A few years ago Harvard Business Review featured an article by Michael Watkins, based on a book he co-authored with Max H. Bazerman on Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming. It is imperative that we look at the ‘predictable surprises’ facing local government. Watkins points to many examples where disasters, mistakes and problems could have been avoided.

He cites three key areas for leaders to monitor:

Did you recognise the threat?

Can your middle managers implement the changes you want?

How will staff react to redundancies or change?

Will all the politicians support the hard decisions?

Have we got the skills and new ways of thinking to deliver Total Place?

We did some scenario planning around community cohesion with the leaders in one council. We asked: What happens if there is an India-Pakistan war (possibly nuclear)? Worried looks on everyone’s face, “Goodness, that would have a devastating impact and we have not thought about it at all.” It’s a good example of a predictable surprise!

Did the leader prioritise appropriately?

Every local government leader is under tremendous time pressure. Leaders will be judged by their ability to balance the strategic and the operational – and their capacity to initiate new ways of working.

Is sufficient thought and time given to reducing the likelihood and impact of disaster?

How did the leader react?

Disasters do happen – are you ready?

Are you confident you can engage people to respond quickly and effectively?

Has your organisation got the capacity to stop a disaster from becoming a catastrophe?

Watkins rightly delivers this sombre message:

“If a damaging event happens that was foreseeable and preventable, no excuses should be brooked. The leader’s feet need to be held to the fire.”

How do you avoid the smell of burning toes? A few items from our leadership ‘checklist’ might help:

• Is there a danger of your being over-reliant on intuition? How do you ensure predictable surprises are rigorously reviewed?
• Is there a danger that you ignore the power of short term pain when you focus on long term gain? Psychological research shows immediate, certain negative consequences are a key driver of behaviour. In other words, short term pain mobilises people into action – whatever the longer term benefits may be.
• Does your organisation listen well? Will concerns, key pieces of information and fresh ideas reach the leadership team? If you are seen as a leader who goes his/her own way, or discourages bad news, you may be the last to know when a disaster looms.
• How effective is your risk management? Is it a mechanistic tick box exercise or will you be able to spot that Manager A is likely to handle change badly, or Department B is going to resist even the smallest change? Where might unexpected cost issues come from?
• How aligned are your leaders?  Silo working, too narrow a focus on targets and territorial behaviours can all stop ‘upstream thinking’, innovation and more effective working. Whose behav-iour can limit your capacity to succeed? Who is your predictable surprise?
  

In times of turbulent change, leaders will be judged more harshly and more quickly than in ‘normal times’.
Keeping a delicate eye on the predictable surprises is an important tactic to both survive and thrive in demanding times.

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