CONTENTS
In the previous chapter, we introduced the idea of projects as organic, complex entities. The resilience of a project organism is aided by the people inhabiting it being aware of their surroundings and potential disturbances. Ideally, the project resists, absorbs adversity and adapts to these disturbances without collapsing. In this chapter, we continue on the road to resilience by introducing and evaluating the archetypes of project resilience. One archetype is based on rules and procedures, stripping the organism of situated thinking, and relying wholly on predetermined responses to risk. The other allows human situated cognition – mindfulness – to flourish, to counter the impact of uncertainty. We use a case study in which these two fundamentally different styles of management ‘clashed’ with each other: the Fall of France in 1940. In it, we analyse how uncertainty was managed by the opposing parties, and what led to one of the most puzzling defeats in modern military history.
A ‘project’ without parallels
We could have chosen from a whole range of cases to provide a compelling insight into rule-based and mindfulness-based approaches to managing uncertainty in a project. The Fall of France in 1940 (Kutsch 2018) at the hands of Nazi Germany offers a compelling insight into the two archetypes of managing uncertainty, as these approaches stood in direct competition with each other in the most dramatic way possible.
‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle’
On 15 May 1940, Winston Churchill, still in bed, was called by Paul Reynaud, the French Prime Minister:
Only five days earlier, on 10 May, six German armies attacked the Low Countries (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg) and crossed the river Meuse at Sedan and Dinant, two small French towns. The plan for the invasion of France, code-named Fall Gelb (Operation Yellow) was not the physical destruction of the French Army but, rather, the immediate collapse of their morale and, subsequently, the military defeat of France. The Oberkommando des Heeres (German High Command) was convinced that a long drawn-out war could not be won given the strength of the French Army and their Allies, and the logistical shortcomings on the German side. Hence, after a series of unconvincing operational plans bearing strong similarities to the Schlieffen plan used in 1914, and postponements of the offensive due to security leakages and weather, the Manstein plan (named after Lieutenant-General Erich von Manstein) was backed by Adolf Hitler and operationalised. The directive, produced on 24 February 1940, solved the long-disputed question of where the emphasis of the attack should be. In contrast to the original plan, it was not to be in the North with Army Group B, who might have bypassed the Maginot line (a mighty line of fortifications constructed along France’s borders with Germany and Italy). Instead, Army Group B was allocated the role of a ‘matador’s cloak’ to lure the bulk of the French forces into Belgium, away from the new centre of gravity, and into a trap where they would be encircled and destroyed.
In contrast to WWI, the weight of the armoured drive shifted south to the upper Meuse (see Figure 2.1), a river in the area of Sedan at the outer edge of the Maginot line, the weakest point in the French front line. Once across the Meuse, Army Group A, with 41,000 vehicles, planned to swing westwards (the cut of the sickle) and thrust to the channel coast, resulting in the encirclement of the bulk of the French forces and their allies. Army Group C, with only 18 divisions, was left to defend the ‘Siegfried Line’ (a line of defensive forts and tank defences) and launch diversionary attacks on the Maginot Line.
Figure 2.1 German campaigns 1914 and 1940 (Johnson 2005, 7)
The French strategy, in contrast, relied on the Dyle Breda plan. The well-equipped Seventh Army, under General Giraud, was placed to the North. In collaboration with the British Expeditionary Force and General Blanchard’s First Army, the Allied forces were supposed to move to the River Dyle to absorb the weight of the German attack. General Corap’s Ninth Army was to occupy the area along the Meuse just north of Sedan. Below Sedan, holding the gap between Sedan and the start of the Maginot Line, General Huntzinger was placed with his Second Army. The divisions under his command were of mediocre quality because a German attack through the thickly forested area of the Ardennes was considered unlikely and, if such an attack should occur, the French would have sufficient time to reinforce.
