The Scanning Process

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the process of environmental scanning. It goes in depth by describing different methods used in environmental scanning.

Ways of seeing

Multiple glasses

'Scanning is best done in a group, so you should look to set up a representative group of staff from across the organization. Doing this sounds easy, but it requires a commitment on the part of managers to include scanning in the position descriptions of these staff and to support them to spend a regular amount of time to do scanning each week. Staff finding the time to do scanning is the biggest obstacle to implementing a successful scanning system. 

You need people who have open minds, who are willing to have their ideas challenged, who can think outside the box and are not tied to the present way of doing things, who are willing to share their knowledge, and who can see the big picture rather than being obsessed with the details' 

We are so preoccupied with the short term, the here and now, and the urgent, that switching our brains over a long term and more strategic focus takes time and space. You might need to have a few scanning sessions that seem confused and worthless before you start to identify the valuable information, and to filter out the "noise". You will need to move out from your organization, into and beyond your industry to global trends. You will need to take a systems perspective. You will be looking for information about: 

  • Your industry and its operating environment. 
  • Your services and how they might evolve. 
  • Your clients and how their expectations might change. 
  • Issues that likely affect your workforce and your staff. 
  • Emerging and converging technologies. 
  • Emerging shifts in what we think is "business as usual". 

Your scanning focus will likely cover: 

  • what competitors are doing, 
  • what is happening in the industry and how might your competitors respond, what is 
  • happening more generally with industry and government policy, and then the broader 
  • societal and global trends. The emphasis you put on each segment will depend on 
  • what you need, but you should always spend time looking at global trends – this is the area that sometimes gets dismissed because people are busy and want to know 
  • what is going to affect their work tomorrow rather than in 10 years' time. But, the global trends drive the former and you need to understand them first

Figure 29. Taxonomy