A Global Environments Lens on Enacted Extreme Environments: An Appreciation of McLaren (2020)

7/7/20 – 8:00 a.m.: Today’s assigned reading is O’Grady, K. A., & Orton, J. D. (2016). Resilience processes during cosmology episodes: Lessons learned from the Haiti earthquake. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 44(2), 109-123.

Today’s assigned video is the April 1, 2020, lecture on Sense-losing from the previous iteration of the Resilience Leadership Practices during Cosmology Episode Process course (3/23/20-7/4/20).

Today’s meeting place/date/time is Yarnell Hill Staff Ride Location Number 4 (to be determined by Brad Mayhew and Dave Christianson); July 7, 2020; at 8:00 a.m.

Today’s learning objectives are the following:

1. Introduction to Three Sense-losing Resilience Leadership Practices

2. The Capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise and Incubation Periods

3. The Vietnam War as a Foundational Case Study for Threat-Rigidity Research

4. The 2020 C19 Outbreak: The Dangers of In-Groups and Out-Groups

5. 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake – Sense-losing

6. 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake -- Social Entrepreneurship and Bricolage

7. The Birdcage Model of Resilience Leadership

8. An Introduction to Bracketed Triggering Events; Time

9. Time in the Haiti Earthquake

10. Time in the Pediatric Ward Murders

11. Hinges

12. An Introduction to Deference-to-Expertise Leadership; 2011 Roberts Ridge Operation in Afghanistan

13. From “Deference to Expertise” to “Deference-to-Expertise Leadership”

14. An Introduction to Brutal Audits

15. Three Very Important Sense-losing Concepts on Our Way to Improvising and Sense-Remaking

1. Review the literature – as of today – on twelve resilience leadership practices during fifteen cosmology episode processes within the context of twelve regions of the world, e.g. the brand-new article on enacted political environments by Norwegian safety science experts Johansen and Almklov (2019).

1. Three Sense-losing Resilience Leadership Practices; Mixed-Method Cosmology Episode Studies

“Okay, we’ve got our … Daniel’s got his new hiking boots on. Today, we’re going to be … We’ve surpassed 40,000 deaths.” The reading you studied for today was written during Expedition 120 (Winter Publishing) for an April 2015 conference -- in Barcelona, Spain -- of the International Association for Management, Spirituality and Religion (Orton & O'Grady, 2016). The article has a partner article (O'Grady & Orton, 2016) that you have been assigned to read for this afternoon's hike/lecture/seminar/module on Economic Environments. Together, the two articles constitute a mixed-method research methodology blending a qualitative meta-analysis of 164 cosmology episode studies and a microcosmic narrative account of the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake -- following what we believe is a "best practice" in cosmology episodes, best demonstrated by Kathleen Carley and her colleagues' qualitative meta-analysis of 80 industrial accidents and a computer simulation study of the accidental downing by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian airliner (Ismail, Carley, ... (2006).

2. The Capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise; Twelve Enacted Extreme Environments

"Christophe Roux-Dufort talks about how the triggering event is not actually the beginning of the crisis, but when the crisis spins out of control. It’s when we begin to notice it. Tying in to that idea of a brutal audit." In the video you studied from Introductory Spring 2020 Expedition 140, we focused attention on a very small piece of the Haiti mixed-method project from 2015: the three paragraphs labeled "Sense-losing." Sense-losing is an interruption to normal operations (Anticipating) and the beginning of what we refer to as three groups of "inside-the-boom" cosmology episode processes (Sense-losing, Improvising, Sense-remaking) that must be managed well in order to return human beings to normal operations (Renewing). However, before we can get you up to speed on sense-losing, we must get you up to speed on the twelve enacted extreme environments -- historical, political, global, economic (HPGE); volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, interdependent (VUCA); and interdependent, leverageable, wicked, and extreme (ILWE).

