Surprise and Ukraine
Why do things take us by surprise? Why are we blind-sided? Sometimes it’s randomness. Sometime it’s incomplete information. Sometimes it’s ignorance (wilful or otherwise). Sometimes things surprise us because they weren’t on our radar in the first place. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, surprise means “an unexpected event”. Merriam-Webster’s definition of surprise is more blunt: “an attack made without warning”. And this brings us to Ukraine.
Many people expressed surprise when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Phrases to this effect have permeated conversations on the internet and in person. “I can’t believe this is happening.” “I never imagined this could happen.” Let alone “in Europe” and “in 2022”. All said, of course, against the backdrop of the ongoing invasion.
How do you reduce the likelihood of surprise and minimise the chance of being blind-sided by disaster? The maxim ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst’ seems apt. To plan for the worst, you need at least two things. First, you need enough imagination, experience, judgement, and understanding to identify the kinds of events and situations that could plausibly happen. Second, you need to assess the likelihood of each situation becoming real. This assessment will change over time as the underlying factors shift around.
In the business world, one tool that helps ‘plan for the worst’ is the pre-mortem. A pre-mortem focuses on trying to figure out all the reasons why something might go wrong, to help reduce the likelihood that it will. As Gary Klein explained in the Harvard Business Review:
A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient’s death. Everyone benefits except, of course, the patient. A premortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members’ task is to generate plausible reasons for the project’s failure.
How does a pre-mortem work in practical terms? Klein goes on:
The leader starts the exercise by informing everyone that the project has failed spectacularly. Over the next few minutes those in the room independently write down every reason they can think of for the failure — especially the kinds of things they ordinarily wouldn’t mention as potential problems, for fear of being impolitic.
The pre-mortem is a scenario-based method for risk management. While scenario-planning usually aims to generate a range of plausible scenarios, the pre-mortem assumes a single worst-case scenario — a failed project, a failed product launch, an invasion — has already occurred, and then aims to figure out the reasons why.
Should the invasion of Ukraine have been a surprise? Was it — as per the Merriam-Webster definition or surprise — “an attack made without warning”? In hindsight, probably not. It looks like the warning indicators were there: the amassing of huge numbers of Russian troops and materiel at the border; the military training exercises; the increase in cyber attacks; the flurry of diplomatic activity; the pessimistic tones of media reporting; and so on. Looking back, you might say the signs were pointing in one direction.
So for the invasion to have still been a surprise, at least one of the following conditions would probably need to be true:
- Invasion was not considered a plausible scenario.
- Invasion was considered a plausible scenario. But the right indicators and warning signs were not identified.
- Invasion was considered a plausible scenario, and the right indicators and warning sights were identified. But they didn’t get enough attention.
To be surprised is unsurprising. We miss things even when they are right in front of us. This often happens when we think we already have things figured out, and then we refuse to update our views over time. Anchoring bias and confirmation bias both play a role here. In Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Richards Heuer refers to “one of the most fundamental principles concerning perception: We tend to perceive what we expect to perceive.”
If you uncritically convince yourself that something absolutely couldn’t happen, you are already on the back foot. And if creative imagination and proper attention to changing circumstances both fail to manifest, you are primed to be blind-sided when the unthinkable actually happens. Hope for the best, imagine the worst, and pay attention.
tobyfenton.com
