Organisations seem to really struggle when they are required to manage something that has a degree of complexity or uncertainty.
This is a problem. Because, of course, most of our work is complex and uncertain. As soon as you include people, you get complexity, so it is kind of hard to avoid.
Like many others, I find Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework useful for making sense of ways to approach complex systems. But for getting the message across to management, a straightforward example can help.
Imagine you are driving along a busy stretch of road when a fire engine comes up behind you, sirens blaring and lights flashing.
What do the rules say? Pull over and let them pass. Ok. So, you do that.
What now? What do the rules say to do next?
Absolutely nothing. You look around you, check what other vehicles are there and start to move, perhaps stopping and waving someone else through. Everybody else does the same and, before long, it’s as if nothing has happened.
You can’t really proceduralise this kind of response to an unexpected (but not unforeseeable) development. There are too many variables, too much uncertainty. I suppose you could make a sweeping statement to recommence your journey being mindful of other vehicles and proceed with care. But that’s not really any more useful than just saying “sort yourselves out.”
And although emergency vehicles are relatively scarce, this kind of unexpected development is routine, if not inevitable on a reasonable length trip. Think of tractors pulling in front of you; someone executing a dodgy overtaking manoeuvre; a child/dog/cow/moose/elephant (location dependent) running into the road; traffic lights at roadworks; sudden squalls; potholes; and in one memorable example at Kegworth, UK, a Boeing 737 crashing on the road. It is simply not possible to even predict, much less cater for, every eventuality, but you know they are going to happen.
So, how do we manage driving? We put a high-level framework around it – speed limits, road signs, driver licensing etc – and rely on the drivers to manage the operational variability that comes with every journey. Of course, it’s not perfect, and far too many people die on our roads. But, given there are millions of people strapping themselves into a ton of metal and firing it at high speed a short distance from a whole pile of others going in the opposite direction, it works pretty well. [Side note. If the internal combustion engine had been required to go through a HAZOP before being introduced, we might still all be on horseback – “You want to deliberately explode a volatile chemical over and over again to propel a massive chunk of steel at 70mph with nothing much between you and 500 other people doing the same thing? I don’t think so.”]
For most organisations, driving is one of their biggest risks. And they recognise that it is. And yet, unlike almost everything else they do, they are generally happy to manage it in a way that is strongly dependent on the core skills of their people, managing variability as best they can. They build in capacity by, for example, providing robust vehicles and allowing enough journey time, but they don’t write detailed, step by step procedures because they know it won’t work.
In our on-site work, the variability won’t come from (usually) from fire engines, but it can be equally unpredictable. When management see the similarities, they start to understand without needing a full foundation in complexity science.
Give it a go.