Fluent Essays

Kaufman, J. (2013, March 14). The first 20 hours: How to learn anything [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnYURL VCUSOE. (2013, February 1). Michael Marquardt action learning lecture [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtVG8kF8qf4URL Praise for Optimizing the Power of Action Learning, 3rd Edition “A brilliant compendium of key action learning techniques that produce extraordinary results. This book is a masterful must-read for any organization that aims to optimize its creativity and resilience amid rapid shifts in this changing world.” — Meliha Dzirlo-Ayvaz, Manager, Risk and Financial Advisory, Deloitte & Touche “Action learning is a powerful cross cultural tool to improving effectiveness and efficiency of groups in corporate settings.” — Dr. Mohammed Asad Al-Emadi, Chairman, Asad Holding, Qatar “Action learning has become part of our culture and helped us be much more successful in our actions.” — Howard He, Assistant Vice President, Aviva-Cofco Life Insurance “The third edition of Optimizing the Power of Action Learning is a great, practical “How To” book for those looking to understand and apply the power of action learning.” — Bea Carson, Master Action Learning Coach; President, World Institute for Action Learning “In this third edition, the four co-authors share priceless new insights and strategies to build leaders and organizations through action learning. If you’re ready to fully unleash the power of creativity in your organization, buy this book!” — Bill Thimmesch, Founder, US Government Action Learning Community of Practice 2 “The best approach to solving complex problems in complex organizations. A tool that is invaluable for any leader in an organization.” — Tom Gronow, Chief Operating Officer, University of Colorado Hospital “Dr. Marquardt and his colleagues have written a must-read thought provoking guidebook for anyone who doubts the value of asking powerful questions yet craves the capacity to solve pressing problems in this era of digital disruption. This book is timely! Learn from the best.” — Dr. Sydney Savion, General Manager, Learning, Air New Zealand “Positioned perfectly at the apex of research and practice, the third edition of Optimizing the Power of Action Learning illuminates a clear and concise path to maximizing organizational power through systematic and simultaneous learning and action.” — Dr. Ron Sheffield, President and Managing Director, OrgScience, Inc. “This revised edition shows clearly how action learning can be a magnificent tool for developing the skill of asking great questions for teams, for leadership, and for innovation.” — Marilee Adams, PhD, Author, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 12 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching, and Life; Founder and CEO, Inquiry Institute International LLC “A must-read for anyone who wants to improve the effectiveness of people and organizations.” — Doug Bryant, Vice President, Talent Management, Training and Recruiting, Sonic Automotive “Action learning’s power reaches far into the learning profession. It’s a superb technique for demonstrating learning’s value, and this book is a vital resource for harnessing learning as an organizational performance 3 enabler.” — Dr. Dave Rude, Chief Learning Officer, Global Learning Associates 4 5 6 This edition first published in 2018 by Nicholas Brealey Publishing An imprint of John Murray Press An Hachette company 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Copyright © Michael J. Marquardt 2011, 2018 The right of Michael J. Marquardt to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marquardt, Michael J., author. Title: Optimizing the power of action learning : real-time strategies for developing leaders, building teams and transforming organizations / by Michael Marquardt, Shannon Banks, Peter Cauwelier, Choon Seng Ng. Description: Third Edition. | Boston : Nicholas Brealey, 2018. | Revised edition of Optimizing the power of action learning, c2011. Identifiers: LCCN 2017058663 (print) | LCCN 2018000144 (ebook) | ISBN 9781904838364 (ebook) | ISBN 9781473646292 (open ebook) | ISBN 9781473676961 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Organizational learning. | Problem-based learning. | Active learning. | Leadership. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Management. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / General. Classification: LCC HD58.82 (ebook) | LCC HD58.82 .M375 2018 (print) | DDC 658.3/124—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058663 7 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058663 ISBN 978-1-47367-696-1 US eBook ISBN 978-1-90483-836-4 UK eBook ISBN 978-1-47364-404-5 Printed and bound in the United States of America John Murray Press policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. John Murray Press Ltd Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ Tel: 020 3122 6000 Nicholas Brealey Publishing Hachette Book Group Market Place Center, 53 State Street Boston, MA 02109, USA Tel: (617) 523 3801 www.nicholasbrealey.com 8 http://www.nicholasbrealey.com Part 1 Chapter 1 Part 2 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments About the Authors Emergence of the Power of Action Learning Overview of Action Learning Applying the Six Components of Action Learning The Problem The Group Questions and Reflection Taking Action Individual, Team, and Organizational Learning 9 Chapter 7 Part 3 Chapter 8 The Action Learning Coach Unleashing the Power of Action Learning Introducing, Implementing, and Sustaining Action Learning in Organizations References Index 10 R a. b. c. PREFACE ecently one of the authors conducted an action learning workshop for nearly 50 training directors from several departments of the US government. Following a brief overview and demonstration of action learning, the directors formed eight randomly chosen groups and spent the next couple of hours working on problems introduced by members of the group. A volunteer in each group served as the action learning coach. To conclude the action learning workshop, he asked the problem presenters whether they had been helped. Every single one responded with an enthusiastic, “Yes.” The volunteer learning coaches were then asked to summarize the activity of their group, and each seemed to outdo the other with wonderful testimonials on how well the group had worked on the problem and the valuable learnings that were shared. Finally, a training director from a table at the front of the room asked the author, “Does action learning always work this perfectly?” The author’s response to him and to all readers of this book is, “Yes, it can!” Based on our collective experience with thousands of action learning projects over the past 25 years, we have become ever more confident that action learning has the power to always be successful. If the key elements of action learning described in this book are established and allowed to operate, action learning is amazing in its consistent capacity to: Effectively and efficiently solve problems and challenges with truly breakthrough and sustaining