SODA

SODA or Journey Making

The SODA (Strategic Options Development and Analysis) was developed in the late 80's. SODA is a method for working on complicated problems. It is an approach designed to help OR consultants help their clients with difficult problems.

it uses interview and cognitive mapping to record individual views of an issue. Group maps constructed through the aggregation of individual cognitive maps are used to facilitate negotiation about value/goal systems, key strategic issues, and option portfolios. As well as problem content, attention is paid to the affective, political, and process dynamics in the group.

SODA aims to provide a management team with a model as a device to aid negotiation, working with individuality and subjectivity as the basis for problem definition and creativity. It tends to generate increasingly rich models, rather than move towards abstraction or simplicity and sees strategic management in terms of changing thinking and action rather than planning.

The method aims to develop high levels of ownership for a problem through the attention paid to problem definition and negotiation. It is aimed at groups of four to ten participants.

The SODA methodology has recently developed further into _JOURNEY Making_ (JOintly Understanding Reflecting and NEgotiating strategY) (Eden and Ackermann, 1998a). SODA specifically addressed the resolution of complex strategic problems. JOURNEY Making continues to address strategic issues resolution, but also allows agreement to a statement of strategic intent giving an explicit model.

Technique: Cognitive Mapping.

JOURNEY Making & SODA both contain a number of interlinked contributing factors: (1) facilitator(s) using cognitive mapping as a technique; (2) computer software (Decision Explorer) as a supporting tool to elicit, (3) store and handle the complexity revealed by members of a client team through a designed process of inquiry exploring strategic issues.

SODA brings these elements together so as to meet the specific needs of those drawing on support from the system. Originating from research into methods of helping the process of problem solving in teams (Eden et al., 1983), it has been increasingly used as a fully fledged organizational Group Decision Support System (Eden and Ackermann, 1992; Ackermann et al., 1993; Ackermann and Eden, 2001) and for strategy development and implementation within both public and private sectors (Eden and Ackermann, 1998a).

At the core of the method, and of particular relevance to the analysis of expert views, is the technique of ‘‘cognitive mapping’’. Although _cognitive mapping_ has a variety of interpretations in practice (Axelrod, 1976; Huff, 1990), this particular form of cognitive mapping is based on ‘‘personal construct theory’’ (Kelly, 1955) and has been developed, following extensions to the use of ‘‘Repertory Grids’’, for the purpose of capturing a ‘‘personal construct system’’ (Eden et al., 1979; Eden and Jones, 1984; Eden, 1988). Personal construct theory sees ‘‘man as a scientist’’, constantly trying to make sense of the world in order to act within and upon that world.

The analyst using the technique of cognitive mapping seeks to elicit the beliefs, values and expertise of decision makers relevant to the issue in hand through interview or through the analysis and coding of documents. These are then captured as a model of the construct system represented as a cognitive map. The cognitive map is made up of concepts linked to form chains of action-oriented argumentation. We seek to map the construct system of a person as it relates to a particular issue, the map will need to capture the idiosyncratic ways of seeing the world for the particular person. Following, for example, a one hour interview about a problem the cognitive map is likely to contain 90–120 nodes. Similarly when an article is decomposed into a map, the substance of the arguments within the paper are likely to require a map of over 100 nodes to fairly represent the point of view of the author. When maps are used for research purposes they have tended to be 12–20 nodes (see, for example, Johnson et al., 1998; Narayan and Fahey, 1990). It is the richness of a map that provides opportunities for option development and problem solving (Ackermann and Eden, 2001).

A cognitive map demands that assertions have consequences or implications (which reveal the answer to the ‘‘so what?’’ question)––and so the map is made up of ‘‘constructs’’ (or concepts) and arrows indicating the direction of implication embedded in the belief or argument. In particular the arrow shows the implied possible action and its possible outcome as suggested by the original argument.

To ease concept representation we use three dots to separate positive and negative concepts so that we can capture both concepts in ‘more prisoners...less prisoners’. This is read as ‘more prisoners rather than less prisoners’. As shorthand we sometimes omit the negative concept and write ‘more prisoners...’ so that the second concept is implied as the negative of ‘more prisoners’. Concepts are linked by arrows, with the direction of the arrow being such that concepts representing options lead to concepts representing outcomes. A negative sign associated with an arrow indicates that if the first phrase of the first concept applies, then the second phrase of the second concept also applies.

Cognitive maps thus take the form of a set of connected options-outcomes chains. Assertions about the world imply possible policy options which (taken in coherent bundles) in turn imply strategies for the organization. These are often linked to the overarching goals taken to be purposes of the organization or decision maker. In building a map, then, it is important to ask at each and every stage what the proper place of a concept is within the map. The answer can only come confidently from a clear appreciation of the policy-maker’s belief/goal system and its relationship to the issue being addressed.

