Towards Spectacular Teams

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Towards Spectacular Teams

• R. Wade Schuette
• 9/9/2006

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Spectacular results are possible
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T. S. Eliots observation of us all

• They constantly try to escape
• From the darkness outside and within
• by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one
  will need to be good
• TS Eliot "The Rock"
• http//en.wikiquote.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

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Does systematizing work?

• High-Reliability Organization literature for
  nuclear power plants, cockpits, etc. describes
  teams that can rise-above protocols and
  occasionally challenge every level of the model
  in real-time.
• What is required for that to be an improvement,
  instead of a collapse of authority and control?

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Culture conflict

• How does the culture above and beyond protocols
  (e.g., Threat and Error Management) connect to
  the culture that stresses protocols as the
  end-all and be-all of quality?
• Are they in conflict, or are they compatible if
  viewed correctly? (the latter.)

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What it takes I think

• My conclusion we have to move from reliance on
  protocols to internalizing the protocols,
  digesting them, mastering them, and then
  floating a single concept in their place that
  encompasses them all, and more, stabilized and
  made safe by operating only in an active
  strength context team members must create for
  each other (you cant make your own).

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Linear model more systematic process yields more
reliable output
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New model with only one section linear (region II)
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Reliablity goes up, then down as more and more is
standardized
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Five stages as we try to manage active systems
with more protocols

• I chaos
• II Quality improvement
• III diminishing returns, soaring costs
• IV paradoxical reductions in safety
• V catastrophic collapse

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Comparison of models

• Linear model assumes more is always better, and
  perfection is possible.
• Nonlinear model assumes there is a gap, and a
  maximum point beyond which a different strategy
  is needed.

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The problem of the gap

• Protocols can only close about 99.5 of the gap.
  The real world doesnt lie flat or stay still
  long enough to ever capture the remaining
  half-percent.
• In case of ulta-high cost accidents (say,
  nuclear power or bio-war situations) that 0.5 is
  way too much.
• Expected cost is equal to low Risk times huge
  Cost, which is a very large number

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Also, regulatory model collapses under its own
weight

• Attempting to define every possible case in
  protocols or regulations becomes prohibitively
  expensive. After the first several hundred
  pages, adding another 1000 pages to the manual
  in an effort to make it more helpful is
  well-intentioned, but not actually helping.
• Laws piled on laws forever cannot close the gap.
  Period. Ever. So, Now what?

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We need a phase transition, and it turns out
one is possible
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Phase transition to spectacular

• Once get to maximum value of more procedures,
  stop adding them.
• More will never cross the chasm its like
  trying to write team rules for how to always win
  at football.
• Procedures must be mastered, 105, internalized,
  and then stepped beyond
• Visual-on-top state is what to seek, with eyes
  open and all the dots connected.

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Three states of flight visual, by instruments,
and visual-on-top we need to get to VFR on top
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Flying on top is tricky

• Emergent control from above is required to
  stabilize motion, because definition by a limited
  human based on limited-experience rules will
  always be incomplete and under-specified.
• Guidance from above is not mystical, its a
  social-engineering application of what civil
  engineers call active strength. or
  intelligent materials.

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Spirit-stabilized mastery active strength in
human systems
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Phase transition to spectacular

• Need to get to a very specific sense of throwing
  away the rule book, removing the scaffolding,
  because the higher-order concept has clicked,
  made sense, and is now in control from above.
• This is a realization in a human system of the
  active strength / intelligent materials
  feedback concept now used in the design of modern
  buildings.

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What is active strength?

• Engineers now realize that structures can be made
  hyper-strong by using feedback to damp out tiny
  variations that are the precursors to collapse
  failures.
• This tiny intelligent-context feedback makes
  all the difference in the world, by stabilizing
  the intrinsic strength that is lost by just
  small imperfections.

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What is active strength?

• Engineers now realize that structures can be made
  hyper-strong by using feedback to damp out tiny
  variations that are the precursors to collapse
  failures.
• For example how strong is a rolled-tube of
  one sheet of typing paper?

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Pretty strong if it stays aligned
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Nonlinear effects in structures

• Some buildings now use a central control that
  uses a very light touch of active pressure
  devices to damp out vibrations that, if allowed,
  could cascade into a structural collapse.
• The opposite end of that dimension is the famous
  Tacoma Narrows Bridge which ripped itself apart
  and collapsed. See the amazing video clips at
  http//www.enm.bris.ac.uk/research/nonlinear/tacom
  a/tacoma.htmlmpeg

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Active Strength citations

• Active structural vibration control A review,
  Rabih Alkhatib, The Shock and Vibration Digest,
  Vol. 35, No. 5, 367-383 (2003)
• http//svd.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/5/3
  67?maxtoshowHITS10hits10RESULTFORMATsearch
  id1FIRSTINDEX0minscore5000resourcetypeHWCIT

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Intelligent Materials Centers are springing up
everywhere

• http//www.cimss.vt.edu/
• http//depts.washington.edu/cims/about2.htm
• And have their own journals
• http//www.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId
  Journal201582

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Phase transition to spectacular

• The only valid time when above the law
  actually works, in total submission to a
  higher-order law thats all that and more.
• We no longer have 500 dots to connect, but a
  single graceful curve that fills in all the dots
  and is 1000 times easier to remember.

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Take home message

• This effect cannot be accomplished with
  stronger joints. Ever stronger and heavier
  joints still wont work, but will instead
  collapse under their own added weight.
• Strong is a system property, not a joint
  property.
• It wont just emerge, but needs only a
  light-touch from some system that has the big
  picture
• It will not happen without that guiding context.

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Threat and Error Management

• Links to BMJ, and latest wisdom in how to manage
  cockpits and operating rooms
• http//cscwteam.blogspot.com/2006/09/threat-and-er
  ror-management-tem_05.html

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High-Reliability Organizations

• "Organizational Learning From Experience in
  High-Hazard Industries Problem Investigation as
  Off-Line Reflective Practice", on the MIS Sloan
  School of Management Working paper site (Working
  paper 4359-02, March 2002). It is by John S.
  Carroll, Jenny W. Rudolph, and Sachi
  Hatakenaka.It's on the Social Science Research
  Network Electronic Paper Collection
  athttp//papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract
  _id305718