On 10 May 1940, the German forces launched their offensive. General Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer corps punched through the southern end of the Maginot line and successfully crossed the river Meuse at Sedan on 13 May. Meanwhile, General Hoth, with his 7th Panzer Division, under the leadership of the enigmatic Erwin Rommel, overcame the defences at Dinant and established a bridgehead on the same day. The successful crossing of the Meuse, just three days after the beginning of the campaign, sealed the fate of the French Army, to be concluded with the Armistice at Compiègne on 22 June 1940.
In just six weeks, the German Armed Forces went on to bring a military juggernaut to its knees. The defeat of the Allies was so profound that it demands an explanation.
David versus goliath
The military disposition of both armies favoured the French. France and her allies mustered in total 134 divisions: the French had 79 divisions plus 13 fortress divisions, and there were an additional 22 Belgian, 10 British and 10 Dutch divisions. Hitler could rely on 135 divisions. In quality, the divisions varied on both sides. The Allies had at their disposal around 3,000 tanks, most of which outgunned their German counterparts (2,400 tanks) and provided greater protection. France also had more artillery pieces than Germany (a ratio of 3 to 2). Only in the air, the allied forces were outclassed by the German Luftwaffe.
Given the allied superiority of arms on the ground, one might be tempted to attribute the defeat to mobile tank warfare, introduced by the Germans. By the same token, the doctrine of armoured Blitzkrieg (lightning war) needs to be put in perspective. Only ten German divisions were fully armoured. The majority of the German Forces relied on soldiers on foot, supported by horses. Hence, an armoured lightning war would have been ill-conceived: ‘particularly since Guderian’s doctrine about tank warfare was neither fully understood nor fully approved by his commanders, and Rommel’s idiosyncratic doctrine was at odds with it’ (May 2009, 449). In those cases where the infantry and armour were supported by tactical air support, the impact of the Luftwaffe on the French fortifications can best be described as minimal, especially in the Sedan sector.
The morale of the French Army, especially in the initial stages of the Meuse crossing and despite the later rout, also does not suffice as the primary reason for the ultimate collapse of the front around Sedan. Multiple accounts underline the tenacity and courage with which the French and Belgian defenders along the Meuse opposed the German invaders. In essence, ‘whatever the advantages for the Germans, however, the campaign was not a “walk through the sun” for them’ (Doughty 1990, 4).
We need to understand the ‘why’ of the final outcome, given the setup of a French Goliath versus a German David. How could the Germans have ‘outfought the French tactically and outsmarted them strategically’ (Doughty 1990, 4)?
‘Bataille conduite and colmatage’ versus ‘auftragstaktik’
Let us begin with the overall manner of waging war. France, being reliant on a largely citizen-army, focused predominantly on determining when, where, and how the Germans would attack, and controlling every situation by executing a different plan. The Germans were able to deploy a professional army, although in an ad-hoc fashion. Some planning was carried out, but ultimately, it was down to the ‘boots on the ground’ to manage a rapidly changing situation, based on the exploitation of human situated cognition – of mindfulness.
From the French perspective, the approach to preventing the Germans from invading their country was predominantly driven by a rule-based approach to managing adversity that was top-down, centralised, and methodical. Encapsulated by the idea of la bataille conduite (battle by guidance, or methodical battle), this gave the French forces little freedom to act. With the promise that any attack would be stopped by massive firepower, improvisation was to be avoided, and all steps were meticulously prepared in advance. If the worst happened and the enemy was close to breaking through the French defences, the only French response was to plug (colmater) the gap with reinforcements. Their strategic fixation, though, for an operation based on a single scenario assumption left them vulnerable to any unexpected moves by the Germans: ‘The French Military knew what kind of war they expected to fight. They also knew where they expected (and wanted) to fight: in Belgium’ (Jackson 2003, 25).
At the heart of the German approach was the autonomous deployment of Panzer forces, relying on the doctrinal approach of Auftragstaktik (mission-oriented leadership). Mission-oriented leadership was characterised by the military commanders providing their subordinate leaders with an understanding of the intent behind orders and how these fit into the strategic perspective. Operationally and tactically, these subordinate leaders were equipped with wide-ranging independence and freedom of execution, although within the boundaries of standard operating procedures.