‘‘Coding’’ argumentation is thus a discipline––it forces the analyst to ask powerful questions of the ‘‘data’’ presented by the experts. The process comprises three key elements: eliciting the different views and belief sets as individual cognitive maps, drawing together this expert opinion in the form of a composite map which is the aggregation of the cognitive maps representing models of the expertise of each expert, and, as noted below, using the composite map in a workshop setting to explore the policy arena and the possible policy options. SODA workshops are designed for small groups (ideally of 6–10 key individuals) to work on taking forward the issue(s) as defined by the participants through their maps. The composite model acts as a tool to help negotiation towards an agreed policy.

The aim is not to develop an all compassing database of argumentation; rather it is to develop a model that is sufficient to allow the strategy or policy debate to be intelligently resolved (Phillips, 1984). The model is thus issue dependent and indeed, client dependent. The practice of this process means that the task of the SODA analyst has been to design and manage a policy making activity such that policy meetings (or workshops) involving key policy makers are appropriately informed by and are built upon the policy analysis of the map/model through interacting with the software.

The aim is to produce clear and agreed statements of goals, major policy areas, policy options available, and explorations to be carried out to support the policy. The important purpose is to make certain that the management team members share an understanding of, and commitment to, strategic decisions, their logical reasons and their consequences.

Steps of Applying SODA

In summary it is a methodology for helping someone understands the various viewpoints of a problem area. Whilst the detail of any projects is tailored to the specific problem, the general steps are;

1.     Planning meetings: Where the project is set up and an initial view of the problem / situation is achieved. At this point it is important to decide who the participants will be and what the outputs will be in order to manage expectations.

2.     Client interviews: Here the key people involved with the issue are interviewed, in a relaxed format, for an hour or so to obtain their individual views of the problem area / situation.

3.     Development of causal maps: Causal mapping is used to get depict the interviewee’s perception of the situation.

4.     Check-back interviews: To check with the interviewees that the causal maps have correctly interpreted their views. If not, they are modified until they are a true representation.

5.     Merging the maps: The individual maps are combined to form a single map.

6.     Presentation: Both the individual and combined maps are presented to the participants, and the merged map is worked on until everyone finds it acceptable. This is best done on a computer with projector, or using several computers and appropriate software. This allows the whole group to understand all the viewpoints and to have ownership of the final map.

7.     Interpret the map in terms of goals, strategies and tactics: The completed, agreed, map can be used to determine the;

§  High level goals – these are usually where the causal arrow-heads that emerge from the map but don’t go any further.

§  Medium level strategies - these are generally the factors that feed in more or less directly to the goals.

§  Low level tactics and operational targets - these are typically the activities that feed into the medium level strategies. They are often located at where causal arrows tend to come in from the wider environment.

8.     Action selection, allocation and implementation: Now that the goals, strategies and targets have been determined, these need to be allocated to people for implementation.

Small Examples of SODA for B.Sc. Students of London International Program

Example 1:

We will apply SODA to the following example problem:

“Crime is a real problem in this country. We are spending more and more on locking up increasing numbers of people in prisons, yet crime seems to go on rising. Many of those in prison are there for reasons connected with medical problems (e.g. drug addiction, mental illness), yet when they come out of prison these problems are unresolved and so they go straight back to crime. Perhaps the answer is longer prison sentences.”

Now the individual interviews would lead to different responses to improve the situation such as:

Interview 1:     More education can create better attitudes of criminals and hence the better society.

Interview 2:     More medical care in prisons can create the better society.

Interview 3:     Longer prison sentences will not reform the criminals and so don’t create the better society.

Interview 4:     More prisoners i.e.  more and strict punishments can create the better society.

The individual cognitive maps are then merged to construct group map as:

Example 2:

We will apply SODA to the following example problem:

“Traffic congestion is a big problem in the urban area. It is mainly due to shortage of off-street parking, due to more individual cars and people not using public transport.. Perhaps the solution lies in reduction on cars subsidies or constructions of multi-storey car parking.”

Now the individual interviews would lead to different responses to improve the situation such as:

Interview 1:     Multi storey car parkings should be constructed near city centers and it should be charged parking.

Interview 2:     More education to public for traffic rules and willingness to reduce traffic congestion is needed.

Interview 3:     Ring roads, by-passes, under-passes and the flyovers must be constructed to reduce the traffic congestion.

Interview 4:     Reduce the subsidies and increase tax on cars.

The individual cognitive maps are then merged to construct group map as:

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