Building adaptive capacity in hierarchical organisations

Building Adaptive Capacity in Hierarchical Organisations:

An Integrated Model

Dr Stephen Mugford

Visiting Fellow, Centre for Defence Leadership & Ethics,

Australian Defence College*

* Views expressed in this paper are those of the author and not an official expression of the views of

the ADC or of the ADF more generally.

Introduction: The Special Character of Hierarchical Organisations

This paper seeks to integrate several different literatures into a single model that will help to clarify

how adaptive capacity can be enhanced inside hierarchical organisations (HOs) such as the military,

police and emergency services and, perhaps, certain kinds of high risk, heavy industry setting such as

oil rigs or mines. In carrying out the integration the paper seeks to combine general features that

have relevance for all individuals or organisations, with features that have added salience in HOs.

The underlying argument in distinguishing these high stakes organisations from others that have

lower stakes and are more ‘loosely coupled’ (Weick, 1976) is that the role of those in authority

positions is more ‘fateful’ in hierarchical, high risk organisations.

In most organisations where the stakes are low or the coupling loose, poor leaders have a limited

impact on those under their authority. At very least, people are unlikely to die if they make a

mistake and in many cases the leader has limited capacity to demand obedience: the Vice Chancellor

who would control an academic staff member, a Departmental Secretary who would control a mid-

level public servant or a store manager a sales employee does not have access to MPs, court martial

or condign punishment. Her word in not law as it might be if s/he held a military (etc.) command.

A complementary way of developing this point is to think about Hirschman’s (1970) well known trio

of options that face individuals when they are unhappy with the way things work out in an

organisation of which they are part: exit, voice and loyalty. If we (simplistically) compare the options

of a factory worker and a soldier with respect to the first two options we see something like this:

Worker Action Soldier Equivalent

Exit Walk off the job

Strike

Desertion

Mutiny

Voice Protest Insubordination

Building Adaptive Capacity in Hierarchical Organisations …. 2

Clearly, the options that face people in the more hierarchical context are starkly different. Indeed, in

the short run the only option of Hirschman’s trio is ‘loyalty’, couched as ‘obedience’. There are, of

course, numerous compelling reasons why this is the case in military and similar contexts. The point

is not that traditional ‘command and control’ models are bad: on the contrary, these models are

very good in many ways for the problems they are designed to resolve (coordinated and effective action under enormous stress and danger). Instead, the limited but relevant point here is simply that

when loyalty/obedience to the commander is the only option, serious failings on the part of that

commander are potentially fateful/fatal. Dramatic and illustrative examples of this fact can be found

in cases where the decision making of ‘the boss’ results in spectacular disasters for the organisation

and its people.

“Vain-glorious”: a tragic instance of fateful command

A graphic illustration of this problem is the

sinking, in June 1940, of the British aircraft

carrier HMS GLORIOUS and her attendant

destroyer escorts, HMS ACASTA and HMS

ARDENT with the loss of over 1500 officers

and men of the Royal Navy. This tragic event appears to have arisen largely from

the poor judgement and obsessions of the

commanding officer of GLORIOUS, CAPT

D’Oyly Hughes, RN. A strict authoritarian at best, and a disturbed martinet at worst, D’Oyly Hughes

had detached his fast carrier from the British fleet that was steaming back from the Narvik campaign

in order to more speedily reach Scapa Flow. As Howland explains:

A poor relationship between Glorious’ Captain, D’Oyly-Hughes and his Commander (Air), J.B. Heath

had broken down completely during the ship’s previous deployment to Norway, after Heath refused

the Captain’s orders to use his Swordfish to attack certain ill-defined targets ashore. Heath refused,

on the ground that the aircraft were unsuitable to the task and the aircrew were untrained for such a

venture. Left behind in Scapa awaiting trial for disobedience of orders, Heath escaped the

forthcoming disaster. Glorious was not a happy ship. (Emphasis added.) [Howland at

http://www.warship.org/no11994.htm (see also Winton, 1986)]

Determined to pillory Heath, D’Oyly Hughes hurried ahead of the main fleet, too absorbed with

revenge to order the air reconnaissance patrols which would have given him ‘eyes in the sky’ and

excellent information. Unfortunately for him, and more so for the officers and men under his

command, the German battle cruisers SCHARNHORST and GNEISENAU lay in his path. The three ships blundered into this powerful enemy at about 16.00 on June 8th. By then the Germans, alerted

by smoke on the horizon, had come to full speed and moved to engage. ARDENT and ACASTA,

ordered to reconnoitre, moved towards the enemy and subsequently attacked with great heroism. It

was futile (although the SCHARNHORST did receive torpedo damage). By 16.30 the Germans were

closing and firing repeated salvos. By 18.30 all three British ships had sunk. One man’s unhealthy

obsessions had led directly not only to his death but also to that of hundreds of his comrades in

arms. The irony, for the vain and glory seeking commander, is that not only did he fail in the worst

way but that a more measured approach in flying air reconnaissance would have revealed the

German ships and quite possibly allowed a concerted naval action against them that would have

drawn to him the very fame he so desired.

D’Oyly Hughes is, in some sense, not unusual. People in positions of authority who make foolish

calls, blinded by anger or jealousy, lust or revenge are not uncommon. Even more common, perhaps

are those who simply make poor judgement calls that do not adequately take into account the

information that was available at the time. For example, the loss not long after GLOPRIOUS of the

HMAS SYDNEY to the German raider KORMORAN off the West Australian coast in Nov. 1941 seems


to have been a result not of distempered reasoning by the CO so much as mild complacency leading

to an ill-judged approach that left the ship open to sudden ambush. (See the inquiry reports at

http://www.defence.gov.au/sydneyii/FinalReport/index.html)

At the same time, while ‘commanders’ in such organisations may have a fateful effect, in contrast

outstanding commanders can, by their leadership and charisma, call out the best in those they command: good leadership alone is not enough. There is widespread evidence that high

performance and enhanced capacity needs also to be grounded in good organisational practices and

culture.

What is adaptive capacity?

Adaptive capacity refers to the extent to which an individual or collectivity can anticipate problems

and seek to prevent them, rise to new and unexpected challenges when anticipation or prevention

fail and continually consider and deploy new and better ways to achieve outcomes.

Adaptive capacity, as used here, is akin to but more than ‘resilience’. Resilience is commonly

understood as the capacity to ‘bounce back’ after a setback or challenge and to ‘keep on keeping on’

and is thus a very important sub-component of adaptive capacity. Resilience, however, does not

require that the individual or group concerned necessarily changes their stance and methodology as

they ‘bounce back’. In contrast, adaptive capacity implies not only resilience but also the

development—perhaps by trial and error at times—of new and better methodologies for grounding

actions.

To increase adaptive capacity, therefore, we need to consider the varied ‘domains’—both in the

senses of analytically separable aspects of life that underpin capacity and also in the sense of the

domains of scholarly research that enquire into these aspects of life. In so doing, it will be imperative

to include both individual level factors (since these are crucial for improving the capacity of

commanders at very least) as well as collective factors.

Three domains

There at least three domains which we can identify as being relevant to capacity and capacity

enhancement. These are:

1. Critical thinking: the extent to which an individual can process information, interpret it,

evaluate options and make choices is a crucial capacity and one where skills sets can be

improved.

2. Social-emotional competence: often referred to as ‘emotional intelligence’ or EI, is the capacity for self-awareness, awareness of others and related inter-personal skills. Again,

there is good evidence that EI can be improved and skills acquired.

3. Organisational arrangements: the structure, processes and culture of an organisation is

directly linked to its success. ‘Peak performance’ and ‘high reliability’ can be purposively

pursued and achieved.

Obviously, the separation of these three domains has an analytic clarity while in the messy ‘real

world’ they flow into one another. It is, however, valuable to keep the separation for discussion

purposes albeit that in any given intervention to enhance capacity all three will likely be melded

together. For example, in engaging a senior leadership team in processes to increase their critical thinking skills and EI, it is likely that:

• The two elements will partly meld since increases in self-awareness (EI) will be intimately

connected to improved meta-cognition around enhanced thinking skills; and


• To the extent that the team shares the development process they are also improving as a

collectivity and socialising the ideas into the wider organisation.

Lines and Loops

Each of the three domains shares two features. First, it is possible to develop a simple, linear

argument that goes something like this:

DIAGRAM 1: A SIMPLE, LINEAR MODEL

For example, using the basic Goleman (1998) model of EI we can put increased self-awareness in

place of A, increased self-management and social awareness instead of B, increased relationship skills in C and argue (correctly) that since this leads to improved links with team members (etc.) and

hence enhances effectiveness, everyone should therefore increase their self-awareness. So far as

this goes, the linear argument with the single ‘therefore’ loop makes sense and if life were that

simple progress would be easy. In fact, life is not that simple.

In contrast, in all three domains it is possible to show an alternative, ‘double feedback’ model. In

broad, abstract terms this model can be represented as follows:

DIAGRAM 2: A DOUBLE FEEDBACK MODEL

A Leads to B Leads to C Leads to

GOOD

STUFF!

Therefore, do A

Existing

systems Actions

Glitch Stress

+

‘Coping’

-

Functional: adaptively

increases performance

ircle: Adaptive

Dysfunctional:

exacerbates problems

Self-Defeating Iterations


This model is quite easy to follow. The glitch in the centre causes stress, either for the individual or

for the collectivity. In turn, the stress leads to either a constructive or an unconstructive response.