Two principal modes of project management revisited
The battle of Sedan in May 1940 offers a peculiar picture. If we see it as two project teams in competition, both are equipped with rationales that could guarantee success: ‘Thanks largely to an infatuation with a mythical Blitzkrieg, we are far too quick to dismiss the methodical battle as an example of stupid doctrine’ (Kiesling 2003, 114).
Let us move back to the distinction between aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. The French and their Allies adopted a conception of aleatory uncertainty, driven by the Legacy of Victory in WWI (Kutsch 2018, 48). The Germans, in contrast, could not repeat the mistakes of WWI but conceived their upcoming struggle with the French as largely epistemic (Kutsch 2018, 52). As a result, both sides developed distinct coping strategies in line with their conception of uncertainty.
The French High Command rigidly stuck to its plans and its expectations of how these plans would work out. They expected the Germans to attack in the north, through the Low Countries, and so they prepared themselves for the fulfilment of this expectation, constrained by their own capabilities and blind to the capabilities of their enemy.
The Germans displayed an extraordinary wealth of novel ideas on how combat operations should be conducted. These were not just documented as theoretical thought pieces, such as Achtung Panzer (Guderian 1999), originally published in 1937. Visionary ideas were tested in field exercises and war games and further validated in those early campaigns of WWII, such as the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 as well as in the campaign against Denmark and Norway of 9 April 1940, a mere four weeks prior to the invasion of France.
The insights gained from these successes and failures – Norway was successfully invaded but at a terrible cost to the German Navy – were heeded despite ongoing conservatism among German generalship. In order to surprise an enemy, the envelope had to be pushed beyond what one knew from past experience. Visionaries took the upper hand.
If there is a criticism about the strategic planning of the Germans, it is that their vision mainly referred to the operational necessity of breaking through the French lines in the Centre and then, through encirclement, demoralising French Forces. Once that aim was accomplished, lack of vision beyond the capitulation of France left a vacuum. At the eve of Operation Yellow’s commencement, no vision, let alone any plan, was in place to defeat another enemy: Great Britain.
In contrast to opportunistic thinking, the French strategy was characterised by myopic, out-dated expectations. The campaign in the west in 1940 was preceded by a range of engagements that could have provided the French with an idea of what the Axis forces were capable. Despite these valuable insights, the common belief that ‘It cannot happen to us’ prevailed. This perception revealed overconfidence in their own plans, which were believed to be so detailed and complete that they would cover all eventualities. Readiness to counter any eventuality other than an attack in the north severely limited their strategic flexibility as prevailing overconfidence was rarely challenged. Concerns about their defences, in particular in the area around Sedan were ignored. Exercises or War Games probing these defences and the readiness of the Allied forces either did not take place or their outcomes were discounted as not applicable to a ‘real-life’ scenario. In a memorandum written by Colonel Charles de Gaulle, General Keller (Inspector-General of Tanks) pointed out:
While the Germans did plan, the credo of German commanders was Helmuth von Moltke the Elder’s (1800−1891) that no plan survives contact with the enemy. It was a necessity for German commanders to lead from the front and to remain tactically sensitive to an unpredictable, ever-changing situation. Such sensitivity at a tactical level, and its translation into operations and strategy was assisted by the use of wireless communications.
In contrast, French generalship received many situation reports about the unfolding campaign. Communications from the front line arrived frequently, but they were often outdated and ambiguous. Fuelled by overconfidence, reports that indicated a deteriorating situation near Sedan were flatly ignored until the pleas of front-line officers made them ‘wake up’ to reality; that the front had been broken.
Adaptability
On some occasions, Allied logistics prevented a timely deployment of forces. At the time when Allied reserves were deployed and on the move, the Germans had already occupied the area in contention, gaining a defensive advantage. On others, French columns of men and material on the move were surprised and subdued by lightly armoured German reconnaissance forces.
