CONTENTS
Key enablers to the art of containing
Mindful practices: spontaneity through improvisation
Mindful practices: a ‘just’ culture
The impact of containing on relationships
Mindful practices: organisational identification and belonging
Your project is prepared and equipped with the necessary flexibility to engage with uncertainty and complexity. The next step is to develop a commitment to contain uncertainty appropriately and to prevent complexity from cascading into a full-blown crisis. Each part of the project must be ready to work together coherently to align the execution of responses with the problems at hand as and when they arise.
Nevertheless, some sub-units in your project will need support to counter each problem mindfully. They cannot always act on their own. Collective ownership goes hand-in-hand with collective accountability, yet this also needs to work in tandem with individual responsibility to act on uncertainties. It is a delicate balance.
The lure of control
The preparation for your project is done. Not only is the project prepared for the expected, aleatoric uncertainty (risk), but also the unexpected (epistemic uncertainty). The project is in a state of alertness, with participants constantly on the lookout for what might go wrong. Their preparedness goes beyond what one normally expects; their readiness to act quickly offers a timely resolution before issues can cascade into a crisis. As with all actions, there are behavioural obstacles that may make this state of readiness less effective.
The illusion of control is a cognitive bias that leads us to feel we have complete control over a situational outcome where, in fact, we do not. The phenomenon was identified in the 1970s (Langer 1975, 311) as ‘an expectancy of a personal success probability inappropriately higher than the objective probability would warrant’. What this means is that people feel they can influence outcomes of a particular course of action even when the ability to influence those outcomes may lie partially or wholly in the control of others. More precisely, the illusion of control is connected closely with the use of power. People believe that the unilateral use of power to make changes is the equivalent of control, although this is not necessarily the case (Dermer and Lucas 1986). This is because power can over-inflate peoples’ self-esteem to such an extent that they believe they have control, even over uncontrollable situations. This cognitive bias is found to be even more pronounced where people have power thrust upon them or a sudden increase in power, and where they have a high level of familiarity with the situation (Fast et al. 2009).
The effect of the illusion of control can be seen in everyday life. People carrying special talismans or ‘lucky tokens’ often do so as a means of providing physical evidence that they can channel luck to stay on their side. As with all cognitive biases, there are benefits and drawbacks to this. The illusion of control means that people feel that they are not subject to the vagaries of fate and have some influence over their lives. The drawbacks of unwarranted and excessive illusions of control include unfounded fears and paranoia and delusions that they are either in complete control over events or that events have conspired to defeat them.
A good example of the illusion of control is when people are driving. If they are a passenger, they feel they are more likely to be involved in an accident than if they are driving because, as a passenger, they are out of control, whereas if they are driving they feel in control.
In organisations, the illusion of control can manifest itself in all sorts of ways. For example, although senior management may have a vision for their organisation this is, at best, only partially followed throughout the organisation as a whole. This is because, in many organisations, a single, global vision for the organisation is not implementable but instead becomes a kind of composite vision with the emergence of other modes of control (Pettigrew 1973). In this situation, senior management may believe they have control, but much of this belief is illusory. Another example of the illusion of control at play is in the attempts of management to implement change. While many managers labour under the belief that change can be planned and directed, many researchers have found that much of change is an emergent phenomenon (Dermer and Lucas 1986). Perhaps the most problematic thing about this is that people feel they are to blame when things do not turn out as envisaged, not recognising that their actual control over the situation was partial at best.
Habitual responses
Faced with the challenge of epistemic uncertainty, the temptation for us project managers is to fall back on ‘tried and tested’ routines and rely on these until it is, perhaps, too late. Where no problems emerge, this behaviour is fine. It is when things start to go awry that reflexively following routines, that have been used successfully before, can become a problem. Indeed, it may be that responses to problems are habitual: if something goes wrong, then certain routines are followed, regardless of the context or nature of the problem. Of course, the main problem with habitual responses is that they are the antithesis of mindful project management. They are an attempt to find a ready-made answer to any problem when in practice these new difficulties often require more innovative and imaginative solutions.
Hierarchical escalation
Where managers encounter uncertainty, there is often a tendency to ask someone more senior to take the crucial decision on how to respond. Frequently, this is not about what action should be taken, but more about passing accountability for decision-making up the hierarchy. This is not always a problem, and it is frequently necessary where there are crucial decisions to be made which may lie outside the control or scope of the project manager (for example, resource allocation across a portfolio of projects). However, the process of escalation can present major problems. This is because escalation of decision-making is slow – it requires the project manager to articulate and communicate the problem clearly to senior management, for people at a more senior level to understand the nature and implications of the problem and then for a decision to be made and communicated. Managers at a more senior level are generally more remote and removed from the project situation and may therefore not be best placed to make decisions. In the time it takes to make a decision, the risky circumstances may well have escalated into something far more problematic for the project, and this could have been avoided if the people closest to the problem had dealt with it straight away. Other, slightly subtler issues arise, too. If a reporting and escalation culture takes root, then any problems or deviations from a plan can result in excessive reporting (for example, daily conference calls being set up), resulting in extensive effort to measure and report rather than actually to fix the problem. This can be painful, and may well cause managers to ‘hide’ small problems until they can resolve them themselves to avoid extra scrutiny. The upshot of this, of course, is that the first senior management hears of these problems is when they have become full-blown crises that can no longer be concealed.
