Surprise! How can insights from other high-pressure occupations help legal professionals better handle unexpected events?

• Author: Baiocchi, David

MIKE Wheaton knows about surprise. (1) As a coach in the National Football League (NFL) for more than 20 years, Wheaton is one of the longest-serving coaches in the franchise's history. For a profession that is known for being short-lived, Wheaton's longevity is a testament to his effective mastery of the job and, in particular, in dealing with surprises. (2) When I called Wheaton to discuss his approach to dealing with surprise, he stated his position clearly: "If I'm doing my job right, there should never be any surprises."

He went on to describe that his preparations begin in the off-season, when the coaching staff receives the team's schedule for the upcoming year. Once the preseason begins, Wheaton and his fellow coaches start reviewing hours of videotape and thousands of photographs from previous games. Wheaton's goal is to determine how his opponents think and behave in every situation. The output of all of this research is the team's playbook, which provides the coaching staff with a detailed list of "what if' plans for any situation they might find themselves in. His team's playbook is so specific that the coaches can input the down number, the team's position on the field, and the opposing team's formation, and the playbook will recommend the best course of action.

Wheaton, therefore, prepares for surprise by thinking about every possible scenario that can happen to his team, and then generating a playbook as a way to eliminate foreseeable chances that he will be surprised. But what about practitioners who do not possess the luxury of a planning season and reams of historical performance data?

After speaking with Wheaton, my conversations turned to former Navy Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) platoon commander Chris Bradford. At first glance, it would seem that Bradford could appreciate Wheaton's approach to dealing with surprise; before serving as a SEAL platoon commander, Bradford wrote his master's thesis on what the Navy can learn from the NFL. Similarly, Wheaton spends his off-season reading military doctrine because, he says, it makes him a better strategist on the field. (The two men have never met.)

I led my interview with Bradford by asking if he, like Wheaton, prepares detailed plans for all of his missions. Surprisingly, Bradford said, "I need my guys to have clear heads on the ground, otherwise they're going to make mistakes. The last thing I want is to be worrying about all of the countless things that could go wrong and cramming plans into their heads at the last minute."

Bradford went on to describe his preparation process. Instead of reviewing every possible scenario and devising a plan against it, Bradford limits his scope to the key parameters particular to the upcoming mission: What is the mission goal? What is the route to the target? What are the primary threats that the team is likely to face? To address these, Bradford and his team review aerial photos, identify key landmarks, and discuss ingress and egress strategies. They may notionally walk through the mission before going out into the field, but Bradford notes that there is no such thing as a playbook for his SEALs.

The differences between the two approaches are striking for two reasons. First, Bradford and Wheaton clearly see their professions as analogs of one another, as evidenced by the fact that they each spend time researching the other profession's strategies. Yet, they maintain completely opposite approaches to dealing with unexpected scenarios: Wheaton thinks about everything that could possibly go wrong, while Bradford tries to stay focused on the bigger picture, despite the fact that Bradford faces an existential threat every time he goes to work. Why would the SEALs--individuals who risk their lives on every mission--have far fewer "what if' plans than football players?

To address this and other surprise-related questions, my colleague Steven D. Fox and I interviewed a number of highly successful professionals to find out what they believe creates surprise, how they prepare and respond to it, and how the negative effects of surprise can be mitigated. We interviewed CEOs, foreign service officers, medical professionals, engineers, military personnel, and performance artists. Our objective was to identify common strategies used across multiple professions, and to detect how and why some strategies differ across professions. Our approach was not designed to be exhaustive; instead, we focused on using good interview practices to identify common themes and heuristics.

We reviewed the transcripts of our interviews, and we identified salient similarities and differences across the professions. We came away with three key observations. Our first was that all of our interviewees rely on a common set of core strategies for preparing and responding to unexpected events. Our second and third are more about how professions differ from one another. One key difference that we observed is that a profession's response techniques depend on how much response time they typically have after a surprise

occurs. Those professionals who have seconds or minutes to respond (surgeons and Navy SEALs, for example) have a different response mechanism than those who usually enjoy a longer response time (CEOs and ambassadors, for example). We also observed that the professions respond differently depending on how much chaos exists in the work environment. Those working in highly controlled environments (like an NFL coach) prepare for surprise in a different way than someone who works in a complex environment (like a Navy SEAL).

For the remainder of this piece, I will describe our findings in more detail, and I will add some additional context by including supporting examples from the professions that we interviewed. I will also answer the question that I posed in the introduction: Why does the Navy SEAL prepare in such a different way than the NFL coach? To conclude, I will offer some observations on how these lessons might apply to legal professionals.

1. Response Techniques Common Across all of the Professions

   We were particularly interested in identifying techniques that were common across all of our interviewees because these strategies are likely to be applicable to a broader set of professions. After the interviews were completed, we identified four common strategies.

   The most common phrase that we heard in our interviews is that there is no substitute for experience. To understand why experience is so important, it is helpful to understand what happens after a surprise occurs. When something surprising happens, it is because something is happening that we do not recognize. As soon as the surprise occurs, our brains start working to transform the unrecognized into something that is recognized, even if it is only partially so. This transition is key to mitigating the negative effects of a surprise because it allows us to start formulating a response, and this is where experience matters.

   Experience is therefore the best insurance policy against the negative effects of surprise because experience is what allows us to make a quick transition from unrecognized to recognized. In other words, experience reduces the size of the surprise space. Experienced practitioners can recognize many nascent surprises early, before they can cause too many adverse effects. This, in turn, allows...