The German forces showed greater adaptability, facilitated by tactical sensitivity and logistical independence. A common pattern emerged in this campaign: one of quick action in line with tactical and operational necessities, but still in line with strategic foresight. In essence, German planning allowed and encouraged forms of improvisation, an extreme form of adaptability. Its purpose is to create and maintain uncertainty and ambiguity for the enemy to such an extent that he is incapable of adapting to circumstances (adapted from Kutsch 2018, 59–61).
Overall, these two coping strategies, synthesised as French rule-based versus German mindfulness-based, are fundamentally different styles and both offer advantages that, in the light of the superior resources on the French side, should not have allowed the breakthrough at Sedan. Nevertheless, as with any project, the question is less about the critical resources than how they are applied in practice and how they are utilised to meet the overall objective. Regarding the application of rule-based and mindfulness-based project management, let us consider:
- Time – What is the effect of time on processes, functioning, behaviour and performance?
- Team – How do groups of people in temporary organisational systems resolve issues of uncertainty and risk?
- Task – What kind of tasks do temporary organisational forms perform?
Time
How did the French make sense of time? Their approach to engaging with the upcoming German attack was set by prior expectations. These expectations and the planning that went with them added to a form of ‘tunnel vision’, a restricted understanding that the Germans would attack through Belgium. Alternative frames of reality were blocked out, despite ongoing concerns about the unpreparedness of the Sedan front. Once the offensive was underway, the French generals were not sufficiently close to operations to realise in realtime that their plans did not apply to the situation at hand:
Crucial information that came to the attention of the French High Command was already out of date upon their receiving it, at times by several hours. Even when they did receive information, they failed to see that anything was going awry. This was typified by reports they received from the front, massively underestimating the situation. For example, General Huntzinger’s staff reported: ‘There has been a rather serious hitch at Sedan’.
This situation report offers an insight into the self-inflicted state of mindlessness, as a form of deception and denial. Information about successes, for example against the 2nd Panzer Division which was struggling to reach its staging area on time and was bogged down by French artillery, was amplified. In contrast, information about retreats, initially carried out in a planned and methodical way, was downplayed to the extent that Georges signalled Gamelin at midnight on 13 May: ‘Here we are all calm’ (May 2009, 411).
The French mindless fixation on a single theatre of battle in the north, lack of sensitivity to the state of defence in the Sedan sector and being cut off from information, coupled with ignorance and the premature commitment of reserves based on expectations, meant that, for the Allies, the battle for France was fought in something of a vacuum. Only the opportunistic intervention of individual divisions could have turned the tide. However, bound by a top-down approach, decisions to counterattack were taken late or not at all. Furthermore, where opportunities emerged to counter the establishment of a German bridgehead, logistical dependencies prevented a quick reaction. For example, the mobilisation of counterattacks by the 55th Division, which was responsible for the Sedan sector, was bogged down by the layers of hierarchy through which orders had to find their way. It took a staggering nine hours to mobilise a counterattack. By then, the situation on the ground had already changed considerably:
1900 hours: Telephone discussion between Grandsard and Lafontaine about attachment of additional infantry and tanks for a counterattack.
1930 hours: Telephone discussion between Grandsard and Lafontaine about moving command post of 55th Division.
After 1930 hours: Movement of 55th’s command post. Lafontaine meets Labarthe in Chemery.
After 1930 hours: Lieutenant Colonel Cachou, who was the deputy Chief of Staff of the Xth Corps, meets Labarthe in Chemery. Approves Labarthe’s decision not to move north.
After 1930 hours: Cachou meets Lafontaine east of Chemery. Informs him of Labarthe’s decision.
After 1930 hours: Lafontaine calls Grandsard to discuss counterattack.
2200–2300 hours: Lafontaine learns that the 205th Regiment and 4th Tank Battalion are being attached to the 55th Division.
