As the day closed on September 11 2001, we began the process of "doing what we know"- we had been attacked – strangely suprising to some in other lands, Americans strike back hard when treaded upon – so we went to war in the way we know how.  The events of September 11, 2001 were of such magnitude, shock and so far outside the norm of how we perceived warfare, and our whole intelligence process was so much still Cold War mind set, we didn't "know what to do" ...really. We attacked, we fought, we used B-52s and smart bombs with special forces guys doing the targeting and riding with Afghans on horses. We learned, but we were still doing what we know not knowing what to do. 

After the invasion of Iraq, that became apparent - who exactly were we fighting, how many groups, were they connected?  We learned, the hard way. Army General Petraeus and Marine General Mattis rewrote the counterinsurgency manual – many had long fought even using the term insurgency. Americans fought, Americans died, some learned.  But it has been a tough think.  What kind of war have we been fighting: guerrilla warfare, non conventional, unconventional, fourth generation, irregular?  Is the answer counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, what? The debate on whether what applied in Iraq applies in Afghanistan still ebbs and flows – below the surface for most Americans.

It's gets hard when the protagonist stop wearing blue and red uniforms to understand the true nature of warfare.  Yet, old principles still abide, Clausewitz's trinity does indeed still hold:

1. primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; 


2. the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; 


3. element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason...." 

(This set of elements is usually labeled "emotion/chance/reason"; sometimes "violence/chance & probability/rational calculation"; or, even more abstractly, "irrationality/nonrationality/rationality.")

Like most Americans over the past week I've searched the blogs, read the opinion pieces, the stories of the folks most directly involved, watched hours of commentators and ceremonies and dedications. I've searched and struggled to find words for this blog, given the focus on decision making in severe crisis.

Below are three articles and links to the originals that surround the idea of learning and focusing so that we as a people – top to bottom – can know what to do.  They are well worth your time.

One introductory comment, then the rest stand on their own needing no help from me. The first article is about Rick Rescorla.  His story has been featured here before.  (See  Sheepdog of Morgan Stanley) He may be the only person who knew what to do on September 11 2001. Learning from the first WTC attack, he prepared those at Morgan Stanley for what he was sure would be another attack. Ignoring Port Authority notice to remain in place after the attacks, he evacuated Morgan Stanley employees. Were it not for him, the losses at the twin towers would have been not 2800 but 5300.

Knowing what to do is possible – it takes constant learning and the will to stay the course. Day is done, what next?

Rick Rescorla, Hero: Vietnam to 9/11

Boundary Condition #4 (3)

The Observe Orient Decide Act decision making process,  or as it is commonly known, OODA Loop, was evolved over time by John Boyd in search of improvements in capability in the highly competitive environment of war. Over time many have come to see the worth of the OODA process as instructive in any competitive environment.  Indeed Boyd's last work summarized his thinking in stating "without OODA loops… and without the ability to get inside other OODA Loops (or environments) we will find it impossible to comprehend, shape, adapt to, and in turn be shaped by an unfolding, evolving reality that is uncertain, ever changing, unpredictable."  Many consider Boyd and the "loop" in only the context of having a faster loop than the competitor. But the real value is found in the realization that the OODA loop in its complete form is really a process of learning – a way of search, analysis, synthesis, and aquistion of actionable understanding.  As such it is offered here as a crucial element when considering a culture of preparedness and the make up of resilient communities.

The video below was developed for youth soccer coaches based on the OODA process. I think you will find the method of presentation enlightening. You should be able to navigate to all 17 currently available segments.  Each lasts 2-3 minutes.

Boundary Condition #1 (4)

UPDATE 16 March: See the comments below from PWH's contributors and advisors

One significant element of an unconventional crisis as compared to other large catastrophes is the complex maps of actors – Catastrophic crises systematically involve an enormous variety of stakeholders, on an international scale.

Pictures from Japan: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/03/world/hires.japan.quake/index.h tml?hpt=T1

Preparation? Readiness? Thinking the unthinkable?

Initial earthquake damage, then explosions and massive fire, then 30 feet of water, then flooding., nuclear meltdown, massive radiation in the atmosphere. Where does response start, where is the forward edge of battle, where is the center of gravity? How does leadership define and shape this "battlespace?"

 This most applies does it not? Unconventional Crisis: Parameters

Comments below reflect e-mail discussion that resulted from the recent announcement of the PWH blog Round #2 of the 2011 Boundary Conditions. They address  "unconventional crisis" in context of the catastrophic events ongoing in Japan:

Boundary Condition #2 (3)

A work in progress: With this post we conclude the second round of discussion on our 2011 boundary conditions.  Before reading Part 2, a few thoughts:

Of no surprise should be the issue of training as a key to operating successfully in unstable or high stress, high impact situations.  But what is emerging is the degree to which it is not just training to task no matter how detailed or how continuous, but apparently training combined with learning so as to teach recognition and perception skills i.e., how to recognize the edges of the envelop almost before those edges are actually defined.  Out of the Boyd discussion – smart Observation and then Orientation.

Recall Dr. Chet Richards question from the end of the "Synthesis" discussion closing the Washington article:  "What kind of organizations operate at rapid OODA loop tempo? Organizations whose leaders have, over time, imbued certain qualities into the fiber of their very being, with these four qualities:

• Superb competence, leading to a Zen-like state of intuitive understanding. Ability to sense when the time is ripe for action.


• Common outlook towards problems. Superb competence and intuitive understanding at the organizational level.


• Concept that answers the question, "What do I do next?" in ambiguous situations


• Understood and agreed to accountability

Now reflect on some extracts from the comments:

• In order to prepare responders for this it takes training that involves blending cognitive abilities with the physical action taking, working all stages of the Boyd Cycle


• The relative speed of accurate perception (orientation) and decision to action is key.  Achieving success in this dynamic relies on training/education, exercising, red teaming (or adaptive red teaming/alternative analysis during preparatory phases — pre-incident —and actual response — trans-/post-incident).


• One of the deficiencies in current incident command training is how to "orient" yourself to the situation. Responding to an unfolding event is totally different than commanding a planned event.


• Problems in recognition: First, some responders develop their SA once and then do not re-observe until things get bad or a sudden change occurs on the incident. Second, Orientation often stays confined to where a responder starts at an incident. Some also freeze their orientation to a specific point in time as they make decisions, usually their first encounter at the scene.


• A main concept in the HRO work is that if you train people, have them understand the true risk of the work they are doing, and keep them stimulated they can both become experts in their areas and be able to recognize when events fall outside of the usual pattern (unconventional crisis). With this recognition they can utilize their training to develop creative response approaches. But it is key that they are able to know with certainty that a crisis is unconventional so that they do not make errors regarding their response.