How?

Arousal and Stress

We know that there is a complex relationship between stress and performance.

For example, the Yerkes-Dodson

model, developed in the early 20th

century shows two curves (right), for

complex and simple tasks. In both cases, low arousal is associated with

low(er) quality performance. Quality

rises as arousal rises then, after

peaking, further arousal leads to a fall

in performance. In common sense

terms, boredom and disengagement

on the left give way to ‘flow’ at the

peak followed by collapse or even

panic on the right.

The difference between the complex

and simple tasks lies in the fact that

the latter curve is shallower and the

peak displaced to the right.

DIAGRAM 3:

YERKES-DODSON MODEL OF STRESS AND AROUSAL

Applying this insight to the general double loop model in Diagram 2 moves the argument forward.

For the person or group who enters the virtuous circle, the stress caused by the glitch produces

arousal that is somewhere in the middle of the curve—at or close to the ‘flow’ zone. Thus the coping mechanisms that are triggered are positive ones: they allow the person or group to respond

adaptively in that the ‘glitch’ leads to a set of actions and reactions that not only cope with any

problem but also enhance the systems that were producing the actions in the first place.

On the other hand, when the stress begins to move the arousal level towards the right hand side of

the curve, a quite different reaction develops. Under severe stress, performance falls. People revert

(individually or collectively) to ingrained response patterns drawing on a narrow and familiar

repertoire. In short, they do what they know and are used to doing.

System 1, System 2: Dual Process and Dual Systems

This reversion is a normal and everyday phenomenon. Indeed, in a situation where the

consequences are not negative, we have quite a different evaluation of this ‘move’: we see what we

think of as ‘good habits’ or ‘trained intuitions’. An important point about human cognition and

decision making is at stake here, which is worth developing—the existence of ‘dual processes’ (or ‘dual systems’ of processes) in human action:

A dual-process theorist holds that there are two distinct processing modes available for a cognitive

task, which employ different procedures and may yield conflicting results. One process (type 1) is

characterised as fast, automatic and non-conscious, the other (type 2) as slow, controlled and

conscious. Type 1 processes are also described variously as associative, heuristic or intuitive, and type

2 processes as rule-based, analytical or reflective. Dual-process theories have been proposed by


researchers on several aspects of human cognition, including deductive reasoning, decision making

and social judgment. Researchers have also proposed dual-process theories of learning and memory,

which posit dual attitudes, implicit and explicit, associated with distinct systems, one fast-access but

slow learning, the other slow-access but fast-learning. More recently, some theorists have proposed

dual-system theories, according to which human cognition is composed of two multipurpose

reasoning systems, widely known as System 1 and System 2, the former supporting type 1 processes,

the latter supporting type 2 ones. In addition, it is often claimed that System 2 is an evolutionarily

recent, uniquely human system, which is the source of our capacity for de-contextualised, abstract

thinking in accordance with logical norms. (Frankish, 2010: 914. Emphasis added.)

A simple and everyday example that illustrates these processes is given in a marketing context by Bond et al (2009):

Consider the following scenario: In the checkout line at the grocery store, you are contemplating

various new brands of chewing gum. Based on price, packaging, and so forth, you have trouble really

distinguishing among the brands. However, you notice during this cursory scanning process that you

keep coming back to one brand in particular. Objectively, there is nothing superior about the brand,

but it just seems to “feel right,” so you make the purchase based on this impression. The following

day, you are talking to a good friend at work as she reaches into her purse and pulls out the exact

same brand of chewing gum! Being a marketing scholar, you realize that, somehow, your friend

undoubtedly played a role in your “intuition” concerning the brand.

Or consider the following: during a shopping trip through the mall, you walk past a cookie and candy

vendor. Faced with the vast array of sweets on display and the chocolate aroma, you make an impulse

decision to stop for a moment and buy something for yourself. However, waiting in line, you begin to

think about the implications of this decision for your upcoming dinner, the possibility that the cookies

have been sitting out all day, and the number of calories represented by even the smallest of your

options. Realizing that you would not have been interested in the treats if you had not walked right

past them, you decide that giving in to temptation does not “make sense,” leave the line, and

continue with your shopping trip.

Despite representing very different decision contexts, these scenarios share certain features that

come up repeatedly in everyday … decisions. One way of understanding behavior in these contexts is

to consider the effects of thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that “feel right” and those that “make sense,”

on cognitive processes underlying choice. This topic has been gathering increased attention in recent

years by investigators in the fields of social, cognitive, and consumer psychology. As a consequence, a

variety of conceptual models have been developed to capture the constructs of intuition and analysis

as distinct processes conducted by separate underlying cognitive systems. Although still in their

infancy, these dual-systems models present compelling explanations for [information] processing in

situations like the examples above, and they offer promising opportunities for research into real-

world …phenomena.

Military trainers and other have long understood these phenomena in practical ways and built

training regimes accordingly. Activities from drill and saluting to complex routines such as clearing a

building of terrorists, safety routines in aircraft or complex procedures for replenishment at sea (and

a myriad of other examples) are repeated and practised until they are ‘automatic’. As one fast jet

pilot put it to the author, “It is not that you aren’t scared if something goes seriously wrong. But

while one part of your mind is screaming, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die!’ the trained part

of you is opening the throttle, or kicking the rudder or whatever and if all else fails, hitting the EJECT button.” Hence system 1 will save your life while system 2 is paralysed with terror!

Two crucial implications arise from the dual process model if we are to consider enhancing adaptive

capacity:

1. First, it is crucial to realise that there is a powerful tendency—almost certainly developed

over time as an evolutionary adaptation—to pack as much action as possible into system 1.

System 1 is ‘fast, feral and frugal’ and frugality alone is an important feature. Few cognitive

resources are consumed by the intuitions and intuitive response of system 1, which is


important, for such resources are depletable. The leading researcher in this area—

Baumeister—has shown, in many studies, the importance of ‘depletion’. For example,

depleting ‘self-control’ impacts on other processes:

… each individual act of regulation temporarily depletes self-regulatory resources, leading to

decreased performance in a variety of domains. These impairments in performance reflect

one important category of costs of self-regulation: In the aftermath of self-regulation,

people’s ability to perform effectively in many important spheres, including reasoning, acting

appropriately, and dealing effectively with others, is compromised. (Baumeister and Alquist,

2009: 121. Emphasis added)

This depletability and the preference for pushing things into system 1 also contradicts a

common belief that we ought always to ‘think carefully’ about what we are doing. Bargh & Chartrand (1999) approvingly cite the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on a contrary

view: It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people

making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The

precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations

which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry

charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and they

must only be made at decisive moments. (Cited at p.464).

2. Second, much ‘recipe’ knowledge derived from common sense is often questionable, not

least because research shows how often the firm inner conviction that individuals have

about themselves and others seems to be misplaced in fundamental ways (see e.g., Bargh

and Chartrand, 1999). As Nørretranders (2002) says in a review of Wilson’s book Strangers

to Ourselves (2001):

In the joke about two behaviourists chatting after sexual intercourse, one says to the other:

"That was fine for you, but how was it for me?" This captures the core idea of behaviourism -

that human beings should be seen as black boxes whose input and output, stimulus and

response, are the only worthy objects of study. All internal states, experiences and hairy stuff

like consciousness are best ignored. [ …]

[Although behaviourism is now gone, some important ideas are now re-emerging] Wilson …

offers a charming, talkative and yet authoritative review of how it became clear that most of

what happens inside us is not perceptible by us. In fact, other people often know more about

events inside me than I do, because they can monitor my actions and body language better

than I can. (Emphasis added.)

Understanding dual process models, then, can help to identify what sorts of training and

development might position people well with respect to enhancing adaptive capacity as a general

foundation. So far as possible, we need to ensure that education and training moves people towards

well trained intuitions that see repeated practice closely linked to critical reflection. This sounds

remarkably like, for example, good flying training and that is no coincidence. In many areas of life in

HOs, such development of excellent system 1 resources is a staple activity.

It is also the case, however, that we can identify several areas where this is either less well

developed or, at best, erratically applied. The three areas mentioned at the start—critical thinking,

social and emotional competence and optimal organisation—are all examples and the paper now

turns to these in more depth.


1: Critical thinking and complex decisions

(In)Famous screw ups

The history of military and related operations as well as of other high stakes ventures (such as the

‘explorers’ of the 18th and 19th centuries) are littered with cases of spectacular failures. In many

cases it seems that serious errors in decision making procedures, more than bad luck, led to these

outcomes. It is true that Scott on his last ill-fated expedition to the South Pole was dogged by one of

the worse summers in recorded Antarctic history, but so was Amundsen in his parallel successful bid.

The latter’s decision to take dogs as sled haulers compares favourably with the obstinate insistence

by Scott on using ponies which were much less suited to the conditions. It is similarly true

(thankfully!) that Hitler’s interference in the summer of 1941 slowed the German advance on

Moscow at critical moments, albeit that like Scott the weather (one of the worst and earliest winters

on record) came out against him and in favour of the Russians. Without the Führer’s interference it is arguable that the Germans would have captured Moscow—the hub of the whole Soviet rail

network and a place of enormous symbolic significance—with incalculable consequences for the war

on the Eastern Front.

