Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity

Citation

(2002), "Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity", Work Study, Vol. 51 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2002.07951dae.003

Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity

Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity

Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. SutcliffeJossey-Bass£17.05ISBN: 0-7879-5627-9

High reliability organisations (HROs) manage the unexpected through five processes:

1. 1.

   preoccupation with failures rather than successes;

2. 2.

   reluctance to simplify interpretations;

3. 3.

   sensitivity to operations;

4. 4.

   commitment to resilience; and

5. 5.

   deference to expertise, as exhibited by encouragement of a fluid decision-making system.

Taken together these five processes produce a collective state of "mindfulness". This state combines a rich awareness of discriminatory detail and an enhanced ability to discover and correct errors before they escalate into potential - or actual - crises. The authors offer a basic, though useful, questionnaire to identify the state of each process within your own organisation. Each chapter ends with a valuable summary of the main points.

The final chapter attempts to "move things on" by providing a number of relevant ideas "to build competence to contain or bounce back from inevitable problems, once they become evident". Such ideas include the notions that:

• •

  ambivalence builds resilience;

• •

  use rich media and encourage people to listen;

• •

  be mindful publicly;

• •

  enlarge competencies and response repertoires;

• •

  build excess capacity;

• •

  create flexible decision structures;

• •

  accelerate feedback;

• •

  balance centralisation with decentralisation; and

• •

  reinforce perishable values and mitigate complacency.

The presentation might be more suitable for those used to academic texts but this is worth reading by a wider audience.