Article – Strategies for Uncertainty

19. June 201313. April 2018

What if Your Flight is a Few Years Late? – Planning for Investments that Depend on Others

We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, the Federal Republic of Germany and its capital are unable to complete the country’s most prestigious infrastructure project anywhere near on time. Whoever was planning on doing business around Berlin Brandenburg Airport better has a Plan B somewhere in the drawer.

Unfortunately, as even international media is pointing out by now, such delays are not an unusual problem for large public or semi-public development projects in Germany. More often than not, they come with a hefty extra bill for the taxpayer: Hamburg’s new concert hall, the rebuilding of the Stuttgart central train station, the Cologne subway, even the new headquarters for Germany’s foreign intelligence service are due to open years behind schedule and with a total cost far beyond the original price tag.

Various commentators, including Oxford project planning professor Bent Flyvbjerg, see a method behind the madness: Faced with a public that is generally hostile towards new technology or infrastructure, German politicians tend to be overly optimistic on cost and timeline to get their investments through the political process. The resulting problems will usually be inherited by their successors, while after successful completion, much of the positive aspects of the project will be attributed to the long-retired initial promoter. Positive examples cited often come from the UK, like the 2012 olympics or the extension of Heathrow airport. However, it is quite obviously possible to complete major infrastructure investment according to plan in Germany , as well: The Frankfurt airport operator Fraport has a history of completing projects like the North-West runway or Terminal 2 on time and within a reasonable budget, at least once external political and administrative hurdles have been cleared. Planning is not perfect there, either, as it never will be: Terminal 2 was designed to handle airliners even larger than today’s A380, which are nowhere in sight, while passengers boarding the many much smaller planes there today mostly have to use rather unconvenient bus gates. However, the simple fact that the capacities promised were available at the time they were promised is a key factor for Frankfurt’s continued success.

So, are the delays at Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg a problem of strategic planning? They certainly weren’t caused by mistakes in strategic planning. If professor Flyvbjerg is right, they were caused by a combination of intentionally overambitious aims, supported by the politically elected board members, and unprofessional project management. To a certain extent, the delays of course represent a problem for strategic planning. However, no strategy could have prepared the company to survive maintaining a complete international airport that does not produce revenues for years without getting help from the (public) ownership.

The most interesting strategic planning questions come up outside the airport operator. About 80 tenants were waiting to start their business in the new terminal. Airport shuttles and logistics companies were preparing for the new airport.

For most companies planning to do business with, at or around the new Berlin airport, the fact that there are delays isn’t even the worst part. Many will be growing or migrating from existing businesses, and most will be renting rather than investing in actual real estate, so they should in principle be able to adjust to a change of schedule, given reasonable advance notice. Therefore, the postponement from October 2011 to June 2012, announced in June 2010, should not have been a disaster for most companies affected, as they were still far from operational readyness.

However, until May 8, 2012, the official opening ceremony of the airport was announced for May 24, the beginning of regular flight operations for June 3rd. Less than four weeks before facilities for 70000 passengers a day had to be running, the beginning of operations was postponed to August, then to March 2013, to October 2013, then “until further notice”. Even for tenants and contracting parties of the airport operator, who can at least hope for some degree of compensation, such a process must be a threat to a company’s very existence. At this point, employees have been hired and must be paid, merchandise or material have been ordered and can only be canceled at additional cost, interest on investment must be paid, and equipment starts losing value, even if it isn’t used.

So what can planning contribute to limit the damage from such a timeline change? Is it primarily a matter of operative project planning or does it involve strategic questions?

From the point of view of uncertainty, this is in fact a rather simple planning problem, as there is one dimension of uncertainty dominating the whole process, and with the official dates fixed, the only direction the timeline can change to is backwards. The planning process, therefore, becomes a combination of traditional project planning with uncertainty-based strategic elements. The following points have to be addressed:

Basic Project Plan: Given the official external timeline, what should the own project plan look like? What are the internal deadlines? In the case of a tenant planning to run a retail business at the new terminal, when should the furniture be ordered, when the merchandise, when is the workforce hired and trained, when must the IT be ready?
Resulting Business Plan: What does the financial side of the project plan look like? What investments have to be made, when do running expenses start? When can the first revenues be generated?
Dependencies: At which points could external uncertainties, in this case the timeline of the airport, affect the project plan?
Modeling:

29. May 201313. April 2018

How Powerful is Game Theory? Part 2 – A Powerful Tool for Strategic Planning?

