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Communicating emerging threats and
potential crises to leaders
Lars Hedström, Executive Director
The Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies,
Swedish Defence University
Ongoing Crises
Migration
Islamic State
Terrorism (Paris)
Syria
Resurgent Russia
Financial Crisis
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
Sensemaking
• “Sensemaking before and during crises takes
place within organizational, socio-technical
and political contexts which both enable and
constrain the ability of decision-makers to
understand potential threats and
opportunities.”
• The agenda-politics perspective points to three
main sources to explain unaddressed
vulnerabilities and warning-response problems:
overcrowded agendas, the failure of key actors
to place issues high enough on the agenda to
be acted on adequately, and competing
priorities.
Fukushima
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making
“Cynefin”
Emergent practice
Good practice
Novel practice
Best practice
Harvard Business Review, David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone
Complexity – the challenge
“COMPLEX” (or “WICKED”) PROBLEMS
• Result from concurrent interactions among multiple systems of events,
and they erode the customary boundaries that differentiate bureaucratic
concepts and missions
• Cannot be broken apart and solved piece-by-piece. They must be
understood and addressed as a system
• Cannot be permanently solved. Instead, they morph into new problems
as the result of interventions to deal with them.
”Anticipatory Governance, Practical Upgrades Equipping the Executive Branch to
Cope with Increasing Speed and Complexity of Major Challenges”
Leon S. Fuerth with Evan MH Haber, Oct 2012
Foresight – a diciplined process
“Foresight is the disciplined analysis of alternative
futures. It is not prediction, it is not vision, and it is not
intelligence; it is a distinct process of monitoring
prospective oncoming events”
“…analyzing potential implications, simulating
alternative courses of action, asking unasked
questions, and issuing timely warning to avert a risk
or seize an opportunity.”
“A foresight-generating and horizon-scanning system….
detect trends and weak signals, visualize alternative
futures…”
”Anticipatory Governance, Practical Upgrades Equipping the Executive
Branch to Cope with Increasing Speed and Complexity of Major Challenges”
Leon S. Fuerth with Evan MH Haber, Oct 2012
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-
csi/vol42no5/pdf/v42i5a04p.pdf
• The support was geared to respond quickly to whatever we felt the situation called for.
• The day-to-day personal contact enabled us, in ad hoc fashion, to tailor the support.
• Requirements were not filtered; they were received directly, continually, and from the top level
Relation and independence
The “Grey Zon” challenge
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
War Crisis
Civilian
Military
National
International
Internal
External
Societal Security – Whole-of-a-society-approach
Lars Hedström, Executive Director, Institute for National Defence and Security Policy Studies
Communicating emerging threats and potential crises to leaders
• Independence, but integrated
• Relation and continuity
• Methods (complexity) and process
• Horison Scanning Model
• Built in to the system
• Unasked questions