High on a list of all time bad decisions is that of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell, RN. As

Sobel (1998) recounts the story, in October 1707, with the English fleet lost in the fog off the South

West of England, one sailor had kept a log of the estimated position off the Scilly Isles which showed

the fleet in danger of shipwreck. He reported this to his CO who in turn informed the Admiral.

Outraged at the man’s insubordination, Shovell had him hanged. Ironically, the sailor’s estimate was

correct. Shortly after his execution the fleet ran onto the rocks with massive loss of life, including

that of the Admiral himself.

Fateful and fatal errors by RN admirals do not end here. An infamous incident in 1893 saw ADM

Tryon order a complex turn exercise which led to his flagship HMS VICTORIA being rammed by HMS

CAMPERDOWN. Despite several senior officers having serious doubts about the maneuver no one

contradicted Tryon nor intervened in any way until too late. VICTORIA sank rapidly with the loss of

over 300 lives, including once again the overall commander. Perhaps D’Oyly Hughes in GLORIOUS

was only following precedent?1

In the classic On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Dixon (1976) chronicles many such

examples: Buller’s indecisiveness in the Boer War and Percival’s paralysis at Singapore are clear

examples. But even successful commanders are prone to serious error. Lee’s decision to press on

with frontal assaults at Gettysburg when Longstreet favoured screening the Union forces and advancing on Washington is a case in point. Like Hitler’s failure to take Moscow, the Confederacy’s

failure to capture Washington, which might have led the Union to accept peace and secession, also

had immense (positive!) effects.

Montgomery’s excellent plan at El Alamein, which succeeded in drawing Rommel’s Afrika Korps

armour into ‘The Crucible’ and grinding it to pieces, was followed by indecision. Where boldness

might have decided the campaign in North Africa once and for all, the slow follow up allowed the

Germans to escape to fight on for some time. Similarly, having skilfully executed the breakout from

1 It should not be assumed that this analysis is somehow ‘anti-Navy’ in general nor ‘anti-RN’ in particular. All services make

mistakes. The mistakes of Naval officers have the character of high visibility simply because the loss of a capital ship is

spectacular, costly and easily recalled. The failure of command decisions in Army is often much more costly but, the

Somme aside, it is rare to lose large numbers of men at a single stroke. However, one could point to examples like the 1944

Battle of the Hürtgen Forest to demonstrate fateful and fatal decision making. As Whiting (1982) notes, many thousands of

American troops died fighting in conditions that favoured the defenders and it is unclear why the US generals kept pushing

on so pointlessly.


the Normandy beach head, drawing the German armour away to make a hole that Patton’s forces

poured through, Montgomery proceeded to ignore the entreaties of Eisenhower to capture the

Scheldt estuary and open Antwerp for Allied supplies (Thomson, 1960). Taken with his great (sic)

idea to drop the airborne on Arnhem and open the highway to the Reich—Arnhem itself being a

preventable disaster—Montgomery neglected the Scheldt at a crucial moment, allowing the Germans to reinforce the defences and hold out for a critical time, denying the Allies adequate fuel,

ammunition, etc.

The psychology of military incompetence

Dixon is very clear that these sorts of errors are NOT the result of stupidity:

On the contrary, by looking further into the nature of decision–processes we are compelled to

entertain another rather different possibility: namely, that the apparent intellectual failings of some

military commanders are due not to their lack of intelligence but to their feelings. Cognitive

dissonance, pontification, denial, risk-taking and anti-intellectualism are all, in reality, more

concerned with emotion than intelligence. The susceptibility to cognitive dissonance, the tendency to

pontificate and the inability to adjust the riskiness of decisions to the real situation are a product of

such neurotic disabilities as extreme anxiety under stress, low self-esteem, nervousness, the need for

approval and general defensiveness. These, it seems, over and above his level of intelligence, are the

factors which interfere with what a man decides to do in a given situation. (1976, 168).

Dixon’s book is now less cited and less popular than it was some time ago, and in some ways it is

dated. For example, while he makes much of the idea of low self-esteem, more recent evidence

suggests that actually high (albeit brittle) self-esteem seems more the cause of self-defeating behaviour:

It is self-love, rather than self-hate, that lies behind most self-destructive patterns. People are afraid

to admit they are wrong, so they pour more time and resources into a lost cause. They are afraid to

look bad by failing, so they engage in self-handicapping, which increases their likelihood of failure.

They avoid taking a chance in order to prevent a possible rejection. They are unwilling to accept a loss

of face, so they seek revenge even at substantial cost to themselves, or they make grandiose,

impossible commitments for future performances and then end up failing even worse. They cannot

tolerate the loss of self-esteem that results from a recent failure or setback … (Baumeister, 1997: 166.

Emphasis added.)

Baumeister’s view here is akin to the rather more ‘pop psychology’ of Stevens (1994). In Stevens’

paradigm common fear patterns (‘dragons’ in his metaphor) come in pairs. One pair centres on

“fearing that one is not special”:

• The ‘arrogance dragon’ is one pole of this model: “I fear I am not special. To assuage my fear

I will act in a stand-offish and superior manner. Others will treat me as special and act at

their peril if they do not!”

• The other pole is the ‘self-deprecation dragon’. “I fear I am not special; indeed, I am sure I

am not. I am not up to what you ask of me, please do not expect much.”

In Stevens’ explanation these can flip into each other under extreme pressure (e.g., punctured

arrogance leads to self-deprecatory grovelling) but are usually stable. It is easy to see, through this

lens, how it is arrogance (Baumeister’s ‘self-love’) that opens the door to error more than self-

deprecation. D’Oyly Hughes, for example, was much more an arrogant than a self-deprecating man

and the same seems to have been true of Tryon and Shovell not mention Lee or Montgomery.

Nonetheless, despite any specific developments or quibbles one might have, Dixon’s emphasis on how psychological needs and emotions, rather than intellect, leads to striking errors opens two lines

of enquiry. The first is the link to (failures in) critical thinking which is the focus in this section of the

paper and the second is to social and emotional competence, to which the paper returns in the next

section.


Dörner and the ‘logic of failure’2

A strong complement to Dixon is Dietrich Dörner’s The Logic of Failure. This was published in the

1990s and draws on work done in the previous decade using ‘small world’ simulations to explore

how people make decisions in complex contexts. Complexity in this context means such things as:

• A large number of interdependent variables that affect each other, potentially leading to

long chains of inter-related events.

• Evolution over time, not just a simple one-step and done situation • Effects act with lags, so the results of an action are not always immediately apparent.

• Variables that act dynamically, in response to external or internal stimuli, even if we take no

action at all.

• Unclear, conflicting, or tacit goals and objectives about what is really to be achieved

• Lack of transparency – we do not always know all the variables, their values, and how they

relate to each other.

• “Chaotic” behaviour, where very small changes in the initial state or seemingly tiny actions

can have dramatic consequences downstream.

Dörner shows that faced with such conditions, it is common for people, over time, to ‘lose the plot’.

That is, while to begin with they might make reasonable decisions, as feedback loops generate unexpected consequences and/or pressure acts on the individual, his/her capacity to stay effectively

engaged begins to fall. Dörner argues that as the capacity to stay engaged with the real problem

falls, people take flight, either ‘vertically’ (grandiose pontificating) or ‘horizontally’ (managing

minutiae). He gives, as an illustration, the case of Goebbels’ diaries , noting that in the closing days

of the Third Reich as the Soviet forces closed on the Führerbunker, Goebbels alternated between

musing about how he would have acted had he been Peter the Great (vertical flight) and fussing

about the design of new medal ribbons for the SS (horizontal flight).

In this light, some of the errors mentioned above make more sense. D’Oyly Hughes may well have

been out of his depth in the Narvik campaign. Self-aggrandising (arrogance dragon) and low on

emotional intelligence (see next section) he seems to have begun to take horizontal flight into the details of court-martialling Heath, leaving the complex task of managing his ship in dangerous waters

to one side while he focused on the trivia. Similarly, Shovell, lost and worried about his position took

refuge in persecuting a poor sailor who was simply doing his best—a horizontal flight into

‘command’ in the most microscopic and negative way.

Montgomery, in Sept. 1944 in contrast, seems to have taken flight vertically. Obsessed as ever with

his reputation (and his duelling with Patton as to who would spear head the assault into Germany)

Monty seems to have lost his normally cautious judgment and, egged on by ‘Boy’ Browning who was

keen to use his airborne troops3, to have been taken with the heady possibilities of seizing bridges by

an airborne coup de main and hence crossing the Rhine like some latter day Roman general crossing the Rubicon.

Dörner’s work pivots upon two central needs that he argues people exhibit to varied degrees. One is

the need for certainty, the other is for (perceived, especially self-perceived) competence. His

argument is that in both cases we can usefully imagine that the individual has a sort of ‘tank’ which

contains his/her reserve of certainty and competence.

2 The following account draws heavily on the work of Dr Anne-Marie Grisogono of DSTO who has worked with and

advanced the Dörner model. Several specific sets of detailed information are derived from her slide presentations.