In part 1 of this article, we took a skeptical look at game theory and the claims made by Frank Schirrmacher in his book Ego. So if game theory is not a satanic game that destroyed the Soviet Union and makes our economies a playground for selfish rational crooks, if it is, as I concluded, only one of many decision support tools available to managers, is it even the powerful tool described in management textbooks?

To get a clearer picture of the actual value of the concept, we will take a closer look at the advantages claimed for game theory in strategic planning and at the drawbacks directly associated with them:

Game Theory Studies Interactions with other Market Participants. In fact, game theory is the only commonly cited tool to explicitly study not only the effect of other market participants on one’s own success, but also the impact one’s own decisions will have on others and on their decisionmaking. However,
Game Theory Focuses Unilaterally on These Interactions. In some special markets and for certain usually very large players, in-market interactions account for the majority of the business uncertainty, but most factors that most companies are exposed to are not interactive. The development of the economy, political, social or technological changes are not influenced much by a single company. If a tool focuses entirely on interactions and other important factors are hard to incorporate, they tend to be left out of the picture. With a highly specialized, sophisticated tool, there is always a danger of defining the problem to fit the tool.
Game Theory is Logical. The entire approach of game theory is derived from very simple assumptions (players will attempt to maximize their payoff values, specific rules of the game) and simple logic. Solutions are reached mathematically, usually in an analytical way, but for more complex problems, numerical approximations can be calculated, as well. But
Game Theory is also Simplistic. Most of the problems for which analytical solutions are generally known are extremely simple and have little in common with real-life planning problems. Over the years, game theory has been extended to handle more complex problems, but in many cases even formulating a problem in a suitable way means leaving out most of the truly interesting questions. In most cases, information is much more imperfect than the usual approach to imperfect information, probabilistic payoff values, suggests. Most real problems are neither entirely single shot nor entirely repetitive, and often, it is not just the payoff matrices but even the rules that are unclear. Any aspect that doesn’t fit the logic of player interaction either has to be investigated beforehand and accounted for in the payoff matrix, or has to be kept aside to be remembered in the discussion of results. The analytical nature of game theory makes it different to integrate with other planning concepts, even other quantitative ones.
Game Theory Leads to Systematic Recommendations. Game theory is not just an analytical tool meant to better understand a problem – it actually answers questions and recommends a course to follow. On the other hand,
These Recommendations are Unflexible. If a tool delivers a systematic recommendation, derived in a complex calculation, that recommendation tends to take on a life of its own, separating from the many assumptions that went into it. However, whichever planning tool is employed, the results will only be as good as the input. If there are doubts about these assumptions, and in most cases of serious planning there will be, sensitivities to minor changes in the payoff matrices are still fairly easy to calculate, but testing the sensitivity to even a minor change in the rules means the whole game has to be solved again, every time.
Game Theory Leads to a Rational Decision. Once the payoff values have been defined, game theory is not corruptible, insensitive to individual agendas, company politics or personal vanity. Although including the irrational, emotional factors in a decision can help account for factors that are difficult to quantify, like labor relations or public sentiment, being able to get a purely rational view is a value in and of itself. The drawback is,
Game Theory Assumes Everybody else to be Rational, as Well. Worse than that, it assumes everybody to do what we consider rational for them. While some extensions to game theory are meant to account for certain types of irrationality of other players, the whole idea really depends on at least being able to determine how others deviate from this expectation.

These factors significantly impact the applicability of game theory as a decision tool in every day strategic planning. In that case, why is it taught so much in business schools? Why are many books on game theory extremely worthwhile reading material?

Game Theory Points in a Direction often Neglected. There are not that many other concepts around to handle interdependencies of different market participants. Just like having no other tool than a hammer makes many problems look like nails, not having a hammer at all tends to cause nails to be overlooked. Many dilemmas and paradoxes hidden in in-market interactions have only been studied because of game theory and will only be recognized and taken into account by knowing about them from game theory, even if the textbook solutions are hardly ever applicable to real life.
Game Theory Helps to Structure Interdependencies. Although the analytical solution may not lead to the ultimate strategy, even without seeking an analytical solution at all, trying to derive payoff matrices leads to insights about the market. Systematically analyzing what each player’s options are and how they affect each other is a useful step in many strategic processes, even if other factors are considered more influential and other tools are employed.
Game Theory Shows how the Seemingly Irrational may be Reasonable. Game Theory shows how even very simple, well-structured games can lead to very complex solutions, sometimes solutions that look completely unreasonable at first sight. This helps to understand how decisions by other market participants that look completely unreasonable at first sight may be hiding a method behind the madness.

