Avalanches and Earthquakes: Events that Both Rattle and Define Us

Posted on April 18, 2020 by David Cooper, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

The Plague, the Renaissance and the accompanying scientific and social revolution known as the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the invention of the printing press, the American Revolution and the advent of democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the World Wars — what do they all have in common? They were all emergent events or the consequence of a sequence of such events, avalanches and earthquakes that fundamentally altered humanity’s trajectory and did so in ways that could not have been predicted at the time they occurred. They conspired to cause a tip in the fundamental ways we perceive the world and our place in it, how we make sense of it, and what it means to act in it. They caused tectonic shifts in our patterns of thinking and acting. And now the coronavirus can be added to that list of events. In narrative terms, this moment is the civilian equivalent of what was the norm during the latter third of my career as a SEAL: “Grab your kit. The mission’s a go.” And that mission today is to contain and mediate the spread of the coronavirus — our common enemy.

To simplify a bit, such events require an initial condition or a set of initial conditions in the environment that fosters their emergence. We say that such events are both path-dependent and context-sensitive. That’s not the same as saying history determines the path the future takes, but it does influence it. Nor does it suggest that one’s context, like one’s DNA for instance, is destiny. But context certainly influences destiny — it influences the path or paths available to us. And it’s those initial conditions that put us on one trajectory over another. For instance, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the culmination of a sequence of other events and circumstances, like an arms race, that put the world on the path to World War I.

Such events, like the emergence of COVID19 and its propagation or transmission, also require a positive feedback loop, or they sit at the confluence of such loops. To simplify yet again, a positive feedback loop is just another way of saying “more equals more.” The more people are infected, the more the virus is put back into the environment to infect even more people. In essence, more infections equals more virus equals even more infections. And when the rate of transmission turns exponential, as it has, we are put on a path not only toward mass exposure and infection rates but mass instability — and in ways that we can’t necessarily predict.

What can be done to ameliorate those initial conditions? Scientists in the UK showed that without interventions in China, such as testing, social distancing and isolation, and travel restrictions, the rate of infection would have been on the order of 67 times higher than without those interventions. But had the Chinese acted earlier, even a week sooner, 66% fewer people would have contracted the disease. In other words, by combining interventions (i.e., using a diversity of responses to one’s advantage) and acting quickly (the x-axis if you want to graph it), transmission rates (the y-axis) were reduced exponentially and could have been reduced even further with an even more rapid response. Those interventions didn’t just disrupt the initial conditions, like social contact, but disrupted the positive feedback loop as well. More still equals more, but the exponential rate of transmission was slowed, and the curve — the trajectory the Chinese are on — was flattened.

Might we had seen the same slowing of transmission rates here in the US had we pulled our collective heads out of the sand and intervened earlier? And when I say intervened earlier, I mean through a variety of means, like accepting the tests offered by the World Health Organization, and both preaching and enforcing social distancing, not just shutting down travel from China. The answer is a definite yes. The details might have looked a bit different if only because we’re not China, but the end result would have been the same: transmission rates would have slowed.

All of that now falls into the realm of dysfunctional or wishful thinking. What we could have or should have done can only be seen in the rearview mirror. Hindsight is “50/50” (pun intended). Speaking of thinking, though, I’m reminded that high-performers have this uncanny ability, when the world is spinning chaotically all around them, to ask themselves one simple question: What matters right now? And high-performing teams possess this capability as well, because behavioral patterns repeat themselves, albeit not perfectly. Still, they show up in some fashion at different levels — what we call a self-similar or multi-scalar aspect of the natural world. But perhaps it would be better to say that they have the uncanny ability to attend to what matters right now, as the practice stems from mindfulness, from focusing one’s attention on the moment and doing so without judgment. If the practice sounds simple, that’s because it is. It’s just not easy.

Rather than asking ourselves what matters right now, I saw where some are asking the question, “What should we do?” and then answering that question, conveniently, by suggesting that, over the next several weeks and months, they are going to start advising leaders on what they should do. That makes me laugh. The sentiment is typical of leadership consultants, where they routinely tell formal leaders what they should do. That sentiment is also indicative of why leadership development programs, and the consultants who push them, so often fail to live up to the hype.

While undoubtedly well-intentioned, these consultants forget, of course, about the larger subset of the population that might not appreciate having things done to them, so they’ll dig in their heels and resist any effort to change, sometimes mightily. A better question, perhaps, that those consultants might want to ask of leaders is: How can you ready people for change? And the easy answer to that question is: involve them to the fullest extent that you can.