3 A classic instance of the old cliché, “to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”


Over time, even with little happening, these tanks tend to ‘leak’ and hence run low. Action is needed

to top them up. This model of a depletable resource is, we might note, very similar to the

Baumeister approach. There too we see various aspects of the ‘will’—such as self-control—as

depletable and when the level is low further action is compromised. Again this is intimately

connected with the dual systems approach: system 1 is fast, feral and frugal: using it to make judgements, initiate action and so on is much easier than using system 2. So long as system 1 makes

good calls, this is a very adaptive process, but if for any reason system 1 is making ‘bad’ calls (by

relying on inadequate models, poor reasoning, bad data, prejudice, etc.) then poor outcomes are on

the cards. (Gladwell’s Blink (2005) makes the case well, arguing in effect that intuition is a great

resource when it is backed by extensive experience and a poor one when backed by prejudice.)

What Dörner succeeds in doing is showing that the actions needed to ‘top up’ the tanks have an

inherent danger. This is represented in the very complex diagram below.

DIAGRAM 5: THE DÖRNER DOUBLE LOOP

This diagram, taken directly from one of Dr Grisogono’s slides is not easy to follow. But it can be

represented more simply.

Diagram 6 (next page) was—as an overall flow shape—originally created by Roger Martin et al as a

major submission to the Canadian ‘Walkerton’ Enquiry4. We shall return to the Martin diagram at

least twice more, with different substantive content. Here it illustrates the basic links to get the overall plot, so details then can be followed more easily. In effect, Dörner is making two arguments:

4 This public health disaster is reported at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_Tragedy . The paper by Martin, Archer

and Brill is at http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/rogermartin/Walkerton.pdf.


DIAGRAM 6: DÖRNER SIMPLIFIED

• RESOURCES First, for any individual the capacity to function and make good decisions

over time is linked to personal resources. There is a personality characteristic we may call

‘tolerance of ambiguity’ which is important: the greater the tolerance, the longer a person

will cope before reverting to formulaic, System 1 responses. Also some people have a wider

range of reasoning skills and a better developed model of meta-cognition. Combine these

factors and some people will make better calls than others and will persist in that over time.

• DYNAMICS Second, the steady leakage from the tanks calls for topping up action. The greater the resources the less the pressure and the slower it comes. But come it does,

nudging more and more people towards reliance on less useful modes.

Specifically, we can derive from the Dörner/Grisogono diagrams above that:

Both needs (certainty/competence) promote behaviours which lead to the vicious cycle:

� Safeguarding

� Flight

� Confirmatory Information Collection & Perceptual Defence

� Aggressiveness

Need for certainty raises but need for competence dampens (hence partly cancelling out) behaviours

which would lead to the virtuous cycle:

� Exploration

� Affiliation

Both needs suppress a behaviour which would lead to the virtuous cycle:

� Self-Reflection

In summary, need satisfaction tends to drive people to the vicious cycle

(cont.)


The need for certainty provokes stress arousal. This suppresses cognitive functions which would

otherwise lead to the virtuous cycle:

� Extent of analysis of:

o validity conditions for actions

o long-term effects

o side-effects

� Extent of fanning of memory search

At the same time, stress arousal fans cognitive functions which lead to the vicious cycle:

� Difficulties with

o concentration

o sustainability of behaviour

In summary, stress arousal tends to drive people to the vicious cycle

More detail on a variety of these aspects is shown in Appendix 1. However, even from the brief

summary of these strongly interlinked and reinforcing tendencies given above it is not surprising to

discover that in some of Dörner’s studies as many as 90% of participants collapsed into the vicious

cycle over time. Only 10%—those with the high tolerance of ambiguity—were able to stick with the virtuous cycle.

This finding can be linked to at least two other important pieces of work which complement the

Dörner model by intellectually different routes.

The Opposable Mind

Coming out of an organisational sociology/business studies approach, a major study by Roger Martin

(unrelated to the Walkerton work) is called The Opposable Mind (2007). This study is very different

to Dörner’s. Where Dörner studied failure in an experimental setting, Martin studied success in a

challenging business setting. In effect, although he does not phrase his study this way, what Martin

did was to find leaders who had stayed with the virtuous cycle of decision making through a series of

challenges and as a result arrived at a positive outcome. His major finding? These leaders have an

‘opposable mind’: that is, displaying a very high tolerance for ambiguity and following many of the

strategies Dörner identifies as leading to good outcomes, they create success where others might and do fail. Indeed, one could almost see Martin’s work as an exemplification of a famous quotation

over 1500 years old:

If you want truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between

"for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease. Seng-ts'an, 6th Century AD

Mistakes were made, but not by me

A second major trend that supports the Dörner model is the comprehensive and powerful work in

cognitive dissonance theory, recently reviewed by Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson (2007). As these

authors document across many studies and numerous domains of life, there exists a powerful

tendency in humans to make their various beliefs and actions ‘congruent’ and ‘consonant’ one with

another. Like the fox who cannot get the grapes and so deems them ‘sour’, people fit their

memories, accounts, interpretations, etc. to what has occurred and to what they have done. Importantly for our purposes, what this means is that in addition to many common ‘biasing’

processes (see e.g. appendix 2 for common examples) to which most people are subject most of the


time, pressure is likely to exacerbate these as dissonance reduction cuts in. Thus everyday ideas like

“shooting the messenger” make ‘sense’. If I don’t like what you tell me, disliking and being unkind to

you is consonant: it helps me discount the issues and move the blame elsewhere. In short, “There

probably was not a mistake and if there was it was not my fault.” Etc.

Better Critical Thinking

The good news at the end of this section on how thinking fails is that there is little doubt that better

critical thinking skills can be taught. Two elements are important: improving metacognition; that is, helping people to think about their thinking and making their thinking processes explicit and second

in developing specific (and sometimes domain relevant skills). The trap which can lead to failure,

however, is to assume—as per the simple linear model early in this paper, Diagram 1—that simply

knowing that one needs to know more will lead down a straight and simple path to acquiring and

deploying the skills. For a number of reasons, this is unlikely to be the case. To begin with, “we don’t

know what we don’t know” and even when we find out what we don’t know and start to find

materials to fill the gap, it is not just a question of ‘applying’ the knowledge.

Simulation games, mentoring and coaching are all likely to be relevant. Interestingly, in a simulation

game carried out with Army officers and reported orally in presentation sessions, Dr Grisogono

stated that performance in complex decision making improved substantially within the experimental group on a second iteration when the subjects worked in co-mentoring pairs and that the greater

gain lay not in the phase where a subject performed with mentoring but in the phase where the

subject mentored. That is, watching what the partner did and drawing the partner’s attention to

metacognitive strategies gave mentors more gain than mentees.

Of course, no matter how good the water, the horse still has to want to drink. Reflecting on arrogant

and difficult characters like Shovell or D’Oyly Hughes one wonders how much shrift one would have

received suggesting that they would benefit from improved metacognition? Self-awareness, at least

to a modest degree, combined with a willingness to change, is therefore a pre-condition for

developing better critical thinking. It is to the barriers to this sort of ‘openness’ that we now turn.

2: Emotional and social competence

In the Goleman model of EI mentioned earlier, the logical chain for improvement is fairly simple.

While Goleman himself presents the 4 elements in a two by two table, they link in a diamond shape:

DIAGRAM 7: THE GOLEMAN MODEL

SELF AWARENESS

Being aware of your emotions, clearly

grasping your strengths and weaknesses,

performing with confidence in your self

SELF MANAGEMENT

Controlling your emotions, being

adaptable, optimistic and transparent,

striving to achieve

SOCIAL AWARENESS

Having empathy with others, knowing

how your organisation ‘ticks’, serving

the wider good not being selfish

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Developing and leading others, being

a change catalyst, influencing people,

managing conflict, building bonds

both within the team and beyond


By improving self-awareness we raise both our capacity for self-management and also open the

window wider for social awareness. As these grow so we create a base for better relationship

management skills. If life were simple and linear, we would now simply rush off, one and all, to

increase our self-awareness and hence trigger the positive cascade of improvement. In reality,

however, this is frequently not what happens.

Ellis and REBT

How should we understand this? A myriad of possibilities exist: psychology is a rich science and many aspects of it have a degree of relevance in answering the question.

Of these, a useful starting point is cognitive behavioural psychology and its parent, rational

emotional behavioural therapy (REBT). REBT was developed by Albert Ellis who coined the idea of

the A-B-C model of loss and grief. A is an activating event, B is the beliefs we bring to bear to

interpret what happened and who we feel and C is the consequences that follow. It does no violence

to the model to insert its key terms into the Martin et al flow diagram we saw above, as follows:

DIAGRAM 8: DOUBLE LOOP OF SELF ACCEPTANCE OR SELF DOWNING

In short, stressful challenges can initiate growth and self-development via the functional feedback

loop at the top. The therapeutic intervention that flows from this is, in one sense obvious—if things

don’t feel good, see if there is a different story you can tell yourself. The Roman Emperor Marcus

Aurelius had said the same thing many centuries before:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate

of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius, 2nd Century AD,

But very often what happens is that actually the stress triggers the dysfunctional loop at the bottom

of the diagram and the individual remains locked in the cycle of unproductive assumptions, stories,

accounts and coping mechanisms.

Indeed, if we follow the simple but illuminating account offered by Stevens (1994) it is not merely

that ‘the dragon’ is unhelpful. Rather, the dragon produces behaviours that exacerbate the problem.

