Management Consulting - High Reliability Organisations

The Concept of ‘Mindfulness’. What Managers Can Learn From ‘High-Reliability Organisations’ (HRO's)

By Dr Dirk Maclean Copyright © All rights reserved. 

‘High reliability organisations’ have become a focus of attention within management studies in recent years for the many lessons they offer to managers dealing with any organisational context that involves uncertainty, complexity, and volatility. HRO’s are organisations operating in a highly complex technological environment where the consequences of failure can be catastrophic, examples include air traffic control, nuclear power plants, offshore oil rigs, the military, and emergency services. As a result, HRO’s have developed management systems that not only deliver an extremely high degree of reliability, but also resilience - the capacity to recover quickly from mistakes and malfunctions before these lead to disaster. Investigations into the way HRO’s achieve this have brought into view a number of management principles that can be applied almost anywhere with highly beneficial results.

Less well known is the philosophical foundation that underlies all of these principles, the concept of ‘mindfulness’ which traces its origin to the Buddhist tradition but also appears in modern Western philosophical thinking through the works of Nietzsche, Heidegger and others.

HRO’s are an example of the application of ‘mindfulness’ to management, and are interesting because the principles by which HRO’s are managed run counter to much of the conventional wisdom and practice that dominates organisations in a less critical environment, they do so because they have to, and the end result is a superior method of management that can be adopted by anyone once the underlying principle is understood.

Mindfulness appears in the form of a number of management principles that together deliver high reliability and resilience. These include –
 

• EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED

• ATTITUDE TO FAILURE
   
• ATTITUDE TO SUCCESS
   
• DEALING WITH COMPLEXITY
   
• RESPECTING EXPERTISE
   
• FOCUS ON OPERATIONS
   
• FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
   
• A LEARNING ORGANISATION
   
• A CULTURE OF MINDFULNESS
   

It is useful to look at these principles in more detail, and how they run counter to conventional thinking.


EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED

This involves an acceptance that the environment is uncontrollable, and it rules out a reliance on plans or even systems. Instead the expectation is that things will go wrong, systems will fail. In the face of this, HRO’s build redundancy into their structures, and prioritise the early detection of problems before they escalate. This means the idea of efficiency has to be rethought, as the overall performance of the organisation is not measured by how efficient it is when everything is running smoothly, but by how well it is able to cope with breakdowns and disruptions to operations that are an unavoidable feature of the environment. Resilience becomes the key performance indicator.


ATTITUDE TO FAILURE

Mistakes and failures are both accepted and tolerated. They are acknowledged openly, discussed, and considered as opportunities to refine and improve systems that will always be inadequate to some extent, will contain vulnerabilities, given the nature of the context. This is a surprising feature of HRO’s, where the consequences of failure are potentially so catastrophic, however it is an absolutely essential principle. The main challenge for managers is to create an environment where employees are comfortable with admitting their errors and raising issues promptly, before they escalate out of control.


ATTITUDE TO SUCCESS

Success is the organisation’s number one enemy, for a successful track record breeds complacency, and this is the fastest route to disaster. The more it appears everything is running smoothly, the louder the alarm bells should be ringing, the problems are still there, they are just undetected and this is the most dangerous situation of all for an HRO to be in. This is another surpising feature, however complacency has been the cause of many a successful company’s downfall. Strategies and formulas that worked in the past may no longer apply in a dynamically evolving environment, however the tendency is to stick with the tried and the tested, even to the bitter end.


DEALING WITH COMPLEXITY

The key here is to resist the temptation to avoid complexity by oversimplifying. Complex problems require complex solutions, even if these are difficult to arrive at, or to explain to non-experts higher up in the management structure. Adopting simplified models or systems runs the risk of overlooking details that will later turn out to be of the highest significance. Most management systems involve simplification, this is especially true of consulting models. The point here is that in a turbulent environment, no one can predict what factor will be minor and what will be critical. Instead, the challenge posed by complexity needs to be acknowledged and confronted head on.


RESPECTING EXPERTISE

Expert decisions should be made by the experts, not their managers. In HRO’s the role of management shifts from controlling the organisation to a support function, providing front line experts with the resources they need to perform. This involves a major shift in thinking for most managers. A key aspect of this is facilitating the situation where everyone knows who to turn to for expert advice should an unforeseen problem arise. It also means that the more critical the position, the more decision making is devolved away from the boardroom to the people on the spot.


FOCUS ON OPERATIONS – SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

A major challenge in the HRO context is to be able to arrive at an accurate assessment of the operational situation at any one point in time. This becomes the key management priority, as minor problems can escalate extremely rapidly in unforeseen ways if undetected. An important dimension of this is to communicate this situational awareness across the organisation so that all personnel can understand the significance of their individual actions in the wider context. In a situation where decisions are of necessity devolved to the lowest level, this awareness is essential.

This is another application of the principle of redundancy. Despite the complex technical environment, the goal is still to build awareness. This means staff ideally not only know their own function, they also understand what everyone else is doing and why. This also contributes to resilience, as it allows operators to step into each others’ roles where circumstances require. In a conventional organisation this would be considered highly wasteful, however HRO’s demonstrate that this is not necessarily so.


FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

HRO’s develop contingency plans, systems and procedures more than other organisations, given the nature of their activities. However they also adopt the attitude that plans and procedures can always be dropped if the situation requires. They prepare for the resources of the organisation to be redirected as and when circumstances dictate. Here too senior management end up in the role of a support function, releasing and providing the means for front line personnel to deal with a situation as they see fit.


A LEARNING ORGANISATION

While mistakes that are openly admitted are accepted without judgement, there is absolutely no tolerance for mistakes that are covered up. Underlying this is a confidence in the organisation’s capacity to take human error into account, to learn, and to handle any situation that arises so long as it remains true to the principle of ‘mindfulness’. All personnel are encouraged to uncover gaps and weaknesses in their own knowledge and performance, and to seek out others who can help them improve and develop, on a continuous basis. This creates a cooperative and collaborative environment across the organisation.


A CULTURE OF MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness means managers stop looking for confirmation and reassurance that they are in control, and instead actively seek out gaps in their performance, areas of weakness, unforeseen problems, and opportunities to improve. They avoid dismissing situations through familiar labels or simplified models, and are constantly seeking to understand things as they really are, rather than how they are supposed to be. Their role as managers is to cultivate these same attitudes across the organisation at all levels.

In the context of an HRO, where the threat of catastrophe is ever present, the need for this kind of mindfulness is clear. However there is no question that the same kind of mindful attention and set of management principles can be applied successfully in almost any organisational setting by any manager.
 

HOW MINDFUL IS YOUR ORGANISATION? TO WHAT EXTENT COULD IT BENEFIT FROM THESE PRINCIPLES ?

ACP is able to conduct a ‘mindfulness’ audit of your organisation and advise you on how to reduce your vulnerability to unforeseen threats, improve management performance, and build resilience.

A program of ‘Mindful Management’ sits firmly inside current trends within risk management, business continuity, developing enterprise resilience, crisis prevention, emergency and disaster response.

ACP has the consulting expertise and philosophical depth to desgn and deliver a package of measures that can transform your organisation.

* Research into HRO’s has been pioneered by the San Bernardino Group in the US, for more information and resources on this topic look at http://www.high-reliability.org/