Enablers and confounders: Achieving the mission

Abstract

You have planned extensively to achieve your mission; your preparation, you think, is perfection itself. What could possibly go wrong after all the hard work you have done? Actually, quite a lot can either go wrong, or at least not go quite right, as the quotation from Robert Burns in the heading of this chapter indicates. It is said in military circles that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. This healthy cynicism is equally applicable to any plan that relies on assumptions on the behavior of others, including plans to deliver medical care in support of the victims of conflict and catastrophe. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan perhaps put it in a nutshell. When asked what constituted his biggest problem he replied "Events, dear boy. Events." Events for which we have not planned, or which are outside our control, can throw us into confusion if we have no available response to them. Even a small event can have major consequences - the so-called "butterfly effect" in chaos theory. As I hope you will glean from this chapter, there are a lot of butterflies about!.