Integrating Mindfulness in Project and Program Management

Mindfulness is a state of consciousness in which attention is focused on present-moment phenomena occurring both externally and internally (Dane 2011 p.1000). This present-moment phenomena can also include embarking in creative imagination about the future, problem solving in the present or analysis of the past - as well as a discerning capacity of observing the present situation and context without falling into habitual tendencies or routines. This targets a number of challenges for Project and Program managers in where, due to time pressure, uncertainty and personal cognitive biases, sub-optimal decisions are often made impacting the projects deadlines extensively.

This article intends to build upon the growing number of theories and evidences of the benefits of mindfulness, from two perspectives: individual and collective. It will draw from the latest research on the topic and link it to the existing framework for Mindfulness in High Reliability Organizations (HRO), developed by professors Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe. Finally, the article will finish by suggesting potential tools and areas of integration for Project and Program Managers practice.

Context

Historical definition of Mindfulness

The earlier account of the meaning of the world mindfulness comes from the Pali-term sati, simply meaning a state of non forgetfulness, bearing in mind a given object of attention. This includes retrospective memory of things in the past; prospective memory, to remember to do things in the future; and present centered recollection in the sense of maintaining attention to the present reality.

Figure 1: Time Magazine - February 2014

In several contemplative traditions mindfulness this mental factor is viewed as a pre-requisite to: 1) Develop attention/concentration skills 2) Develop empathy and altruism; and 3) Developing cognitive balance. The latter can be generally understood as the self-awareness of our own internal mental processes, cognitive biases and tendencies, and the degree of freedom to which an individual can refrain from acting on them. (source: B. Alan Wallace, "The four applications of Mindfulness")

Mindfulness in the West

Even though there are earlier accounts of Mindfulness in the West, the recent popularity of the concept of Mindfulness in the West is generally attributed to Jon Kabbat-Zinn and his work on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme. The adoption of mindfulness related practices/training has been widespread, ranging from training and development programs of major corporations from Google to General Mills, to programs in prisons to prevent work burnout of juvenile guards.

Universities, too, have taken up the call. For example, the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center leads on average 200 people every week in a silent Mindfulness Awareness meditation class held at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater (Hanc 2015).

Recent research

Figure 1: Mindfulness Research Publications: 1980-2013

The past 30 years have seen exponential growth in research of Mindfulness. Much research concerned with the development of individual-level mindfulness maintains that mindfulness can be developed through meditation. The research takes its cue from Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR programme but also a variety of other Mindfulness Based Interventions (MBIs) i.e.: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (Teasdale et al. 2000).

Building on the view that mindfulness is a byproduct of meditation experimental research has shown that state mindfulness can be activated through brief meditation-related instructions and exercises (e.g., Hafenbrack et al. 2014, Ostafin & Kassman 2012, Papies et al. 2012, Reb & Narayanan 2014).

The growth in mindfulness research literature from 1980-2013 is shown in the graph at the right-handside.

Individual Mindfulness

Definitions	Source
A state of consciousness in which attention is focused on present-moment phenomena occurring both externally and internally	Dane (2011, p.1000)
A meta-cognitive ability defined as "a state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present" and involves conscious perception and processing of external stimuli (in contrast to automatic tendencies)	Eisenbeiss & van Knippenberg (2015)
A state of consciousness in which individuals pay attention to the present moment with an accepting and nonjudgemental attitude	Brown et al. 2007, Kabat-Zinn 1994
An active state of mind characterised by a novel distinction-drawing that results in being (a) situated in the present, (b) sensitive to context and perspective, and (c) guided (but not governed) by rules and routines	Langer (2014, p. 11)

Benefits of Individual Mindfulness

Different research on mindfulness has proved its varied impacts on health, performance and emotional regulation. Some of the key findings presented include:

• enhanced psychological and physical well-being (e.g. Brown et al. 2007)
• slow aging (Epel et al. 2009)
• improve standardised test performance (Mrazek et al. 2013).