I don’t have any advice for leaders, formal or informal, just a narrative that you might find useful.
Maintain awareness and be ready to move. This isn’t just a lesson from the SEAL teams; it comes from physics, from a recognition that our physical reality changes and when it does, we have to be ready to move, i.e., change with it. In the tactical world, there was much that we attended to on any given mission, or much that we were mindful of. In the larger scheme of things, though, we were on the lookout for a culminating point — the point at which momentum changed and in so doing signaled that we would have to change with it. If on the offense, for example, it’s the sense (because accurate sensemaking in any environment is paramount) that the situation was changing and that we might have to shift to the defense or even retreat — to beat feet out of Dodge if you will. If on the defense, it’s the sense that it’s time to go on the offense or retreat, and so on.

When is the right time to move or change? No one can tell you that with certainty because context matters. Even best practices have to be modified to fit a new or different context. What works in one environment or context will not necessarily work in a different one. I joke that what worked for me in the SEAL Teams does not work as a husband and father: I’ve tried to give my wife and kids orders, but it doesn’t work. Alas, I seem to be the only one in our house who follows orders — ever the good soldier I am. But even if the space you’re operating in is similar, the times have likely changed. And best practices and standard operating procedures might have to change with it.

I remember early in the war in Afghanistan, we found ourselves toe-to-toe in broad daylight with a group of al Qaeda militants. Sixteen of us, seventeen of them. They had more firepower — AK47s, PKM machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). We had better weapons and, I’d like to think, better training. During that fight, a young teammate yelled at me, “We have to move! We have to move!” And I yelled back, “Just wait!” Understand that we were yelling not because we were angry with one another but because it’s a little hard to hear when seventeen AQ militants are on line firing their machine guns and RPGs, and sixteen SEALs, Combat Controllers, and Para-rescue Jumpers are on line thirty meters away firing their machine guns as well. Suffice it to say, it’s loud.

But why did I yell, “Just wait!”? Because I was making sense — in real-time — of the environment. I was wholly aware of my surroundings, particularly the sights (of the enemy) and the sounds (of the firing of my teammates). Time seemed not to flow so much as trickle. I waited for that culminating point — that point in time where we achieved “fire superiority,” where the militants were forced to hunker down and seek cover, where they transitioned from firing accurately at us to firing wildly. I waited for their fire to be, as we say, ineffective. At that point, and then and only then, could we move.
Maintain awareness and be ready to move.

And when we achieved that fire superiority seconds later in the fight, when the last of our four M60s (a big machine gun we liken to the lead guitar in a firefight) — when that gun kicked in and the AQ militants were no longer able to return accurate fire in our direction, only then did I say, “Flank left.” And flank we did.

Much can be gleaned from this scenario, from this issue-laden narrative. In broad terms, was this fight merely a technical problem, the kind of crisis that could be solved by my experience and expertise and rank? I was the team leader, after all, the senior guy with the most experience (but arguably not the most skill). In other words, was it a problem to be managed? Well, no, not really.

We had practiced that scenario hundreds of times in training (what some would call “fore-sighting” or scenario planning), and after each run, we gathered to discuss what went well, what didn’t go so well, what we learned, and what we might do differently the next time, or if the situation changed just slightly how we might handle it. All of us had a say — each operator had a voice. He had influence and experience and he was expected to use them. Speak up or forever hold your peace. Or don’t speak up and join us as we all do the lemming thing and run over the cliff together.

More importantly, if we made mistakes, we owned up to them and talked about them. We talked about the information we had at the time we made a decision; we talked about our intentions; we talked about how we made sense of the situation, and the decisions we made and the actions we took based on that sensemaking; and we talked about the outcome of those decisions. We learned together. And teams that learn together grow cohesive together.

Could I have treated the fight as a complex problem and invited a diverse set of perspectives before making the decision to move? I can see it now. As the gunfire and rockets erupted around us, I stand up and say, “Hey guys, what do you all think we should do here? Tom, what do you think — should we fix bayonets and charge? Dick, how ‘bout you, what do you think? Harry, don’t hold back, tell us what you’re thinking!” The very thought of this scene playing out makes me chuckle.

The fact is, we are keen to put our problems into nice neat categories — and everything and everyone else for that matter. It’s an assumption that we humans make, that issues (and animals, insects, microscopic organisms, and Democrats and Republicans as well) fit into precise categories. They don’t. Not really. And this basic assumption is second only to another one that we make: that there are boundaries between us. There aren’t, or if there are boundaries, they are semi-permeable at best. Things come and go between us, like diseases. If nothing else, the coronavirus has shown us that.