2400 hours: Lafontaine departs for Xth Corps command post.
0130 hours: Chaligne learns that counterattack would consist of two infantry regiments and two tank battalions.
0300 hours: Lafontaine returns to Chemery without having reached Xth Corps.
0415 hours: Lafontaine issues an order for counterattack (Doughty 1990, 260).
The well-prepared plans gave a false impression of what was expected to be happening and when. Events were expected to unfold as the plan predicted, yet what was happening in the field told a different story. The discrepancy between expectations and reality could not readily be compensated for as real-time updates were either downplayed or took too long to be relayed between the commanders and the front line.
In contrast, the Germans considered time as organic. Their strategic planning for the invasion of France was superseded by the operational necessities and uncertainties. A river needs to be crossed quickly, no matter what, as everything else depends on its outcome. This may sound haphazard and reckless, but detailed planning of the ‘when’ and ‘how’ was replaced by ‘whatever’ was operationally necessary, given the unfolding events on the ground – the initially conceived plan of ‘what should be done when’ was no longer the overriding factor. Instead, mindful responses ‘in the moment’ meant that timely decisions and actions were paramount; all in light of the strategic intent to breach the French front at a place where the French would expect it the least.
Team
The French doctrine was characterised by centralised, hierarchical, decision-making. This is unsurprising given that those executing orders – mostly conscripts – had little or no experience and were given only limited training to make decisions on their own. As team members were often allocated to areas of operation and to regiments they were unfamiliar with, there was little social bonding and familiarity about their environment prevailed. Such inconsistency is often associated with modern projects, in which resources are parachuted in for a limited period, initially oblivious of context. The teams – platoons, regiments, and battalions – were expected to function by following the orders provided, context-free. This is the classic mindless ‘command and control’ style. Orders were stripped of the ‘why’, and this could not be replaced by the (lack of) experience of those that had to execute them.
The German approach, in stark contrast, focused on the development of internally cohesive, well-equipped teams with an extraordinary response repository and independence to exercise flexibility in action. Subordinate leaders were given, in no small extent, insights into the mission objectives and strategic ramifications, and freedom in execution. For example, General Heinz Guderian (XIXth Panzer Corps, Sedan) later reflected:
Before Operation Yellow, teams of specialists were defined within Panzergruppe Kleist. They were kept together as much as possible and rehearsed a range of scenarios, ranging from amphibious landings to urban warfare. These kinds of ‘Tiger Teams’ were given the experience of the context of warfare through rehearsals, and their performance was driven by orders from superiors who were very ‘close’ to them. Officers such as Guderian and Rommel ‘led from the front’, capturing time as it unfolded, racing between their headquarters and the developing events. Rommel, for example, tried to be always in the ‘picture’ of developing events by crossing the Meuse with one of the first waves of assault teams. His scepticism about initial success turned into a curiosity about what was going on.
Task
The French front-line soldiers were tasked with countering a German attack. However, using the example of the 147th Division, their preparations included constant digging and fortifying, with little emphasis on the practical aspects of combat: ‘Many of the soldiers in the 147th knew their responsibilities in the smallest detail, but their skills for defending fortresses or firing machine guns were useless in regular infantry units’ (Doughty 1990, 127).
Their preparation – digging and fortifying – left little time to prepare the French soldiers for actual fighting. It was – wrongly – assumed that giving orders to the front-line soldiers would compensate for the lack of knowing ‘why’ and ‘how’. Execution of tasks was expected to be done in isolation of the specific context. This would not have been such a problem if the orders matched the unfolding situation. Unfortunately, that was not the case and backed into a corner with orders that no longer made sense, the French Forces took their initiative and retreated in the hope of receiving fresh orders to form another coherent front further back.
With the French very much rule- and task-oriented, the Germans followed a slightly different approach of goal-orientation, in which the achievements of objectives superseded the specificity of execution. Such goal-orientation can only work if teams are prepared and ready to carry out any task necessary to accomplish the given aims. Their flexibility was such that not only did they provide their logistics, but they also made sure that a range of specialists (e.g. the Grossdeutschland Regiment) were immediately available to adapt to a changing situation.
