Do you want to learn for the future? Or blame someone? You can't do both

This article, published yesterday on the Guardian website, argues that the Chilcot Inquiry (i.e. examining UK involvement in the run-up to the 2003 Gulf War and blogged about by me on its day of publication here) was set up to 'focus on lessons and avoid blame'.
It goes further, reporting that this was all about 'not holding people accountable'.

So far, so very typical of the media.

To report in this way is to make a category error because you can either investigate in order to hold people accountable and find out who is to blame, or you can seek to identify lessons for the future.  You can't do both - at least, not as part of the same process you can't.

In his excellent book, 'Black Box Thinking', which I reviewed here, Matthew Syed writes about the 'blame game' and the way it prevents people, teams and organisations from learning about past performance, thereby depriving them of valuable learning opportunities for the future.

He writes,

"...if professionals think they are going to be blamed for honest mistakes, why would they be open about them?  If they do not trust their managers to take the trouble to see what really happened, why would they report what is going wrong, and how can the system adapt?" (p. 240, Black Box Thinking)

Readers may recall my review of the great Sidney Dekker's book, 'Just Culture', in which he examines the dilemma of balancing openness (and learning) with accountability (and blame).
Dekker relates a powerful story of a nurse who volunteers the information that she made a mistake which contributed towards the death of child, with the result that she loses her job and is prevented from nursing again. 

In such an environment, and with such consequences, how likely is it that other healthcare professionals will volunteer insight into their own mistakes?  Or is it more likely that they will seek to cover them up?

Back to the media, and the campaign groups, and the families of the deceased - such people need to ask themselves, what outcomes do they seek?  Do they want to learn what happened and reduce the likelihood of recurrence?  OR, do they want to hold people to account and blame them for their decisions and actions? 

They can't have both - not from the same process, at any rate.

If you run lessons capture meetings, use a structured process to examine past events and identify lessons for the future, including actions that, if implemented, will help to improve performance.

You need to ask:

• What did we expect to happen?
• What actually happened?
• Is there a difference between these and if so, why?
• What have we learned?
• What will do differently next time?
• What actions do we need to take to embed this learning?
• What was the impact of this issue?

Please don't ask 'Who?'  Even when examining 'what happened' and 'why', I am always very careful to ensure that no-one uses words like 'fault' or 'blame', and that we talk about 'actions taken' rather than 'he or she doing this or that'.

It may sound as though we're avoiding the hard questions and seeking an easy life, and it is certainly the case that organisations that have such processes hardwired into their projects and programmes are more comfortable with providing answers to questions that might be uncomfortable for others that are less familiar with this approach. 

However, the aim of such meetings in particular, and of knowledge management (KM) in general, must be to improve performance through the sharing and re-use of knowledge.  Other processes exist to 'hold people to account' and they must be kept separate from KM in order to encourage people to talk freely, without fear of consequences.

Can and should politicians and civil servants and generals be 'held to account' and 'blamed' for their decisions?  Where appropriate, absolutely. 

But an inquiry set up to identify lessons for the future is not the place for such motives and it is wilfully naïve of the media to expect both aims to be achieved through the same process.

The Iraq Inquiry - what lessons?

Today’s publication of ‘The Chilcot Report’ will provide stacks of material for those of us interested in learning from the past in order to improve future performance.  A few points:

·        Firstly, I declare an interest, having deployed on Operation TELIC in February 2003 on what proved to be one of the most fascinating (if challenging) deployments of my military career. I was a Captain in an Army liaison team, embedded within the Coalition Air HQ in Saudi Arabia.  This morning I dug out the notebook I used to scribble ‘nuggets’ that I then intended to use in a novel (written, yet to be published!). Some that stand out for me below (some of which show the paucity of planning and equipment, as well as some context):

o   Sunday 16 February – Arrival in Saudi Arabia on a reinforcement C-17 aircraft that had been refused entry 4 times by the Saudi authorities, reluctant to be seen to be supporting the imminent war effort; so the RAF changed the call-sign of the aircraft to one of a routine roulement flight and got us in ‘under the wire’;

o   Monday 17 February – Work begins; all UK personnel reminded to get their respirators tested to ensure they are serviceable;

