Perils of One-Way Thinking

                                              

Napoleon's Disastrous 1812 Russian Campaign

                                                   Click to Enlarge                                                       


Each semester, my friend, who teaches business statistics, brings a framed copy of this illustration*-- devoted to Napoleon's disastrous 1812 Moscow campaign--to class. He uses it to demonstrate how in a single graphic, you can elegantly and intuitively illustrate a narrative’s multiple streams of information.  I value the graphic above all for its depiction of an error in judgment that, I think, holds its own with such cognitive and social biases as excessive anchoring, overweighing data because of their availability, and Groupthink. 

That would be our more than occasional tendency—like Napoleon and his armies in Russia—to become so fixated on a goal that we fail to plan adequately for the return to our starting point. Or, in a variant, neglecting our home base while we’re en route to such a goal.  Both are examples of tunnel vision--a rendez-vous with obsessive one-way linearity.

Dogs of War. In the fall of 1812 Napoleon and his Grande Armée failed to achieve his strategic goal of taking Moscow and much of Russia. Perhaps worse, his strategy treated the return trip in late autumn as an afterthought. His  inadequately provisioned army paid the price, with many of them dying on the vine in their slog back to Western Europe and France. (For added poignancy, listen to Mark Knopfler's "I'm Done with Bonaparte" here.)

Flash forward to 2003, in Desert Storm II when G.W. Bush and his brain trust methodically secured Baghdad but stayed mired in Iraq for years. He should have taken a page from his father’s version of  Desert Storm, with its clearly defined and executed exit strategy.

How again do I get down?

Surviving and Thriving.  In Deep Survival, Lawrence Gonzales notes how mountain climbers get into trouble by hyperfocusing on the  ascent and reaching the summit. Treating the descent as an afterthought can prove fatal. Just as critical, warns Gonzales,  hikers need to  have alternative strategies on tap when poor visibility, adverse weather, and other natural forces scramble their mental maps.

In the business school where I work, alumni visitors to the classroom frequently sell students on the value of temporary overseas job placements. By and large, they are touted as sacrosanct. But in a recent installment of the Economist’s Schumpeter column, Adrian Wooldridge cautioned that many managers who excel in overseas postings ultimately lose ground to managers who stay home, sowing oats of corporate upward mobility. Managers who accept overseas assignments, then, need strong mentor/advocates and guaranteed opportunities waiting for them when they return.

Leaving Breadcrumbs.  In planning and execution, then, strategists and project managers should plan systematically for happy endings. Due diligence is a must; breadcrumbs won't do. 

*from Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information 

Amherst, Massachusetts Contemplates Moral Hazard

Moral Hazard at Reichenbach Falls

Two weeks ago, firefighters from Amherst and surrounding communities rescued 22-year-old Scott Merrick, who had fallen 25 feet from the top of Bare Mountain in the Notch, a popular hiking venue in the Mount Holyoke Range State Park. Merrick’s mishap occurred late at night when he ascended the hill alone, following a dispute with his girlfriend at the bottom.  The rescue involved 35 firefighters, including members of the department’s technical rescue team, who responded at 11:30 p.m. to the girlfriend’s call. They wrapped things up at 3:30 a.m. Merrick, who sustained minor injuries, left the hill on a stretcher and was transportated by ambulance to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. The cost of his rescue: around $10,000.

Charging Merrick for the rescue “is not something I’m actively pursuing at all, Amherst Town Manager John Musante told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “Implementing a fee-for-service component—does that have the unintended disincentive for people to call for help when they most need it?” With that said, Musante, who is admired both for his financial acumen and kind-heartedness, may have been primed for his response: he recently spent several months out of circulation after falling  in September while walking his dog.

Still, $10,000 is no bag of shells. A year ago, State Representative Stephen Kulik, a liberal democrat from Worthington, Massachusetts, introduced a bill (H.650) that would allow municipal and state governments to recoup emergency response costs attributable to reckless or intentional behavior. Many of the communities that Kulik represents have more vertical topography than Amherst; they also have tighter resources, making costs tougher to absorb.

A light at the end of the spelunk

But when there's clear negligence, why should the towns foot the entire bill? Consider the 12-hour rescue in 2010, for example,  by Amherst  responders of 25-year old Maya Hersh from a cave in the hills of nearby Leverett. Ms. Hersh got stuck in a cave's narrow orifice. To her discredit, she confessed to having been  stuck and unstuck there before (the first time without emergency assistance).

Whether Kulik's bill becomes law or not, Scott and Maya would do well to read Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival.

In Survival, the author warns that overconfidence nurtured in the low-risk milieu of home and culture can get us into unforgiving trouble in nature. With dire results, climbers often over-weigh the challenges and goals of ascent while treating descent as an afterthought. Experienced hikers get disoriented in the woods when poor visibility, adverse weather, and other natural forces scramble their mental maps. Skiers  who venture just off the path at ski resorts may encounter frictionless slopes and unstable geology. And unwary swimmers at some of Hawaii's beautiful beaches are just a rip tide away from their final aquatic adventure.

In recent posts, this blog has examined the dangers of other wishful perceptions:  viewing interspecies liaisons as central casting in a peaceable kingdom and experiencing what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls amnesiac vacations.  Happily, we can all learn from Scott and Maya's picaresque adventures. One question  does, however, cry out: Given the lightening learning curves and voracious networking skills of this blog's readers, do we still need a Kulik bill to become a Massachusetts law?