Thus, he points out as an example, those ruled by the ‘impatience dragon’ (a disturbed sense of


time) always feel harried and rushed. As a consequence they frequently fall into the trap of ‘more

haste, less speed’. Hurrying to do tasks, they do not take the time necessary to do them well and end

up ‘jamming’ things. Fearful of wasting time, if ever they discover they are ahead of schedule on a

trip, they will ‘just’ do an extra task, such as ‘pop in’ to another office/store/whatever on the way,

since it ‘will only take a minute’5.

Of course, nothing ever takes ‘just a minute’ so in short order the ‘popping in’ has more than

consumed the few spare minutes and now our impatient person is rushing and harried again (and on

a really bad day makes a consequent error such as backing the car out into a minor traffic accident

that makes them really late!) The point here is that being late and feeling harried does not lead to

enlightenment, calm mindfulness and better time management. Instead, it leads to a renewed sense

of being rushed and time poor—a self-defeating and destructive loop.

In the same way, poor leadership that lowers morale through

consistently low EI on the part of leaders does not result in

better leadership. More commonly—as in this well-known

cartoon satire—the tendency is to focus on the dissatisfied and disillusioned followers and punish them for leadership

and system failure.

Tell Yourself a Different Story

It is important to note, however, that while ‘tell yourself a different story’ seems trite and frequently

it is not what people do, it turns out to be enormously powerful when successfully applied. The idea

has been picked up and used in a variety of ways. For example, Patterson et al’s (2002) influential

Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking When the Stakes Are High devotes the whole of Chapter 6 to

‘mastering stories’: discussing how stories work, how they can be monitored and changed, etc.

Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey (1999), Harvard based cognitive psychologists also work in a similar space

with How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, a powerful model for underpinning

change through individual exercises (such as the ‘competing commitments’ exercise designed to lay bare some underlying assumptions [in Ellis’ term ‘beliefs’] that people hold and which lock them in)

as well as group based work to develop new cultural norms.

Timothy Wilson’s (2011) very recent Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change

reviews a wide range of research centred around the stories people tell themselves and how one can

influence these stories, and the mindsets that ground them, through ‘rewriting’ central stories. So

the issue is clear enough: self-awareness/self-management is a key the effective remedial strategy

focuses on getting people to (re) consider how they frame their experiences via key assumptions,

scripts and stories.

A closely linked set of activities—which can support and inform the ‘rewriting’ efforts—lies in various forms of feedback. Whether self-generated (via e.g., ‘reflected-best-self’ methods see

http://www.centerforpos.org/the-center/teaching-and-practice-materials/teaching-tools/reflected-

best-self-exercise/) or via some external 360 feedback method (numerous good ones are available)

‘seeing ourselves as others see us’ can be very powerful in change.

5 Note the language here. Words and phrases such as ‘just’, ‘pop in’ and ‘only take a minute’ are what we might call reality

palliatives: they mask what is actually happening under a soothing discourse that allows the utterer to pretend, at least to

themselves, that time can be cheated.


Different Stories: Are You Telling/Listening? Why Not?

The difficulty, however, lies in a form of reverse ‘preaching to the converted’. That is, those who

most want to get 360 feedback and learn from it are usually those who least need it and vice versa.

For those with a deal of sensitivity about self, based on varied pathologies and fears, there is often

little enthusiasm for honest feedback and linked self-reflection. Indeed, at a practical level,

experience with using 360 feedback systems in an organisational context leads very rapidly to

several revealing concerns. These include:

• It will be a waste of time, the data will be useless because “people won’t tell the truth

because they fear retribution”;

• People not wanting to be respondents because they do, indeed, fear retribution;

• Senior people who dismissively say that it, “gives the troops a free kick at you”.

All of these and similar concerns point to the fact that honest feedback is not unproblematic. To use

a term which will recur in the third section, performance becomes an ‘undiscussable’. The problem here is not that good 360 feedback, feedback that meets and overcomes all of these concerns,

cannot be undertaken: the reality is that many good systems exist. Instead, what looms out here is

that many people in leadership positions are not open to learning more. Their self-awareness is

limited and they carefully protect against being confronted with anything likely to disturb their

current (low) level of insight.

As noted at the start of the paper, this is a very serious problem. When leaders in HOs make life or

death decisions, they need to do so from a psychologically strong position, one that is open to

development and learning and which underpins sound decision making6. The key to this lies here in

the realm of social and emotional competence. Without this competence, it is very unlikely that the

person involved will be open to the work needed to improve thinking. In short, while social and

emotional competence is not sufficient to guarantee improvements in critical thinking, it is almost

certainly a necessary condition. It follows that all organisations—and HOs in particular—need to

take active responsibility in ensuring the social and emotional competence of leaders.

Coda: Authentic Leadership

Before passing on to the final major section, it is important to link what has just been covered to

relevant leadership research. A key source here is the work of Bruce Avolio and co-workers on

authentic leadership, not least because this leadership approach as explicit links to HOs such as the

military.

Authentic leaders display four types of behaviors: Balanced processing, internalized moral

perspective, relational transparency, and self-awareness (Walumbwa et al., 2008). Balanced

processing refers to a leader behavior that is less susceptible to denials, distortions, and

exaggerations. Internalized moral perspective refers to leader behaviors that are guided by internal

moral standards as opposed to those behaviors based on external pressure from peers and other

organizational demands. Relational transparency refers to leader behaviors that are aimed at

promoting trust through disclosures that include openly sharing information and expressions of the

leader’s true thoughts and feelings. Finally, self-awareness refers to the extent leaders appear to

understand their strengths, motives, and weaknesses and how others view their leadership.

(Walumba et al, 2011:5-6)

The overall model of how components fit together is shown in the diagram 9 (next page).

6 To head off a frequent objection: this is not about removing decisive ‘command and control’ leadership in times of

emergency, such as combat. It is about grounding leadership, in all its modes, on rock not sand.


DIAGRAM 9: AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

It is readily apparent how closely this fits with the Goleman model (Diagram 7) of EI discussed above:

once more the key issues centre on self-awareness and management and these in turn influence

social relations via positive modelling.

So the take out of the authentic leadership school fits closely with the arguments in this paper.

Authentic leadership, a powerful component of adaptive capacity, emerges and flowers when

practiced by leaders with high EI.

3: Positive organisational arrangements

Many approaches exist that discuss the organisational and cultural arrangements that appear to

underpin various forms of outstanding performance. This section briefly considers two examples:

• The literature on high reliability organisations (HROs);

• Literature on ‘peak performance’; and

High Reliability Organisations

The literature on HROs was originally developed by studying high risk organisations (nuclear power

plants, aircraft carriers, bush fire brigades, etc.) where disaster is an ever present possibility yet

there is a good safety record. Studying these organisations it becomes clear that success in

maintaining reliability is a function of two strategies:

• Proactive: do things that reduce the likelihood of deficient performance;

• Reactive: do things that effectively contain and correct deficiencies when they occur.

The question scholars initially posed was what these organisations had in common but this was

gradually transformed into a more dynamic question: namely, what principles do they employ to produce the high reliability outcome?


As documented by writers such as Hopkins (2005) and Weick and Sutcliffe (2007), five core principles

emerge:

• preoccupation with FAILURE

• reluctance to SIMPLIFY

• sensitive to OPERATIONS

• committed to RESILIENCE

• defer to EXPERTISE

These five principles when applied create several, shared features7 in HROs who:

• accept imperfection and failures as inevitable, but see them as opportunities to learn – and they treat near-misses as near-hits;

• don’t oversimplify system behaviour modelling, they use sophisticated systems to

manage complexity, and they encourage more than one view and approach to

operations;

• make it someone’s express business to maintain overall situational awareness;

• adopt and retain redundancy, and therefore the flexibility and resilience to adapt to the unforeseen;

• rely on experience and knowledge more so than hierarchical command or

management structures to manage the inevitable unforeseen behaviour of

imperfect designs and processes;

• maintain optimum human stress (not too much, not too little); and

• maintain an enthusiastic but nervous outlook on positive feedback (good trends) – they appreciate that modern systems and processes will exhibit, by and large, non-

linear, probabilistic behaviour, and the longer a good trend continues, the closer the

next surprise is.

It is not hard to see that, when compared to these principles, some of the disasters referred to

earlier in the paper stand in stark contrast to the characterisation of HROs. In particular, not relying

excessively on hierarchy, instead deferring to the expertise of people no matter what their formal

rank, is exactly what Shovell failed to do and what those surrounding Tryon did not challenge despite

their misgivings that the orders were not safe to follow.

Modern practices in high risk situations are increasingly designed to offer specific training to enhance the processes of HROs. A very good example of this is CRM: Crew resource management.

In complex environments, crew resource management is a way of thinking which helps to

structure the effective use of all resources to minimize errors, improve safety and improve

performance. … The concept …, descended from Resource Management on the Flightdeck; a

workshop sponsored by NASA in 1979. The intent of this workshop was to better understand

air transport accidents. Research presented at this conference (the Ruffell Smith

experiment) “identified the human error aspects of the majority of air crashes as failures of

interpersonal communications, decision making, and leadership”. This research and the

ideas derived from it are significant and broadly applicable. (Adams, 2011, 1-3)

CRM thus sets out to find a social (interpersonal) response to problems which have their origin in two psychological (intrapersonal) phenomena:

1. First, as indicated above in the first two sections, failure either of the cognitive processes

needed to make decisions in complex contexts and/or failure to display sufficient EI to seek

information, advice and feedback from others that might lead to better decisions;

7 This list created by, and reproduced with permission of, GPCAPT Chris Crowley, RAAF.


2. Second, the need to offset broad cognitive tendencies towards routine, ‘short cut’ thinking

which overlooks weak signals, normalises risk, etc., and in so doing is inadequately proactive

to prevent a disaster and too slow in reacting to minimise it. (In the case of the sinking of

HMS VICTORIA, for example, ADM Tryon initially insisted that rescue boats were not

necessary and ordered them away, in part worsening the disaster that beset the stricken vessel.)