o   Thursday 20 February – Respirator testing is stopped due to the high failure rate; decision apparently made that it would be better to claim ignorance of the state of the respirator filters than have evidence that they were failing and be unable to replace them (not enough spares, apparently);

o   Thursday 6 March – 2 kinds of difficult people out here: those that simply do not understand that war entails discomfort, disturbance and friction and those that use such friction as an excuse to cover up their own failings;

o   Friday 14 March – Reports of 75 Iraqis crossing into Kuwait and trying to surrender to 1 PARA soldiers conducting training; Paras tell them to go back to Iraq;

o   Wednesday 26 March – Reports France has given Iraqi Intelligence Service access to satellite, allowing them to eavesdrop on mobile phone communications;

o   Saturday 30 March – US Army Families Network adverts gut-wrenchingly corny: “helping to spread freedom and democracy around the world”;

o   Sunday 31 March - 1 x Apache downed and every other aircraft in regiment hit by small arms fire during air assault on Medina Division south of Baghdad; reports regiment will not fly again;

o   Friday 4 April – 1 (UK) Div area, soft hats being worn; hearts and minds etc – example of how it’s done? Or is Northern Ireland experience irrelevant here?

o   Sunday 6 April – Difference of opinion between US and UK targeteers re infrastructure and/or Iraqi airforce; US wishes to destroy all aircraft, bunkers etc. UK ask why bother? Not used yet; use now even less likely; faint suspicion around that US motivation might be a wish to sell Iraq new aircraft possibly?

o   Thursday 10 April – UK forces find Iraqi forces arms cache, including 19 French MILAN anti-tank missiles with production date of 1999 (i.e. after the UN weapons inspectors were booted out by Iraq in 1998).  Puts the French opposition to the war into some sort of context, I suggest.

o   Friday 11 April – Time-sensitive targeting of ‘Chemical Ali’ attempt; bombs hit late and miss and a dud; National Component Command furious; SFHQ livid; systemic problem – 12 windows have to go green before bombs drop;

o   Monday 14 April – We have been asked for our lessons; some criticism of lessons process; too quick; not leading to anything.

·        Most of the lessons in the report have been ‘identified’ NOT ‘learned’ – as most people with a passing interest in knowledge management (KM) will know, a lesson is not learned until you have changed something (or made a deliberate, auditable decision not to do so).  Many of Chilcot’s ‘lessons’ are more properly described as ‘observations’ or ‘insights’ and, if they are to become lessons, need to be re-crafted with explicit recommendations added; hopefully this necessary work will now take place;

·        Many of the criticisms of the British Army planning and conduct of operations in Iraq can be found to have their origins in its culture, that of the ‘can-do attitude’ – which leads to senior commanders taking on more work than can be realistically done with the resources offered.  Indeed, Chilcot says:

“Ground truth is vital. Over-optimistic assessments lead to bad decisions. Senior decision-makers – Ministers, Chiefs of Staff, senior officials – must have a flow of accurate and frank reporting. A “can do” attitude is laudably ingrained in the UK Armed Forces – a determination to get on with the job, however difficult the circumstances – but this can prevent ground truth from reaching senior ears. At times, in Iraq, the bearers of bad tidings were not heard. On several occasions, decision-makers visiting Iraq (including the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chief of the General Staff) found the situation on the ground to be much worse than had been reported to them. Effective audit mechanisms need to be used to counter optimism bias, whether through changes in the culture of reporting, use of multiple channels of information – internal and external – or use of visits.”[1]

This issue is discussed at some length in the article linked from this blog post here, which looks at how the British Army tries to learn lessons from operations and training and how its efforts are hampered by its culture.  It should be obvious that it is not only the military where these problems are found and that many other organisations also have issues with discussing accidents, mistakes and errors openly.

Having read more of the report, I shall write again on this in due course.

For a conversation about knowledge management and learning cultures in general, or identifying and learning lessons in particular, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

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[1] http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246581/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_section-98.pdf  Volume 8, Section 9.8 ‘Conclusions: The Post-Conflict Period’, Paragraph 197, Page 504.

KM UK 2016 - Come and learn about learning...

I'll be speaking at the forthcoming KM UK Conference on 16th June.

My old boss, Colonel Ian Tinsley (Retd) and I will be talking about how the British Army learned from both the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and how it managed the knowledge it gained.