• Preparedness is motivated by the perception of the threat. That is why car insurance is more expensive for 20 year olds than. 50 year olds. Young men perceive the threat differently, and have less motivation to be prepared, or to avoid thresholds likely to cause problems.  Carrier flight deck accidents occur with sufficient regularity to keep perceptions of the threat high. Katrina-type storms don't.

Consider these points as you continue  reading Part 2 of the research work on high reliability organizations.  How much then applies to unconventional crisis as defined? Are the narratives of George Washington's leadership and carrier aviation instructive in that context?  Does OODA as an analysis tool lead to learning?

Self-Design and Self-Replication

Today's aircraft carrier flight operations are as much a product of their history and continuity of operation as of their design. The complexity of operations aboard a large, modern carrier flying the latest aircraft is so great that no one, on or off the ship, can know the content and sequence of every task needed to make sure the aircraft fly safely, reliably, and on schedule. As with many organizations of similar size and complexity, tasks are broken down internally into smaller and more homogeneous units as well as task-oriented work groups…

In order to keep this network alive and coordinated, it must be kept connected and integrated horizontally (e.g., across squadrons), vertically (from maintenance and fuel up through operations), and across command structures (battle group—ship—air wing). As in all large organizations, the responsible officer or chief petty officer has to know what to do in each case, how to get it done, whom to report to and why, and how to coordinate with all units that he depends upon or that depend upon him. This is complicated in the Navy case by the requirement for many personnel, particularly the more senior officers, to interact on a regular basis with those from several separate organizational hierarchies. Each has several different roles to play depending upon which of the structures is in effect at any given time.

Furthermore, these organizational structures also shift in time to adapt to varying circumstances. The evolution of the separate units (e.g., ship, air wing, command structures) and their integration during workup into a fully coordinated operational team, for example, have few, if any, applicable counterparts in civilian organizations.

 There is also no civilian counterpart for the requirement to adapt to rapid shifts in role and authority in response to changing tactical circumstances during deployment.

No armchair designer, even one with extensive carrier service, could sit down and lay out all the relationships and interdependencies, let alone the criticality and time sequence of all the individual tasks. Both tasks and coordination have evolved through the incremental accumulation of experience to the point where there probably is no single person in the Navy who is familiar with them all. …

For a variety of reasons, no two aircraft carriers, even of the same class, are quite alike. ..What is more, even the same formal assignment will vary according to time and place. Carriers differ; missions differ; requirements differ from Atlantic to Pacific, and from fleet to fleet; ships have different histories and traditions, and different equipment; and commanding officers and admirals retain the discretion to run their ships and groups in different ways and to emphasize different aspects. Increased standardization of carriers, aircraft loadings, missions, tasks, and organizational structure would be difficult to obtain, and perhaps not even wise.  There is a great deal to learn in the Navy, and much of it is only available on the spot.

Shore-based school training for officers and crew provides only basic instruction.  It includes a great deal about what needs to be done and the formal rules for doing it. Yet it only provides generalized guidelines and a standardized framework to smooth the transition to the real job of performing the same tasks on board as part of a complex system. NATOPS and other written guidelines represent the book of historical errors. They provide boundaries to prevent certain actions known to have adverse outcomes, but little guidance as to how to promote optimal ones.

Operations manuals are full of details of specific tasks at the micro level but rarely discuss integration into the whole. There are other written rules and procedures, from training manuals through standard operating procedures (SOPs), that describe and standardize the process of integration. None of them explain how to make the whole system operate smoothly, let alone at the level of performance that we have observed.  It is in the real-world environment of workups and deployment, through the continual training and retraining of officers and crew, that the information needed for safe and efficient operation is developed, transmitted, and maintained. Without that continuity, and without sufficient operational time at sea, both effectiveness and safety would suffer.

Moreover, the organization is not stable over time. Every forty months or so there is an almost 100 percent turnover of crew, and all of the officers will have rotated through and gone on to other duty. Yet the ship remains functional at a high level. …

Behavioral and cultural norms, SOPs, and regulations are necessary, but they are far from sufficient to preserve operational structure and the character of the service. Our research team noted three mechanisms that act to maintain and transmit operational factors in the face of rapid turnover.

First, and in some ways most important, is the pool of chief petty officers, many of whom have long service in their specialty and circulate around similar ships in the fleet.

Second, many of the officers and some of the crew will have at some time served on other carriers, albeit in other jobs, and bring to the ship some of the shared experience of the entire force.

Third, the process of continual rotation and replacement, even while on deployment, maintains a continuity that is broken only during a major refit. These mechanisms are realized by an uninterrupted process of on-board training and retraining that makes the ship one huge, continuing school for its officers and men.

The Paradox of High Turnover

"As soon as you learn 90% of your job, it's time to move on. That's the Navy way." Junior officer

Because of the high turnover rate, a U.S. aircraft carrier will begin its workup with a large percentage of new hands in the crew, and with a high proportion of officers new to the ship. The U.S. Navy's tradition of training generalist officers (which distinguishes it from the other military services) assures that many of them will also be new to their specific jobs. Furthermore, tours of duty are not coordinated with ship sailing schedules; hence, the continual replacement of experienced with "green" personnel, in critical as well as routine jobs, continues even during periods of actual deployment.

Continual rotation creates the potential for confusion and uncertainty, even in relatively standardized military organizations. …

It takes time and effort to turn a collection of men, even men with the common training and common background of a tightly knit peacetime military service, into a smoothly functioning operations and management team. SOPs and other formal rules help, but the organization must learn to function with minimal dependence upon team stability and personal factors…

Yet we credit this practice with contributing greatly to the effectiveness of naval organizations. There are two general reasons for this paradox.

First, the efforts that must be made to ease the resulting strain on the organization seem to have positive effects that go beyond the problem they directly address.

Second, officers must develop authority and command respect from those senior enlisted specialists upon whom they depend and from whom they must learn the specifics of task performance.

The Navy's training cycle is perforce dictated by the schedule of its ships, not of its personnel. Because of high social costs of long sea-duty tours, the Navy has long had to deal with such continual turnover—it attempts as best it can to mitigate the negative effects. Most important is the institutionalization of continual, cyclic training as part of organizational and individual expectations. This is designed to bring new people "up to speed" with the current phase of the operational cycle, thus stabilizing the environment just before and during deployment; however, this is accomplished at the cost of pushing the turbulence down into individual units. Although the deployment cycle clearly distinguishes periods of "training" from those of "operations," it is a measure of competence and emphasis, not of procedural substance that applies primarily to the ship as a unit, not its men as individuals.

