Fanatic Risk Acceptance: A Tragic Tale One Century Later

I found it very ironic that last week I was co-facilitating a session on Risk Management as part of the Project Management Institute Upstate New York Chapter’s PMP Exam Prep class. As defined in the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) one of the inputs to the Plan Risk Management process is Enterprise Environmental Factors.  The PMBOK defines this input as:

“The enterprise environmental factors that can influence the Plan Risk Management process include, but are not limited to, risk attitudes and tolerances that describe the degree of risk that an organization will withstand.”

As part of the exam prep session we review the need to understand which project constraints (time, cost, scope, or quality) organizations and sponsors are most sensitive, to be used as an input in the process of ranking project risks. For example if you are working on a project which your organization’s CEO or state’s Governor has publically announce a date for deployment, your project will be more sensitive to risks that would impact the schedule.

While we can use these organizational tolerances to guide us in our risk management processes it is the responsibility of the Project Manager to ensure the focus on any particular project constraints is not taken to an extreme at the expense of others.  This is especially critical when risks that would impact the quality of the project are overlooked in favor of other constraints such as cost or schedule.

The best and extreme example is a famous project on which risks impacting quality were ignored and resulted in the loss of over 1500 lives. The vilified Project Sponsor of this project was J. Bruce Ismay whose project was the maiden voyage of the White Star Line’s new luxury liner Titanic.

There are many factors that resulted in the sinking and loss of life associated with the Titanic, but Ismay's obsession to reach New York ahead of schedule is likely the most fatal decision that contributed to the tragedy.  Despite iceberg warnings and the lack of enough lifeboats for all on board, Ismay ordered Captain Smith to proceed at full steam ahead.

But before we vilify Ismay for the full steam ahead decision, as we learn from Sam Sommers book, Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, we should understand the context around Ismay's acceptance of this particular risk.

To understand the context around the ultimate acceptance of the risk of Titanic hitting an iceberg we need to consider that before April 15, 1912 nobody could image the deadly impacts of Titanic of hitting an iceberg given that it was widely thought to be “unsinkable”.  Although the White Star line has been highly criticized for not carrying enough lifeboats to support everyone onboard, the line was operating within the legal requirement for lifeboats. Even the governing officials considered the Titanic to be the ultimate floatation device so enough lifeboats to carry all passengers and crew were not required.

In addition it is unlikely that Ismay would have known about the fatal flaws built into the Titanic which contributed to the sinking of the grand liner.

Therefore, it may be the case that the risk of hitting an iceberg was determined as having a medium or even high probability, given the number of warnings, but it is conceivable that the impact would have been seen as very low. This flawed impact analysis may have contributed to the fateful decision to run at full speed.

Although it is easy for us to look back and judge the full steam head decision to have been a terrible one, given the available knowledge at the time, it may have been a risk that many others besides Ismay would have accepted. Although we may not be able to harshly judge this decision, there are plenty of other actions that Ismay took during and after the disaster which can not be even partially justified when we consider context.

We will never know for sure if Ismay was aware of these risks or the exact conversations that occurred between Captain Edward Smith and Ismay. We can only hope that Smith in his role as Captain (Project Manager) would have explicitly informed Ismay (Project Sponsor) of the enormous risks (as he understood them) that were being undertaking along with the deadly impacts.

The interesting dilemma for the Project Manager is what to do if you see a disaster looming but you cannot convince the Project Sponsor to change course. In most situations the Project Manager can either appeal to other managers within the organization or decide to leave the project and find other employment. Unfortunately for Captain Smith these options were not available in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and he chose the most responsible course of action when he (unlike Ismay) went down with the ship.

One of the many lessons that Project Managers should take away from the Titanic disaster is to understand the sponsor’s and organization’s risk tolerances while making sure all risks are considered and any looming icebergs are properly analyzed, communicated and addressed.

One hundred years later our hearts and sympathies go out to the families of those who lost their lives on April 15, 2012 in the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean. May the souls lost that night rest in eternal peace.