Frequent readers of this blog will have read the article linked at this post in which I examine the ways in which the Army increased its learning capacity from 2009.

Building upon some of the material in that article, we'll cover:

• What does 'good military KM' look like?
• What does it take for a lesson to be actually learned?
• Why does the Army do KM?  What should anyone?
• Top tips and things to watch for when managing lessons.

The agenda for the conference is listed here.

Come along and let's learn about learning.

If you'd like to chat about knowledge management, or 'lessons learned', please get in touch direct or via the Knoco website.

Hmm, now that IS interesting. Let’s keep that to ourselves.

I have written elsewhere about my admiration for the relative openness of the US military in its approach to lessons learned from operations and training.[1]  Where the British instinct has always been to keep things under wraps, the American bias is traditionally towards greater transparency.

Sadly, this article in the Marine Corps Times, reveals that things are changing.  Whereas I would love to report that the British Army has decided to publish more, unfortunately the US Marine Corps Centre for Lessons Learned (MCCLL) is going the other way.

Whilst the detailed contents of its lessons have always been classified, MCCLL used to publish an unclassified summary every month, which enabled some degree of civilian scrutiny, education, accountability and debate.  Academics, journalists, defence contractors or knowledge management (KM) consultants could keep up to debate on how the US Marine Corps was, or was not learning lessons.

Knowing how much to share and how much to keep hidden is a judgement call facing all organisations.  Making everything secret is self-defeating and prevents one’s own employees from benefiting from learning from other’s experiences.  However, sharing everything ‘warts and all’ is not without its adverse consequences either, not least for an organisation’s short-term reputation.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I err on the side of greater openness, which means more honesty, more self-criticism, more transparency and a willingness to entertain ideas and innovations from ‘outside the box’.  Whilst some lessons should be considered sensitive, and access to them limited, these should be the exception, not the norm.

Unfortunately, MCCLL decided that re-writing lessons to ‘de-classified’ status took too long.  Let’s hope that they change their mind soon.

To chat about lessons learned - military, commercial or indeed from anywhere - contact me direct or please visit the Knoco website.

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[1] “Furthermore, the traditional British predilection for over-classifying official documentation impedes both the internal sharing of knowledge hard-won on operations and its critical analysis by outsiders who, however unwelcome, may nevertheless provide valuable insights.  To make the point, you can buy the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual from Amazon whereas tracking down its British equivalent requires agility, cunning and tenacity.  It’s not the enemy’s efforts that are most frustrated by such constraints.” ‘Learning Lessons – the British Army’s Experience’, Rupert Lescott, Page 11, downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/barmychap/20140409-learning-lessonsthebritisharmyexperience on 3 June 2015

 

Communities of practice - nothing new, it would seem!

Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with my take on military culture and KM.  Both the American and British Armies have invested resources into the knowledge management capabilities that can facilitate organisational learning.  However, military culture often prevents such investment achieving its intended value. 
This is because whilst ‘heroic leadership’ can often be useful, perhaps necessary, for getting scared and weary soldiers to engage in combat, it is too often very hard for such heroes to admit to their own mistakes, thereby sending out the example that euphemisms and cover-ups are okay.  The cumulative effect of this is an exaggeration of achievements and a wilful blindness when it comes to failure – neither of which help successors to learn.
One of the KM capabilities with which armies have been experimenting is the Community of Practice (CoP) – a forum within which functional colleagues can collaborate, seek mutual help as well as sharing ideas and lessons.  The British Army’s dabbling in CoPs has yet to bear the fruit for which many have hoped but these things take time and require support, not least from above.
Interestingly, this article by Dr Robert Foley of Kings College London, shows how the Prussian Army was using Communities of Practice over 200 years ago.  For me, a pertinent quote is, “While the membership was obviously as self-selecting group — only those with the interest and the aptitude applied and were accepted — being part of this society also clearly helped create important professional networks that aided the careers of its members.” 
People need to see that participating in CoPs is worthwhile and, when they do so, they will join up.  That means it’s up to other members to spread the word and to use clear examples of where pulling on the brainpower and know-how of several hundred colleagues helped them get results far beyond what they would have achieved on their own.
For information about Knoco’s CoP services, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

The expeditionary operation is dead. Long live the expeditionary operation!