The result is a relatively open system that exploits the process of training and retraining as a means for socialization and acculturation. At any given moment, all but the most junior of the officers and crew are acting as teacher as well as trainee. …

As a result, the ship appears to us as one gigantic school, not in the sense of rote learning, but in the positive sense of a genuine search for acquisition and improvement of skills. One of the great enemies of high reliability is the usual "civilian" combination of stability, routinization, and lack of challenge and variety that predispose an organization to relax vigilance and sink into a dangerous complacency that can lead to carelessness and error.  

The shipboard environment on a carrier is never that stable. Traditional ways of doing things are both accepted and constantly challenged. Young officers rotate in with new ideas and approaches; old chiefs remain aboard to argue for tradition and experience. The resulting dynamic can be the source of some confusion and uncertainty at times, but at its best leads to a constant scrutiny and re-scrutiny of every detail, even for SOPs.

In general, the Navy has managed to change the rapid personnel turnover to an advantage through a number of mechanisms that have evolved by trial and error. SOPs and procedures, for example, are often unusually robust, which in turn contributes another increment to reliability. The continual movement of people rapidly diffuses organizational and technical innovation as well as "lessons learned," often in the form of "sea stories," throughout the organization. Technical innovation is eagerly sought where it will clearly increase both reliability and effectiveness, yet resisted when suggested purely for its own sake. …

Authority Overlays

"Here I'm responsible for the lives of my gang. In civilian life, I'm the kind of guy you wouldn't like to meet on a dark street.—Deck petty officer

Our team noted with some surprise the adaptability and flexibility of what is, after all, a military organization in the day-to-day performance of its tasks. On paper, the ship is formally organized in a steep hierarchy by rank with clear chains of command, and means to enforce authority far beyond those of any civilian organization. We supposed it to be run by the book, with a constant series of formal orders, salutes, and yes-sirs. Often it is, but flight operations are not conducted that way.

Flight operations and planning are usually conducted as if the organization were relatively "flat" and collegial. This contributes greatly to the ability to seek the proper, immediate balance between the drive for safety and reliability and that for combat effectiveness. Events on the flight deck, for example, can happen too quickly to allow for appeals through a chain of command. Even the lowest rating on the deck has not only the authority but the obligation to suspend flight operations immediately, under the proper circumstances, without first clearing it with superiors. Although his judgment may later be reviewed or even criticized, he will not be penalized for being wrong and will often be publicly congratulated if he is right.

Coordinated planning for the next day's air operations requires a series of involved trade-offs between mission requirements and the demands of training, flight time, maintenance, ordnance, and aircraft handling. It is largely done by a process of ongoing and continuing argument and negotiation among personnel from many units, in person and via phone, which tend to be resolved by direct order only when the rare impasse develops that requires an appeal to higher authority. In each negotiation, most officers play a dual role, resisting excessive demands from others that would compromise the safety or future performance of their units, while maximizing demands on others for operational and logistic support.

This does not mean that formal rank and hierarchy are unimportant. In fact, they are the lubricant that makes the informal processes work. Unlike the situation in most civilian organizations, relative ranking in the hierarchy is largely stable and shaped by regular expectations, formal rules, and procedures. … the shipboard situation tends to promote cooperative behavior, which tends to minimize the negative effects of jealousy and direct competition. .. we rarely observe such strategies as the hoarding of information or deliberate undermining of the ability of others to perform their jobs that characterize so many civilian organizations, particularly in the public sector.

Redundancy

"How does it work? On paper, it can't, and it don't. So you try it. After a while, you figure out how to do it right and keep doing it that way. Then we just get out there and train the guys to make it work. The ones that get it we make POs. ‡ The rest just slog through their time."- Flight deck CPO

Operational redundancy—the ability to provide for the execution of a task if the primary unit fails or falters—is necessary for high-reliability organizations to manage activities that are sufficiently dangerous to cause serious consequences in the event of operational failures.  In classic organizational theory, redundancy is provided by some combination of duplication (two units performing the same function) and overlap (two units with functional areas in common). Its enemies are mechanistic management models that seek to eliminate these valuable modes in the name of "efficiency."  For a carrier at sea, several kinds of redundancy are necessary, even for normal peacetime operations, each of which creates its own kinds of stress.

A primary form is technical redundancy involving operations-critical units or components on board—computers, radar antennas, etc. In any fighting ship, as much redundancy is built in as is practicable. This kind of redundancy is traditional and well understood. Another form is supply redundancy. …Here is a clear case of a trade-off between operational and safety reliability that must be made much closer to the edge of the envelope than would be the case for other kinds of organizations. Indeed, for a combat organization, the trade-off point is generally taken as a measure of overall competence.

Most interesting to our research is a third form, decision/management redundancy, which encompasses a number of organizational strategies to ensure that critical decisions are timely and correct. This has two primary aspects: (a) internal cross-checks on decisions, even at the micro level; and, (b) fail-safe redundancy in case one management unit should fail or be put out of operation. It is in this area that the rather unique Navy way of doing things is the most interesting, theoretically as well as practically.

As an example of (a), almost everyone involved in bringing the aircraft [in for a landing] on board is part of a constant loop of conversation and verification taking place over several different channels at once. .... This constant flow of information about each safety-critical activity, monitored by many different listeners on several different communications nets, is designed specifically to assure that any critical element that is out of place will be discovered or noticed by someone before it causes problems….

Fail-safe redundancy, (b), is achieved in a number of ways. Duplication and overlap, the most familiar modes of error detection, are used to some extent—for example, in checking mission weapons loading. Nevertheless, there are limits to how they can be provided. Space and billets are tight at sea, even on a nuclear-powered carrier, and unlike land-based organizations, the seagoing Navy cannot simply add extra departments and ratings. Shipboard constraints and demands require a considerable amount of redundancy at relatively small cost in personnel. In addition to the classic "enlightened waste" approach of tolerance for considerable duplication and overlap, other, more efficient strategies that use existing units with other primary tasks as backups are required, such as "stressing the survivor" and mobilizing organizational "reserves."

Stressing-the-survivor strategies require that each of the units normally operate below capacity so that if one fails or is unavailable, its tasks can be shifted to others without severely overloading them. Redundancy on the bridge is a good example. 34 Mobilizing reserves entails the creation of a "shadow" unit able to pick up the task if necessary. … Most of the officers and a fair proportion of senior enlisted men are familiar with several tasks other than the ones they normally perform and could execute them in an emergency.