The German forces applied a potentially costly strategy of mindfulness. With speed as the essential factor, the crossing of the Meuse received operational preference. Such intent was carried out with a specialised, yet operationally and logistically independent, force. Methodology and operating procedures – rule-based management – played less of a role because of the specially trained units’ ability to achieve the intent of crossing a river and establishing a bridgehead. This subsequently enabled the encirclement of the French Forces, and this logic was embedded in their thinking. Rules did not have to be tightly controlled, and deviation from a method for the benefit of achieving the operational aim was not only allowed but encouraged.
The French followed a supposedly more certain strategy of not allowing French front-line soldiers and officers to mindfully think on their feet. Orders were relayed from the top to the front line, to be executed without question. This does make sense given the largely conscript army whose soldiers would not have the knowledge and experience to think and act flexibly enough under such severe conditions. The ultimate breakdown of the rule-based approach here was down to delayed or absent communication and the lack of preparation for the scenario that unfolded.
The temptation of rule-based project management
On the one hand, a rule-based approach to project management offers greater efficiency, accountability and stability (or, perhaps, the illusion of it). On the other hand, a situated cognition-based approach to epistemic uncertainty provides the required flexibility to deal with situations that deviate from the norm. And there is the problem. In projects, we often start with a rule-based approach, as the French did. We plan, set up procedures and run our projects the ‘right’ way. It is a form of ‘dogmatism’, the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly ‘true’, without consideration of the evidence or the opinions of others.
Such dogmatism, developed over time, may undermine readiness to address epistemic uncertainty. Why communicate extensively if a planned future of normality is assumed? Such dogmatism is entrenched by long periods of planning and the absence of failure. This sends the message that the system is working, reinforcing faith in the process. The more we believe that plans will unfold as predicted, relying on an expectation of aleatoric uncertainty, the less we prepare and ready ourselves for epistemic uncertainty: for a situation that unfolds beyond the risk horizon. It is not surprising that the French held on to their planned expectations until it was too late.
Even the Germans, after their stunning success in overcoming their French foe in May/June 1940, they encountered a practical drift in the following years towards a rule-based form of management:
A stark example of this practical drift was the battle of Kursk in July–August 1943. Hitler gave his generals little leeway in planning this battle and what they produced was a transparent scheme that the Senior Soviet planners easily anticipated. Imagination played a lesser role. The focus on the repetition of previous schemes of warfare, the obsession of Hitler to plan every move in detail – similar to the French in 1940 – and the constant delay in launching the offensive (e.g. because of the deployment of new tank designs) turned the battle of Kursk into a methodical and inflexible endeavour that was countered by the Soviet Union even before it started. As a result, after Kursk, initiative changed hands at Kursk, and the defeat of Nazi Germany was accelerated by the lack of manpower and as well as an increasingly centralised, rule-based approach to decision-making by the German High Command and Hitler:
In projects, the question is not whether to adopt a fully rule-based or mindfulness-based approach, because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. We often see projects being set up with a rule-based approach, or to shift gradually to one characterised by reducing situated human cognition and a greater focus on compliance with rules and procedures. Does that automatically imply that this approach is superior, despite the inability of the French Forces to make it work in 1940? Well, yes and no. Rule-based management is a more fruitful approach in environments that unfold very much in linear, predictable ways, informed by aleatoric uncertainty; so, by default, environments that do not favour project management in the first place, but rather operations management.
Mindfulness and project management
Standards in project management are various. Most dominant are those of the Project Management Institute (PMI), the UK Government Centre for Information Systems and the British Standards Institution, all of which offer similar, if not identical, standards for project management. Those advocated by the PMI are widely used and are considered to be a competency standard. The PMI standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) includes nine areas of project management knowledge: project integration management, project scope management, project time management, project cost management, project quality management, project communications management, project risk management and project procurement management.