The problem of inappropriate escalation generally lies in a lack of empowerment on the part of those working where problems are occurring. If they feel unable or unwilling to be accountable for their actions, they will defer decisions rather than take action when it is needed. In mindful project management, escalations are to be avoided. We must ‘own’ the problem until it is resolved.
Problem of accountability
We may use accountability as a judge instead of a witness; a whipping stick instead of a ruler. That is when accountability becomes a problem. The tendency to avoid this whipping stick escalate problems away, through the organisational hierarchy.
Where there is a lack of empowerment in the project team, decisions will be deferred or escalated. This results in a delay in decision-making and, in turn, allows risks to escalate. The problem lies with us retreating to compliance. If we have ‘ticked the box’, our job is secure. Compliance becomes a tool for protecting individuals rather than serving the best interests of the project. This goes to the heart of project governance: what does the governance approach seek to achieve? Is it there to blame and castigate individuals for mistakes, or to help the project team achieve objectives? If, where mistakes are made or uncertainty emerges, a scapegoat is sought, no one will want to be accountable for their actions. This puts the whole project at risk.
First formally identified in the 1980s, status quo bias is a prevalent cognitive bias where people prefer their environment and situation to remain as it is (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988). Closely related to the concept of inertia (Madrian and Shea 2001), where the stability of prevailing systems often results from status quo bias, this bias affects all sorts of decision-making, from relatively small, low-risk decisions to very significant choices.
As with other cognitive biases, status quo bias affects all people in all walks of life. For example, it has been found that there is great inertia in the UK to changing domestic energy suppliers, despite the process being made incredibly simple and with virtually zero cost with direct monetary savings being available as a result. This can, in part, be explained by status quo bias. Many organisations, such as insurance companies and banks, factor status quo bias into their business models in the expectation that people will not bother to switch accounts, even when offered a more enticing deal.
The psychology of status quo bias closely relates to both cognitive misconceptions (that underpin most cognitive biases) but, in the case of status quo bias, also psychological commitments – people feel committed to a particular situation and, therefore, are reluctant to change. In particular, it is connected with loss aversion, where people weigh the possibility of a loss more highly than they do the possibility of equal amounts of gain, and sunk cost fallacy, where people continue to invest resources into a particular endeavour, even when that endeavour is not beneficial (both these cognitive biases are discussed elsewhere in this book). Status quo bias is also influenced by the mere exposure effect where people prefer something they have been exposed to before.
Confirmation bias
First identified in the 1960s (Wason 1960), confirmation bias (sometimes referred to as confirmatory bias) is a cognitive bias that describes the tendency of people to favour new information that confirms their previously held beliefs. Indeed, it has been found that people will actively seek and interpret information that supports their preconceptions. As such, it represents an error of inductive inference towards confirmation of a position held, hypotheses or other pre-existing viewpoints (Nickerson 1998).
Features of confirmation bias are:
- In developing opinions, people look for positive and resist negative cases.
- People need less evidence to form a hypothesis than they need to reject a hypothesis.
- People see what they are looking for, even when it is not there.
- People perceive a higher correlation in data that supports their beliefs than is there.
- People tend to believe things that are desirable to their current way of life. This is closely associated with the status-quo effect and is sometimes called the Pollyanna principle.
- The more strongly people hold a belief, the more likely they will be to confirmation bias.
- People tend to stand by first impressions, even if future information undermines those impressions (Nickerson 1998).
Within organisations, confirmation bias has a profound influence on decision-making. Because people are more concerned about being right than about being wrong, so they find data and information to support their sometimes erroneous views (Chambers and Windschitl 2004). Some of the effects include assuming opinions are factual. Although past performance is not an indicator of future performance, senior managers tend to assume that because organisations have done well in the past, they will do well in the future. People in organisations tend to over-value the way things were done in the past, and confirmation bias reinforces this (Nickerson 1998).
Isolation
Just as we tend to look at problems in isolation from the wider picture, we also tend to do this with responses. Responses are defined to match particular uncertainties. However, individual responses can have wider implications beyond the prevention and mitigation of isolated uncertainties. We respond and then move on to the next problem, not necessarily making linkages between them, or appreciating that containment may well trigger new uncertainties, not only for our project but possibly beyond it as well.
Non-commitment
Uncertainty represents fiction until it materialises. Why act on fiction if all that it does is close off opportunities to act? We may well know about a particular uncertainty but resist commitment, hoping that uncertainty will not materialise, possibly until it is too late. We tend to cling to inaction for two reasons. First, we seek to retain our freedom to act. Second, we seek to avoid commitment of resources that may not be needed. Indeed, when budgets are tight, expenditure on seemingly ‘non-essential’ activities might lead to awkward questions, so this logic has some rational basis. We believe uncertainty might happen, but hope it will not.
Lack of reflection
We all like to believe that our decisions are well founded and that we have identified the most effective solutions to uncertainty. However, responses can often be initiated without recourse to scrutiny: to identify whether the chosen response matches the problem at hand and to ensure that our judgement is as good as it could be. This automatism is fuelled by the lack of time for useful reflection. Signs of stress and a full workload are good indicators of a lack of reflection in matching a response to a problem, and this is worth looking out for in both ourselves and our teams.