The Combat Direction Center (CDC, or just "Combat"), for example, is the center for fighting the ship.  Crucial decisions are thereby placed nominally in the hands of relatively junior officers in a single, comparatively vulnerable location. In this case we have noted several of the mechanisms described above. There is a considerable amount of senior oversight, even in calm periods. A number of people are "just watching," keeping track of each other's jobs or monitoring the situation from other locations. There is no one place on the ship that duplicates the organizational function of Combat, yet each of the tasks has a backup somewhere—on the carrier or distributed among other elements of the battle group.

In an "ordinary" organization these parameters would likely be characterized in negative terms. Backup systems differ in pattern and structure from primary ones. Those with task responsibility are constantly under the critical eyes of others. Authority and responsibilities are distributed in different patterns and may shift in contingencies. In naval circumstances, where reliability is paramount, these are seen as positive and cooperative, for it is the task that is of primary importance.

Thus, those elements of Navy "culture" that have the greatest potential for creating confusion and uncertainty turn out to be major contributors to organizational reliability and robustness under stress. We believe this to be an example of adaptive organizational evolution to circumstance, for it responds very well to the functional necessities of modern operations.

Some Preliminary Conclusions

"The job of this ship is to shoot the airplanes off the pointy end and catch them back on the blunt end. The rest is detail."- Carrier commanding officer

Even though our research is far from complete, particularly with regard to comparisons with other organizations, several interesting observations and lessons have already been recorded.

First, the remarkable degree of personal and organizational flexibility we have observed is essential for performing operational tasks that continue to increase in complexity as technology advances. "Ordinary" organizational theory would characterize aircraft carrier operations as confusing and inefficient, especially for an organization with a strong and steep formal management hierarchy (i.e., any "quasi-military" organization). However, the resulting redundancy and flexibility are, in fact, remarkably efficient in terms of making the best use of space-limited personnel.

Second, an effective fighting carrier is not a passive weapon that can be kept on a shelf until it is needed. She is a living unit possessed of dynamic processes of self-replication and self-reconstruction that can only be nurtured by retaining experienced personnel, particularly among the chiefs, and by giving her sufficient operational time at sea. This implies a certain minimum budgetary cost for maintaining a first-line carrier force at the levels of operational capability and safety demanded of the U.S. Navy.

Third, as long-term students of organizations, we are astounded at how little of the existing literature is applicable to the study of ships at sea. Consider, for example, the way in which the several units that make up a battle group (carrier, air wing, supply ships, escorts) are in a continual process of formation and reformation. Imagine any other organization performing effectively when it is periodically separated from and then rejoins the unit that performs its central technical function.  More importantly, most of the existing literature was developed for failure-tolerant, civilian organizations with definite and measurable outputs. The complementary body on public organizations assumes not only a tolerance for failure, but at best an ambiguous definition of what measures failure (or for that matter, success).

Naval Aviation 100 Years – Part 1: A Bad Night for Schoolboy – A Self-designing, High Reliability Organization

IV. Bad Night for Schoolboy – And Other Stories of the Carrier 

1. The Pilot's Story: Bruce Kallsen VA-115

2. Landing Signal Officer Perspective

3. Champs In the Middle

4. Survival on her own terms: Midway's Magic

Boundary Condition #1 (3)

The previous post (2), presented the parameters defining an unconventional crisis as developed by Dr. Erwan Lagadec.  Here in the following table and discussion we  provide comparison of the characteristics that differentiate decision making, leadership and operational response in relation to both routine emergencies and conventional disasters and to unconventional /hyper complex catastrophic level events:

Summary of Contrasting Features of Routine and Crisis Emergencies

 (Modification from Leonard and Howitt, Against Desparate Peril: High Performance in Emergency Preparation and Response, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard Business School, 2007.)

The last box under "defining competence" notes "recognition of novelty. Novelty is not only an endemic property of our environment, it is also a fundamental characteristic of social systems and activities. Unconventional crisis create uncertainty as do complex systems.  As uncertainty is central to unconventional crisis, andindeed seems pervasive in our time, it is imperative for organizations to create the ability to operate comfortably in this condition.  Novel input requires adaptability or creation of novelty in response. (Boyd 1992, Osinga 2007)

Discussion of novelty will be a recurring thread thoughout the various boundary condition discussions. For now consider the following:

• The novelty of the situation implies that there is less than complete understanding of the circumstances—or even of which circumstances are relevant. Responders do not necessarily know which facts and observations are relevant and, therefore, which to collect.


• Scripts developed for routine situations may be applicable, but, by definition, there is no comprehensive "playbook" from which the response can be directed;  The existence of significant novelty implies that significant customization or improvisation is likely to be needed. (Clarke, 1999)


• Given the uncertainties born of novelty and the corresponding lack of available comprehensive routines, decisions cannot reliably be driven by pattern recognition (because, by definition, the patterns are not available).  Decision making must proceed through a standard analytical process: the identification of objectives, the development of alternatives, the prediction of likely results from different approaches, and the choice of a best action.


• Because newly improvised approaches or previously untried combinations of existing routines may be implemented, execution is likely to be much less precise than in routine circumstances, which call for more tolerance of imperfections and errors in execution;


• Since new actions may be taken, skills will not have been comprehensively developed for either the design or the execution of the required response. While training in the skills necessary to use existing routines as elements of the newly developed response will be useful, the need for the relevant skill base for components of what is being invented and improvised cannot reasonably have been foreseen and will not be available.  Adaptability will be THE key skill required for both operational and political actors (including departmental participants in EOCs, etc) – a learning requirement.


• A leadership approach generally oriented to producing collaboration that works for directing the development of understanding and the design through invention and improvisation of a new approach—followed by a more authority-driven approach during the execution phase.

Concluding remarks

The level of personnel training, system performance and system-system interoperability acceptable for routine or conventional crisis events does not guarantee usefulness when the environment becomes hyper- complex and severely stochastic.  Nor does the 1) training and experience of key decision makers in the lower end of the spectrum, nor 2) "planned for in the playbook script" leadership insure that the magnitude and novelty of the emerging catastrophe does not overwhelm communities and emergency management, or simply negate "the plans" and won't destabilize the entire response structure. 

Unconventional/Hyper-complex/Catastrophic level events are often noted as Low Probability, High Impact events.  But we should keep in mind that these events are actually Absolute-Certainty, Low-Predictability, High-Impact incidents that take place all the time. (Essmaeel, comments on PWH, 2009)

Hyper complexity makes it near impossible for "traditional" leaders to plan, let alone coordinate response efforts.  Extrapolation of training and system evaluation suitable for routine emergencies and conventional disasters as suitable for unconventional or catastrophic operational response is an intrinsically flawed strategy.