3. The Vietnam War as a Foundational Case Study; the 20 February 2016 Cyclone Winston in Fiji

"Also, what comes to mind for me today is how. Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton (1981) talked about how our interaction with our environment can actually make it worse. They draw upon a lot of neurological research to do that. So they’re describing how physiologically our brains will move into fight-or-flight fearful mode. When a threat happens, that’s natural. Be alert. However, there are some things that can happen for us when our bodies move into the threat mode. We reduce the part of our brain that is responsible for considering options." Our virtual guest lecturer for today is Matthew McLaren, who should be able to give us a crash course this morning on Global Environments, based on his new cosmology episode study on the 20 February 2016 Cyclone Winston landfall in Fiji -- which we hope to see published soon in an elite U.S.-based management journal. In next week's course, we will differentiate among twelve arenas in which cosmology episodes have been studied: collapses, fires, wrecks, capsizings, crashes, accidents, explosions, leaks, errors, outbreaks, shootings, and abuses. Where would you put Winston in that typology? Large-scale natural disasters -- especially earthquakes such as the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake -- can often be studied through a "collapses" lens -- in a macro-view of collapses and in a micro-view of collapses. The macro-view of a collapse is a societal collapse (Diamond, 2005) -- we saw in the Haiti earthquake that many government leaders were killed in the earthquake, making a national governmental response to the earthquake difficult. Furthermore, as Diamond's (2005) chapter comparing the Haiti side of Hispaniola island with the Dominican Republic side makes clear, a large-scale natural disaster -- landing on top of previous layers of societal challenges -- can be a very large straw on the back of a very weak camel. The micro-view of a collapse also applies to earthquakes, since the specific deaths they create are often caused by building collapses, bridge collapses, dam collapses, and mine collapses. Some of you, though, might be able to make a case -- and we hope you will! -- that Winston and other types of water-based natural disasters should be seen as meso-level capsizings. So with all that in mind, we look forward to meeting Dr. McLaren, who earned his doctoral degree at the University of New South Wales in 2018.

4. The 2020 C19 Outbreak; A Dataset of International Humanitarian Disasters

"There’s some really interesting research that talks about how when we feel in threat we’re more likely to pay attention to our in-group, outgroup. That is one of the ways that the threat-rigidity cycle could encompass us. So we could end up saying, in this time, “This is scary. Who’s the enemy. Who’s my people.” The entire globe. We’re all part of this. One loss in China is the same as a loss in Italy is the same as a loss in the U.S. So what do we do about it?" One of the questions we have for Dr. McLaren is "What are the top twelve cosmology episode studies that he relied on in his literature review?" In preparing for today's hike/lecture/seminar/module, we made a list of some of them: the 1995-1999 volcanic activity in Monserrat in the Caribbean; the 1999 Maranmar earthquake in Turkey; the 2001 terrorist attacks within the United States; the 2010 Chilean earthquake; and the 2011 Fukushima earthquake/tsunami/nuclear incident in Japan. In this Summer 2020 Advanced Expedition 142 -- from Canada to Mexico -- we are continuing to focus our attention on the C19 outbreak and the George Floyd uprising we studied in Spring 2020 Introductory Expedition 141 -- from Mexico to Canada -- but pivoting hard back to the roots of cosmology episode studies by incorporating C19 social distancing practices into embodied ethnographies of the Mann Gulch, South Canyon, and Yarnell Hill cosmology episodes. We need Dr. McLaren's help to build a massive data set of global cosmology episode studies to complement our rising focus on Western-U.S. wildland firefighting cosmology episode studies.

5. 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake; Three Waves of Sense-losing

"This reminds me of a time. There was a priest there. He was very . . . he was heavy. He was still weighed down three years later because of a story that continued to ruminate in his mind. Trapped in a bus that was crushed by the earthquake. In the same bus, was a Brazilian who was a daughter of a dignitary. She died, instantly. However, the seminarian said that, when the United Nations came to rescue them, he felt a sense of relief. They left his friend, who was still alive, but struggling for life, trapped in the bus, and only helped out the Brazilian, who was dead. And he kept saying, “Why would we rescue a dead person and leave the alive person?” That’s an example of when teams become more important than life." A second question we want to ask Dr. McLaren is how his study of Winston in Fiji illuminates several waves of sense-losing during a cosmology episode. We have seen in the 26 January 1986 Challenger cosmology episode study (Roger Boisjoly) and the 11 September 2001 airplane attacks (Richard Clarke) that people who deeply believe that a catastrophe is about to occur exhibit characteristics of sense-losing before the tangible manifestations of the catastrophe are visible to others. In our studies of the 12 May 2008 Sichuan earthquake; the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake; the 9 August 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri; and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that people who are present during collapses, shootings, and abuses can provide rich retrospective accounts of their sense-losing processes. Because, though, Dr. McLaren's focus was on international disaster management teams coming to Fiji in the days after the discrete event of 175-mile-per-hour winds made landfall in 20 February 2016, he may have good data -- from his literature review of similar cases and from the Winston case -- on "off-shore" sense-losing (when people removed from the event geographically learn about the event through diverse communication technologies). This is an important component of a research project we conducted in Publishing Expedition 132 Winter 2018 on the 14 July 2014 shootdown of MH-17 over eastern Ukraine; the Amsterdam-based disaster responders described their activities between hearing about the disaster and arriving at the disaster site. Dr. McLaren might be able to help us understand the dynamics of these three waves of sense-losing as different groups of people become actors in cosmology episode dramas.