Closely related to loss aversion and status quo bias, the sunk-cost fallacy refers to the tendency of people to continue to pursue a particular endeavour or behaviour as a result of previously invested resources. Those resources need not just be capital but could also take the form of time or effort (Arkes and Blumer 1985). The misconception behind this tendency is that people think they are making rational decisions based on the future value of their investments whereas, in truth, their decisions are tainted by investments they have already made, to which they have an emotional attachment. This emotional attachment becomes more difficult to break, the more the investment accumulates.
Sunk-cost is a fallacy because it prevents people from taking the best course of action. People become wedded to a specific course, even when it is detrimental to them simply because they have a large, and often increasing, stake in the action.
Psychologists have found that the sunk-cost fallacy affects all aspects of life. It results in people staying with partners who are inappropriate or problematic for their health and well-being. Gamblers chase losses, people overspend on products for which they have no need and consume products and services even when the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits (Sweis et al. 2018).
In organisations, the sunk-cost fallacy leads to people committing to investments and pouring more and more resources into those investments when, often, the wisest course of action is to cut one’s losses. The result is that people in organisations are prepared to throw good money after bad (Arkes and Blumer 1985).
Key enablers to the art of containing
One thing that is certain about uncertainty is that it is likely to emerge at some point during a project. Uncertainty can take many forms and often threatens to derail projects in terms of both timescale and budget, and it may well jeopardise the realisation of long-term benefits. It is our job to contain uncertainty through adaptation and through continuous commitment to the management of uncertainty.
Commitment
To foster resilience, people in projects need to work together in multidisciplinary teams. This means removing remove barriers to cross-functional collaboration. From a resilience standpoint, encouraging mindful thinking in team members to accommodate epistemic uncertainty is crucial and requires a commitment. This means breaking the tendency to operate mindlessly compliant to a project management framework.
Commitment is the social ‘glue’ in a project and can be a compelling reason to focus on project delivery. In resilient projects, commitment is not just restricted to our work – we commit to our relationships, friendships; the causes we ‘truly’ care about.
Ensuring team commitment is not just an act of leadership at the moment though; it needs to be built up over time so that the project or organisational culture is one of dedication to the work and personal commitment to project objectives. This is neither straightforward nor without cost but, when potential crises are successfully averted, this effort will seem like a price well worth paying.
Abundant expertise
Expertise is not to be confused with ‘experts’. Expertise (proficiency, skill, specialist knowledge) is not a permanent state of being but is situational, based on current needs and previous experiences. Expertise is also relational in that it is an assemblage of knowledge, experience, learning and intuition that is seldom embodied in just a single individual.
An expert is often defined as someone very knowledgeable in a particular area. Expertise is unlikely to be defined by hierarchy, status or ego. Nor is it necessarily asserted through accreditations, as these can be just forms of knowledge-testing. ‘True’ expertise combines deep factual knowledge in a particular field and a way of appreciating that it is dynamic. There is rarely only ‘one best way’ of doing things in a complex situation and solutions and choices are likely to evolve. The expert’s opinion is not to be mistaken for the end of a discussion about an answer. Instead, expertise is the beginning of a discourse, triggering a process of fact-finding, knowledge-generation and problem-solving.
Sensitivity
Any response based on expertise not only has an immediate impact on the problem – hopefully for the better – but may have consequences for other projects, units or departments of the organisation as a whole. Just imagine that you have responded to uncertainty through taking actions to reduce the likelihood of its occurrence or to mitigate its impact. This is generally a positive process since uncertainty is being actively addressed, as it should be. However, it is important also to keep in mind and be sensitive to the impact on the wider environment. The big picture goes beyond the problem and solution at hand. It looks beyond the task or even the project boundaries and incorporates a wider perspective; that of a programme or even a business in which the project is embedded. Management not only involves zooming ‘in’ to the management of tasks but also zooming ‘up and out’ to see how project work relates to the bigger picture. A big picture approach looks at the wider impact of decisions and needs a broad appreciation of goals, priorities and work methods if we are to be able to make sensible judgements in the light of the effects our decisions may have.
Improvisation
In resilient projects, we understand the importance of routines and procedures for predictable behaviour in delivering the work, but we also know that none of us has perfect knowledge about how to respond to epistemic uncertainty. The unexpected is inevitable. With these surprises comes the necessity to improvise – the need for staff to think on their feet. Knowledgeable project teams need to have the freedom and space to self-organise into ad hoc networks to provide expert problem-solving. These networks have no formal status and dissolve as soon as a crisis is over.
Weick (1998, 552) provides a list of characteristics of teams that are required to be highly capable of improvising:
- Willingness to forego planning and to rehearse in favour of acting in real-time.
- Well-developed understanding of internal resources and the materials that are at hand.
- Proficiency without blueprints and diagnosis.
- Ability to identify or agree on minimal structures for embellishing.
- Openness to reassembly of and departures from routines.
- Possession of a rich and meaningful set of themes, fragments or phrases on which to draw for ongoing lines of action.