References

Beakley, James E, Evaluation of Interoperability Capability for the Department of Homeland Security, June, 2010

Clarke, Lee, Mission Improbable: A critical look at how governments and corporations plan for accidents and disasters, University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Concept Development: An Operational Framework for Resilience, Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute, Arlington, VA., 2009

Elkus, Adam, Science, Defence and Strategy; Without strategy, the science of war overtakes the art of war, http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/adam-elkus/science-defence-a nd-strategy, Jan 2010

Ellis, Aaron, What the Hell is strategy, anyway? http://thinkstrat.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/what-the-hell-is-strategy-a nyway/, June, 2010

Henderson, Joseph V., The Virtual Terrorism Response Academy: Training for High Risk, Low Frequency Threats, Institute for Security Technology Studies, Dartmouth College, 2004

Lagedec, Erwan, Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity, Center for Transatlantic Relations – The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.c., 2007

Leonard, Herman B. and Howitt, Arnold M., Political Control and Operational Command: Building a Balanced Disaster Response System, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2006

Leonard, Herman B. and Howitt, Arnold M., Against Desperate Peril: High Performance in Emergency Preparation and Response, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007

Leveraging Exercise Programs in a New Fiscal Environment, CNA, Alexandria Virginia, 2009

Orr, George E., Major United States Air Force, Combat Operations C3I: Fundamentals and Interactions, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 1983

Quarantelli, E.L., Catastrophes are Different from Disasters: Some Implications for Crisis Planning and Managing Drawn from Katrina, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, 2006

Re-Evaluation of National Security Ordered,  (Article), New York Times, 16 Feb. 2009

Boundary Condition #1 (2)

          "Conventional crises rarely require high levels of inbuilt resiliency from our systems. This is because such events tend to affect circumscribed "ground zeros," and therefore can be tackled by bringing to bear the "normal" assets and strategies of the unscathed outside on the impacted area.  On the other hand, catastrophic or hyper-complex events will destabilize entire systems, forcing leaders and public alike to abandon "normality" altogether, and look for a coherent fallback position. However, it is eminently difficult to organize an orderly general retreat, especially when leaders must redefine a new line of defense while on the run, and from the ground up. Miracles at Dunkirk are precisely that: miracles. Even before the planning phase, and more fundamentally, the makeup of our systems itself must anticipate the destabilizing effects of unconventional events by weaving resiliencies (visible or "hidden") into their fabric." Erwan Lagadec

Unconventional Crisis was discussed briefly in the previous post which introduced the four boundary conditions for PWH 2011 effort.  Indeed, it is really the driving element. While 2010: The Earth Strikes Back summarized UC-type incidents in the past year, here we will provide more in depth explanation.

In the 2007 Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity, Erwan Lagedec noted that In recent history, there is no doubt that the "three horsemen of the Apocalypse" best illustrating the impact and consequences of catastrophic events, for leaders, analysts, and popular culture alike, are September 11, the 2004 Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. Most certainly, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti easily qualifies as the fourth horsemen.

Recent catastrophic crises repeatedly have overwhelmed traditional mechanisms for crisis planning and management, and made them instantly obsolete, in several respects.

• The challenge of the "unthinkable" – This series of events has clearly shown that complex Western societies today are not equipped to confront major crises effectively…


• The culture of leaders – Generally speaking, in all countries and sectors, they have proved culturally incapable of taking the "unthinkable" seriously, let alone react effectively when it actually occurred…


• The identity of leaders – The public sector's traditional monopoly on planning and response efforts time and again has shown its limits when confronted with unconventional events. The priority now must be to define new allocations of tasks and responsibilities among the public, private, and humanitarian sectors, as well as the wider…


• Complex maps of actors – Catastrophic crises systematically involve an enormous variety of stakeholders, on an international scale. These include spontaneous, unanticipated coalitions … that can wield extraordinary and unexpected power, especially through the channels of "old" and "new" media alike


• New processes for crisis recovery – Today's unconventional crises generally do not contrast a single "Ground Zero" with an unscathed "outside" from which response can be safely organized: on the contrary, they destabilize systems in their entirety.

Therefore, instead of a clear succession of phases from planning to response to reconstruction (each under the leadership of a different agent, which withdraws and transitions to the next when its job is done), leaders now must tackle the three together, in other words build reconstruction dynamics into their contingency plans (as events in Iraq demonstrated) – all the while taking into account that leaders and responders themselves might be among the victims of unconventional crises.

We must ask what accounts for whether the first response process will be able to provide effective mitigation of unfolding disaster incidents. How can that effort best be organized to respond to significant emergencies? What must be done in advance to create the capacities needed in the face of disasters?  To start, we must recognize the differences between crisis/disaster types and the different set of challenges in planning, execution, and required forms of leadership.  Additionally, we must accept that we will most probably require new and innovative analytical methods and metrics

Dependent upon your source, there are multiple and overlapping terms defining the various levels of the "threat environment" in use for emergency management – planning, mitigation recovery.  Here we  will distinguish between the following conventions:

1. Routine Emergencies and Conventional disasters. 


2. Unconventional/hypercomplex disasters and catastrophes

Each presents a different set of challenges in both planning and execution and requires consideration of different forms of leadership and decision making.  There will be differences in agencies involved, forms of organization, in skills required and skill building at various levels and, resourcing and preparation.  In addition, as events become worse, political and value choices must be addressed and response will now include the private sector, non-profit organizations and spontaneous communal action. This paper submits that the differences are such that these sometime low probability – high impact, or absolute certainty low predictability events require a unique planning and response strategy.

For our purposes, strategy and thinking strategically is:

• to identify priorities, translating those priorities into goals to be achieved, and developing a plan to achieve them by matching goals with resources and figuring out how and when to use those resources to best advantage.


• to understand how an action or an event impacts on your priorities, goals and plan; and if the impact is negative, working out how to remedy the situation.


• to recognize how significantly strategy is impacted by how well the environment of struggle is understood and how well we can adapt to shifting, sometimes non-predictable circumstance. (Ellis, Aaron, 2010)

Routine Emergencies and Conventional disasters.