6. 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake; The Links between Twelve Enacted Extreme Environments and Twelve Resilience Leadership Practices

"He realized that if he was, over time, make a difference. Innovative ways to reduce the likelihood Williams and Shepherd (2016).  Let me turn the time over to Dr. Orton to talk a little bit more about resilience leadership." A third question we can ask Dr. McLaren is how he sorts out the required Resilience Leadership Practices necessary to manage international humanitarian disasters. Because the term "cosmology episode" was coined in an elite U.S. business school (Weick, 1985), it carries with it deep roots in management theory. In 2006, we made a conscious decision to leave that research environment (and its often self-serving, self-fulfilling, and self-destructive presumptions about human opportunism as a stronger force than human altruism) to focus on real-world cosmology episode studies -- e.g. the U.S. Government's efforts at national security management reform in response to the 9/11 attacks within the U.S. (Project on National Security Reform, 2018). We found great altruism, comfort, and diversity of thought in the transdisciplinary social science community outside elite U.S. business schools. On the downside, though, we found an outdated, simplistic, and overly-individual-focused understanding of leadership theory (Selznick, 1957). Our solution to this problem has been to incorporate twelve management theory doctoral seminars into cosmology episode studies -- each linked to a specific enacted extreme environment: historical-leadership, political-structures, global-cultures, economic-strategies, volatile-change, unpredictable-decisions, complex-learning, ambiguous-sensemaking, interdependent-collaboration, leverageble-strategizing, wicked-improvisation, and extreme-resilience. We would be interested to learn how the humanitarian disaster community guarantees that their Resilience Leadership Practices are operating at the same level, or higher level, as other multinational executives. What are the top twelve "buckets" of cosmology episode leadership knowledge in the international humanitarian disaster management community?

7. The Birdcage Model of Resilience Leadership; Strategy, Leadership, Change, Structure, Culture

"So, remember, we’re creating from the first five Resilience Leadership Practices, we’re creating a sort of birdcage, where we jump and change the sequencing. Strategy. Leadership. Change. Structure. Culture."

8. An Introduction to Bracketed Triggering Events; A Review of the Time, Temporality, and Time Travel Approaches within the New Journal of Management Studies Organizational Sensemaking Special Issue

"If we take a look at this idea of triggering events, there’s a whole Perceived time versus objective time,"

9. Time in the Haiti Earthquake

"in which in some instances, the Haitian earthquake for example, It becomes very clear that a catastrophe is taking place." 

10. Time in the Pediatric Ward Murders

"We always talk about this interesting article by Andrew Brown. Medical murder mystery. Iatrogenic to the extreme. “Iatrogenice” is when physicians create disease, unintentionally, of course. In this case, a nurse was murdering patients in a pediatric realm, institution."

11. Hinges

"So the question is How quickly can we become aware. There’s a lot going on there on triggering events."

12. 2011 Roberts Ridge Operation in Afghanistan

"As leaders become aware that a triggering event has taken place the natural tendency might be to centralize control, in other words, to become more in charge. Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Die to Die. Locally. As the body count started to go up, control over the catastrophe started to shift away. The military has an expression, the 10,000-mile screwdriver. Let decision authority migrate toward the catastrophe."

13. From “Deference to Expertise” to “Deference-to-Expertise Leadership”

"Dr. Weick and Dr. Sutcliffe labeled it “deference to expertise,” drawing on high reliability organization work available in the 1990s. If we marry it with an entire field of leadership research. Deference-to-Expertise Leadership. Then we start pushing into a resilience leadership model in which we allow the situation to move into a vicious cycle, but pushing resources to the capillaries of the organization so that they can improvise at the local level."

14. An Introduction to Brutal Honest Appraisals

"One thing we’ll be talking more about tomorrow, when we talk about improvising. Patrick Lagadec – which Dr. Weick and Dr. Sutcliffe moved into the U.S. research community. Sometimes, we might say, well, calling it a brutal audit might make it even more brutal, so you might think about how to reframe."

15. Three Very Important Sense-losing Concepts on Our Way to Improvising and Sense-Remaking

"So those are three very important concepts. Triggering Events, Deference-to-Expertise, and moving us toward Brutal Audits. Subsequent lectures."