The Planning Fallacy

Blame the Book Club at work - one of the books we were to read was "Thinking Fast and Slow". It's hard going and I am still ploughing through it !

Then someone posted, somewhere, a link to an article about Hofstdter's Law

"any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected - even when Hofstadter's law is taken into account. "

and just after that, I got to the section of the book that covers the planning fallacy. The author tells a tale of a group of people (including him) who were working on developing a new course. After a period of work during which they had defined what they wanted to do and completed two chapters of the associated supporting text, they had a conversation about how long they thought it would take them to complete the work. There was a range of answers, from 18 months to 2.5 years.

Among the group was someone who regularly did this sort of work and - after having given his estimate (which also fell within the range of answers), he got asked "how long do other people take to do this kind of work ?" and "as a group how do we compare to the average ?"

It turns out that a signficant number of groups NEVER complete the work, but for those who do - it takes around 8 years on average.

And the group doing this particular piece of work were all fairly new to it, so were probably below average.

Hmmmm.... so their own estimate not only assumes they will finish, when there is a fairly high likelihood they won't, but it also assumes they will work three times faster than the norm when they are an inexperienced group !

In the end they did complete, and in around 7 years.

I carried on reading the book, and came across another concept that struck me as potentially useful. The premortem basically uses "prospective hindsight" to look at what might make the project/activity fail, and then look for solutions. That may sound familiar as it is the same kind of thing that we are trying to do when we run Risk Workshops. What I thought might help us is the way of framing the work i.e. to brief people to "imagine one year in the future, we implemented the plan and it was a disaster" and then work through every reason why it did fail.

While this may seem like a negative mindset, it is purely an exercise and intended to prevent that disaster from happening.

And while I'm on the subject (well sort of), here is a link someone shared on cognitive bias and this one too - The Flaw of Expected Values

Doom Loop: restructure blues

or alternatively "I'm a human, get me out of here !"

I was at a conference recently and they showed a video of a previous conference speaker - that speaker made reference to a book "Good to Great" which I gather talks about Kimberley Clark. I got home and decided to check the reference out as it sounded interesting (<cough> geek <cough>)

And it led me to a book by Jim Collins, and the following article about that book ( Good to Great ) where he talks about the "Flywheel Effect"

"Now picture a huge, heavy flywheel. It’s a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle. It's about 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and it weighs about 25 tons. That flywheel is your company. Your job is to get that flywheel to move as fast as possible, because momentum—mass times velocity—is what will generate superior economic results over time.

Right now, the flywheel is at a standstill. To get it moving, you make a tremendous effort. You push with all your might, and finally you get the flywheel to inch forward. After two or three days of sustained effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. It takes a lot of work, but at last the flywheel makes a second rotation. You keep pushing steadily. It makes three turns, four turns, five, six. With each turn, it moves faster, and then—at some point, you can’'t say exactly when—you break through. The momentum of the heavy wheel kicks in your favor. It spins faster and faster, with its own weight propelling it. You aren't pushing any harder, but the flywheel is accelerating, its momentum building, its speed increasing.

This is the Flywheel Effect. It's what it feels like when you’re inside a company that makes the transition from good to great."

and it's opposite - the "Doom Loop"

"Companies that fall into the Doom Loop genuinely want to effect change—but they lack the quiet discipline that produces the Flywheel Effect. Instead, they launch change programs with huge fanfare, hoping to “enlist the troops.” They start down one path, only to change direction. After years of lurching back and forth, these companies discover that they’ve failed to build any sustained momentum. Instead of turning the flywheel, they've fallen into a Doom Loop: Disappointing results lead to reaction without understanding, which leads to a new direction—a new leader, a new program—which leads to no momentum, which leads to disappointing results. It’s a steady, downward spiral. Those who have experienced a Doom Loop know how it drains the spirit right out of a company."

Hmmm. If you are in the middle of that change, how do you know if you are part of the "Flywheel Effect" (virtuous circle) or the "Doom Loop" (vicious circle) ?

No one is going to propose a change intending it to be part of a Doom Loop are they ? And probably within change you will get people who see it both ways.

Is this like the Emperor's New Clothes ? Are there always going to be some people within any change who see it as a Flywheel, and some who see it as a Doom Loop... and only time will tell ?

Or are the telltale signs that you are in one or the other ? Are there differences between the two. Isn't that why we have lessons learnt exercises, best practice for change management and so on ? You know, the process that starts with "share the vision"...

Can a good process produce a bad outcome and vice versa ? Is that gut feel and instinct that all is (or is not) well enough or do you need cold hard facts in the bright light of day ?