Many types of emergencies occur every day and are routinely mitigated by local first responders.  In certain areas hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes and fire are seasonal or typical of the area.  The manifestation is well understood and planning well thought out and resourced.  While they move past routine emergencies based on magnitude of destruction and/or significant loss of life, physical response assistance goes no higher than county or state mutual aid and need for federal assistance is basically limited to financial aid.  Command and control during the event and recovery follows the locally developed "playbook."  A Category 3 level (CAT 3) hurricane is a good example of a large emergency or conventional level disaster event, with potential for significant damage, yet normally well understood with only small possibility of response being overwhelmed at the local level.

For routine/conventional disaster consider the following:

• Overall understanding of the nature of the situation is high and so knowledge of facts and what needs to be observed is high.


• Decision makers have high correlation of the event with past experience, quickly recognize patterns that trigger response decisions.  This is Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPDM)


• Playbooks and included scripts of action are valid requiring little customization


• Functional organizations, skills required vs. trained in skills have high correlation and mitigating action can be implemented with high confidence of success


• Leadership within the Incident Command System is well understood and established for effective, efficient, operations conduct with minimum risk associated.

Unconventional/hyper-complex disasters/catastrophic events 

Researchers note that there are "disasters that go beyond typical disasters." The latter have come to be noted as "catastrophes."  Most notably would be 9/11, the 2004 Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and in 2010, the earthquakes in Haiti and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

By virtue of unusual scale, a previously unknown cause, or an atypical combination of sources, responders face challenges that are indeed novel, the facts and implications of which cannot be completely assimilated in the moment of crisis. (Leonard and Howitt, 2007)

These events are not only characterized by high stakes—the likelihood of major losses (to life, limb, property, heritage, or other highly valued social or private assets) – but they have shared striking similarities, inasmuch as they foster destabilization of leaders in charge of response and reconstruction efforts, and the whole of communities. (Lagadec, 2007)

Catastrophes generally exhibit a high level of uncertainty about just what the outcomes will be and a high degree of contingency - significant variability in the possible outcomes that may result under different choices of action. Much is at stake, and the results will depend on what we do—but we do not know for certain which course of action will be best.

These events are thus distinguished from more familiar or routine emergencies and conventional disasters by the presence of significantly new circumstances and different kinds of intellectual challenges, thus the use of the terminology unconventional crises. (Lagadec, 2007, 2009)

The main characteristic of unconventional events is that they are exceedingly difficult to map. This can be due to (a) the technical complexity of response efforts; (b) an unusually complex geography of affected areas; (c) the potential for a crisis suddenly to affect systems and interests that initially seemed remote ; (d) a bewildering kaleidoscope of stakeholders; or (e) confusing, overwhelming, or, conversely, insufficient information. With high degree of difficulty in "mapping" the operational environment, we now require decision making under circumstance with hyper complex characteristics or parameters:

1. Most or all of the community built structure is heavily impacted.  In addition, in catastrophes, the facilities and operational bases of most emergency organizations are themselves usually hit.


2. Local officials are unable to undertake their usual work role, and this often extends into the recovery period. Related to the observation just made, local personnel specializing in catastrophic situations are often unable for some time, both right after impact and into the recovery period, to carry out their formal and organizational work roles. Many leadership roles may have to be taken by outsiders to the community. 


3. There may not be a "ground zero" with an unscathed reasonable proximity "outside" from which response can be safely organized.  Help from nearby communities cannot be provided.  Many nearby communities not only cannot contribute to the inflow, but they themselves can become competing sources for an eventual unequal inflow of goods, personnel, supplies and communication


4.  Most, if not all, of the everyday community functions are sharply and concurrently interrupted.


5. The presence of significant novelty implies that understanding of the situation, at least at the outset, will be relatively low, and that there will be no executable playbook/script or routine that is known or identifiable and that provides a comprehensive, reliable, and fully adequate response. Existing routines are inadequate or even counter-productive. Dealing with a crisis emergency thus means that the response will necessarily operate beyond the boundary of planned and resourced capabilities. It will necessarily be unplanned (or, at least, incompletely planned), and the resources and capabilities will generally be (or seem) inadequate.


6. By their inherent nature – high stakes, urgency, and associated fear and stress—unconventional disaster events are necessarily political as well as operational matters. All disasters of course involve, at a minimum, local political considerations, but here the political and mass media arenas become even more important.   And it is a radically different situation when the national government and the very top officials become directly involved.  Diffusion of rumor is high, organizational weaknesses of responding organizations surface and questions of "who's in charge?" reiterated.  In significant crisis events, both political and operational officials will have important—and different—roles to play.  Hyper complex unconventional catastrophe events, in which the operational decision makers and responders are operating beyond the bounds of what they have planned, practiced, and are resourced for—will necessarily confront senior decision makers with conflicts of values. Values are intrinsically political in nature and should involve determinations by people with the political legitimacy to authorize, warrant, and defend the choices made.


7. If the true nature of the crisis is emergent vice immediately recognizable – difficulty in recognizing the novelty and therefore a break from normal operating pattern required – responders and decision makers may fail to note serious inadequacies or need for assistance.  Not only will all the other factors impact the decision/response process but the emergent challenges arise in context of organizations and teams that are already deployed within the operational response.

(Lagadec, 2009, Leonard and Howitt, 2007, Quarantelli, 2006, Von Lubitz, 2009, PWH articles, 2006-2010)

How these parameters impact decision making is the subject of the next post.

______________________________________________________

References

 Lagedec, Erwan, Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity, Center for Transatlantic Relations – The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.c., 2007

Also see follow-on post – Unconventional Crisis (3): Impact on Decision Making

Boundary Conditions for 2011

 As a result of working around emergency plans and training on Threat, Risk and Vulnerability Assessments around the country and having responded to many significant events, I believe most plans for handling emergencies are based on assumptions and guesses made by well meaning workers/managers and oft times- "experts" – BUT a number have been off base, or completely wrong. . I have heard many proposed solutions from "experts." Many are easily discounted even though they receive much press".   

You can't fix things without some understanding, real understanding of the problem – nor can there be real leadership without actionable understanding. That's where establishing boundary conditions as a vehicle to frame the problem – and therefore garner greater insight – become important.

With the concept introduced previously of  intersections from seemingly disconnected fields in mind, I have determined to explore the usefulness of the UC concept in discussion of decision making in severe crisis by addressing it in context as one of four research boundary conditions to be presented via this FORUM/Blog.  The four previous posts (links provided) have provided introductory remarks defining those boundary conditions and are summarized below.