This is an extremely useful model. It should not be thought, however, that it is only ‘historical’

examples of failure that show the contrast between routine efforts and best practice. The loss of

HMS SHEFFIELD to an Exocet missile strike in the Falklands War, with 20 dead and 24 injured

personnel, indicates ways in which these failures are still manifest in relatively contemporary times.

The story from the radar operator on HMS INVINCIBLE makes sobering reading:

As I was the long-distance air surveyor, I operated 1022 radar which covered 258 miles down to 18

miles radius from the ship. I was sitting at my display when a contact [Argentinian jet] appeared at

180 miles. So I waited for the next sweep - and there it was again. I logged it into the computer and

reported it as I'd done so many times before.

But this time [an officer] said there was nothing there. The next sweep of my radar came and there it

was, now at 160 miles. I reported it again. But the same thing happened. Precious time was passing us

by, we did not alert the fleet. We did nothing.

The next sweep of my radar, it was at 130 miles, so I reported it again. This time [the officer] became

annoyed and told me 'You're chasing rabbits'. My mate now reported a contact at 120 miles and

closing. I changed my display down to watch it closer. The contact was now at 80 miles and closing.

The radar swept again but this time there were two contacts. The second contact was only on our

display for two sweeps when it disappeared under radar coverage. This indicated that we were

dealing with an Exocet missile designed to skim above the waves. [That is, the radar registered the

aircraft and missile before the Exocet dipped below visibility.] My mate and I reported the double

contact and the fact that one had suddenly disappeared. [An officer] told us that we were 'riding a

bike'.

Slowly the machines in the ops room began ticking away with the information that Sheffield had been

hit. We were shocked with disbelief. An officer came up to us and began handing round sweets.

I should have stood up and shouted, 'There is a fucking contact, there's something coming in, believe

me - alert the fleet'. I'll always punish myself in my conscience for not having done that. But you're

trained to obey the chain of command regardless. It had been drummed into me. (Emphasis added.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/sep/26/falklands.world)

Keith Grint, a leading UK researcher on organisations who teaches ‘constructive dissent’ to RAF

NCOs to help avoid these sorts of problems, uses this example as a graphic illustration of the failure

of leadership8. Ideally, then in a system with constructive dissent where relevant and a state of

shared alertness, with optimum stress levels and good communications, excellent outcomes can be regularly achieved even when stakes are high and risk ever present.

8 The author learned of the SHEFFIELD example and of the work on dissent in a presentation by Grint at RAF Hendon in

2005.


Peak Performance

A complementary research literature concerns ‘peak performing organisations’9. Among the varied

sources here, one of the best grounded pieces is Gilson et al (2001) Peak Performance: Lessons From

the World’s Top Sports Organizations. This book looks at teams and groups which, in the 1980s and

1990s (i.e. the period under study) had been extremely successful in their endeavours and included:

• FC Bayern Munich

• Netball Australia

• The Australian Cricket Board

• The All Blacks

• The 49ers

Gilson et al explain how peak performance arises through their ‘PPO theory’ summarised in Diagram 10 (see Gilson et al, 2001, 241)

DAIGRAM 10: PPO THEORY

They argue that:

There are three …principles, peak purpose, peak practices and peak flow. Each is supported by three

PPO concepts which are brought into being by PPO actions. Peak purpose provides meaning and

directions for people within organizations. Peak practices create the organizational context for people

to prepare for peak performance while peak flow explains how people work together to achieve it.

(240).

9 Although, as has emerged elsewhere in this paper, the fact that literatures are complementary does not guarantee that

they ‘see’ or cite one another or are co-cited E.g., A search of Google scholar for papers co-referencing Gilson’s (2001)

book on peak performance and Weick’s work on HROs draws a blank.


Having explained the model, the authors go on to explain how this works in practice, which is

summarised in Diagram 11:

DIAGRAM 11: PPO IN ACTION

As the diagram implies, peak performance is a continually evolving and dynamic thing. At the same

time, regression, they note, can be sudden and dramatic:

The loss of inspirational players, the destruction of the dream, the undermining of the infrastructure

or the destabilization of any of the peak practices can lead to PPO regression. Peak practices need to

be nurtured constantly for an organization to remain in contention. (264)

Linking this to an example used in this paper, Winton’s (1986) account of the loss of GLORIOUS notes

the irony that throughout the inter-war years, this was a happy, high functioning ship with excellent

morale and performance. Yet as Howland has said, by June 1940 she was “ … not a happy ship”.

Under D’Oyly Hughes’ malign command the ‘peak performance’ degraded, with fatal consequences.

There is a very strong echo here, therefore, of the HRO literature which reaches very similar

conclusions by an analogous route. The painstaking attention to detail that Weick et al document is

exactly the same as ‘catching the last detail’ in diagram 11. Hence not having a disastrous outcome

in a high risk context is directly parallel to great success in a competitive one.

Nor surprisingly, the argument turns on the same sorts of psychological and social considerations. In

a paper in the Journal of Change Management published very shortly after the book, one of the co-

authors, Ed Weymes (2003) laid out the dynamics that work for ‘inspirational players’ to help drive

peak performance. The model (see Diagram 12, next page) is a very close parallel to the model of

authentic leadership in Diagram 9. Yet again, we see how elements of EI, especially self-awareness

and self-management are key to developing the sorts of team relationships that lead to success.

A crucial additional element that the work of Weymes and others brings forward—and which echoes

work by Avolio and others in a different literature—concerns the role of those in charge of

organisations, ‘in command’ as it were. This shows that a CEO with high EI is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for organisational success. While—a main theme of this paper—a ‘bad boss’ can

mess things up with fateful and fatal consequences, the reverses is not true in a simplistic way. A

‘good boss’ does not achieve good outcomes just because s/he is a good performer.


DIAGRAM 12: WEYMES’ MODEL OF INSPIRATIONAL PLAYERS AND THEIR IMPACT

Nor does s/he achieve it simply by role modelling for others to follow, although role modelling is

important. Instead, s/he achieves it by creating the conditions for synergy. Then the team performs

individually and collectively at its best. In the sports context, the inspirational players are freed up to

lift the team to new heights.

The point is hardly novel in broad terms: the times that leaders acknowledge their team are legion,

whether it is the sports captain holding the trophy, the CO accepting the medal, the lead scientist

accepting the prize or the CEO the shareholder accolades, it is almost routine to point to those on

whose shoulders one has stood.

However, this does not just ‘happen’. To create and unleash synergy—whether of inspirational

players or more commonly of the regular folk in the organisation—takes ability and insight. Grint

argues that this becomes most possible in ‘heterocracies’. In his model—Diagram 13—Grint argues

DIAGRAM 13: GRINT’S MODEL OF LEADERSHIP AND HIERARCHY


that optimal leadership occurs when commitment to the organisation is high and there is more

independence from the leader.

… heterarchic leaders recognise their own limitations in a Socratic fashion, with leadership switching

according to needs, rather like a rowing squad (from coach, to captain, to stroke, to cox and back

again), or the flexible system of Mission Command employed by the armed services which sets

general objectives and allows subordinates latitude in the specific means of achieving them. In this

model, “the power of leaders is a consequence of the actions of followers rather than the cause of

it.” (Underlined emphasis added, home.no/emarum/artikkel2.pdf )

The emphasis here on the mission command phrase is designed to draw attention to the fact that a

doctrine exists which, when practised effectively, delivers adaptive capacity in HOs. Good examples

exist and are documented. For example, Abrashoff’s (2002) account of turning USS BENFOLD into

‘the best damn ship in the Navy’ is an excellent case study. Although Abrashoff was carrying out his

actions before Peak Performance was published, the book almost reads like a manual on how to

apply PPO theory to a military context.

In complete contrast to the ‘wheelwright’ model in Grint’s top right quadrant, of course, we see in the bottom left, the ‘emperor’ model, with irresponsible followers and destructive consent.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in cases like the loss of the VICTORIA (where no one

questioned Tryon’s orders). A similar picture emerges with the radar room of the INVINCIBLE where

the operator did not stand up and shout out about what was going on.

Why HROs and PPO are not the norm

If we know through a wide variety of studies (the two sub section above are striking illustrations of a

much wider literature) how to make organisations work well, why don’t they do so more often?

Most people are not ill-intentioned so, as Martin et al (2002) ask, “Why do people and organizations

produce the opposite of what they intend?” Here is their succinct summary of their answer:

Using the lens of Chris Argyris’s theories of individual and organizational behaviour, we provide an

explanation for this pattern of behaviour. Argyris’s extensive research suggests that people are

universally predisposed to engage in counterproductive behaviour – behaviour that produces

outcomes contrary to their hopes and wishes. This counterproductive habit is driven by values that

are focused on winning, staying in control, and avoiding embarrassment. When pushed beyond our

comfort levels, we will engage in defensive behaviour aimed at avoiding failure and the resultant

embarrassment and loss of control. We will avoid telling the truth or asking questions, especially if the

consequences involve challenging the opinions of others, which could produce embarrassment.

