UpScope Articles

The Team Action Triangle

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:27:58 -0500

When managers are working under the friction of complexity, the big picture (called “the bubble” on the boats) is easy to lose and hard to discern. Sometimes a simple mental model can clear the fog. The Team Action Triangle is one of those models. In this article, I will describe how the Team Action Triangle applies to a submarine crew, and then offer some suggestions for using it more broadly in any organization.
For a Submarine crew, the stark consequence of action taken or not taken, decisions made or missed, is incredibly concrete. The team has to be remarkably prescient… able to perceive the significance of events before they happen. The Team Action Triangle helps the crew take a fix on their location in real-time (their level of cognitive focus) and over the broader scope of their development as a team (their quality of competence).
The figure below shows a Team Action Triangle that applies to a submarine crew, with a description of the team’s quality of competence next to each level. At the bottom is is safety. Clearly, in the presence of hazardous technology and harsh environments, nothing could be more fundamental to the team than to be safe. The next level is the ship’s distinguishing characteristic: its stealth…the submarine’s essence. Finally, at the top, is the aim… the team’s ultimate goal.

The model works this way: all crews need to be safe before they can be stealthy. And they have to be both safe and stealthy before they can achieve the mission. As the team advances up the triangle during their training cycle, an increasing quality of competence is required.
At the safety level, the team must have a characteristic we call “basic submarining”. Among other things, basic submarining is a set of cultural defenses against human error… safety virtues if you will. Examples of the cultural defenses include: forceful backup, a questioning attitude, procedural compliance, process formality, non-complacency, and integrity. Submarine skippers look critically for these virtues on their teams and it takes a constant strain to achieve them uniformly. But, it is not enough for a team to be safe.
Stealth is much more than a state of being… it is an achievement. The vessels themselves are designed to be remarkably quiet and nearly impossible to detect, but careless operators can put noise into the water that creates exploitable vulnerabilities. Additionally, the enemy might have a host of radars and eyeballs to detect a needlessly exposed periscope. The enemy is not passive…they are always looking. And they are not dumb… they are as bright (if not as well-resourced) as we are. It takes operational sophistication for a submarine crew to remain undetected. There is a tremendous effort of planning, practice, and team-building to develop an awareness of detection risks and the protocols for managing them. Further, the crew must be nimble enough to respond to the enemy’s adaptations. In some cases, being stealthy and being safe are the same thing. Still, it is not enough to have a safe crew that remains undetected…they actually have to DO something.
Accomplishing the aim is at the top of the pyramid. This is the level where opportunity is patiently exploited, information is collected and sorted, and the opponent’s patterns are discerned. Operation at this level requires a crew to be capable of managing complexity, and complexity operates in an environment of fog and friction. Since ambiguity and uncertainty are never eliminated, decisions must be made on incomplete data. It takes a tremendous amount of cognitive focus to operate at this level and it can be exhausting. Complexity is impossible to manage unless a safety culture is present and the sophisticated stealth protocols are performing like clockwork. Only THEN can cognitive effort can be applied to the mission. Clearly, a high degree of graduate-level training is necessary for a team to work in this environment with confidence and fortitude.
Economy of cognitive focus is the key to understanding the how the Team Action Triangle works in real-time. As long as safety and stealth risk can be managed in the background, the Captain and his team can focus on their mission. If stealth is lost or threatened beyond a certain level, they have to stop their work on the mission and focus on stealth deliberately. There is just not enough brain power to work actively at both levels. Further, if safety is threatened, the Captain may have to give up stealth to keep the ship safe. Safety problems are important enough to require complete cognitive focus under time and material constraints with nothing in reserve for sophisticated stealth operations. As each lower level is recovered, the Captain can move his team deliberately to the next higher level and shift their cognitive focus. The Team Action Triangle is a model that helps the Captain decide to stop mission work to remain stealthy, give up stealth to stay safe, but keep safe no matter what. It a model to help Captains make those big picture tradeoffs deliberately and in a way that aligns the entire team. Just like cash in a business, cognitive focus is a resource that requires economy of management.
So, while its clear enough for a submarine crew, how would a hospital or a brokerage firm develop a Team Action Triangle for its own leaders? Start with the fundamentals. What is it about your business must absolutely be at the core of the culture…the thing never to be compromised no matter what? For a hospital, it might very well be safety (in fact, I think the health care industry could learn a great deal from submarine culture). Whatever the basis, think critically about the cultural defenses and virtues that must be present. For a engineering research and development firm with technical mastery as it base level, these might be advanced degrees, the free exchange of ideas, independent research and publication in scholarly journals, and so fourth.