- Predisposition to recognise the partial relevance of previous experience to present novelty.
- High confidence in the team’s skill to deal with non-routine events.
- The availability of associates committed to and competent at impromptu making do.
- Skill in paying attention to the performance of others and building on it to keep the interaction going and to set up interesting possibilities for one another.
- Ability to match and maintain the pace and tempo at which others are extemporising.
- Focus on coordination here and now without being distracted by memories or anticipation.
- Preference for and comfort with process rather than structure, which makes it easier to work with ongoing development, restructuring and realisation of outcomes, and easier to postpone the question, ‘what will it have amounted to?’
Spontaneity through improvisation
Being at the forefront of technology has the dual benefit of providing interest and engagement for employees while enabling the company to spot new business opportunities. TTP has created new groups and formed several spinoff companies as such opportunities were identified. In exploring, adapting to clients’ needs and spotting new opportunities, management has found that:
Project managers in TTP face challenges that require new, spontaneous responses. This is because, at times where planning and execution converge, quick actions are necessary. The work that is required in an environment of pressure and uncertainty becomes less ‘formalised’ and more improvisational:
Key to improvisational working is, first and foremost, an acknowledgement that improvisation is not a sign of ‘bad planning’. Indeed, improvisation works best in a culture in which processes and plans can be circumvented, albeit with set boundaries. Such deviations from ‘planned activities’ are supported at TTP. Scrutiny is not limited by compliance thinking, improvisational capabilities are not fostered by compliance audits. Instead, the power of improvisation is measured by its creativity and adaptability. The question of consistency of action is replaced by the question of whether the ‘right’ action has been carried out in a timely fashion.
Going hand-in-hand with empowerment (letting go), improvisation (making do) leads to increased creative outcomes that are novel and yet at times appear not to be useful. The outcome of improvisational activities might lead to otherwise ‘wasteful’ activities such as ‘near-misses’. However, in the culture of TTP, such near-misses are seen as opportunities – opportunities to learn.
Improvisation can be prepared for. TTP does not just leave its project managers to ‘do their own thing’. Improvisational capabilities are pre-established through training. Again, it is important to point out that compliance to management frameworks – what one should do – is not high on TTP’s training agenda. Rather, the aim is to provide project managers with an understanding of what empowerment and improvisation entail – what one can do – to deal with situations that are characterised by urgency and uncertainty.
What is mindful about it? The word improvisation stems from the Latin word ‘improvisus’. In essence, it implies the thinking and acting in the ‘here’ and ‘now’ in the absence of being prepared for or having planned for a situation. We may become absorbed in the moment, and advocate self-censorship in believing we can simply rely on a pre-loaded, past-informed action.
Traditional project management framework, with an emphasis on deterministic and probabilistic planning, may enable us to work just right to the edges of the risk horizon. Beyond it, we can not rely on pre-determined instruction but have to engage with a discomforting experience of improvising.
Improvisation is a powerful skill that adds to resilience. It can be developed and fostered but also needs to be supported by a culture of trust, respect and mutual support. Improvisational skills enable us to be prepared for epistemic uncertainty that are truly unexpected but require swift action.
Freedom to think
Improvisation is not carried out in a vacuum. Any action, as novel as it might be, needs to be synchronous – as in a jazz band – with the ‘tunes’ of other players, namely the other stakeholders. Our freedom to think and act requires alignment and commitment to the success of the collective (not just their individual success). Thinking about how and why one should respond is paramount, but requires time. Such time is often scarce. We tend to be preoccupied with the ‘how’ – doing things according to what has been pre-planned – and less so with a reflection on responses and their alignment to the bigger picture.
Leading the art of containing
Where time is sufficient to prevent a crisis from happening, leadership is required to support the containment of uncertainty. It is tempting to pre-load responses and make people do what has been defined in advance. Uncertainty makes such an approach in itself risky, as novelty and ambiguity require reflection and deliberation, not necessarily the ‘blind’, almost ‘unthinking’ adherence to what has been defined as a response to a past problem.
Increasing readiness
Preparation is just part of the story, though. The preparation of us and key stakeholders means that we have the organisational system and understanding in place to scan for and communicate uncertainty and that we are not complacent about our preparedness. However, readiness implies that our team is set to put its preparation into action, to be willing to execute what one has prepared for.
Such commitment to act immediately – when adversity strikes – requires a number of other factors. Key among these is transparency. People must be encouraged not to conceal or hide problems, and the outcomes of projects should be measured using an agreed methodology. Apart from anything else, public reporting of outcomes can act as a powerful driver for improvement.
It is also crucial to link everybody’s behaviour to the desired outcomes. If we want others to be committed to resilience, they need to be rewarded for this kind of behaviour. This might include the following:
- Bonuses can be linked to behaviour-based expectations (BBEs). Originally used in the nuclear power industry, BBEs are typically agreed among employee peers, and they hold each other accountable for seeing that they are fulfilled. They are designed to tackle some common causes of failure, such as lack of attention to detail, lack of critical thinking, noncompliance with policies and behaviours in high-risk situations. They generally involve ensuring that simple tasks are performed accurately every time, perhaps by developing mnemonics (for checklists) when people are performing repetitive tasks.