strategies Develop the leadership skills and qualities needed by 21st century managers Develop teams that continuously improve their capability to perform and adapt 11 d. e. Develop powerful coaching and learning competencies Transform organizations into learning organizations Although action learning has been around since it was introduced by Reg Revans in the coal mines of Wales and England in the 1940s, it is only within the past 10 years that it has begun sweeping across the world, emerging as the key problem-solving and leadership development program for many global 100 giants such as Boeing, Sony, Panasonic, Deutsche Bank, Toyota, Samsung, and Microsoft; for public institutions such as Helsinki city government, Malaysian Ministry of Education, George Washington University, and the US Department of Agriculture; and for thousands of small and medium-sized firms all over the world. Throughout this book you will discover how these and other organizations have flourished with action learning and are discovering how to optimize the power of action learning. Requirements for Success in Action Learning Briefly described, action learning is a remarkably simple program that involves a group of people working on real problems and learning while they do so. Optimizing the probability of success in action learning, however, involves some basic components and norms (ground rules), which form the substance of this book. These components include an important and urgent problem, a diverse group of four to eight people, a reflective inquiry process, implemented action, a commitment to learning, and the presence of an action learning coach. Norms include “questions before statements” and “learning before, during, and after action.” Action learning works well because it interweaves so thoroughly and seamlessly the principles and best practices of many theories from the fields of management science, psychology, education, neuroscience, political science, economics, sociology, and systems engineering. Action learning has great power because it synergizes and captures the best thinking of all group members and enriches their abilities. 12 Purpose of This Book During the past 20 years, we have had the opportunity to work with thousands of action learning groups around the world, as well as the good fortune of sharing ideas and best practices with many of the world’s top action learning practitioners. The purpose of this book is to share what we have experienced and learned, the exhilaration as well as the challenges. Although action learning is a relatively simple process, the essence of which could fit on a three-by-five card, there are a number of key principles and practices that, as we have discovered, move action learning from good to great, that take it from being a solid organizational tool to a spectacular resource for transforming people, groups, organizations, and even entire communities. This book describes each of the components of action learning and why they are necessary for action learning success. Through scores of stories and testimonials, the book clearly illustrates how many organizations have implemented and thrived with action learning. It also shows how any organization can simultaneously and effectively achieve the five primary benefits of action learning, namely, problem solving, leadership development, team building, organizational change, and coaching competence. This book presents the basic elements and principles of action learning as well as the more advanced, more recent innovations within the field of action learning, including the role of the action learning coach, the balance between order and chaos for maximum creativity, and the step-by-step procedures for introducing and sustaining action learning within your organization. Overview of the Book Chapter 1 provides an overview of action learning, the six basic components and two key ground rules. It summarizes the five greatest challenges encountered by organizations in today’s environment and how action learning enables organizations to respond effectively to those challenges. Chapter 1 also highlights the major contributions of action 13 learning to organizations, groups, and individuals. Chapters 2 through 7 explore in detail each of the six critical components of successful action learning programs. Chapter 2 identifies the criteria for an action learning problem, how it is best introduced and examined, and the differences between single-problem and multiple- problem groups. In Chapter 3, we explore the group, including diversity of membership, ideal size, continuity, roles, and characteristics. Chapter 4 introduces the reflective inquiry process and discusses the importance of questions as well as the group rule “statements only in response to questions.” The problem-solving, goal-framing, strategy-development action is covered in Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 examines the individual, team, and organizational learning achieved through the action learning process. In Chapter 7, the roles and responsibilities, authority, and questions of the action learning coach are described. Chapter 8 provides the reader with detailed practical steps for unleashing the power of action learning in organizations and communities. We provide guidance for introducing, implementing, and sustaining action learning. Specific strategies for applying each step are offered. Two in- depth case studies (Essilor International and US Department of Justice) have been added. Throughout the book are scores of case examples from groups around the world that have introduced action learning into their organizations. The challenges they faced as well as the successes they experienced are discussed. Finally, there are numerous checklists at the end of each chapter to guide readers in understanding and implementing action learning for themselves. What’s New in the 3rd Edition Since the 2nd edition was published seven years ago, action learning has flourished in many countries around the world and within thousands of new organizations. We have thus added new vignettes and case studies from countries such as India, the Philippines, Brazil, France, Kuwait, Ukraine, Thailand, Uganda, Cambodia, and the Caribbean. More action learning is occurring within community-based organizations, and we have 14 therefore included such programs as C&C in London and the United Nations Environmental Program in Kenya. During the past seven years, the authors have continued to experiment with and improve the power and process of action learning. Leadership development has become much more integrated into action learning. In this edition, we also share the recent experiences we have had in introducing, implementing, and sustaining action learning in organizations (Part 3/Chapter 8). The value of questions has become ever more critical for leadership and problem solving. In this edition, we have added more strategies and principles in helping teams and leaders become better at asking questions. Finally, new advances in the social and physical sciences have enabled us to better increase our understanding as to how