Editor's view, Inside Track, December 2010
Managing the unexpected
“Imagine that it’s a busy day and you shrink Heathrow airport to only one runway and one ramp and one gate. Make planes take off and land at the same time, at half the present time interval, rock the runway from side to side, and require that everyone who leaves in the morning returns the same day. Then turn off the radar to avoid detection, impose strict controls on the radios, fuel the aircraft in place with their engines running, put an enemy in the air, and scatter live bombs and rockets around. Now wet the whole thing down with sea water and oil, and man it with twenty year olds. Oh, and by the way, try not to kill anyone.”
That’s how one navy veteran describes life on an aircraft carrier.
Karl Weik and Kathleen Sutcliffe of the University of Michigan Business School have studied organisations like this which manage the unexpected every day so that they routinely avoid catastrophes. They call them High Reliability Organisations (HROs).
Reflecting on recent big bank failures, and even on work we are doing with the NHS on eliminating Healthcare Associated Infections (eg MRSA), it seems to us that leaders in business and the public sector can learn much from studying the way in which HROs organise themselves to maintain structure and function in uncertainty where the potential for error and disaster can lead to catastrophe.
Weik and Sutcliffe discovered that HROs focus on anticipation and containment.
Anticipation
- Preoccupation with failure: To avoid failure leaders must look for it and be sensitive to early signs of failure.
- Reluctance to simplify: Leaders never allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by seemingly favourable data.
- Sensitivity to operations: Leaders remain connected to the front line.
Containment
- Commitment to resilience: The organisation must maintain function during high demand events. It does this by absorbing strain and preserving function despite adversity, maintaining the ability to return to service from untoward events, and learning from previous episodes.