Even more relevant to our point, organisational research indicates that individual mindfulness is positively related to employee outcomes such as:

• Work engagement (Leroy et al. 2013) and
• Job performance (Dane & Brummel 2014).

Suggesting the mindfulness contributes to an organisation's bottom line.

Collective Mindfulness

Collective mindfulness was originally developed to explain how high-reliability organizations (HROs) avoid catastrophe and perform in a nearly error-free manner under trying conditions. Over time, the focus has expanded to include "organizations that pay close attention to what is going on around them, refusing to function on ‘auto-pilot’”. Collective mindfulness is a means of engaging in the everyday social processes of organizing that sustains attention on detailed comprehension of one’s context and on factors that interfere with such comprehension (Vogus & Sutcliffe 2012; Weick et al. 1999; Weick & Sutcliffe 2001, 2006, 2007).

Some of the most common definitions of Collective Mindfulness highly influenced by Weick et al work are the following:

Definitions	Source
To stay mindful, despite hazardous environments, frontline employees consider constantly five principles: tracking small failures, resisting oversimplification, remaining sensitive to operations, maintaining capabilities for resilience, and taking advantage of shifting locations of expertise	Ausserhofer et al. (2013, p. 157)
Actively and continuously question assumptions; promote orderly challenge of operating routines and practices so successful lessons of the past do not become routine to the point of safety degradation; “outside view” actively solicited or created through active multidisciplinary review of the routine and debriefing of the unusual to prevent normalization of deviance	Knox et al. (1999, p. 26)
The combination of ongoing scrutiny of existing expectations based on newer experiences, willingness, and capacity to invent new expectations based on newer experiences, willingness and capacity to invent new expectations that make sense of unprecedented events, a more nuanced appreciation of context and ways to deal with it, and identification of new dimensions of context to improve foresight and current functioning	from Weick & Sutcliffe 2001, p. 42)
Mindfulness refers to processes that keep organizations sensitive to their environment, open and curious to new information, and able to effectively contain and manage unexpected events in a prompt and flexible fashion	Valorinta (2009, p. 964)

Benefits of Collective Mindfulness

Investigation on the employee and organisational consequences of collective mindfulness - defined as the collective capability to discern discriminatory detail about emerging issues and to act swiftly in response to these details (Weick et al. 1999, 2000; Vogus & Sutcliffe 2012) - and, in doing so, have found an array of benefits. For employees,

• mindful organising is associated with lower turnover rates (Vogus et al. 2014a).

For organisations, collective mindfulness is positively related to salutary organisational outcomes including:

• more effective resource allocation (Wilson et al. 2011);
• greater innovation (Vogus % Melbourne 2003);
• improved quality, safety and reliability (e.g., Vogus & Sutcliffe 2007a,b).

Interestingly, these effects are most commonly observed in particularly trying contexts charactered by complexity, dynamism, and error intolerance. This suggests that some of these benefits can be achieved even in the toughest project and programs situations.

Why is it important? The Impact of Human Behaviour on Project and Program Management

Independent of the actual complexity of a project is the way we perceive and manage this complexity. Arguably, regardless of its “real” complexity, what count are our perception and reaction to it. (2015 J. Oehmen, C. Thuesen, P. Parraguez, and J. Geraldi)

We are incredibly adaptable at learning although our capacity to make decisions is limited by at least three main factors:

• Our access to information will never be perfect and completely and accurately represent the full current state;
• We have cognitive limitations—for example, regarding the number of factors we can consider in parallel,

the amount of information we can take up, or the speed with which we can process it; and

• The time we have to make a decision.