The purpose of project management is seen as the management of entities such as tasks, requirements and objectives in advance, and is reliant on hindsight as a predictor for future changes. However, the problem that project management faces relates to the degree of uncertainty that is inherent in a project. This problem, arising through the lack of hindsight, means that project managers may not rely on the validity of probabilistic estimates grounded in historical data.
The PMBOK guide approach to ‘best’ practice project management standards, as introduced and promoted by organisations such as PMI or APM, is advocated as being self-evidently correct. In this respect, Williams (2005, 2) argues:
Modern project management bodies of knowledge tend to assume a world of aleatoric uncertainty (or in other words, risks) where past occurrences can inform the future. The underlying rationale is that risk can be ‘designed out’ of a project by probabilistic, deterministic planning tools, enforced and applied consistently. Epistemic uncertainty plays a much smaller part in this logic. At the centre of such rule-based project management is the pre-loading and automation of fixed responses, based on a past-informed future. A rule-based approach is fundamentally Taylorist, breaking every project action, job, or task into small and simple segments which can be easily analysed and efficiently delivered. Rules are put in place to pre-plan the future-based actions of forecasting, assessing and scheduling with the express purpose of prevention, embodied in project management tools like PERT, network planning and earned value analysis. Human cognition – as a potential source of error – is being replaced by these pre-planned and pre-loaded actions. A benefit of this approach is the consistency of action (and we do fully acknowledge the benefits), but they are not without limitations. An ‘autopilot’ may enable managers to deal with common problems quickly and consistently but may struggle with effective responses to novelty and ambiguity.
That highlights again the uneasy coexistence between professional bodies of knowledge and the validation, but also criticism, from their research counterparts. In essence, the fundamental assumption of traditional project management standards is that the project is decoupled from its environment. That is to say, once the project is planned, changes should happen only occasionally. Assumptions of project management include knowledge of probable future states and repeatability of event, and at its foremost, decision-makers free of cognitive errors.
Nevertheless, none of us can possibly claim to be free of cognitive biases that cloud our thinking about managing a project. Cognitive failures are best understood in the context of how our minds operate. In principle, intuitive processes define hard-wired routines, informed by experiences, that enable us to engage with daily occurrences, such as driving a car repeatedly from and to work. The successions of routines are an expression of mindless, rule-based behaviour:
Analytic processes break into our propensity to adhere to routines, rules, processes and procedures. They are conscious, deliberate, and define our state of increased awareness of our surroundings as a stepping stone to mindfully engage with adversity such as uncertainty and complexity.
It is these analytic processes that self-evidently correct project management does not address. One may even claim that pursuit of ever greater compliance to past-informed rules, processes and techniques (such as probabilistic risk management) undermines our ability to trigger analytic processes of thinking and reduces our ability to maintain a state of mindful being and thinking. In this respect, it is worth noting that project management frameworks (even Agile Project Management) ‘just’ want to do that: automating past-informed actions.
But Mindfulness can help us to fight the tendency to fall prey to intuitive processes (Denyer et al. 2011), to counter the urge to routinise and thus automate our actions in a project. Project Management should be anything but past-informed. By default, projects are volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. As a result, mindful practices are part of a debiasing strategy, a capacity to override intuitive processes.
We are not the first to write about rule-based versus mindfulness-based approaches in organisations or projects. For further reading, there are a range of books that we saw as central in writing this synthesis:
- Weick, Karl, and Kathleen Sutcliffe, 2015. Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World (Weick and Sutcliffe 2015): This book builds on the pioneering work of a concept called High-Reliability Organisations. It offers a compelling insight into a variety of disasters and provides practical advice on how to establish and maintain a state of collective mindfulness for reliable and resilient performance.