1) Unconventional Crisis; 2) Carrier Aviation as a High Reliability Organization; 3) Washington's Leadership; 4) John Boyd's Way

Boundary conditions – the set of conditions specified for the behavior of the solution to a set of differential equations at the boundary of its domain – are important in determining the mathematical solutions to many physical problems.  More specifically, concerning flight, the condition is noted as the boundary layer – the layer of reduced velocity in fluids, such as air and water, that is immediately adjacent to the surface of a solid – the wing – past which the fluid is flowing.  If the angle of incidence of an airfoil in relation to airflow is increased, whether  initiated by the pilot or by impact of turbulent air, the boundary layer flow can slow to the point of turbulence  ( loss of laminar flow)  and in this disruption,  the flowing air can no longer stay attached to the layer/airfoil, drag over comes lift and the wing is no longer in stable positive flight – not flying it stalls – etc., etc., etc – the title applies!

Drilling for oil at a depth of 5000ft and in open ocean – Deepwater Horizon – should have been/should be seen as a "crisis" in waiting no matter the historical track record. Proper understanding would have meant that the National decision making level immediately recognized the high potential for the initial crisis migrating into a severely complex catastrophe after the explosion and acted, not waiting to see if BP's response plans would work. Activities in "Blue Water"/open ocean are not a linear extrapolation from "inshore," nor is 5000 ft a linear extrapolation from 200ft or 500ft. depths.  BP's plans might have been up to the problem, but the shear nature of the environment, if scrutinized in context of "unconventional" as described below, should have been a trigger to initiate intermediate action.  Rather, the declaration of an Event of National Significance was 30+ days in coming??? A significant point, I believe, is the problem generated by not recognizing the nature or even acknowledging the existence of a different kind of  problem, one potentially very complex or stochastic in nature – an "unconventional crisis."

The idea of unconventional crises was first introduced in 2007 by Dr. Erwan Lagadec in Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity. As defined, these events are distinguished from more familiar or routine emergencies and conventional disasters by the presence of significantly new circumstances and different kinds of intellectual challenges.  The main characteristic of unconventional incidents is that they are exceedingly difficult to map. This can be due to:    

> the technical complexity of response efforts

> an unusually complex geography of affected areas

> the potential for a crisis suddenly to affect systems and interests that initially seemed remote

> a bewildering kaleidoscope of stakeholders

> confusing, overwhelming, or, conversely, insufficient information

With a high degree of difficulty in "mapping" the operational environment, we now require decision making under circumstance with hyper complex characteristics.

Along with this and stated many times on this website, low probability, worst case disasters – the CAT 5's – require a different mindset – not only for operations, but for education, training, and planning.  It is most certain that responding organizations will require thinking and planing (learning required) that differentiates between preparedness and readiness; they will require the ability to operate and adapt in a high tempo Observe-Orient-Decide – Act manner; and they will require leadership that transcends normal political, operational, and functional boundaries.

The PWH main theme remains decision making in severe crisis as a distinct skill required for community resilience and survivability on our own terms and since inception, the path for Project White Horse has evolved as follows:

1. Bounding the problems of severe crisis/disaster – the Cat 5s – as distinctly unique


2. Discussions on decision making Such as Dr. Gary Klein's Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPDM)and John Boyd's Discourse on Winning and Losing


3. Teams of Leaders


4. Resilient Communities ideas


5. General Russ Honore's Culture of Preparedness


6. The 2010 question "what kind of organizations (and groups of organizations) can operate at the necessary OODA tempo to survive and indeed thrive through unconventional, hyper complex crisis events?"

Even though the main PWH website content currently centered on a "Culture of Preparedness," has not changed throughout 2010, research and FORUM/Blog publication has continued to address the underlying operational thread and question: What kind of a community or organization –or indeed, group of organizations – can survive and thrive in uncertain and severe crisis environments?  Increasingly it became apparent that the concept of unconventional crisis (UC) offered a critical and indeed necessary perspective.  So, in work and soon to be online, the main PWH website will provide a greater level of depth on unconventional crisis and introduce related topics. And as always, the intent for the FORUM and INTERSECTIONS elements of PWH will be to provide discussions on various aspects of that operational thread, as a meaningful path for greater insight on the core ideas.  As noted above, the Blog will be used to provide discussion leveraging four boundary conditions as follows:

1. Unconventional crisis (2010: The Earth Strikes Back) as introduced above.


2. Naval Aviation throughout its 100 years particularly as the airwing and carrier represent a highly reliant organization with flight operations at sea the closest to the "edge of the envelope" day-day execution of mission under the most extreme conditions in the least stable environment, and with the greatest tension between preserving safety and reliability while attaining maximum operational efficiency (Ghosts of Christmas Past: Fly Navy 100 Years)


3. Washington's leadership in holding the Continental Army together particularly through the winter of of 1776 and 1777. In today's terminology he fought a hybrid style of warfare – on occasion as European Armies fought, on occasion pure guerrilla warfare. Francis Marrion's actions in South Carolina are obvious, but his leveraging of the hit and run harassing tactics of the New Jersey militias that wore down the  Hessian Forces considerably prior to the Battle of Trenton are not so well known or even acknowledged.  Hessian forces defended in good order - not drunk or hung over -  but it was Washington's leadership and  sheer audacity in the face of incredibly bad weather conditions that made all the difference. (Christmas 1776: The Crossing)


4. The OODA way of thinking as an analysis tool for all in light of Col John Boyd's work – Patterns of Conflict, Destruction and Creation, Essence of Winning and Losing (the real OODA process). Discussed previously in light of the decision path, but expanding into the need to introduce novelty, insight, initiative, adaptability and harmony so as to improve fitness for survival. (Searching For John Boyd)

While this may appear a strange mix, initial thinking along this line reveals that this approach will provide a vehicle(s) to introduce disscussions of concepts such as relative superiority from Admiral William McRaven's SPECOPS, rapid reflection forcesfrom Lagadec, systemic operational design from the Army's Advanced School of Military Studies,  and allow expansion of previously introduced ideas such as preparedness vs. readiness by Von Lubitz, highly reliant operations from LaPorte, Commander Leader Teams fom Bradford and Brown, and organizational response from Roux-Dufort. And last but certainly not least, this boundary conditions approach will provide a significant methodology for leveraging the work of John Boyd beyond warfare and business to the distincly different context of leadership and decision making for unconventional crisis response. Hopefully the relevance of each in relation to the others and the main theme will be come more apparent throughout the year. We bound the problem so as to better understand our situation within our environment. Without that understanding we run high risk of stall, spin, crash, burn, and die when encountering the hyper complex, the unconventional.

I do not know what the research, reading, thinking, or dialogue may yet produce. The journey should be fun though.

