The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 4

and landing crafts. It revealed the issues that can occur when operational intent – a key aspect of

Auftragstaktik – is undermined by individual pursuit for glory and dislike for each other’s rank and

status. Such autonomy may well pay off, yet the risk of operating in isolation of each other may also

open gaps, to be exploited by an enemy with incalculable consequences.

Although disengagement from the ‘bigger picture’ played a role in Halsey’s decision to ‘open the

door’ to Kurita’s battle group, the complexity of communications also impeded effective application of

the concept of Auftragstaktik . In an environment where time is of the essence, relaying

communications at Leyte took up to two hours, despite wireless technology. It is no surprise that

information was obsolete. And, because of the egocentric behaviour of key decision makers,

information was (ab)used to obscure or embellish the truth.

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Just Culture instead of Blame or Learning Culture

Conveying and communicating an intent goes hand in hand with providing an appropriate

culture in which it can flourish. A Blame culture is one that is driven by individualistic

accountability; it entails attributing the root cause of a problem to whichever individual is

associated with not having prevented the root cause from cascading into a problem. The

outcome is to retrain or to discipline the individual.

The attribution of a problem to an individual tends to be associated with ‘fear’, an

unpleasant emotion that drives people to be vigilant. Nevertheless, such perceived

unpleasantness undermines the very essence of an intent; to prepare and ready the

collective to the inconvenience of errors. Instead, it drives centralised attribution of blame,

and thus centralised management of problems.

The opposite extreme to a Blame culture is a Learning culture. Problems are seen as an

opportunity to acquire more knowledge and experience for dealing with future problems.

There is encouragement for problems to be shared openly, and actors do not face any

repercussions, even if these problems and errors can be associated with them. The

downside of such an approach is ‘absolution’, freeing one from guilt and any form of

accountability. On the upside, in the ‘heat of the battle’, little time is given to defining

attribution of blame, so greater attention and space can be given to finding solutions for

dealing with the problem at hand.

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