Gene says: “They’re talking about spinning through debris, that doesn’t sound like instrumentation to me.” Then, when he notices people starting to panic:
They failed, and at the time he was angry, feeling the simulator team was making the scenarios unrealistically difficult. But during the real Apollo 11 descent, they experienced exactly that kind of momentary loss in comms, forcing Armstrong to take manual control. Because they had practiced the scenario, they remained calm. Kranz immediately thanked the Sim team. A useful variation on contingency planning is a technique called ‘pre- mortem’. You ask the team to ‘imagine we’ve failed and consider what the most likely cause is.’ This makes it safe for people to talk about niggling concerns they’ve not mentioned because they didn’t want to appear negative. Another is preparing for ‘Black Swan’ events. The definition of a black swan event is something that has a very low chance of happening but would be devastating if it did. While it’s not useful to prepare for every individual ‘Black Swan’ event, it is worth building in a buffer of resources in preparation for the likelihood that ‘something’ will go wrong. This is why Amundsen took 5 times the amount of food than the science suggested they would need. Preparing for ‘Black Swan’ events is why adaptive organisations tend to keep more cash reserves. Allowing them to navigate unanticipated issues with confidence.
“Settle down people. Wake up whoever you need and let’s work the problem.”
Be prepared: Contingency planning and ‘Black Swan’ events
One technique good adaptive organisations use to help people remain calm and respond effectively to sudden changes is contingency planning. Taking time in advance of a key performance opportunity to think of ‘what if’ scenarios, prioritising them by likelihood and impact, and figuring out an effective response in advance. In the lead up to the Apollo 11 launch, the flight control team ran many intense descent simulations, designed to throw all kinds of problems at the controllers. In his autobiography, flight controller Kranz describes one particular sim involving a communications blackout at a critical moment during descent.
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Adaptive Leadership : Building your capacity to thrive in a disruptive environment
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