- Ensuring that individual owners are identified for all actions, rather than having responses owned by the team. This way, actions are more likely to be implemented.
- Where expected behaviours are exhibited, advancement opportunities are made available.
Facilitating improvisation
Improvisation can take on a purposeful, considered dimension. A commitment to resilience in projects requires an expectation that project teams will improvise around unexpected problems. In this context, improvisation is not a complete absence of structure in decision-making, implying chaos, randomness, and disorder. It is not simply ‘making it up as you go along’. Using jazz as a metaphor, the performers – us, as project staff – improvise around a structure and plan. Like jazz musicians, improvising managers continuously invent novel responses without a predetermined script and with little certainty as to the exact outcomes of their actions. The consequences of their decisions unfold as the activities themselves are enacted.
Key to this process is an activity termed ‘provocative competence’, where managers instigate a departure from routines and ‘recipe’ behaviours, treating errors as a source of learning. They can alternate between ‘soloing’ and ‘supporting’ to give the team room to think, enhance learning and distribute the leadership task. There are five steps to provocative competence:
- The affirmative move, where the manager has an excellent knowledge of the team’s capabilities, often understanding individual team members’ strengths better than they do themselves.
- Introduction of a small disruption to the routine, such as shifting a regular meeting to a different location or time, or switching personnel around.
- Giving the team a stretch-assignment to solve.
- Facilitating incremental reorientation by encouraging repetition. This involves learning new routines or ways of doing things based on the problems they have solved.
- Analogic sharpening – the provocative competence intervention should allow the team to work out new links and connections that they can employ in problem-solving. This might, for example, be new or better understanding of other peoples’ skills, or new knowledge about resources that they could call upon when faced with a crisis.
Creating ‘space’ to reflect
Any response exercised in a project needs to be reflected upon, as the problem at hand might have changed in the meantime. However, we also need to keep project momentum going to meet the inevitably tight deadlines. We need to create space for ourselves, to think about the ‘why’. Why did we do this? What was the purpose of this response and has it had the desired effect? These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed repeatedly. Private, personal reflection is powerful and short daily meetings can also be used to gain greater insight. A suggested balance between ‘doing’ and ‘reflecting’ is 90/10. Given the intensity of most projects, this is likely to be challenging. However, it is a powerful approach since it is foolish to believe that a future will unfold exactly as planned. Time spent slowing down is likely to be time well spent on reflection.
Deferring to expertise
As mentioned before, improvisation is not chaos. It is a state of highly situated thinking, dealing with problems in the here-and-now. Such thinking in a collective – as a project normally is – requires expertise both to challenge and also to supplement one another. The hierarchies of traditional, stable project teams can be too inflexible and slow to see and respond to uncertainty in a prompt and effective manner. By the time ‘permission’ to act has been escalated up the hierarchy to a higher authority, the problem in question may already have spun out of control. This is because there is, understandably, a premium placed on progress in projects. The project schedule is one of the key objectives of the work and progress is frequently valued as a key priority. The idea of stopping the project is an anathema to many managers. However, where a problem is identified early, work could be paused briefly to deal with the problem effectively before it becomes much more significant. Caught early, the issue is likely to be relatively small in scope and scale and isolated to a particular part of the project system. The team has to deal with it in a focused manner and then it can move on.
This then brings us to a key principle for containing adversity in resilient projects – deference to expertise. Resilient projects push decision-making ‘down and around’. Those who are close to uncertainty are often best-placed to deal with the problem. They should not be ‘left on their own’ to make the best decisions, though. As we have already observed, people in resilient projects are empowered beyond their expertise. However, we must support them with expertise, to enable both us and others we have empowered to take action, to make the most informed judgement.
Expertise, residing in the project and beyond, needs to be made transparent to us ‘owning’ the management of uncertainty. We need to be made aware of these informal networks, and such expertise needs to be made readily available to us to inform our decision-making.
Sometimes called obedience bias, authority bias is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of people to attribute greater weight and accuracy to the opinions of authority figures. This is found to happen even when people believe what those in authority are saying, or how they are behaving, is wrong. People are likely to value the opinions of those in authority over their own.
Blind obedience to authority was revealed in the infamous Milgram Shock experiment in the early 1960s in which participants believed they were administering increasingly harmful shocks to an unseen participant. Despite their misgivings, about two-thirds of the participants in the experiment were prepared to continue increasing the electric shocks to a fatal level under the instruction of an authority figure (in this case, a man in a laboratory coat) (Smith and Bond 1998).
Authority bias is, in fact, an important aspect of everyday life, driven by a deep-seated duty to authority among people. Police and judicial members rely on this, as do medical and educational staff. For example, people generally follow medical advice based on the authority of the medical practitioner. This is the case for anyone, including other people in authority. This effect has been seen to extend to people who are listened to, such as social media influencers.
However, while deference to authority is useful as a kind of social glue, it also has problems. In organisations, people can sometimes do as they are instructed mindlessly, rather than questioning their instruction. This means that organisations might participate in ethically suspect actions at the behest of senior management even despite the misgivings of staff. Similarly, the ideas and innovations of senior management might be seen as superior to those of other people in the organisation, even when they are in fact inferior, simply because of the authority of the proposer.