and why action learning works so well and so powerfully. We have added updated theories, particularly how the use of theories and principles of neuroscience can improve action learning. Action Learning: The Power Tool for the 21st Century Action learning is truly an exciting and awesome tool for individuals, teams, and organizations struggling for success in the 21st century. More and more of us have experienced the power and the benefit of action learning in our lives and in our organizations. It is my hope that many more will be able to share in the wonderful and amazing adventure of action learning. If you apply the principles and practices offered in this book, you too will see how action learning can, indeed, be powerful and successful every time. Good luck! 15 W ACKNOWLEDGMENTS e owe a deep debt of gratitude to so many people not only for this book, but for the action learning opportunities and experiences offered by them that made this book possible. First, we would like to recognize the founding pioneer of action learning, Reg Revans, who inspired each of us and thousands of others around the world about the power of action learning. Reg died in early 2003, and this book is dedicated to his memory. There are many other giants in the field of action learning from whom we have learned so much, including Lex Dilworth, Charles Margerison, Victoria Marsick, and Mike Pedler. Special recognition also goes to colleagues who have guided us along the way, especially Marilee Adams and Thomas Carne for their insights on questions and collegial coaching. Boeing, Samsung, and Microsoft were important launching sites in developing the WIAL model of action learning, and we would like to especially thank Nancy Stebbins, Shannon Wallis, and Anita Bhasin for bringing us these opportunities. We would like to thank the World Institute for Action Learning (WIAL) family of affiliates, partners, and certified coaches who have worked with us to expand action learning around the world. Special appreciation to the members of the board of directors who have guided WIAL over the years, especially Bea Carson, who now serves as chair. Sincere thanks to the people at Nicholas Brealey Publishing, especially Alison Hankey and Michelle Morgan, who have patiently and joyfully helped in every stage of the writing of this third edition. Finally, we would like to thank our wonderful spouses—Eveline Marquardt, Varunyupar Cauwelier, Serene Ng, and Richard Banks—for their support, love, and encouragement. 16 ABOUT THE AUTHORS Michael Marquardt Michael Marquardt is Professor of Human Resource Development and International Affairs as well as Program Director of Overseas Programs at George Washington University. Mike is a co-founder and first president of the World Institute for Action Learning (WIAL) and currently serves as chair of the Global Advisory Board. Mike is the author of 24 books and over 100 articles in the fields of leadership, learning, globalization, and organizational change. More than a million copies of his publications have been sold in nearly a dozen languages worldwide. He served as the editor of the UNESCO Encyclopedia volume on human resources. He has been a keynote speaker at international conferences in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, South Africa, Singapore, and India as well as throughout North America. Mike’s achievements and leadership have been recognized through numerous awards, including the International Practitioner of the Year Award from the American Society for Training and Development. He serves as a senior adviser for the United Nations Staff College in the areas of policy, technology, and learning systems. Mike is a fellow of the National Academy for Human Resource Development and a co-founder of the Asian Learning Organization Network. His writings and accomplishments in action learning have earned him honorary doctoral degrees from universities in Asia, Europe, and North America. Shannon Banks Shannon Banks is managing director of Be Leadership, a modern 17 leadership development company focused on helping organizations, teams, and executives thrive in a digital, social, and networked world. She is a Master Action Learning Coach and a board member for the World Institute for Action Learning. Shannon holds a master’s degree from the University of Birmingham, England. She has completed an executive coaching certification with the NeuroLeadership Institute and is accredited as an ACC with the International Coach Federation. In addition to her coaching, Shannon works as a consultant and facilitator for global clients across many sectors. As part of this work, Shannon often uses action learning to help create sustainable cultural change. Prior to Be Leadership, Shannon spent seventeen years with Microsoft in a variety of leadership roles across the business, with responsibilities managing globally distributed, multifunctional teams. Her work earned Microsoft a 2010 WIAL Outstanding Organization Award and a 2010 Workforce Management Optimas Award for Corporate Citizenship. Shannon also was awarded the 2011 EFMD Excellence in Practice Award for Executive Development and the 2013 Best Practice Institute’s Top Practitioner Award for Talent Management. Peter Cauwelier Peter Cauwelier helps teams learn, grow, innovate, and take ownership of their own and their company’s future. His Team.As.One approach focuses both on the team’s heart (the connections that support team dynamics) and the team’s hard (the business results). Peter is a Master Action Learning Coach and a member of the WIAL board since 2014 and manages the WIAL affiliate in Thailand. In addition to action learning Peter uses other approaches to help teams become more effective. He is a Certified Professional Facilitator (IAF), Belbin Team Roles accredited facilitator, and Certified Team Performance Coach (Team Coaching International). He has 20 years of experience in operations management, with responsibilities with multicultural teams across Asia. He works with teams in English, French, or Thai. Peter received a PhD in Knowledge and Innovation Management from Bangkok University, an executive MBA from Boston University, and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manchester and Ghent 18 University. Choon Seng Ng Choon Seng Ng is the Managing Director of WIAL Singapore, the official international affiliate of WIAL. He is a Master Action Learning Coach and was a board member with the World Institute for Action Learning from 2013 to 2015. Choon Seng has conducted action learning programs for many organizations in Singapore and has also certified many action learning coaches throughout Asia. He was instrumental in establishing many WIAL affiliates in Asia. Through his leadership, WIAL Singapore won the WIAL Affiliate of the Year in 2015. Choon Seng received his Master of Arts degree in Human Resource Development from George Washington University. He was also awarded the Leonard Nadler Leadership Award for his outstanding leadership, service, and professional and academic successes. Choon Seng is the author of What’s Your Question? Inspiring Possibilities through the Power of Questions. In addition to his coaching, Choon Seng is also a Certified Professional Facilitator and Certified Assessor with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). He is concurrently the Chief Facilitator and Process Consultant with Inquiring Dialogue, working with clients from all sectors to increase their organizational effectiveness and employee engagement. 