The unexpected: Are we prepared?

Recently I was delivering a course on complex project management, and I was asked the question: Should we embrace or manage the unexpected...?

Interesting question. I was trying to convey the idea that the unexpected happens and in your projects we consider some contingencies, but never the unexpected. Why? Because we plan based on experience. Traditional project management techniques deal with risks by identifying them, prioritising them and then designing control responses.

That is fine and well, only if we identify risks. And we are told that we should talk to those 'experienced' people in order to do so.

The problem is, the unexpected happens with no previous experience. Complexity theory seems to point out that we live in a complex world where small events trigger much bigger ones.

This would work well if we are aware of the small things, and we are able to foresee connections with potentially bigger events.

I can only say that we need to embrace rather than anticipate the unexpected. In projects, this would mean that we need to make cushion for exiting the project or taking it to a different level. We need to keep communication channels open, be able to raise alarms (as cyberneticians would suggest), and have some time and room for maneuvre.


Thinking back again of the unexpected this morning (snow in England, we thought the worst of the winter season was over), it also seems reasonable to ask continuously the question: How heavy do we become that we cannot embrace new things...? Perhaps our luggage is heavy and does not allow us to carry other things. We have heard of the importance of emptying our minds so as to allow new thoughts to be nurtured. Maybe this is why some systems thinkers are now into meditation and spirituality. Francisco Varela wrote about that in his latest book "The Embodied Mind". It is about how we become part of something in the world (what we observe), and perhaps the message for the unexpected is about how we can become part of something else.

My project management students must be wondering why I say these things, and if I have some recommendations to give. Well, researching into tools for modeling and remembering what my good friend Nick Davey said about projects, it is important to prepare the mind to map certain connections between aspects we perceive as important in projects. This is done in projects, but my suggestion is then to map connections and see if they have become too heavy that the unexpected does not have any room. We love to make things complicated, maybe we need to start letting it go abit so that we can respond to new situations.

So the suggestion is: Download freemind mapping software (freemind.sourceforge.net), choose a project or a situation that is in your mind, draw connections between aspects, and see if you have become overprepared, overconcerned or over knowledgeable about it. It might be time to forget it all and draw on a blank canvas!!









To see the diagram, double click on it. I am learning to use free mind! In this project example of off-shoring operations (something that many companies are doing now), I leave room for the unexpected, which could lead us to review what we do in relation to the expected! It might be we need to offload some things we are doing, whilst enhancing the 'informal' (communication, self-organisation) and the learning about the future. Hopefully these things could help us to deal with the unexpected. If not, well, we might need to accept things as they come: "What happens is usually the best", as a good friend used to say.