The British contribution to the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has ended.

 

I served in Afghanistan in the hot and bloody summer of 2008 and left the place convinced that what we were doing was (a) right and (b) working.

I then worked for 3 years in the British Army’s Lessons Exploitation Centre (LXC), helping the Army try to learn from the Afghanistan operation.  Indeed, it was at the LXC that I learnt about Knowledge Management (KM) and Organisational Learning (OL).  Much of what the Army has done in these difficult areas is to its credit and it is rightly considered something of a world-leader in its efforts to learn and share the knowledge that its learning generates.

I have written at length about these efforts elsewhere and a detailed account how the Army tries to learn is available here.

However, my 3 years at the LXC led me to question why such considerable efforts led to so little achievement.  Why did so many varied and costly inputs produce so few valuable outputs?

My conclusion was that the British Army lacks a learning culture and should try to develop one.

The British Army lacks a learning culture because it does not permit dissent, constructive or otherwise.

The British Army lacks a learning culture because senior officers sing their own praises and those of their soldiers but shy away from self-criticism, thereby most definitely ‘leading by example’ and demonstrating that such frankness and honesty is not the way to get ahead.

The British Army lacks a learning culture because of the ‘can do’ attitude that leads all combat arm officers worth their salt to agree to missions for which they have not been sufficiently well prepared, trained or equipped.

The British Army lacks a learning culture because the current difficult operation quickly loses its appeal and the next one will finally be the chance to do things right.

The British Army lacks a learning culture because every venture has to be successful – we always win…we can’t be seen to make mistakes…we can’t lose face.

In his searing account of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, 'Losing Small Wars', Frank Ledwidge quoted one high-flying officer’s analysis of the outcome of the British Army’s efforts in Basra thus, “We were defeated, pure and simple.”  And yet the public narrative at the time was one of ‘work well done’, ‘worthwhile sacrifices’ and soldiers, sailors and airmen and women of whom ‘we can all be rightly proud’.

To do otherwise, to question (let alone criticize) such efforts is seen as ‘doing a disservice’ to the fallen, or being ‘disloyal’ to one’s former colleagues, or basically contorted in any way possible to deflect from the very real possibility that it was one massive mistake.

And so it is today. With the final troops now leaving Camp Bastion, the message being pushed is that we did a good job, that we can be proud and that we have displayed the utmost professionalism etc etc.  For example, listen to this interview from BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World at One’, between Martha Kearney and Major General Richard Nugee, the current Deputy Commander of ISAF’s Kabul HQ.

Utter rubbish.

Brooking no criticism, permitting no honest enquiry into performance and enabling no consideration of courses of action beyond the safe and self-protecting is no way to learn.

As I have done before, I have to conclude once more with these words, from (formerly) Major Giles Harris DSO, quoted in Toby Harnden’s book, ‘Dead Men Risen’,  

“The British are very good at whipping ourselves into a sense of achievement….we almost have to, to make it bearable.  You can’t do something like this and analyse it all the way through and think: “Actually we got that wrong.”  You just can’t.  It takes so much emotional investment.  I’m not saying we lie to ourselves but there’s an element of telling yourself that it’s all right and it’s going well, just to keep going.”[1]

Such honesty.  We need more of it.

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[1] Toby Harnden, ‘Dead Men Risen’, Page 558.

Learning lessons - the British Army experience, for good or bad

We read last week that the MOD is trying to prevent publication of a book that it commissioned, ‘An Intimate War’ by Dr Mike Martin, allegedly because it contains criticisms of the way the British Army conducted operations in Afghanistan.  We have been here before, with Toby Harnden’s excellent book, ‘Dead Men Risen’, the entire first print run of which the MOD had to buy and destroy because it allegedly contained details that might have compromised operational security.

Twitter and other social media have today contained much commentary regarding the Army’s failure to accept criticism which, in turn, impedes its ability to learn lessons.

I declare an interest here because, for 3 years, I worked as a lessons analyst for the British Army’s Lessons Exploitation Centre (LXC) in Warminster, Wiltshire.