Adding to these cognitive limitations, we have a number of subconscious or built-in decision-making models and routines, i.e.: cognitive biases and heuristics, which can often be detrimental when trying to come up with the best solutions/responses when managing complex systems. Below some of the key findings on these topics, and how they directly affect decision making at large and project/program management in particular:

Prospect Theory and Cognitive Biases

"Humans are not the rational beings they think themselves to be", argues Nobel lareaute Daniel Kahneman. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman unpacks his life-long research on prospect theory which if need be to summarise in one sentence could resemble: the experimental faults in Daniel Bernoulli's traditional utility theorbynd challenging that economic rationality of Utilitarian theory do not reflect people's actual choices, by not taking into account their cognitive biases. There are several key findings that have been widely used in Economics, Finance and business (Andrei Shleifer, 2012). These findings are on the edge frontier between psychology and behaviour economics and it is the authors' perspective that they are also of utmost relevance for project and program management.

Other conclusions supported by examples are shown bellow:

Framing

Framing is the context in which choices are presented.

Example: subjects were asked whether they would opt for surgery if the survival rate is 90 percent, while others were told that the mortality rate is 10 percent. The first framing increased acceptance, even though the situation was no different.

Optimism and loss aversion

Kahneman explains a "pervasive optimistic bias", which "may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases." This bias generates the illusion of control, that we have substantial control of our lives. A natural experiment reveals the prevalence of one kind of unwarranted optimism. The planning fallacy is the tendency to overestimate benefits and underestimate costs, impelling people to take on risky projects. In 2002, American kitchen remodeling was expected on average to cost $18,658, but actually cost $38,769 (Holt, Jim (27 November 2011).

To explain overconfidence, Kahneman introduces the concept he labels What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI). This theory states that when the mind makes decisions, it deals primarily with Known Knowns, phenomena it has already observed. It rarely considers Known Unknowns, phenomena that it knows to be relevant but about which it has no information. Finally it appears oblivious to the possibility of Unknown Unknowns, unknown phenomena of unknown relevance.

He explains that humans fail to take into account complexity and that their understanding of the world consists of a small and necessarily un-representative set of observations. Furthermore, the mind generally does not account for the role of chance and therefore falsely assumes that a future event will mirror a past event.

Sunk Cost

Rather than consider the odds that an incremental investment would produce a positive return, people tend to "throw good money after bad" and continue investing in projects with poor prospects that have already consumed significant resources. In part this is to avoid feelings of regret. Roger Lowenstein (October 28, 2011)

Stress and emotional exhaustion

• Research has demosntrated that meditative training programs reduce work-related stress (e.g., Bazarko et al. 2013, Wolever et al. 2012).
• Hulsheger et al. (2013) found through a field experiment with working professionals that mindfulness reduced emotional exhaustion and increased job satisfaction.

Lessons from High Resilience Organizations (HRO)

Weick and Sutcliffe have developed five principles that harness the key characteristics in mindfulness. These guidelines/principles apply upward to divisions and organizations as well as downward to teams, crews and team leaders. The principles can be adopted by anyone. Each principle is given an example from different HRO’s.

Principle	Description
Preoccupation with failure	A preoccupation with failure focuses the organization to convert small errors and failures into organizational learnings and improvements.
Reluctance to simplify	Simplify mindfully and reluctantly. Have in mind that simplification can become too simple resulting in useless, unprecise simplifications e.g. explanations and categories. Problems faced in complex projects typically offer several options and a nuanced picture to fully understand the best solution.
Sensitivity to operations	An organization must have an integrated overall and aligned picture of operation. Sensitivity to operations is closely related to sensitivity to relationships. Meaning a clear and unprejudiced communication between operation and management is crucial to understand the big picture.
Commitment to resilience	Accommodate unexpected events and react to them quickly as they arise.
Deference to expertise (Collective mindfulness)	Deference to expertise is about involving experts in the decision-making. The experts actively involved in the projects are more capable to give articulate solutions to problems. Rigid hierarchies have their own special vulnerability to error where errors at high levels tend to pick up and combine errors at low levels. HRO’s push decision making down where decision is made on the front line. The authority migrate to the people with the most expertise, regardless of their rank. Collective mindfulness is associated with cultures and structures that promote open discussions of errors, mistakes and awareness.