But how one categorizes the situation we faced that day in Afghanistan doesn’t really matter.
Categorizing is almost a purely academic exercise. We prepared for the scenario, and in the process we invited all those who had a stake in the scenario, in living or dying that is, to give his input, as if it were purely a complex problem requiring diverse perspectives to solve. On the day, however, what really mattered was not how we categorized the problem but that we each had a role to play. For the automatic weapons men — the M60 gunners — theirs was to lay down a base of fire that would dissuade the militants from returning accurate, effective fire in our direction. For the more numerous “riflemen,” those toting semi-automatic M4s, theirs was to fire more slowly but more accurately. And if the M60s went down because they had to reload or because they were jammed, the riflemen would pick up the rate of fire until the 60s got back on line. And we played our roles well, thankfully, or I would not be here to write this.

The point of all this, of laying the groundwork or setting the (initial) conditions if you will, is to seize the momentum, achieve fire superiority, and move the fight toward a culminating point that would allow us to transition from one form of maneuver, the frontal assault, to another, the flank. My role that day was to say it, “Flank left.” That’s it. My part was to effectively intervene when the time was right, when we’d achieved that fire superiority. To be sure, everyone in that team (two teams of eight, actually) knew what call needed to be made, and while they fulfilled their duties, their roles, they waited for that call to come. My young teammate who wanted us to move sooner and said so, he was just a little anxious. Happens to the best of us. But he was also instrumental in us coming out of a poorly conceived engagement unscathed. Needless to say, I’m beholden to him and my other teammates.

Additionally, we were prepared to take on the roles of others that day. If one of the automatic weapons men went down, any one of us could have taken over the operation of the M60. If I went down, any one of us could have assumed my role and made that call to flank. And we were ready to perform other forms of maneuver and make other calls as well — if the situation dictated, that is. In other words, we were flexible. In complexity speak, we had the “requisite variety” to handle any problem the environment and the enemy threw at us.

So, preparation, well-defined roles, a timely intervention, and a degree of flexibility. That was our narrative that day, our own set of initial conditions that allowed us to act out our script per our ability to read the situation, that allowed a successful outcome to emerge.

If it takes a village to raise a child, and it does, it also takes a village to solve a tough problem, whether tame (technical) or wicked (complex). Is the coronavirus a complex problem that will require villages at various levels to solve, to include state and local governments, hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods? Or is it a technical problem that can be solved by following the edicts of our public health experts or well-conceived public health processes — wash your hands, refrain from touching your face, avoid large crowds, if you’re sick stay home, etc.?

The answer is “yes” — to both.

This is a crisis, no doubt, but it’s one that requires us to remain calm — to maintain personal awareness and be ready to move. And to provide our input. If we had intervened in a timelier manner, would we have altered the trajectory of the initial conditions and the positive feedback loop presented by the virus? Yes, it’s likely. Is that in the past? It sure is. One of my favorite narratives, or narrative fragments because it’s not a whole story with a beginning, middle, and end, comes from the world of philosophy — from Judaism, as I recall: Given what you’re given, what will you do next?

That question represents just the right amount of optimism. It doesn’t say, “Given what you’re given, everything will work out great.” That’s an optimism bias, and it’s dangerous. It also doesn’t say that what you’re given is a hoax, so carry on as usual, i.e., remain blissfully unaware and ignorant. It doesn’t mean or suggest either of those sentiments. The narrative suggests that we can do something, that we have the skill and the resources and that there are options. We can’t control the external environment, but we can manage whatever it throws at us. We can take responsibility for our own actions or a lack thereof; we can hold ourselves and others accountable; and together we can own the outcome.

Sometimes the beauty of a complex problem comes, ironically, from the recognition that there is no elegant solution and that we are going to have to muddle through. So the pressure’s off to come up with one. This will be a slog, but we will get back on top, even if only temporarily because this virus is sure to mutate, or a new one is sure to emerge somewhere in the world and make its way around the globe. Maybe we’ll even find a new peak, one humanity hasn’t reached before or hasn’t been back to in a long time. And it will take a village to get there. That’s how we rolled in the SEAL teams I was a part of, that was our narrative. If you were on the mission, then you had a say in how it was executed. Did we defer to experts or those with more knowledge and experience? Every day. But did we challenge the assumptions that experts and formal leaders (and all other humans for that matter) tend to make? Only if we wanted to survive — and not only survive but go on to thrive.

This situation presented by the coronavirus is not the kind of crisis that compels us to put on our robot hats and do only as told, nor is it time to sit on our tatami mats meditating and maintaining absolute, Zen-like calm. It’s somewhere in between, requiring us to heed the advice of our public health professionals and make decisions that affect our own lives — and from the calmest perch we can find. The outcome — for all of us — will not be elegant. We will stumble. We will take steps backward — as individuals and as groups. But we will come through this, changed no doubt, perhaps stronger, maybe even more attentive to what really matters right now.

It’s time to grab your kit (i.e., your fellow villagers who have a diverse set of skills and resources). The mission — to not only survive but thrive — is a go.

¹ From the Guardian, March 11, 2020. Research finds huge impact of interventions spread of COVID-19