In short, while game theory probably doesn’t provide all the answers in most business decisions, it sure helps to ask some important questions. Even if it is not most adequate everyday planning tool, it is a good starting point for thinking – which is not to be underestimated.

Dr. Holm Gero Hümmler
Uncertainty Managers Consulting GmbH

14. May 201313. April 2018

A Reading Recommendation that Points Beyond Planning

There are some interesting thoughts on risk culture in an article posted by the folks from McKinsey & Company: Managing the people side of risk. Rather than addressing the planning perspective, the article focuses on the challenges uncertainty poses for a company’s organization and culture. That is interesting, considering that planning alone will not insure that a company is actually able to respond to uncertain developments. Three requirements for a company’s culture are pointed out:

The fact that uncertainty exists must be acknowledged
It must be possible and actively encouraged to talk about uncertainty
Uncertainty must be taken seriously, and respective guidelines must be followed

While the article stays mostly on the surface and never indicates that there also is a strategic perspective to the issue, it hints at some anonymized real-life cases and contains an important beyond-strategy viewpoint.

The authors use the term risk instead of uncertainty, following the colloquial sense of associating risk with a negative impact rather than a quantifiabe probability.

Dr. Holm Gero Hümmler
Uncertainty Managers Consulting GmbH

10. April 201313. April 2018

Bayes’ Theorem and the Relevance of Warning Signs

One of the interesting things about working in the field of business strategy is that the most inspiring thoughts relevant for one’s work are usually not found in textbooks. Dealing with spaceflight, science fiction and fringe technology, the io9 portal is about as geeky as they come and can hardly be considered typical manager’s reading. It does, however, contain fascinating ideas like this one: How Bayes’ Rule Can Make You A Better Thinker. Being a better thinker is always useful in strategy, and the article points out a number of interesting thoughts about how what we believe to be true is always uncertain to a degree and about the fallacies resulting from that. Unfortunately, it just very briefly skips over what Bayes’ Theorem actually says, although that’s really not that difficult to understand and can be quite useful, for example in dealing with things like warning signs or early indicators.

Obviously, Bayes’ Theorem as a mathematical equation is based on probabilities, and we have pointed out before that in management, as in many other aspects of real life, most probabilities we deal with can only be guessed. We’re not even good at guessing them. Still, the theorem has relevance even on the level of rough estimates that we have in most strategic questions, and in cases like our following example, they can fairly reasonably be inferred from previous market developments. Bayes’ Theorem can actually save you from spending money on strategy consultants like me, which should be sufficient to get most corporate employees’ attention.

So, here is the equation in its simplest form and the only equation you will see in this post, with P(A) being the probability that A ist true and P(A l B) being the probability that A is true under the assumption that B is true. In case you actually want more math, the Wikipedia article is a good starting point. In case that’s already plenty of math, hang in there; the example is just around the corner. And in case you don’t want a business strategy example at all, the very same reasoning applies to testing for rare medical conditions. This equation really fits for a lot of cases where we use one factor to predict another:

What does that mean? Suppose we have an investment to make, maybe a product that we want to introduce into the market. If we’re in the pharmaceutical business, it may be a drug we’re developing; it can also be a consumer product, an industrial service, a financial security we’re buying or real estate we want to develop. It may even be your personal retirement plan. The regular homework has been done, ideally, you have developed and evaluated scenarios, and assuming the usual ups and downs, the investment looks profitable.

However, we know that our investment has a small but relevant risk of catastrophic failure. Our company may be sued; the product may have to be taken off the market; your retirement plan may be based on Lehman Brothers certificates. Based on historical market data or any other educated way of guessing, we estimate that probability to be on the order of 5%.

