Complex Projects and Programmes: the Battle of Britain
Stephen Carver
At Cranfield we do a lot of research on project and programme management.
Sometimes it is quite difficult though to try and explain how this academic research
applies in the real world. And something we have found very powerful is to use
stories. And so what I am going to do, just over the next two to three minutes, is
talk about how you can turn high levels of structural and dynamic complexity into a
story that everyone will know and therefore understand the story and therefore
understand what the academic work really means.
The story that I am going to tell you is the Battle of Britain, of all things; 1940, the
UK on its uppers, the Nazi war machine rolling across Europe and the only thing that
was going to stop us being taken over by Adolf Hitler was the RAF. So, we all had
these visions of Spitfires and Hurricanes and plucky young men shooting down the
Luftwaffe.
In fact, it was very different from that. We won the Battle of Britain because the
guy who ran air traffic control effectively – fighter command – understood high
levels of structural and dynamic complexity. What do we mean by that? Well, the
structural dimension of projects – how many people are involved, how many
companies, how many stakeholders? What are the forms of contract between
them? What are the relationships between them? And you can go from low levels
– simple projects – to high. On the other axis we have got dynamic complexity –
how fast everything is changing around you. So are your sponsors changing? Is
the finance changing? Is the world changing around you? And of course the
challenge is what happens when you have got very high structural complexity and
very high dynamic complexity. And that was the Battle of Britain.
Now, you have these visions of Spitfires and Hurricanes flying around – chaos. In
fact it was not chaos. It was a carefully controlled programme. Now the hero
behind all this – the guy that actually controlled this programme that was highly
structurally complex and highly dynamically complex – was a guy called Sir Keith
Park, Head of Fighter Group 11 in the Battle of Britain.
Now he understood what it was all about: number one, have a very clear strategy.
His strategy was not to shoot down Luftwaffe planes, his strategy was to deny the
Luftwaffe air superiority. Why do the Luftwaffe want air superiority? So that they
could invade Britain by sea, and if you haven’t got air superiority you can’t do that.
So number one objective – not shooting down planes, not being brave, just being up
there every single time a Luftwaffe plane comes in and to shoot at it so eventually
they would give up. So number one: strategic objective.
The second thing he understood in this highly complex situation was you have to
have communication, you have to know where you are and more importantly
where the enemy are and then you can create the interfaces between what you can
control and what you can’t control. Now he had radar. Nowadays we talk about
having phenomenal internal communications and external communications. You
have probably seen it on the movies – you will see on the Battle of Britain film, Sir
Keith Park looking down at this table where the girls are pushing on a map of Britain
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June 2010
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Stephen Carver
and France and the English Channel, little pictures of little blocks of enemy aircraft
and our own aircraft. Little headsets on, moving these things around in real time.
So what Sir Keith Park did was actually look at this from behind a soundproof glass
screen and what he could do was look at the patterns. He knew where they were,
he knew where we were. Now how would he interface them and make sure that
every single battle, every single day, every single minute – because that was what it
was down to – would actually orchestrate it to our advantage.
The Spitfires and Hurricanes did not go up there looking for Luftwaffe, they always
knew where they were going to be and they could be there at that exact time. So
communication systems. And the view that Sir Keith Park had the whole time was
the German view, not the British view. He understood that you have to think
outside the box – you don’t think internally from your company out, you think
externally in. He had systems, he had methods, he had control – but of course the
other thing he had and engendered in all of his people was trust. He knew he could
not micromanage at that level; he had to set the agenda, he had to have the
systems and then as the message went down very rapidly – often in seconds – the
pilots would trust that they would be going to the right place at the right time. So
he empowered his people right down to that working face which was the chaos of a
dogfight.
So, it could be done in 1940 – we won against incredible odds. Technically on
paper we should have lost, but we won because one guy understood this
combination of high structural and high dynamic complexity. He understood to
have an important and very clear strategic objective; make sure you
communication, know where you are and where all the other players are and
therefore then empower people and trust them.
As Erica Jong once said in one of her books, Fear of Flying, if you don’t risk anything,
you risk even more. And what we have discovered in complex situations is that you
must actually go out there. You have to take those risks; you have to trust your
people, but you must have systems.
So, if you have got very, very complex projects and programmes, go out there and
you can fly.
Thank you.
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June 2010
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