- Snook, Scott A., Friendly Fire: The Accidental Shootdown of US Black Hawks over Northern Iraq (Snook 2000): Snook delves into a ‘blue-on-blue’ incident in the No-Fly Zone over Iraq in 1994, with the loss of 26 military personnel. He provides a fascinating account of the events leading to that fateful shootdown. He avoids the definition of a root cause but acknowledges that the combination of a multitude of behavioural factors led to this disaster. His analysis is contextual such that it makes generalisation beyond that incident difficult, but it encourages readers to appreciate the complexity and thus the difficulty of preventing incidents like this from happening again. Snook’s major contribution was the theory of Practical Drift, which does seem to be more widely applicable.
- Perrow, Charles, Normal Accidents (Perrow 1999): This book could be interpreted as saying that accidents are bound to happen due to the complexity and uncertainty inherent in an environment. They are hence ‘normal’. Perrow offers insights into a variety of disasters, including the role of people as a contributing factor. He categorises industries according to ‘coupling’ and ‘interactions’, and so offers an interesting take on how vulnerable each industry is to a ‘normal accident’. One may argue that, in Perrow’s view, the glass is half-empty, whereas, with Weick, it is half-full. It is an excellent counterargument to Weick and Sutcliffe’s book on High-Reliability Organisations, although with similarities in content.
- Reason, James, The Human Contribution: Unsafe Acts, Accidents and Heroic Recoveries (Reason 2008): This is probably the most updated account of human situated cognition. Reason captures the audience through his style of writing as well as his in-depth insight into the complexity of the human mind but tells us that there is a way of enabling systems to be more resilient.
- Langer, Ellen, Mindfulness (Langer 1989): One might consider this book as the foundation for many of those previously mentioned on mindfulness, a critical angle in this book. If you would like to explore your resilience, this book is a good start. Langer offers four dimensions of individual mindfulness:
- Novelty seeking: The propensity to explore and engage with novel stimuli. This refers to a tendency to perceive every situation as ‘new’. This type of person is likely to be more interested in experiencing a variety of stimuli, rather than mastering a specific situation.
- Novelty producing: The propensity to develop new ideas and ways of looking at things.
- Engagement: The propensity to become involved in any given situation. An individual who scores high in engagement is likely to see the ‘big picture’.
- Flexibility: The flexible individual believes in the fluidity of information and the importance of welcoming a changing environment rather than resisting it. Flexibility, in this case, refers to someone who can view a situation from multiple perspectives and recognise that each aspect has equal value.
Towards mindfulness-based project management
A mindfulness-based approach is more suited to managing projects characterised by epistemic uncertainty. The significant benefit of this as a management approach is that it provides greater awareness, a more nuanced appreciation of changing circumstances and greater flexibility in containing epistemic uncertainty. Rules are ill-suited to deal with novelty and ambiguity. Not so, our minds. As flawed as they may be, they offer fantastic flexibility to deal with uncertainty, a feat no rule-based system can ever achieve.
What many managers have failed to appreciate is that human variability offers a way of providing the flexibility necessary to manage epistemic uncertainty. It is increasingly recognised that a broader perspective on dealing with uncertainty is required if one wants to look beyond what has repeatedly happened in the past. This has led to an acknowledgement that rule-based management is beneficial, as long as it allows mindfulness to flourish. ‘True’ resilience in a project is most likely the outcome of some rule-based control, yet with leeway to deploy the human mind to accommodate epistemic uncertainty.
Consequently, in most successful modern projects, one can find a mix of both rule-based and mindfulness-based approaches to managing risk and uncertainty (see Chapter 8). It is the ability to impose control, yet offer enough ‘space’ to mindfully manage the uncertainty that goes beyond what one can predict and plan for in detail. Furthermore, resilient projects are those in which the project manager and team are reluctant – in the absence of failure or because of failure – to give in to the temptation to impose ever more adherence to plans, implemented in a rule-based manner. The following chapters go into more detail on what obstacles we may need to overcome to be mindful so that we can ready and prepare ourselves better for epistemic uncertainty.
References
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