19 20 Action learning has quickly emerged as a tool used by organizationsfor solving their critical and complex problems. It has concurrentlybecome a primary methodology utilized by companies around the world for developing leaders, building teams, and improving corporate capabilities. Action learning programs have become instrumental in creating thousands of new products and services, saving billions of dollars, reducing production and delivery times, expanding customer bases, improving service quality, and positively changing organizational cultures. Recent surveys by the American Society for Training and Development indicate that two-thirds of executive leadership programs in the United States used action learning. A study by the Corporate Executive Board (2009) noted that 77 percent of learning executives identified action learning as the top driver of leadership bench strength. Business Week identified action learning as the “latest and fastest growing organizational tool for leadership development” (Byrnes, 2005). Since Reg Revans introduced action learning in the 1940s, there have been multiple variations of the concept, but all forms of action learning 21 ▸ share the elements of real people resolving and taking action on real problems in real time and learning while doing so. The great attraction of action learning is its unique power to simultaneously solve difficult challenges and develop people and organizations at minimal costs to the institutions. Rapidly changing environments and unpredictable global challenges require organizations and individuals to both act and learn at the same time. Global Leadership Development with Action Learning at Boeing The Boeing Company, the world’s leading aerospace company, is a global market leader in missile defense, human space flight, and launch services, with customers in 145 countries, employees in more than 60 countries, and operations in 26 states. Boeing adopted action learning as the methodology for its Global Leadership Program, since action learning enabled the company to build critical global competencies while solving its most critical problems. Results from a comprehensive assessment of the program indicated that action learning has been remarkably successful in developing a forum for senior-level executives to learn while being challenged with real corporate issues related to the international environment in which they were placed. What Is Action Learning? Briefly defined, action learning is a powerful problem-solving tool that has the amazing capacity to simultaneously build successful leaders, teams, and organizations. It is a process that involves a small group working on real problems, taking action, and learning as individuals, as a team, and as an organization while doing so. Action learning has six components, each of which is described below and presented in greater detail over the next six chapters of this book. The Six Components of Action Learning A problem. Action learning centers on a problem, project, challenge, 22 ▸ ▸ ▸ opportunity, issue, or task, the resolution of which is of high importance to an individual, team, or organization. The problem should be significant and urgent, and it should be the responsibility of the team to solve it. It should also provide an opportunity for the group to generate learning opportunities, build knowledge, and develop individual, team, and organizational skills. Groups may focus on a single problem of the organization or multiple problems introduced by individual group members. An action learning group or team. The core entity in action learning is the action learning group. Ideally the group is composed of four to eight individuals who examine an organizational problem that has no easily identifiable solution. The group should have members with a diversity of background and experience to acquire various perspectives and encourage fresh viewpoints. Depending on the problem, group members may: Be volunteers or be appointed Be from various functions or departments 23 ▸ ▸ ▸ ▸ ▸ Include individuals from other organizations or professions Involve suppliers as well as customers A working process of insightful questioning and reflective listening. Action learning emphasizes questions and reflection above statements and opinions. By focusing on the right questions rather than the right answers, action learning groups become aware of what they do not know as well as what they do know. Questions build group cohesiveness, generate innovative and systems thinking, and enhance learning results. Leadership skills are built and implemented through questions and reflection. Insightful questions enable a group first to clarify the exact nature of the problem before jumping to solutions. Action learning groups recognize that great solutions will be contained within the seeds of great questions. Actions taken on the problem. Action learning requires that the group be able to take action on the problem it is working on. Members of the action learning group must have the power to take action themselves or be assured that their recommendations will be implemented (barring any significant change in the environment or the group’s lacking essential information). If the group only makes recommendations, it loses its energy, creativity, and commitment. There is no real meaningful or practical learning until action is taken and reflected on, for one is never sure an idea or plan will be effective until it has been implemented. Action enhances learning because it provides a basis and anchor for the critical dimension of reflection. The action of action learning begins with reframing the problem and determining the goal, only then determining strategies and taking action. A commitment to learning. Unless the group learns, it may not be able to creatively solve a complex problem. And although solving an organizational problem provides immediate, short-term benefits to the company, the greater, longer-term, multiplier benefits are the long- term learnings gained by each group member and the group as a whole, as well as how those learnings are applied on a systems-wide basis throughout the organization. Thus, the learning that occurs in action learning may have greater strategic value for the organization than what is gained by the tactical advantage of solving the immediate problem. Accordingly, action learning places the same emphasis on 24 ▸ ▸ the learning and development of individuals and the team as it does on the solving of problems, for the smarter the group becomes, the quicker and better will be its decision-making and action-taking capabilities. An action learning coach. Coaching is necessary for the group to focus on the important (i.e., the learnings) as well as