Resilient projects have mastered the ability to alter their typical patterns of containing adversity – they allow the situated voices to be heard. In practice, for resilient project organisations, this means:
- All project workers are valued, and expertise is seen as an asset.
- Everyone must be comfortable sharing information and concerns with anyone at any time.
- Project managers defer to the person with the most knowledge of the issue at hand.
- Everyone works together to find the best solution.
Our role as a project leader is not to be that single expert or to assume that those close to uncertainty have all the necessary expertise that comes with empowerment. Expertise needs to be identified and made accessible. People need to be made aware of pockets of expertise and how to access them, without great bureaucratic hurdles.
We need to encourage a culture in which expertise is acknowledged, cherished, and rewarded. This can take many forms. For example, morning briefings can reinforce deference to expertise using conversational methods, such as non-verbal cues (eye contact, gestures), making problems immediate to people’s situations rather than repeating redundant information, and the use of engaging descriptions and storytelling techniques. Whatever method (or a mix of methods) is used, it should be rich, current, and relevant to the needs of the project workers at that moment. The key is to provoke a conversation around expertise beyond ‘surface’ information and to spread this knowledge through the interpersonal – and often informal – networks involved in the project. Developing deference to expertise is less about training and more about changing processes. The first step is to redefine meetings. The best place for conversations is in the work area – not in conference rooms or formal meetings. We can adopt ‘no-meeting time zones’ so managers can circulate the project space and receive feedback from other project workers. By observing progress and meeting with employees in their actual workspace, we can more easily defer to employees’ expertise and customs.
Dealing with the accountability problem
Problems are ‘owned’ by the person closest to them until they can either resolve them or find someone else who can. In resilient projects, problem-based decisions should be taken by those best placed to do so. The challenge in this is that people who experience a great deal of accountability tend to make more appropriate decisions, but sometimes intense accountability can only be relieved by ratcheting decisions up the organisational hierarchy. This is more likely in circumstances where political pressure and career concerns are great.
Hence, we should not confuse accountability as a judgment of our inability to be that fail-safe able to predict the future state of a project and prevent all uncertainty from impacting the project. Accountability can not, and must not, be associated with the inability to prevent something uncertain from materialising; accountability may well relate to not ‘owning’ uncertainty or negligence but mindfully engaging with it.
Supporting ‘just’ containment
The principles underpinning responsiveness in containing uncertainty raise some issues. Perhaps the most profound is that of culture. A resilient project needs a culture that supports the mindful behaviours demanded of the project team. Resilient projects are imbued with what is called a ‘just’ culture. The key focus of this kind of cultural milieu is to concentrate on what is wrong (with the system) rather than on who is at fault. Even one small pocket of failure that is missed could ultimately threaten to derail the project. If we think we will be blamed for the problem, or that the default response will be to identify someone who is at fault, then the early, weak signals will go unreported and mindful engagement with uncertainty will slacken. The types of problems and appropriate responses can be seen below (see Table 6.1):
Table 6.1 Just behaviour
| Mechanism of duty breach | Appropriate response |
|---|---|
| Human error: this is an inadvertent slip, lapse, or mistake. | Console the individual. Improve and failure-proof the system that allowed the breach. |
| At-risk behaviour: this is a conscious drift from resilient behaviour, occurring when an individual believes that drift doesn’t cause harm. | Assess the system for weaknesses that encourage or require the individual to take risks. Improve and failure-proof the system that allowed the breach. Coach the individual; take disciplinary action on repeated risky behaviour. |
| Reckless behaviour: the individual consciously chooses to engage in behaviour that has unjustified and substantial risk. | Determine if the individual is impaired or unwilling to follow standard work principles. Discipline or provide employee assistance as appropriate. |
Marx (2009)
A ‘just’ culture
At TTP, there is a need to learn from errors and mistakes. Mishaps, close calls and process upsets are sources from which one can draw lessons:
Dealing with mistakes can be seen as an acknowledgement of failure, and thus incompetence. Why did the project manager not do the right thing in the first place? It is therefore tempting to ignore mistakes and not share them with others. However, only a small proportion of errors are the result of incompetence or malicious behaviour – something that might justify some blame and penalty. TTP takes active steps to avoid a ‘culture of blame’ that would undermine the emphasis on teams. There is
A ‘just’ culture is not to be mistaken for a ‘no-blame’ culture, which is neither feasible nor desirable. A blanket amnesty, the core of a ‘no-blame’ culture, without any sanctions opens the floodgates for unacceptable behaviour. Instead, a ‘just’ culture provides the encouragement to project leaders at TTP to report and share ‘honest’ mistakes with internal and external stakeholders. This allows a quick resolution and also facilitates information exchange as a prerequisite for reflection and learning.
Understandably, people are reluctant to share incidents that are burdened with the connotation of failure. As a consequence, TTP emphasises two main issues – confidentiality and fairness. Incidents of errors are communicated without the allocation of blame, and people are incentivised, and occasionally rewarded, for speaking honestly about mistakes and errors in projects they were responsible for. Sanctions for unacceptable behaviours are openly communicated so that people can draw a line against what ‘just’ implies. It is of great importance that people at TTP are treated fairly. Hence the response to an incident is often explained and justified, to allow people to understand the ‘why’, without bias and the feeling of injustice.