The second level is your organization’s distinguishing characteristic. It is that thing that makes your firm different from every other… your center of gravity. At this level, you might find radial customer service, out-of-the-box innovation, unprecedented efficiency, etc. Operating at this level requires the team to have sophisticated processes in place. There is the potential for tremendous change in these processes as competitors respond and adapt (they are bright!), so competitive vigilance and critical thought are key virtues at work here.
Finally, the highest level is your product. It might be an actual product like reenforced concrete or something more abstract like great management advice. This is the level where your organization is working with complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. The fundamentals are culturally sound and the protocols that support your distinguishing characteristic are working well… sufficiently in the background. Now, your team can focus on getting your product out in the marketplace.
Senior leaders need to look critically at all three levels, but especially at the basics, even on teams that have a reputation for excellence (in fact, the teams at greatest risk for error are often those that have not suffered a crises in a long time…they may think their excellence makes them invulnerable to error, instead of the mere absence of an error opportunity!). Look for the basics when you visit the loading docks, ask about them when you talk to suppliers and customers, see if they are present on your own staffs (a particular vulnerability since staffs sometimes regard themselves as exempt from the basics). You can be sure that if the basic virtues are not wired everywhere into the culture, then the fundamentals are at risk and it will be impossible for the team to operate with sophistication or complexity.

-Ron Steed, February 2008

Forceful Backup: a Time-Tested Defense

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:20:21 -0500

At the same Human Resources seminar mentioned in my February 7th article, someone asked another insightful question. We had discussed “Forceful Backup”, the idea that during operations, everyone on the team has an obligation to look out for the actions of everyone else and sound-off to prevent errors, even if they do not have direct responsibility for those actions. The questioner asked if Forceful Backup was the same as multi-tasking… after all, it seems like everyone is doing their own actions AND everyone else’s. It was a good question, and I had a sense right away that these are NOT the same ideas.

Forceful Backup is a cultural practice in High Reliability Organizations that serves as a very effective (and time-tested) defense against human error. It is especially useful in complex operations where team members are likely to suffer “channelized attention”… a strongly selective focus on their own actions to the exclusion of everyone else’s. Complex operations that depend on specialized knowledge are particularly vulnerable to channelized attention. Each team member feels a strong need to focus on their OWN actions. In such situations, idle team members can have a sense…even a MORAL sense… that they are not responsible for another team member’s work. Thus, it is easy to rationalize a feeling that “its not MY fault” when someone else makes a mistake.

The trouble with this thinking is that complex operations are usually highly-coupled. In other words, no one’s actions are taken in isolation…. action occurs within a context that includes everyone else. It is almost certain that someone on the team is going to make a human error. It is wired into our beings. It is a false, and dangerous mindset to isolate one’s action and and to ignore one’s moral responsibility for the entire team. The team HAS to be able to suffer individual human error while preventing that error from propagating uncontrolled throughout the operation. Forceful backup is a great defense.

Those who have played team sports are usually familiar with the importance of backup. But FORCEFUL backup conveys an active sense. Passivity is not allowed. Backup is expected to be active…loud…present… even across (especially across) authority gradients. Here the idea is that even the most junior member of the team is RESPONSIBLE… EXPECTED to be on the lookout for error by more senior members. No one is allowed to remain silent in deference to seniority. Clearly, moral courage is a precondition for Forceful Backup and senior leaders must look for standard-setting-events to reenforce this idea among juniors.

Another precondition for Forceful Backup is good planning. Occasionally, during a collision avoidance seminar among Prospective Submarine Commanding Officers, we would run a little thought experiment. After discussing a collision that occurred between two vessels on the surface (during which no one objected to the ever-closing distance between the ships), we asked each student to write on a sheet of paper the distance between the two vessels that would cause them to object to the Captain. In the times we ran this poll across a dozen classes, we never failed to get a remarkable range of opinions… and that was the point. Without a plan, people will see their worries as “just an opinion”, and will fail to voice them. They usually have enough self-doubt about their own evaluation of developing danger that they will say nothing. And this is especially true among junior team members. A good plan is the fix. When the plan is violated, people will speak up and give warning… no opinion necessary.

