Organised prediction is key to calm

The third in a four-part series on managing in a turbulent environment, SELWYN PARKER writes that the upcoming Apec summit will be a test for Auckland.

President Bill Clinton's motorcade will present a real-life exercise in managing the unpredictable when he arrives for Apec with his 120-person entourage.

For obvious reasons, it will move quickly, at about 80kmh. (It's unlikely President Clinton will be issued with a speeding ticket.) Cars before and behind will be filled with armed secret servicemen. Police escorts will clear a path for the high-speed procession. Rubbish bins along the route will be checked beforehand for bombs. Armed marksmen will keep an eye on the upper windows of offices lining the road. Roads leading on to the route will be blocked off, and yet traffic should be disrupted as little as possible.

All this would seem fairly manageable, except the route will not be known until the last minute for security reasons. So it's all got to go right on the night, without dress rehearsals.

For Auckland's millennium management team, it's a daunting exercise that is very different from the reasonably predictable events that usually fall on to the city's plate, such as the BMW marathon, Opera in the Park, and the occasional ticker-tape parade where most of the eventualities are recognisable and can be covered.

This is different. "Responses have to be planned for every one of the alternatives," explains PA Consulting's Stephen Barclay.

The secret? Organised prediction. According to PA Consulting, which specialises in sitting alongside the people who must execute these exercises in turbulence, it is planning that takes the unpredictability out of them. PA Consulting is also helping out the Sydney Olympic organisers to try and take some of the angst out of the games.

The particular tool in the case of President Clinton's motorcade is the "quick-response scenario." This is what it says - a pre-planned solution to one of several instant possibilities. The theory is that if you've been there before, even on paper, it's not such a nasty surprise when the eventuality crops up.

The quick-response scenario will be deployed frequently over the next few months, for example during the America's Cup, which is another exercise in processing turbulence both on and off the water.

For example, numbers. At this stage nobody knows how many visitors will throng the Viaduct during the race - hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands on a nice day?

This raises all sorts of outwardly ordinary problems like toilets and rubbish for the city's contractors.

So, to cover against unwelcome eventualities like overflowing bins and half-hour queues for a pee, they will have to check the Viaduct several times a day instead of once.

Obvious as some of these solutions may seem, they won't happen unless there is a system for them to do so.

"Functional silos are the key," explains PA Consulting's Barclay. In plain terms, functional silos are organisations set up on the mangement landscape, to extend the rural metaphor, to oversee the big picture.

For example, everybody involved in the presidential motorcade gathers together (functional silo) to coordinate their combined response.

To use more management jargon, this puts everybody in the loop.

"The aim is to get everybody thinking forward," adds Gareth Firth, an expert in coordinating giant-sized projects from PA Consulting's team in Britain.

Thinking forward is what managing turbulence is all about, wherever it might occur. Right now, many companies are battling with pricing in a deflationary and highly competitive environment, both here and elsewhere. But not General Electric, whose chief executive Jack Welch got his strategists to prepare a response to this very problem in the first days of 1998. When the turbulence hit, the industrial giant was not flying blind.

In London this week, I sat down for an interview with Georg Fuchs, the Austrian head chef of the Langham Hilton, one of the city's top business hotels. It was 6.15 pm, just before his kitchen's busiest time, with his staff of 45 poised for action.

Yet Fuchs was perfectly composed, eyes twinkling behind gold-rimmed glasses, as he talked enthusiastically about the business of preparing food that traces a direct lineage from Auguste Escoffier, the master of cooking in the grand tradition. His only concession to the urgency of the hour was a pager which he placed on the starched table cloth beside him. "They will call me if they need me," he remarked.

I commented on his relaxed demeanour.

"I am calm because I am organised," Fuchs explained. "When you are organised, there is no need to panic."

We were talking as police battled anti-capitalism rioters in the City, the financial heart of London, in an example of how not to manage turbulence. Billed by the protesters as a peaceful demonstration, it turned out to be a riot: ugly, violent, protracted and massively disruptive to the city with traffic gridlocked, property wrecked, and the futures exchange nearly stormed. The police, who had underrated the intentions of the organisers, just weren't ready for it.

Perhaps you can't cover every scenario, but in the age of turbulence you certainly have to try and manage the most likely ones.