The British Army has put much effort, time and resources into improving its learning capabilities but it has much more to do, as does any organisation that seeks to learn.  My article at this link here sets out how the Army developed learning capabilities but also argues, strongly, that cultural factors remain that, unless addressed, will continue to inhibit its opportunity to improve performance.  It imparts no classified information but covers the following:

• The expansion of the British Army’s KM and OL analytical capacity from 2009 onwards;
• The development of Mission Exploitation Symposia to socialise hard-won knowledge;
• The use of lessons as part of risk management;
• The endorsement of the ‘lessons learned’ approach by the Army Inspectorate;
• Small signs of progress that learning is actually taking place;

 

The article then makes suggestions on how the Army can develop a learning culture:

• Learning about learning – through study of leading KM and OL theorists and practitioners;
• Development of a lessons cadre – making KM and OL a career-stream of choice;
• Moving LXC up the chain of command, reporting to the very top;
• Revisions of performance appraisals to encourage and embed the behaviour that supports learning;
• A move towards open dialogue, not mere adversarial discussion;
• Good, old-fashioned leadership by example through self-criticism and humility;
• A move from reflexive defensiveness, currently hidden behind ‘security’ concerns;
• Recognition that rank and cap-badge inhibit knowledge-transfer and learning;
• Embracing genuine mission command – and learning by doing;
• Moving towards a just culture, encouraging honesty and intelligent accountability;
• Learning from others – armies, charities, companies, the world

 

The article then concludes by quoting Major Giles Harris DSO, who commanded the Prince of Wales’s Company of the Welsh Guards on their bloody tour of Afghanistan in 2009,

“The British are very good at whipping ourselves into a sense of achievement….we almost have to, to make it bearable.  You can’t do something like this and analyse it all the way through and think: “Actually we got that wrong.”  You just can’t.  It takes so much emotional investment.  I’m not saying we lie to ourselves but there’s an element of telling yourself that it’s all right and it’s going well, just to keep going.”[i]

Such honesty.  We need more of it.
For more information on lessons, learning cultures, knowledge management and organisational learning, please visit the Knoco website.

 

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[i] Toby Harnden, ‘Dead Men Risen’ p. 558.

Confusing efforts and effects – the British Army in Afghanistan

This morning’s Today programme on BBC Radio 4 carried a piece by Sima Kotecha on the British Army’s efforts in Afghanistan, including interviews with some soldiers reflecting on what their work has achieved, if anything.

Given the restrictions on soldiers talking to the media, their identities were not revealed but the main points they made were:

• The performance of the Afghan National Army (ANA) did not give them a “warm and fuzzy feeling”;
• ANA soldiers often appeared to be “going through the motions” and not fully understanding why they had to do things in a certain way;
• ANA soldiers often displayed poor weapons discipline, slinging them over their backs;
• Drug-taking was common, as were sexual relations between the ANA soldiers;
• ANA soldiers were mainly interested in fighting, not the broader range of functions in which the deployed NATO forces have been engaged (i.e. establishing good relations with locals etc.);
• The ANA lack the capabilities needed to maintain a presence in remote locations (i.e. medical evacuation helicopters, integrated surveillance systems etc.) so are more likely to pull back to the more easily defended bases;

Overall, their view was that Afghanistan is likely to revert to the way it was before NATO operations began in 2001.

Following the report, Brigadier Rupert Jones (the former Commander of the UK 1st Mechanized Brigade that deployed to Helmand last year) was interviewed (2hrs 43mins onwards) and asked to respond.

During the interview, rather than engage directly with the points made by the soldiers, Brigadier Jones repeatedly referred to the “enormous progress” that the ANA has made recently.  His argument appeared to be that lots of people have been trying really, really hard and that they should be praised accordingly. (I addressed this tactic in this post earlier today.)

This is a classic example of what I term, “defensive dissonance” and fails (or, truth be told, refuses) to address the issues raised, since it is perfectly possible for the Afghan forces to have made ‘enormous progress’ yet still fall far short of the capability and credibility needed to prevent any slide into chaos to take place just as the earlier soldiers feared.  Indeed, starting from such a low base, it is not surprising that the ANA has improved nor that local elders have been impressed by this (another of Brigadier Jones’s points).

Where defensive dissonance stalls further journalistic enquiry, it is frustrating. Where it blunts the desire to reveal poor performance, from learning ‘what happened’, it is unforgivable.