Whenever people change the way they perceive the world they essentially rework the way they label and categorize what they see. This change in perception can be described with the following process:

1. Re-examine discarded information
2. Monitor how categories affect expectations and,
3. Remove out-dated distinctions

Firstly, to rework one’s categories mindfully implies to evaluate how much information is discarded with a categorization of an instance with similar characteristics. Generally categorization help gaining control in a fast pace world. Categories can predict what will happen and plan one’s own actions. Without categories, any person or situation would be unique and therefore conserve scarce mental resources of attention and thinking. One category cannot describe all facets of a person and the professor must be aware of the discarded information within each category.

Secondly, mindful reworking of categories also mean that one pay close attention to their effect on the expectations. Categories and expectations are closely related. E.g., a person categorized as an expert is expected to know the answers within his/her field of expertise. These expectations constantly have to be revised and evaluated. It may be necessary to differentiate the expectations, replace them, supplement them, or discard the whole category.

Third, mindful reworking means a check whether the categories remain plausible. Outdated categorization with implausible distinctions of expectations ensure trouble. This is the basic misreading in HRO’s. The trouble starts when you fail to notice that you only look for whatever confirms your categories and expectations. “Believing is seeing. You see what you expect to see. You see what you have the labels to see. You see what you have the skills to manage.” (Weick, K. E. and Sutcliffe, K. M. 2001.) People who have a critical approach towards their categories by refining them, updating or replacing them notice more and catch unexpected events earlier in their development.

The case for Mindfulness in Project and Program Management

Mindfulness managing Projects

Taking the example a recent interview with the Bispebjerg hospital Executive VP, he states: when managing a project with such a long life cycle (10y) there must be a continuous capacity to adapt because of the of the oportunities that manifest along the way. "What was a the best technology in the beginning of the project might be mediocre by the end of it" - this leads to the idea that if we firmly grasp onto our old existing ways of viewing as the right one, refusing to absorb new information and reconstruct our way of thinking, we become blind to new opportunities of our context.

While we cannot completely dissolve our cognitive limitations, we can discipline our minds by becoming aware of our “irrationalities” and inspiring ourselves to act in a mindful manner. Our behaviour will become more like we thought it was anyway—rational and fact-based. (2015 J. Oehmen, C. Thuesen, P. Parraguez, and J. Geraldi) These are key qualities for a successful project manager

to be continued...

Mindfulness managing programs

As Valorinta states, Collective mindfulness refers to processes that keep organizations sensitive to their environment, open and curious to new information, and able to effectively contain and manage unexpected events in a prompt and flexible fashion. This sounds incredibly similar to the job description for a Program Manager! Taking London Olympics 2012 as an example, part of the success of the program management was due to a heightened awareness of the potential synergies to be drawn amongst the several individual projects - and how could these mutually reinforce one another in reaching the ODA's priority goals.

to be continued...

Conclusion and final remarks

Projects never go according to plan. Far too many cases could be drawn to support this statement. That is why it is fundamental for project managers to be able to navigate in changing environments - making the best decisions not only as a way to accomplish the initial plans but also to seize the opportunities that manifest along the way.

Besides all the objective metrics and targets used to project and program improved delivery; the human aspect, ranging from work satisfaction, social relations and individual well-being is also a key factor that should be accounted for when we consider the benefits of integrating mindfulness in PPPM. Therefore, even though there are clear positive outcomes in terms of organizational performance and output delivery, a key point is that the benefits of having such environment and approach will overflow and the benefit for each individual will never be captured in its entirety.

to be continued...

It is your call to decide which stance would you like you and organisation to hold on this topic. Would you rather wait for all the data come in before embracing a Mindful culture in your oganisation; or given what is already out there are you willing to try it out and see how well your Project and Program Management can improve. How are you going to manage this risk?