What is mindful about it? A just culture holds us responsible for the quality of our choice and actions. It provides us with the freedom to act, allows us to improvise within boundaries. In a just culture, we are not only made accountable for our own actions, but also accountable to each other. It is important to note that the onus does not lie on the outcome but on the process. If, for example, we have done our utmost to contain uncertainty, but due to aspects outside of our control project performance deteriorates, we as project managers need to feel ‘safe enough’ to improvise. Only under conditions of gross-negligence should penalties and punishments be imposed.
Supporting mindful containment
As we mentioned earlier, in a resilient project, the person who responds to a problem – because they are closest to it and thus most familiar with it – is generally to be supported in making the most informed judgement. However, in drawing on his or her specific expertise, the individual may look at the problem in isolation from the larger view of what that problem could mean for the project and the wider business. We may well execute a response without thinking about the potential consequences of it on the big picture (see Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1 Big picture thinking – solution
Hence, we need to make sure that we are sensitive to what that big picture includes and challenge them to make the connection between their response and its possible wider consequences. The simple question ‘What does this mean for … ?’ may suffice to kick-start this consequential thinking. Widening someone’s appreciation will also influence their ownership. Something that, looked at in isolation, may appear to be relatively inconsequential, might suddenly become more important if seen in the context of the bigger picture.
We need to have good oversight and be aware of the wider implications of responses to uncertainty, rather than becoming embroiled in the detail. Yes, we are formally project managers but, in our leadership role, getting involved in day-to-day issues may divert attention from the broader, system-wide issues. Keeping sight of the big picture means that we will be able to help the project team form and maintain a shared sense of the adversities it faces and the appropriate actions to take.
The impact of containing on relationships
The containment of uncertainty is driven by a continuous engagement with stakeholders to help contain that uncertainty. Such promises to mindfully engage with uncertainty may erode in the light of adverse effects of uncertainty, and thus need to be reinforced.
Assessing contribution
The first task for us is to assess the actual contribution of stakeholders to the management of uncertainty. This may start with an assessment of how tolerant stakeholders are in light of emerging uncertainty. Do they see materialising uncertainty as a natural evolution or indeed something that is perceived as inadequate planning? The latter may drive an attribution of blame that is destructive to the continuous commitment of stakeholders to keep on managing uncertainty in a collaborative manner. In this respect, it is important to pick up signals of a deteriorating relationship.
Driving commitment of stakeholders
How can we engage stakeholders in the process of, in the extreme, constant improvisation? Against all odds, we have to anticipate what is coming next before it happens. In other words, what is required is a heightened state of mind, an awareness, playful engagement and the flow of improvisation. Maintaining such a playful improv engagement with uncertainty needs to be nurtured through collaboration and inspiration. One key driver of mental stimulation is to appeal to individual dedication towards the group that are relied upon to deliver the project. As a project is essentially a social undertaking, people need to be inspired and socially committed to act in the best interest of people, aligned with the objectives of the project.
Organisational identification and belonging
How individuals determine value for themselves is a deciding factor in choosing to join an organisation or project. The extent to which members commit to something as temporary as a project is very much dependent on the value of belonging and on identifying one’s values with those of the project and the organisation. The sense of belonging at TTP is driven by the creation of personal relationships. It is:
After-work social groups, sports teams, and working on community issues all help foster a sense of shared purpose including,
Social bonding is also encouraged within TTP. This can be in the form of providing support and peer reviews to other project leaders, or by honestly sharing stories of project successes and failures. The purpose is to create the identity of a project manager who is both professional and committed. For TTP, a professional manager is one who possesses a wide range of knowledge and has gained extensive experience. They have the skills to manage a project successfully. These skills need to be channelled towards a purpose, and to forming a ‘bridge’ – a bond – with other people in the organisation. This includes a strong understanding of what the organisation and project stand for. The value of a sense of belonging should not be underestimated.
What is mindful about it? A cohesive team is one that bonds; meaning that we pick up the slack of others while working towards a shared goal. Fundamental to a socially cohesive project team is the capacity to experience a heightened state of mindfulness about epistemic uncertainty, in a group. This includes the ability to appreciate conflicting perspectives, the ‘safe space’ to challenge and question each other for the purpose to instil curiosity, creativity and engagement beyond the realm of the risk horizon. In other words, social cohesion is the foundation of mindful management of epistemic uncertainty.
Addressing the accountability problem
We have talked about the importance of accountability and the establishment of a ‘just culture’. We have also explored the role of culture in supporting accountability and both facilitating and controlling empowerment. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to see that the project develops its own culture that de-emphasises accountability as a means of attributing blame but, rather, inspires dedication in stakeholders to do their best to contain uncertainty. This process may be reinforced by implementing policies that support just culture and translating a just culture into mindful project practices and processes.
Never-ending commitment to containment
It must be acknowledged that containing adversity is an ongoing process and not a one-off activity. Uncertainty constantly jeopardises project performance. By no means can adversity be fully prevented from materialising. Indeed, it can only be subdued to the extent that variation in project performance may remain within acceptable tolerances. Hence, all the parties involved need to acknowledge that the initial ‘ideal’ of project performance may never be achieved.
Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey – a success of containing?
The previous vignettes all talk about a failure of noticing, interpreting, or preparing for the unexpected in a mindful manner. There is indeed a plethora of case studies of projects struggling to adequately look beyond the risk horizon. However, once the unexpected emerges and can no longer be ignored, projects tend to successfully mobilise activities to contain or recover from a crisis. But, at what cost?
On 8 April 2000, a V-22 Osprey, an American tiltrotor aircraft in development, attempted to land at Marana Northwest Regional Airport as part of a training exercise. Upon approach, it suddenly stalled and crashed, killing 19 Marines. The Osprey earned a terrible reputation during development, costing the lives of 30 Marines in three crashes.
The idea of an aeroplane that could take off vertically like a helicopter and fly horizontally at high speeds and over long distances was realised by the US Military with the program Joint Advanced Vertical Lift Aircraft (JVX), led by Bell Boeing, in 1981.
The programme was plagued with problems from the beginning. The US Army withdraw its commitment in 1987 due to budget constraints, leaving the US Special Ops Command (US SOCOM) to be the sole buyer.
The first of six prototypes made its maiden flight in March 1989. In April 1989, the V-22 programme was cancelled in the 1990 fiscal year’s amended budget. Nevertheless, funding and design studies continued, while increasing interest in the Osprey was shown by the US Congress.
The fifth prototype lifted off on 11 June 1991. To observers and the press, this test flight turned out to be a ‘rodeo ride’. The Osprey rose into the air, hovered in mid-air, and while trying to land, it violently shrugged to the left and right, until its blades hit the ground and disintegrated. House Representative Dave Weldon committed to the Deleware County Daily Times: ‘I’d rather it happens now than with Marines on board’ (Whittle 2010, 199).
From July 1992, a string of accidents led to the loss of more Marines. In July 1992, nine Marines died on board of a pre-production V-22. April 2000 saw the biggest loss of life of 19 Marines during a simulation of a rescue exercise. In December 2000, a V-22 got out of control, killing all four aboard.
Despite these tragic setbacks, the developmental testing period showed that the V-22 met or exceeded all performance and handling quality requirements. The combination of speed, range, and vertical takeoff capability has made it unrivalled as a tiltrotor concept.
In projects, trial-and-error (at times at a terrible price) learning is characterised by repeated, varied attempts, which are continued until success is achieved. Surprising problems may then be addressed by improvisational activities that are not directed by pre-loaded action, as there is often no reference in the past or a script that predisposes how to act. The discomfort to address epistemic uncertainty without specific and scripted action is compensated by the commitment to ‘try something out’. Rewards and incentives are designed to allow and commit managers to be creative in their containment of uncertainty, much less so to make them mindlessly compliant to pre-loaded actions.
Towards an art of containing
A resilient project requires dedication and a desire to respond to uncertainty. Such a desire can only be realised if we are empowered and skilled beyond their ‘silo’ of allocated responsibility and accountability. In this respect, the escalation of decisions up the organisational hierarchy to receive greater authority to enact a response is strongly discouraged.
Empowerment is a crucial component of achieving a commitment to resilience, the confidence in improvising and the ability of us to harness the latent expertise. This expertise can be valuable when directed to dealing with uncertainty in the here-and-now. However, empowerment does not mean that we give up control, as this would be a risk in and of itself. The question becomes one of how we protect their projects from control failures when empowered employees are encouraged to redefine how they go about doing their jobs, improvising and acting autonomously.
Equipping people with range flexibility may allow forms of improvisation. This, though, is not to be mistaken for an acknowledgement of bad planning, since improvisation is a key skill in a project team. However, it can only be applied successfully if the ‘big picture’ is established and maintained. Responses exercised in isolation of their wider impact are simply a ‘shot from the hip’ and are potentially dangerous.
Unsurprisingly, we need to support and inspire those around us who happen to be most qualified to contain uncertainty, resisting the temptation to take over. It is our task not to be bogged down in day-to-day work but to provide a support network that allows people closer to the problems and more qualified to deal with them in a timely and appropriate fashion; through inspiration and dedication towards the individual.
Reflection
How well do the following statements characterise your project? For each item, select one box only that best reflects your conclusion.
| Fully agree | Neither agree nor disagree | Fully disagree | |||
| People are committed to engaging with uncertainty. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Ambiguity in predicting the future is not a hindrance to creating practical responses to it. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| People are empowered beyond their immediate responsibility. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Fully agree | Neither agree nor disagree | Fully disagree | |||
| Training and expertise are provided to allow people to deal with abnormal situations. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| The big picture is shared, maintained and committed to. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Hierarchical escalations are an indicator of a lack of empowerment. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Fully agree | Neither agree nor disagree | Fully disagree | |||
| Expertise is valued more highly than hierarchy, status and position. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Project leaders help and support in facilitating a response, yet they do not take over if something goes wrong. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Unless grossly negligent, people are not penalised for enacting a ‘wrong’ response. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Scoring: Add the numbers. If you score higher than 27, your capability to contain uncertainty would appear to be good. If you score 27 or lower, please think of how you may be able to enhance your capability to respond to uncertainty appropriately and promptly.
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