So, we cover up our mistakes, even if it means making a bad situation worse. While this universal

frailty lurks at all times, its capacity to produce counterproductive results varies substantially. First,

the defensiveness of individuals differs: other things being equal, some people have an enviably high

comfort zone, acting without defensiveness most of the time; others frequently feel frightened and

defensive. Second, however, is that other things are rarely equal. Organizations also vary in their

impact on the defensiveness of individuals. Organizations have steering mechanisms – formal

systems, interpersonal patterns, and cultures – that can either exacerbate or ameliorate an

individual’s tendency toward defensive behaviour.

Because all groups are populated with individuals prone (in varying degrees) to defensive behaviour,

organizations must work hard to create a set of formal, interpersonal, and cultural steering

mechanisms that ameliorate the tendency toward defensive behaviour. Otherwise, any enterprise will

fall prey to the errors generated by self-protective patterns operating at all levels. 1

This elegant argument is shown in Diagram 13—the third this time this ‘flow’ has been shown, this

time with the original content.


DIAGRAM 13: THE MARTIN/ARGYRIS THEORY OF MODEL 1 AND MODEL 2 FEEDBACK LOOPS

As Martin et al explain, Argyris (see e.g. Argyris, 2000) offers two ‘models’ of how people might

operate. ‘Model 1’, has 4 governing values or ‘rules’:

• remain in unilateral control;

• win; do not lose;

• suppress negative feelings;

• act as rationally as possible.

These rules lead to ‘defensive routines’ of which ‘narrow perfectionism’ (NP) is a classic example.

In this stance, people reduce the range of their responsibilities to such an extent that they can

reassure themselves that they will acquit those duties perfectly, and thereby avoid failure and

maintain control.

For example, during a storm in which numerous flights are cancelled or delayed, an airline check-in

agent may define her job as simply checking in customers for their assigned flights. Faced with a

distraught passenger, who needs advice on rebooking, the agent may well respond: “My job is to

check in passengers for this flight; you will have to go to the main terminal to rebook.” In doing so,

the agent ensures that she will be able to do her job of checking in passengers perfectly. The

passenger, of course, will be irate, and the agent will know, in the back of her mind, that this

passenger will remember the bad service and will choose the competitor airline next time. When a

critical number of customers take such actions, the airline will suffer and go out of business, and she

will lose her job. However, trying to remedy problems courts failure, and this creates fear. So narrow

perfectionism becomes the preferred, though flawed, alternative. (Martin et, p 7)

In HOs with high stakes, NP can be seen in stark relief. For example, the second radar operator on

INVINCIBLE backed up the story about the officer ignoring warnings but disagreed with the one who

said he should have shouted out. As cited in the same Guardian report, he claimed:

We did exactly what we trained for in reporting the contacts. It was for other people in the ops room

to act on that information. It is every ship's job to make the rest of the fleet aware of such things.

Invincible was closer to those contacts and smaller ships don't have the same radar. Any responsibility

is on other people's shoulders, not David's. If he had made a fuss in the ops room, he would simply


have been treated as hysterical. I feel no guilt at all and David should not. Although we were only 19

at the time, we were very, well trained. (Emphasis added.)

Following the logic outlined earlier in the paper, which draws attention to personal variability, it is

no surprise to see that, in this analysis too, whether a problem leads to a bind (loop down) or a

tension (loop up) is a function both of:

• Personal tendencies (some are more pessimistic, defensive and insecure than others) and

• Organisational tendencies (some exacerbate the binds, others ameliorate and treat them as tensions).

In this section, the second issue is more pressing as we have already explored the first in some

depth. Examining Diagram 13 more closely, we see that there are three core ‘organisational steering

mechanisms’:

• Formal Mechanisms

o Decision-Rights Allocation

o Performance Measurement Systems

o Reward and Consequence Systems

• Interpersonal Mechanisms

• Cultural Mechanisms

How do these work out in differing ways? According to Martin et al the following basic points can be

observed:

With decision rights we can find:

• Excessive centralisation (hi skill, low data) or decentralisation (low skill, high data)

• Responsibility and accountability for outcomes, but no resource control (staff, budget, etc.)

• Unwillingness to share responsibility—because sharing does not fit Model 1

With performance management we can find:

• Unilateral standard setting promotes defensiveness

• Absence of a link of targets to overall strategic direction for the organisation—“if I don’t get the ‘big picture’ how can I ‘go the extra mile’”?

• Measurement is unclear, vague or not widely accepted, so (arbitrary) rewards to some do

more harm than good

With reward and consequence systems we can find:

• Asymmetry—a low reward for excellence but a big punishment for failure, encourages ‘gold

bricking’ and NP

• ‘Kinks’ in system--$1 off budget, no bonus, on budget, big bonus, etc.—which encourages cover up and manipulation

With interpersonal steering mechanisms we can find:

• The stronger Model 1, the greater the tendency to binds not tensions since no one will be a

‘loser’ and admit “I don’t know”;

• Leaders develops ‘skilled incompetence’—sending out mixed messages but pretending they

are coherent

• There will be a search for ‘the quick fix’, numerous undiscussables and even the fact that undiscussables exist is undiscussable!

With cultural steering mechanisms we can find:


• If the previous interpersonal and organisational problems arise, the culture becomes

negative, prone to ‘cover ups’, and lots of NP

• In face of NP, management ‘turns the screws’ to get better performance, increasing hostility and mistrust—a negative downward spiral which wrecks communication between people

and groups

Contrasting with Model 1, in Model 2 the rules are aimed at:

• valid (and validatable) information

• free and informed choice

• internal commitment to the choice

This necessitates openness, honesty, sharing and a willingness to be wrong and is based on a

different set of conflict management styles. It is easy to see how Model 2 much more closely fits the

heterocratic/mission command style of operation while Model 1 more closely fits the Emperor

model.

The HL Mencken Principle

If research shows how we can get the best—and conversely the worse—out of people surely we

should expect that more and more organisations would be training their leaders for these models

and moving towards them? Unfortunately, defective reasoning and unhelpful mindsets/stories are

not phenomena restricted to individuals. Instead, there is a general tendency towards simplistic

thinking that was beautifully parodied by HL Mencken:

For every human problem there is an answer which is neat, simple and wrong.

The world of social action and social policy is littered with examples of poor outcomes from applying

simplistic models, in many case with the same underlying problem as the ‘worlds’ that Dörner

created, namely that the feedback loops undermine the simple policy10. Even simpler, many failues

are based on empirical fallacies11.

The tendency to want simplicity, however, is not simply a function of stupidity, or laziness (or even

bad character!) As a wide variety of authors have pointed out, looking for simple answers (in the way

that Dörner documented) is normal and being ready to embrace complexity and ambiguity with an

‘opposable mind’ (Martin, 2007) is much less common.

Among the various approaches to this we can point to writers such as Kahneman (2011), Gigerenzer

(2007) or Blastland and Dilnot (2007).

10 For example, in ‘crime policy’ ideas such as a ‘crackdown’ on drugs and drug trafficking sound simple. Some work, some

don’t. Of those that don’t, the commonest failing relates to not dealing with a simple economic feedback loop, namely:

• if demand stays constant and supply falls, price rises (inelasticity effect);

• if price rises, ROI is likely to rise;

• unless risk is unacceptably high, more investment is drawn into supply because of the higher profit margins

• this inadvertent ‘price support policy’ (ironically) guarantees supply.

11 For example, it is ‘obvious’ that the solution to obesity is ‘just’ to exercise self-control, eat less and exercise more.

However, while that may be true in a narrow sense (for instance, if a person becomes a poverty stricken refugee fleeing

huge distances on foot) recent research indicates that a period of ‘over-eating’ resets the ‘body clock’ on hunger. For a

number of years after weight loss the formerly obese person suffers long term hunger sensations, explaining why most

successful diets are followed by regaining weight.


Blastland and Dilnot (2007), for example, describe how people commonly make mistakes in

imagining that they see patterns in numbers and/or drawing poor inferences from those same

numbers. Their argument is that humans are wired for pattern recognition from limited clues and so

make ‘sense’ from fragments of data. Their title—The Tiger That Isn’t—expresses this view

metaphorically. If I see a pattern of light and dark in the jungle, it might be a tiger. Or it might not. Those who assume it is and flee will often be wrong but in the long run they will outlive (and

outbreed) those who stop to check. Hence jumping to simple conclusions by filling in the gaps is a

human trait whereas staying to wrestle with complexity is not—it has to be learned and cultivated.

Kahneman (2011) has spent many years dealing with how some of this ‘jumping’ occurs, detailing

numerous issues in successful and unsuccessful thinking and demonstrating comprehensively how

often ‘rational’ models beloved of classical economics are unrelated to how people actually behave.

His work overlaps with—but at times is in tension with—Gigerenzer (2007) who argues that often

intuitive shortcuts that are not fully ‘rational’ are very helpful guides to action.

The reality of this tendency towards simple, ‘jump-to-conclusions’ thinking helps explain why we so

frequently see people carrying out restructures, reforms or whatever that are driven by ‘obvious’ principles yet which are doomed to fail. (This is the key point of the Martin argument re Walkerton:

promises to ‘tighten accountability’, ‘hold people responsible’ and ‘ensure this never happens again’

are guarantees of the next round of organisational failure.)