Boundary Condition #1 (1)

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

How deadly? Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009

How extreme? After strong early year blizzards — nicknamed Snowmageddon — paralyzed the U.S. mid-Atlantic and record snowfalls hit Russia and China, the temperature turned to broil – the year may go down as the hottest on record worldwide or at the very least in the top three

How costly? Disasters caused $222 billion in economic losses in 2010 — more than Hong Kong's economy

How weird? A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. In a 24-hour period in October, Indonesia got the trifecta of a deadly magnitude 7.7 earthquake, a tsunami that killed more than 500 people and a volcano that caused more than 390,000 people to flee. That's after flooding, landslides and more quakes killed hundreds earlier in the year. And in the United States, FEMA declared a record number of major disasters, 79 as of Dec. 14. The average year has 34. A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP runs 64 printed pages long

And put man in the equation, what then? It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes. BP's busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Mining disasters — men trapped deep in the Earth — caused dozens of deaths in tragic collapses in West Virginia, China and New Zealand. The fortunate miners in Chile who survived 69 days underground provided the feel good story of the year.

2010's world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards

By SETH BORENSTEIN and JULIE REED BELL, Associated Press Seth Borenstein And Julie Reed Bell, Associated Press Sun Dec 19, 5:31 pm ET

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

"It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

"The term `100-year event' really lost its meaning this year."

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.

Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."

The January earthquake that killed well more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people — many of them living in poverty — and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths would have probably been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.

In February, an earthquake that was more than 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile's bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Climate scientists say Earth's climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.

In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.

"It's a form of suicide, isn't it? We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. "It's our fault for not anticipating these things. You know, this is the Earth doing its thing."

No one had to tell a mask-wearing Vera Savinova how bad it could get. She is a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow's record heat, smog and wildfires.

"I think it is the end of the world," she said. "Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don't care about nature."

The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave — setting a national record of 111 degrees — would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.

Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever.

"These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming," said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

That's why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.

"The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making," said a weary Debarati Guha Sapir, director for the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. "It's almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting from it. We've created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact."

Here's a quick tour of an anything but normal 2010:

HOW DEADLY:

While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave, and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. Through mid-December there have been 20 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher, compared to the normal 16. This year is tied for the most big quakes since 1970, but it is not a record. Nor is it a significantly above average year for the number of strong earthquakes, U.S. earthquake officials say.

Flooding alone this year killed more than 6,300 people in 59 nations through September, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, 30 people died in the Nashville, Tenn., region in flooding. Inundated countries include China, Italy, India, Colombia and Chad. Super Typhoon Megi with winds of more than 200 mph devastated the Philippines and parts of China.

Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009, according to Swiss Re. The World Health Organization, which hasn't updated its figures past Sept. 30, is just shy of 250,000. By comparison, deaths from terrorism from 1968 to 2009 were less than 115,000, according to reports by the U.S. State Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The last year in which natural disasters were this deadly was 1983 because of an Ethiopian drought and famine, according to WHO. Swiss Re calls it the deadliest since 1976.

The charity Oxfam says 21,000 of this year's disaster deaths are weather related.

HOW EXTREME:

After strong early year blizzards — nicknamed Snowmageddon — paralyzed the U.S. mid-Atlantic and record snowfalls hit Russia and China, the temperature turned to broil.

The year may go down as the hottest on record worldwide or at the very least in the top three, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The average global temperature through the end of October was 58.53 degrees, a shade over the previous record of 2005, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Los Angeles had its hottest day in recorded history on Sept. 27: 113 degrees. In May, 129 set a record for Pakistan and may have been the hottest temperature recorded in an inhabited location.

In the U.S. Southeast, the year began with freezes in Florida that had cold-blooded iguanas becoming comatose and falling off trees. Then it became the hottest summer on record for the region. As the year ended, unusually cold weather was back in force.

Northern Australia had the wettest May-October on record, while the southwestern part of that country had its driest spell on record. And parts of the Amazon River basin struck by drought hit their lowest water levels in recorded history.

HOW COSTLY:

Disasters caused $222 billion in economic losses in 2010 — more than Hong Kong's economy — according to Swiss Re. That's more than usual, but not a record, Schraft said. That's because this year's disasters often struck poor areas without heavy insurance, such as Haiti.

Ghulam Ali's three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family. It's what many Pakistanis earn in half a year.

HOW WEIRD:

A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. Other volcanoes in the Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia sent people scurrying for safety. New York City had a rare tornado.

A nearly 2-pound hailstone that was 8 inches in diameter fell in South Dakota in July to set a U.S. record. The storm that produced it was one of seven declared disasters for that state this year.

There was not much snow to start the Winter Olympics in a relatively balmy Vancouver, British Columbia, while the U.S. East Coast was snowbound.

In a 24-hour period in October, Indonesia got the trifecta of terra terror: a deadly magnitude 7.7 earthquake, a tsunami that killed more than 500 people and a volcano that caused more than 390,000 people to flee. That's after flooding, landslides and more quakes killed hundreds earlier in the year.

Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.

And in the United States, FEMA declared a record number of major disasters, 79 as of Dec. 14. The average year has 34.

Through September, the 2010 disaster death toll had already surpassed such notable years as 2004, when the South Asia tsunami struck, and 2008, when Myanmar was hit by a massive cyclone and China suffered a devastating earthquake.

A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP runs 64 printed pages long.

"The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion," said Greg Holland, director of the earth system laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

For example, even though it sounds counterintuitive, global warming likely played a bit of a role in "Snowmageddon" earlier this year, Holland said. That's because with a warmer climate, there's more moisture in the air, which makes storms including blizzards, more intense, he said.

White House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters or do something about global warming: "The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society's emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced."

And that's just the "natural disasters." It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes. BP's busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Mining disasters — men trapped deep in the Earth — caused dozens of deaths in tragic collapses in West Virginia, China and New Zealand. The fortunate miners in Chile who survived 69 days underground provided the feel good story of the year.

In both technological and natural disasters, there's a common theme of "pushing the envelope," Olson said.

Colorado's Bilham said the world's population is moving into riskier megacities on fault zones and flood-prone areas. He figures that 400 million to 500 million people in the world live in large cities prone to major earthquakes.

A Haitian disaster will happen again, Bilham said: "It could be Algiers. it could be Tehran. It could be any one of a dozen cities."

A real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when the best is required.

Competiveness: John R Wooden

 More reading about Coach Wooden and his "pyramid of success:"

The Official John R. Wooden site

Biography at Wikipedia

Pyramid of Sucess (PDF printable)

 "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail"  in his own words follow the "Favorite maxims" tab to "never stress winning"