the urgent (i.e., resolving the problem). The action learning coach helps the team members reflect on … Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap1 Thomas Homer-Dixon University of Toronto I have been working for many years on the problem of adaptation: how societies or organisms, species, or systems of various kinds adapt to complex and rapid change. In this paper, I will outline my theories and my thinking about adaptation as summarized in the book, The Ingenuity Gap. I will also highlight five aspects of education for the future: education for complexity and what that means; education for reconnection to the micro and macro scales around us; education that increases our respect for experiential knowledge; education that will encourage a recognition of our connectivity through time, from the present into the future; and finally, education to broaden our conception of values. I’ll touch on each one of these points in my presentation today. Let’s start by going over the basic argument that I’ve been developing in books such as The Ingenuity Gap. I start by asking a number of core questions: • Are we creating a world that’s too complex to manage? • Do the “experts” really know what’s going on? • Are we really as smart as we think we are? • Then finally, the most important question, can we solve the problems of the future? I’m interested in developing ideas and taking them to the general public, explaining or extracting some of the ideas and knowledge from isolated worlds of academe and then providing them for a general audience. One way I do that is to tell a lot of stories. So I will start my response to these four questions this evening by telling a story that comes at the beginning of the book. Now one of the mildly amusing things about this book is that when it first came out it was selling very well in airports across the country. I don’t think people Brock Education Vol. 12, No. 2, 2003 1 1. This is the transcribed, edited text of a lecture delivered by Dr. Homer-Dixon at Brock University on November 12, 2002 Professor Homer-Dixon is Director of the Centre for the Study of Peace and Conflict at the University of Toronto, and the author of numerous books on the human and physical environment. T. Homer-Dixon 2 realized when they bought the book and then settled into their comfortable seats on the airplane that the first thing they were going to read about was a horrific airplane crash. But I’m going to describe that incident today because it will motivate my subsequent comments in this presentation. The incident occurred on July 19, 1989, during United Airlines Flight 232 between Denver and Chicago. About half-way through the flight, the rear tail engine on the DC-10 blew up. Now, there are three engines on the DC-10: a large one in the tail and one over each wing. When the rear tail engine blew up, the shrapnel from the explosion destroyed all three hydraulic systems in the plane. Those hydraulic systems were necessary for controlling the flight surfaces – the ailerons, the rudder, the flaps, and the slats that allowed the crew in the cockpit to direct the plane through the atmosphere. So all of a sudden, the pilot and the co-pilots sitting in their seats found that the wheels and columns in front of them were dead. They had no control over the direction of the plane. Immediately the plane started turning into a rightward, downward dive, and about 15 seconds later, just at the moment that the plane would have been irretrievably lost, the captain tried something. He increased power to the right engine, and lo and behold, that brought the right engine up and stabilized the plane. At that point, he discovered that he could maintain some modest control over the airplane by increasing and decreasing power to the right and left engines - what they later called ‘differential engine thrust’ – and basically skidding the plane through the atmosphere like that. After the engine exploded, the plane described a series of rightward turns across the Iowa countryside, but that modest control enabled them to make one left-hand turn to line the plane up with the shortest runway at Sioux City, Iowa. At the last moment, just before they brought it down on the ground, they made one very tight rightward turn, dropped below radar cover, and then eventually brought the plane down. There’s quite a bit more to the story than that. Some of the details I’m giving you today are from a conversation with the captain, Al Haines, whom I spoke to when I was writing my book. That period of time lasted forty-four minutes and the cockpit crew had some help. It turned out there was an extra pilot on board – somebody called a “check airman” – who was responsible for checking on the performance of United Airlines crews as they flew back and forth across the country. He happened to be off duty but he was sitting in first class and he thought something was wrong. The explosion had been in the back of the plane, so it had been fairly muffled, but he started to see the sun going from one side of the plane to the other, and he knew that wasn’t right. So he thought that perhaps he should offer his help to the cockpit crew. He spoke to a flight attendant who Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap 3 went up and talked to the captain, and the captain immediately called the check airman into the cockpit and explained what was going on. There was pandemonium in the cockpit. It was clear that the captain, the co-pilot, and the first officer sitting behind them had too many things to do. So when the check airman asked, “What can I do?” the captain said, “Could you take over control of the two engines?” So from that point on, the check airman stood between the pilot and the co-pilot with a hand on each of the engine throttles and watched the bank of gauges in front of him and steered the aircraft. Eventually, he was able to bring the plane down on the shortest runway in Sioux City, Iowa. When the plane hit the ground, its right wing dipped at the last moment and caught the ground so that it crash-landed The plane hit the ground five times hard, and broke into three sections. The cockpit broke off and rolled across the tarmac, compressed into a piece of metal about two meters high. The remainder of the fuselage broke into two pieces, both of which cartwheeled and exploded in flames. But despite all of that, of the 300 people on board, 200 were saved, and the entire cockpit crew survived. The rescue teams on the ground didn’t even go and look at the cockpit for 35 minutes after the crash, because they saw it off in the distance and thought it was such a wrecked hunk of metal that nobody could be alive inside, but when they went over and looked at the cockpit, they found that all the cockpit crew was still alive. Now this is a pretty dramatic incident, and I’d probably claim that I started the book with this story because I wanted to make sure that nobody would put down the book once they started to read it. But there was more to it than that. I wanted to draw some lessons, highlight some aspects of our world illustrated by this story that I thought were important. So