Understanding simple thinking, however, also focuses upon a simple (and perhaps obvious) feature

that pins together much of what this paper says—mindfulness, a core demand of the HRO

approach—is the antidote to the negative effects of this tendency. It is inevitable that people will

use short cut, system 1 intuition and heuristics to carry out much of their daily ‘reasoning’ and

interaction. But it is mindfulness—individual and collective—that can help to ensure that this ground

productive rather than unproductive activity. Mindfulness is not simply an act of will, of course, it is

a habit, a set of practices and, collectively, a modus vivendi.

Conclusion

Weaving together the strands we can conclude that high adaptive capacity is linked to:

• individuals—especially those in authority—having good metacognitive skills and a healthy level of emotional and social competence;

• sharing with their colleagues a mindfulness about performance;

• embedding themselves in and sustaining interpersonal/cultural practices that both

encourage mindfulness and reap its harvest;

• a formal system of rules, relations, rewards, etc. that sustain and encourage ‘heterocratic’

organisation, model 2 thinking and open dialogue and dissuade the arbitrary exercise of rank and power.

Nothing in this paper is, or was meant to be, ‘original’. Anyone who knows any one of the literatures

it refers to will recognise from their expertise that it covers only a subset of the material it could

cover (hopefully it does so warrantably). In a similar vein the kind of organisation is leads us towards,

and the kind of leadership and followership it calls for has been called for before.

What this paper set out do, and hopefully to have achieved, however, is a new synthesis.

Psychologists of various stripes have long pointed to ways in which individuals may fail in the tasks of

thinking clearly or acting in a healthy fashion. Sociologists have pointed to ways in which

organisational structures do or do not produce certain group outcomes. Business and management

specialists have written about successful and unsuccessful firms. Historians have written about successes and failures in military enterprises and so on.


In each case, good work has been produced which potentially links across boundaries. For example,

Argyris’ ‘model 1’ dove-tails with Dörner’s needs for certainty and competence, while his model 2

links with the finding that high tolerance of ambiguity keeps open the virtuous cycle. Similarly, the

core role of self-awareness and self-management runs like an ore seam through the work on

‘authentic leadership’ and ‘inspirational players’. Moreover, a high level of self-awareness and self-management, itself a feature of ‘emotional and social competence’, underpins the openness one

would need to learn better metacognition. And so on.

The aim here has been to show clearly how the literatures link and most especially to show how

one underlying ‘flow’ model (as in Diagrams 6, 8 and 13) captures a central process: faced with a

challenge there are two loops—one builds adaptive capacity, the other reinforces suboptimal

activity.

In a sense then, the paper is a version of ‘all roads lead to Rome’: all these literatures point to the

same conclusion.

From this conclusion we can also derive a way forward. We know that adaptive capacity is a crucial

feature of a good organisation and is especially important for leaders in HOs. If we follow the model

shown here we know that this capacity can and should be enhanced through development and

training. In contrast, its neglect is dangerous for if at any time an individual is given the reins of

power who lacks the requisite thinking skills for the task and the requisite social and emotional

capacity to work well with and get the best from the team, and if the local organisational practices

are not extraordinarily robust, then disaster lurks just round the corner.

Under stress, an individual who may have performed well (or at least passably) in less demanding

contexts, may become increasingly prone to the sort of fateful and fatal errors documented earlier

in the paper. In HOs like the military, many failures will not lead to such spectacular disasters such as

the striking Naval examples cited12, but this is no consolation for those who are unnecessarily

injured, for the relatives of those unnecessarily killed or for those who have to pick up the pieces from unnecessary defeats.

The wreck of the HMAS SYDNEY: Y Turret

12 It was noted earlier that Naval examples are ‘easy’ to use because the loss of a capital ship is highly visible and easily

remembered. Here one can add another nuance about Navy: a ship CO is—and certainly in recent history was—more

separated in their own little ‘kingdom’ than Army or Air Force COs. This relative lack of visibility in the simplest sense has a

variety of consequences. Neutrally put, it means that such a CO is routinely less subject to control than those in the other

services. This can mean that they have the freedom to operate imaginatively: Collins in command of SYDNEY in July 1940

took a slightly creative view of his orders and stayed closer to a destroyer group than perhaps he should. As a result when

they were ambushed by Italian cruisers near Cape Spada, SYDNEY was on hand with a lightning counterattack, scoring a

notable victory. When later asked (drily) how he came to be there Collins claimed to have “been guided by Providence”!

The down side of this lower level of control, however, is that even more than most military contexts, a ship can be a ‘total

institution’ (Goffman, 1961) with stifling consequences.


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Appendix 1: Two Models of Making Decisions ( after Dörner and Grisogono)

A flexible and ambiguity tolerant model An inflexible but self-reassuring model

Goal Elaboration Behaviours

� Develops concrete goals at multiple scales

� Considers interdependencies of goals � Assesses impact of ‘problems’ and salient

signals in whole picture.

� Chooses point of strongest effort, but

keeps eye on background goals

� Contradictory goals are traded off against

one another

� Remains with Abstract Goals, doesn’t

concretise � Treats goals as independent

� Repair-Service – Behaviour

� Opportunistic choice of one goal

according to saliency

� "Encapsulation"; chooses a goal that

can be attained, even if it is relatively

unimportant, and ignores everything

else

Information Collection and Model Building

� Extremely interested in information

contradicting own view of the world

� seeks to learn from it, is prepared to

relinquish own ideas. � Develops appreciation of whole causal

and influence network

� Looks for patterns in spatial and temporal

development of the situation

– Situation is seen as network of

interwoven elements.

– Distinguishes between symptoms

& causal and influence factors

– Tries to go beyond the surface of the given situation, to identify

causal factors which drive

development

– Develops systemic hypotheses

– Recognises that understanding is

always incomplete and therefore

keeps looking for further relevant

factors and remains open to

adding causal and influence

pathways as necessary.

� Confirmatory information collection,

ignores information contradicting own

"image of the world"

� Engages in Perceptual Defence – denies or marginalises contradictory

information

� Situation is seen as collection of

independent elements

– Concentrates on data collection

without analysis - identifying

the characteristics of the

current situation

– Looks for ‘single causes’ – Hypothesis formation about

causal factors in the form of

reductive hypotheses

Projection and Planning Behaviours

� Projection:

– Does not assume current trends continue

– looks at what drives current

trends

– And hence estimate future

� Projection:

– Future is linear extrapolation of present

� Planning:

– plans only on basis of present

situation so irrelevant


according to what is known about

situation and causal factors

� Planning

– Develops and evolves a stratagem

– Considers conditions of validity of

actions & side- and long-term

effects. – Assesses their likely impacts and

probabilities.

– Checks whether conditions for

validity of current plans or actions

still hold, even if always so until

now

� Judges how much planning is enough and

can forgo planning when appropriate

� Displays Ambiguity Tolerance

symptoms often treated

– “Simplistic planning" - ignores

validity conditions of actions, or

side- and long-term effects

– Jumps straight from abstract

goals into CoA development

– Methodism, i.e. use actions

which have been successful in

the past without considering

special conditions of actions

� Swings between Over-planning (more

and more conditions, assumptions �

more and more elaborate, specific and

fragile plans) and "bang-bang –

decisions"

� Displays high need for certainty

Action Implementation Behaviours

� carefully studies consequences of actions

and tries to find the reasons for unexpected results

� Concentrates on recognising,

understanding and learning from failures

rather than marginalizing them

� "Ballistic" action, “fire and forget”

� Does not look for effects contrary to expectations

� Marginalizes failures, external

attribution of failures

Meta-Cognitive Behaviours

� Cultivates practice of self-reflection.

– Awareness of own behaviours

– Judges when particular

behaviours are or are not

appropriate

– Challenges own behaviour

patterns and check for

unwarranted ritualisation – Challenges own concepts and

beliefs, entertains alternatives

– Self-reflection concentrates on

failures and on inefficient

thinking and reasoning, and leads

to "reshaping" of thinking

� Little self-reflection

– Engages in limited self-

reflection - only as confirmatory

recapitulation of successes

– Choice of behaviours largely

unconscious or automated

– Prone to ritualistic behaviours

– Clings to own concepts and beliefs. Unwilling to consider

alternatives

– Unwilling to entertain new info

or ideas

– External attribution of failures;

Denies or at least minimises

own responsibility


Appendix 2: Some well know biasses

Anchoring effect: the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or

piece of information when making decisions (also called "insufficient adjustment").

Attentional bias: the tendency to neglect relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or

association.

Availability heuristic: estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is

biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.

Choice-supportive bias: the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Confirmation bias: the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's

preconceptions.

False consensus effect: the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree

with them.

Focusing effect: the tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error

in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Framing effect: drawing different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that

information is presented.

Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based

explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of

situational influences on the same behavior

Gambler's fallacy: the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. Results from an erroneous conceptualization of the Law of large

numbers. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of

tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."

Hindsight bias: sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the tendency to see past events as

being predictable at the time those events happened

Information bias: the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.

Loss aversion: "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with

acquiring it".

Selective perception: the tendency for expectations to affect perception.

Self-serving bias: perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones.

Subjective validation: perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true.

Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.

Suggestibility: a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for

memory.

Wishful thinking: the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing

to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.

Building adaptive capacity in hierarchical organisations

Leadership & Management

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