David Cleden at the Experts’ Forum

ByElizabeth Harrin Last updated: Risk and issue management

“I don’t think there are any magic bullets to deal with the uncertainty we face,” said David Cleden, when he presented at the Gower/NCPM Experts’ Forum earlier this year. His presentation was on organisational strategies for dealing with uncertainty. Cleden brought up the famous ‘known/unknowns’ diagram and pointed out that the commonly-seen version with four quadrants misses off the things we think we know but we actually don’t.

Cleden also explained that risk management is more than just about knowledge and what you know. It’s also about coping with the uncertainty around managing “bolts from the blue.” He told the story of a project his company was working on. On Friday, the project manager was asked if the software would be ready to demo to the client on Monday. He replied that he was 100% sure that it would be. On Monday, it wasn’t. This was nothing to do with the project manager making promises he couldn’t keep. On Monday, the whole office – software to demo and all – no longer existed. The building was close to Buncefield and was wiped out in the explosion. Fortunately no one was in the office at the time, but the disaster meant that the software demo was out of the question. That eventuality was certainly not on the project manager’s risk register.

Cleden suggested doing exploratory work where possible to move risks into a quadrant where they can be actively managed. Unfortunately, you can’t forecast the future state of the project by projecting forward:  things will be different in a week’s time, and after that, there are many variants of where the project could end up. This makes it difficult to forecast with logic or mathematical principles.

His suggestion was to start with the end state of the project and forecast your risk position backwards. It sounds the same as forecasting forward, but it actually gives you more visibility because you can plan risk response from then to now with less requirement to factor in multiple variations on the future.

He also had some more advice for managing uncertainty:

  • Use all the opportunities you have to explore future uncertainty through piloting, prototypes and iterative methodologies.
  • Understand the purpose or goal and what is normal for you, so you can spot deviations when they occur.
  • Harness the knowledge you do have to make patterns and forecast backwards.
  • Empower decision making at the point of crisis and be prepared to circumvent hierarchy.

Finally, Cleden said that the drive to improve is the real key to managing uncertainty. Embrace it, and do the best you can to avoid, anticipate, suppress and cope with it!

Elizabeth Harrin wearing a pink scarf

Project manager, author, mentor

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years.
Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.