I will identify four points of resonance or connections between this particular incident and the state of our world today. The first is the problem of cognitive overload. When I first heard about this incident in 1989, I filed it away and forgot about it. But I came across it again about six years later because somebody had done a very detailed analysis of the information flows within the cockpit of the aircraft during this incident. He had taken the cockpit transcript, broken it down into chunks of information, and had then analyzed the flow of information between members of the cockpit and between people in the cockpit and crews on the ground, the air traffic control officers who were communicating with them as well as other aircraft. He discovered that at peak load, the people in the cockpit were operating at about five times the cognitive level or the information-processing level of people in normal aircraft operation at peak load, which usually occurs during a landing. So it turns out that the people in the cockpit were receiving information, processing it, communicating among themselves, making T. Homer-Dixon 4 decisions, and then communicating information out of the plane to people on the ground as fast as humanly possible. They were at their maximum cognitive load, in fact, and sometimes if you read the transcript, it seems like they almost became one organism. It was as if their brains melded together as they were making decisions to save this aircraft. I’m intrigued by this because I think that in the decision-making environments we’ve created for ourselves in this world, we’re reaching our cognitive maximum in many cases. Especially in times of crisis, I would say that our leaders are finding themselves overwhelmed by the complexity of decisions they have to make, the amount of information they have to absorb, the range of decisions they have to take. It really is a much more difficult world to operate in, especially for our leaders, than it used to be. So that was the first connection point that interested me. The second is a related point. It turns out that the cognitive load that these people faced was a lot higher because they had an inadequate knowledge of the nature of the system they were operating in. It turned out, after the National Safety Transportation Board had examined the wreckage, that the only thing controlling the direction of that plane was the differential engine thrust used by the check airman standing between the pilot and the co-pilot manipulating those engine throttles. But the pilot and co-pilot didn’t know that. They continued to operate the wheels and columns in front of them because they thought they might have some residual control over the system. They continued to operate the plane as normal because they didn’t know the nature of the damage to the system they were operating in. Therefore they had to spread their attention over a much broader range of things than they would have had to otherwise if they’d understood the system properly. Again, I think that resonates with our world frequently, in that we don’t understand the complexities of the systems – ecological, technological, economic, socio- political systems - that we’re living within; frequently we have to try everything in the hope that something will work. As a result, we spread our resources and our cognitive energy over so many things that we end up doing nothing very well at all. The third connection point is the problem of time lags. Now Al Haines, the plane’s captain, didn’t know it at the time the explosion happened, but he sure learned quickly that a plane that has locked flight surfaces and can no longer steer itself but maintains power goes through an action that aeronautical engineers call a ‘phugoid,’ which is kind of a porpoising motion through the atmosphere – sort of like that. Now the key thing about a phugoid is that there is a time lag between the time that you change the engine thrust and the time that the plane responds in terms of changing its aerodynamic behaviour Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap 5 – going up or going down. For a DC-10 the time lag is somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds, a long period of time. Now as that plane was coming down on the runway at Sioux City, Iowa, the right wing was dipping, the co-pilot was yelling at the check airman, “LEFT. LEFT. LEFT. LEFT. LEFT. LEFT. LEFT.” Because he wanted the check airman to increase power to the right engine so that the right wing would come up and they would land instead of crash landing. But of course the check airman couldn’t do anything because the plane was responding to commands he had given it 30 seconds before. He was powerless at that point. When you look at the complex systems that we’re embedded in, you find that time lags are omnipresent, making management of these complex systems far more difficult. They’re especially present in ecological systems. For example, the carbon dioxide that we are dumping into the atmosphere right now won’t have its full effect on the global climate for another 50 to 100 years. The current warming that we see in the global climate has been caused in part by carbon dioxide that was emitted in the middle of the last century. But you also find this in economic systems. Probably the best example of a time lag that we’re all familiar with is the lag between the time when a central bank intervenes to change interest rates and the point at which the economy responds in terms of increasing or decreasing its output of goods and services. In the American economy, that’s assumed to be between six and nine months. We’re all wondering now whether Alan Greenspan got it right this last time around, or if he waited too long to increase interest rates, then increased them too high, then ultimately did not decrease them quickly enough, with the result that he has done serious damage to the American and ultimately the Western economies. Time lags make it much more difficult for us to manage in this world. The fourth connection point between this story and the real world is the problem of experts, the inadequacy of experts. Shortly after the explosion, when the plane was stabilized a bit and they were using differential engine thrusts, the pilot turned around to the first officer and said, “Get SAM on the line.” SAM stands for ‘System Aircraft Maintenance,’ a group of designated engineers that United Airlines has to advise crews in crisis in the air. Within five or ten minutes, a group of engineers had gathered around a speaker phone in San Francisco and were talking to the first officer in United 232. First off, they requested a briefing on the situation, so the first officer told them everything. He said, “We’ve lost all hydraulic quantity and pressure. We don’t know what to do. We seem to have very little control over this plane except by using differential engine thrust.” The SAM engineers didn’t know what to make of this, never having heard of an accident that compromised all three hydraulic systems. In fact, they had the first officer flipping through a thick flight manual T. Homer-Dixon 6 