That is not a pleasant risk to have in the back of your head, but help is on the way – or so it seems. There will be warning signs, and we can invest time and money to do a careful analysis of these warning signs, for example do a further clinical trial with the drug, hire a legal expert, market researcher or management consultant, and that analysis will predict the catastrophic failure with an accuracy of 95%. A rare event with a 5% probability being predicted with a 95% probability means that the remaining risk of running into that failure without preparation is, theoretically, 0.25%, or, at any rate, very, very small. The analysis of warning signs will predict a failure in 25% of all cases, so there will be false warnings, but they are acceptable given the (almost) certainty gained, right? Well, not necessarily. At first glance, the situation looks like this:

If we have plenty of alternatives and are just using our analysis to weed out the most dangerous ones, that should do the job. However, if the only option is to do or not do the investment and our analysis predicts a failure, what have we really learned? Here is where Bayes’ Theorem comes in. The probability of failure, P(A), is 5%, and the probability of the analysis giving a warning, P(B), is 25%. If a failure is going to occur, the probability of the analysis predicting it correctly, P(B l A), is 95%. Enter the numbers – if the analysis leads to a warning of failure, the probability of that failure actually occurring, P(A l B), is still only 19%. So, remembering that all our probabilities are, ultimately, guesses, all we now know is that the negative result of our careful and potentially costly analysis has changed the risk of failure from “small but significant” to “still quite small”.

If the investment in question is the only potential new product in our pipeline or the one piece of real estate we are offered or the one pension plan our company will subsidize, such a result of our analysis will probably not change our decision at all. We will merely feel more or less wary about the investment depending on the outcome of the analysis, which raises the question, is that worth doing it? As a strategy consultant, I am fortunate to be able to say that companies will generally just spend only about a permill of an investment amount on consultants for the strategic evaluation of that investment. Considering that a careful strategic analysis should give you insights beyond just the stop or go of an investment, that is probably still money well spent. On the other hand, additional clinical trials, prototypes or test markets beyond what has to be done anyway, just to follow up on a perceived risk, can cost serious money. So, unless there are other (for example ethical) reasons to try to be prepared, it is well worth asking if such an analysis will really change your decisions.

Of course, if the indicators analyzed are more closely related to the output parameters and if the probability of a warning is closer to the actual risk to be predicted, the numbers can look much more favorable for an analysis of warning signs. Still, before doing an analysis, it should always be verified that the output will actually make a difference for the decisions to be made, and even if the precise probabilities are unknown, at least the idea of Bayes’ Theorem can help to do that. Never forget the false positives.

Dr. Holm Gero Hümmler
Uncertainty Managers Consulting GmbH

22. May 201213. April 2018

The Difficulty of Estimating Probabilities

The May Issue of the German Harvard Business Manager shows the results of a survey among corporate leaders on the importance of various risk factors (Die Sorgen der Konzernlenker, page 22). The survey was done at the World Economic Forum in Davos and asked about the estimated probability and expected effects for 50 predefined global risks. In the article, the results are plotted as the number of answers color coded in 5×5 grids (probability horizontal, effects vertical).

The striking result are not so much the five main problems identified in the article, but the similarity of the distributions of answers, particularly on the probability axis. Whereas the effects of some risks are actually (although not dramatically) seen as larger or smaller than the others, the probability estimates show a strong tendency towards the center of the scale. In other words, the 469 participating global leaders consider all but a handful of 50 global risks about equally probable. In fact, there are very similar distributions of probability estimates for things that are already happening, like the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, deeply rooted organized crime or a rise of cronic diseases (the inevitable consequence of rising life expectations), versus largely imaginary risks like the vulnerability to geomagnetic storms or unwanted results of nanotechnology.

On the one hand, this shows a general problem with the use of standardized scales in surveys. There is, of course, a tendency towards the middle of the scale, and asked for numbers, different participants might actually assign very different numbers to a “medium” probability. Even the same participant might think of very different numbers for a “medium” probability dependent on the category the risk is assigned to.

But the strange probability distributions also show something else: We are simply not very good at estimating the probability of future events, especially if they are rare or even unprecedented. In fact, the only future events that we can assign a probability to with a certain degree of confidence are events that recur quite regularly and where there is no reason to expect the systematics to change. And, of course, any complicated probability calculations, most notably the value-at-risk approach commonly used in risk management, are voodoo if they hide the fact that the input probabilities are wild guesses.

Dr. Holm Gero Hümmler
Uncertainty Managers Consulting GmbH