Forceful Backup is also an idle-time activity… a type of active vigilance that occurs while others are taking actions. When a team member is in the middle of an operation, the backup for error prevention comes from OTHER team members who are NOT actively engaged.

And what if ALL the team members are busy? Where does Forceful Backup come from on those occasions? From the LEADER. This is one of the hardest lessons for a leader to learn… to hang back quietly and observantly… to watch… broadly and with shifting focus as the team works feverishly at their tasks… to be the decider of last resort. The temptation is strong (incredibly strong) for leaders to step in and start doing. Often, the leader did these same things very well as a junior in the past… they KNOW what needs to be done. But it is the leader’s Forceful Backup that keeps the team out of trouble. The leader is the only one… the only “backup provider” in a position to see the PATTERNS OF DEVELOPING DANGER. We can all think of situations that leaders must handle personally…only they have the experience, responsibility, and breadth of knowledge to act safely. But experienced leaders know that as soon as they step in and start doing, they are vulnerable to error… they are themselves in NEED of Forceful Backup, and too often, no juniors will have the situational awareness or presence-of-mind to provide it.

So…Forceful Backup is NOT the same as multi-tasking. It is an active process for idle team members, and in almost all cases, for their leaders. In fact, attempting to multi-task during complex operations actually increases the likelihood of error… it makes the need Forceful Backup even greater. For a good article on the cognitive risks of multi-tasking, see Multitasking Makes You Stupid by Sue Shellenbarger, WSJ.

-Ron Steed, February 2008

Lesson Learned: Clarity of Vision

Thu, 7 Feb 2008 18:10:52 -0500

Recently, I lead a group of human resource professionals in a best-practices seminar sponsored by Lee Hecht Harrison in New York City, and presented a view of Submarine Force culture and lessons-learned that might apply usefully to their own enterprises. During the seminar, I was asked whether I thought that the metaphorical use of a submarine crew really applied to the business world. As I recall, I gave a stunning answer (!), but it didn’t seem to satisfy me. After all, the consequences of bad leadership that are so obvious on a submarine, may seem a lot less clear in the cubicle....

What IS the real use of these metaphorical experiences to business? They ARE metaphors after all... few would want to model their business after a submarine crew (although I can think of a couple of industries that SHOULD!).

Metaphors are useful when they offer clarity of vision. Because consequence is so concrete at sea, virtue and vice are magnified... life hangs in the balance as it almost never will in most businesses (although losing a few million $$ IS a lot of livelihoods). In High Performance Teams, right and wrong actions have direct effects on the health of the enterprise in a way that can be far more difficult to discern in business. The need for structure, discipline, virtue, and leadership IS necessary in business... but its value is more ambiguous and uncertain. The metaphorical use of High Performance Teams is valuable because they offer a clear, magnified view of good teamwork...and good teamwork makes good business sense.

Clarity of vision about an organization is very difficult to achieve... it gets overwhelmed by the day to day. It is easiest to see when teams are placed under extraordinary pressure. In the Submarine Force, such clarity is revealed during decision-rich, scenario-based inspections by experienced and senior outsiders. For the entire crew, these occur during the Tactical Readiness Exam, and for Prospective Commanding Officers as individuals, during the month-long sea portion of the Submarine Command Course. These inspections put the teams, and especially their leaders, under tremendous pressure to perform in an environment filled with uncertainty, ambiguity, and constraints of all kinds. Under such pressure, virtue and vice get magnified way beyond normal levels. If the team has a strength, it will rise to serve them. And likewise, vulnerabilities are made painfully obvious. The results are rich.

I am not going to suggest that businesses should test themselves like a Submarine Crew. But certainly, leaders should look for the opportunity to gain new insights when their teams are under tremendous pressure. Find a couple of senior talented people (if you can spare them... these occasions always strain the whole team) who can stay above the fray and look at the organization from a broader perspective. Capture their observations in writing and, when the pace returns to normal, share the lessons-learned with your team. The clarity you gain will improve your bottom line....

-Ron Steed, February 2008