trying to find something that pertained to their situation at the time. After a few minutes, the SAM engineers said, “Look. We have to go and think about this for a while . So we’re going to sign off.” So they disappeared, and then about ten minutes later, came back on and said, “Could you just confirm that you’ve lost all three hydraulic systems?” The first officer shouted into the microphone, “AFFIRMATIVE, AFFIRMATIVE, AFFIRMATIVE,” and then hung up. At that point, the crew realized that they themselves would have to generate the ingenuity to land the aircraft, and a remarkable job they did. There’s not an insignificant amount of luck involved in this event; after the crash, they programmed the incident into a flight simulator and in 45 attempts, including a number of attempts with the original crew itself, they never got anywhere near the airport. Thus, issues that I investigate, such as cognitive overload, time lags, and adequacy of experts, suggest that in recent decades our world has changed in a way that makes these problems more acute for us. My central argument is very straightforward: that the complexity, the pace, and often the unpredictability of events in our world are soaring, as is the severity of environmental stress. If we are to meet the challenges we face in this new world, we need more ingenuity. But we cannot always supply the ingenuity we need at the right times and places, and the result is an ingenuity gap. That’s the basic argument. Before I elaborate, what are some of the problems that I’m talking about? I divide them into three categories: problems at the global level, problems at the national or societal level, and problems at the individual level. One of the contentious claims I make is that there are common patterns across these three levels. In other words, the causes or sources of rising complexity and pace in our daily lives, at the personal level, can also be seen at the national level and at the global level. They are contributing to such things as international financial instability as in the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. It’s these common patterns that I’m trying to identify in my work. At the global level, I’m interested in climate change, a problem that will probably affect every person on this planet, quite likely sooner than most of us realize. To address it effectively will require us to develop the most sophisticated and complex institutions that humankind has ever developed. International financial crises can be caused by an international financial system tightly coupled with 1.5 trillion dollars of hot capital sloshing around in it on a daily basis and hence prone to flip between stable and unstable modes as we saw in with the Asian financial crisis. Chronic zones of anarchy in the developing world caused by converging stresses, very much like those pilots experienced in United 232 in that cockpit, where you find societies that are Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap 7 faced with epidemics of tuberculosis and AIDS, diffusion of light weapons like rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles, rapid population growth, economic shocks from outside, weakened institutions inside these countries, and the convergence of all of these stresses and problems produce a breakdown of the process of economic and political development and ultimately a rise in violence. Over the last two years, we’ve learned that events happening on the other side of the planet in places where you have states breaking down and widespread social dislocation can penetrate right back into the core of our own societies. At the national level, in Canadian society for instance, I’m interested in rising antibiotic resistance. This is a classic example of a race between our medical and epidemiological knowledge on one side and the pathogens that are affecting our species on the other, the bugs that are evolving faster than we can develop drugs to treat them. In many cases, it seems that those bugs are winning the race. Chronic health care crises – well, we know a lot about those in Canada. Persistent homelessness is an interesting problem: There is a widespread consensus in our society across all socioeconomic levels, across all classes to be crude about it, that this is a problem that needs to be solved, and yet for some reason our municipal, provincial, and federal governments cannot address this problem effectively. The data on the widening gaps between the super rich and everyone else are really quite astonishing. I don’t think most people realize what has happened in the last 20 or 30 years, but I suggest that as the gap between the richest and everybody else widens, it will undermine our sense of identity and perhaps even lead to political instability in our societies. In our daily lives, I’m interested in information overload. This is the thing that we confront every morning when we turn on our computers and find another 60 to 100 e-mail messages there. Many of us, especially those of us living in urban areas, now have the sense that there are simply too many stimuli, too many things coming into our lives, too many streams of information, that sometimes our brains literally feel overloaded. As you can see from my description of United 232, one of my arguments is that sometimes our brains literally are overloaded, that we are reaching our cognitive limits. This is a pretty broad range of problems. How can I possibly link all of these together? I’m now going to sketch out the basics of what I call ‘Ingenuity Theory’ so that you can see how I bring all of these problems together and show the connections among these levels. I start by defining ‘ingenuity’ and sets of instructions that tell us how to arrange the constituent parts of our physical and social worlds in ways that help us achieve our goals. I ngenuity is like recipes that allow us to take the stuff in our world, literally the stuff in the ground, and reconfigure it to make the things we need to solve our problems. My laptop computer, which has about as much T. Homer-Dixon 8 computational power as was available to the entire American defense department in the 1960s, is nothing more than reconfigured rock and hydrocarbons. We’ve taken stuff out of the ground, and through a long and elaborate set of recipes, we’ve reconfigured it into this remarkable device. It’s equally true with everything around us in this room – the seats you’re sitting on, the clothes you’re wearing, lights overhead – all consist of reconfigured materials from our natural world. If you want to think how amazing that is go camping sometime and sit in the natural world and think about what would be required to take all the stuff around you and make it into the things like laptop computers. It’s really remarkable; we’re extraordinarily good at that. In my work, I focus on the requirements for these recipes or sets of instructions, what determines the kinds of instructions we need and how many instructions we need at the same time, and what things impede the flow of those instructions when and where we need them. Also, I make an important distinction between technical ingenuity and social ingenuity. Technical ingenuity consists of ideas or instructions for creating new technologies, like a laptop computer or more comfortable chairs or better lights or better internal combustion engines. We’re really good at doing that as a species. We’re not as good at producing ideas for how we arrange ourselves into societies and groups and institutions. That’s what I call social ingenuity - sets of instructions for creating things like governments, political systems, or markets. Now, it turns out that social ingenuity is more important than technical ingenuity, but not only are we not as good at doing it, we also don’t pay as much attention to it, because we’re really fascinated by technology. But institutions ultimately are more important than technologies because you don’t get the technologies you want until you have the right institutions designed. In particular, you’re not going to get the flow of neat technologies like laptop computers or whatever you want unless you get your markets organized right so that your entrepreneurs are rewarded for the risks they take. They have to get the right price signals. But markets are very complicated institutions that require things like limited- liability legislation, property rights, judicial, court, and police systems that enforce contracts, monetary systems that are stable, stable banking systems – all of these things have to be provided if markets are going to work effectively. You need those first before you get the flow of technical ingenuity. That’s why I claim that social ingenuity is more important than technical ingenuity. I also make a distinction between requirements for ingenuity and supply. I’ll talk more about requirements in a moment. Let me just say one thing about supply. It’s important to understand what I mean here: By “supply,” I mean ideas, ingenuity or recipes that are implemented and delivered. I think of society as pipelines; at the beginning of this pipeline is a generation stage Human Adaptation and the Ingenuity Gap 9 where ideas are produced. That can happen in all kinds of places: in corporate laboratories, in government bureaucracies, in universities, in non-governmental organizations, or in local community groups trying to solve local problems. But then those ideas have to move along the pipeline to the implementation and delivery stage, and they’re not supplied until they have been implemented and delivered. Unfortunately, you often get powerful special interests along that pipeline, acting to block the delivery, especially, of institutional reform, because when you change institutions, you change the power balance and the distribution of wealth within society. Powerful groups don’t like that. So they intervene at various points to make sure that that doesn’t happen. One of the results I have studied is how our political systems are changing to make it less and less easy for true institutional reform to occur. I’ll return to that shortly. We are left with a situation where I would argue that in certain circumstances our requirement for ingenuity shoots up faster than we can supply it. Not in all circumstances; sometimes in certain areas and with certain problems there is no ingenuity gap. We solve the problems quite satisfactorily. But in the kinds of problems I talked about earlier I would suggest there is a significant gap. Note one thing here: The supply is not leveling out, it’s not flattening off. This is not an argument about limits to science or some kind of inescapable cap to human creativity. Human creativity is extraordinary and I believe our ability to innovate is still very strong. It’s just that in some cases, we can’t keep up; we’re creating problems that are too hard for us, that are developing too fast and are too difficult. Given this model, these basic concepts, we can ask some fairly straightforward questions. First of all, is our requirement for ingenuity rising? Second, if it is rising, can we supply the ingenuity we need? Third, if we can’t always supply the ingenuity we need, what do those ingenuity gaps mean for our future? What are their implications? Fourth, what do we do about it? How do we fix this problem? I argue that there are three principle forces driving our requirement for ingenuity, making our world more complex, faster paced, and sometimes more unpredictable: larger human populations; higher resource consumption; and more powerful technologies for the movement of people, material, energy, and especially information. These three changes together sharply raise the density, intensity, and pace of our interactions with each other and with our surrounding natural environment. We can think of the world as consisting of networks. We are embedded in a set of systems - ecological, technological, economic, political, and social systems - each of which can be thought of as a network consisting of nodes or entities connected together with links. A node can be people, T. Homer-Dixon 10 corporations, technologies, even whole nations. Over time, especially in the last two or three decades, we’ve seen a highly significant increase in the number of nodes in our networks and therefore a dramatic increase in the density of linkages among them. We’ve seen an absolutely exponential increase at the rate at which we can push energy, material, and especially information along those links. That causes the increasing density, intensity, and pace of our interactivity within these networks. About a century ago, the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, wrote about the inexorably rising dynamic density of societies. The concept is similar, except that in the last thirty years, we’ve seen a dramatic qualitative shift in the nature of human social systems. They have become complex in a way that’s truly novel and has significant implications for our ability to survive. This is called a ‘Complexity Transition,’ and will be elaborated further later on. Two of those three factors, larger human populations and higher resource consumption, have greatly increased our burden on Earth’s natural environment, and the third factor, more powerful technologies, has shifted power from national and international institutions to individuals and sub- groups. I call this the “power shift issue.” If you want a dramatic demonstration, September 11th, 2001 showed that small groups of individuals can now destroy large groups of individuals. Within ten years, we may see that small groups can destroy whole cities. Thus, individuals now have access to unprecedented kinds of power – power to communicate, power to destroy, power to make things. That change has fundamental implications for the manageability of our societies. All these developments – increasing dynamic density, increasing burden on our natural environment, the power shift from large institutions to small groups – imply that we must cope with more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. “Complexity” here means something specific: Complexity theorists talk about certain characteristics of complex systems: feedbacks, synergies, non-linearities, unknown unknowns, …