I'm an anthropologist who works on governance and development problems around the world. Using my experiences I write about how economic processes and human relationships build (or destroy) social systems and the institutions of governance.
Mission creep is described as the unplanned expansion of a mission to achieve a goal that is no longer strategically relevant. Sometimes what we think is the goal is not really what’s important.
Sometimes it’s not the end of the road that’s important: sometimes the journey is what’s important. So let’s take this step by step.
The story is told of a platoon that took a military location, Hamburger Hill, at a tremendous cost in lives even though it was no longer relevant to winning the war. This happens when the platoon leader feels a great deal of pressure to carry out an order or achieve a field objective even without caring or understanding that the objective is no longer germane to the larger effort.
It’s now time to broaden the definition of “mission creep” beyond the battlefield to include the execution of any activity at high financial or social cost simply to satisfy an indicator or meet a benchmark that is no longer valid. Like the platoon leader, this happens when an executing team or leader feels a great deal of pressure to achieve a bad or invalid indicator or benchmark, or does not care or understand that the task is no longer important.
I’ve seen this happen in countless development or humanitarian initiatives in many countries. Paying a company or consultant on the basis of benchmarks or indicators may seem logical when designing a budget, but it often leads to a waste of resources and an increase in mission creep by unwittingly encouraging expenditures that no longer have relevant results. Companies love mission creep because it is indicators or benchmaks, - not the goal- that are the basis on which they are paid.
When designing a task or project we often try to develop a “Plan B”, which involves considering what to do if an action or assumption no longer has an expected or desirable effect. Mission creep analysis goes somewhat deeper, to analyze the validity of each indicator or benchmark (i.e. ask under what conditions might they no longer remain valid) or to ask how teams or leaders can cancel or redesign a benchmark without penalty. As part of their tasks, teams and leaders need to be directed to constantly review the indicators that drive them. Ideally, their reward system also needs to be structured so that they are empowered to escalate their concerns and to flag any indicators or benchmarks that may need to be changed. Frankly, this is extremely difficult because field teams are often staffed with the skills they need to achieve certain indicators, and changing the composition of a team may cost a team member their involvement in the team or perhaps even their job. So, though we often think of the importance of developing a “Plan B” – i.e. an alternate route to achieve an objective, another kind of Plan B is to structure an activity to avoid mission creep, - how to maintain an open mind to the possibility that “Plan B” may not even be important any more, and how to pivot toward other objectives entirely.
It is the other kind of Plan B that I’d like to discuss. It is understandable that as needs and conditions change, it is often necessary for tactical missions or field projects to make strategic adaptations or midcourse corrections in order to achieve their original goals. But this is quite different from losing focus of those original goals or exceeding them. If original goals are determined to be no longer applicable, the mission obviously needs to be reviewed. (Getting to that building at the end of the road might not really be the mission. Maybe it’s the journey itself that was the mission.) This is difficult in itself because of the sunk emotional costs, namely how much investment of ego or emotion has been made in what was originally thought to have been the mission. Projects too often use tools or strategies that are tied to highly visible and easily understood immediate targets at the expense of was (or should have been) the real mission.
I use the following example in role-plays with students: Imagine that the objective of your mission is to keep the enemy from getting control of Hamburger Hill. Imaging that the strategic reason, of which you may not be aware, is that we need Hamburger Hill right away because it’s a perfect high altitude overlook from which one can observe faraway enemy troop movements. But remember, this is a reason about which you are not aware. You are simply informed that your assigned objective is get the hill right away and to keep the enemy from controlling it. Whether you know the strategic reason or not, your mission is “smart” i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. You don’t know it, but you are a perfect candidate for mission creep: To keep the enemy from gaining control of Hamburger Hill, you use your resources (e.g. half the lives in your platoon) to keep it out of the enemy’s hands. You decide to get control of Hamburger Hill or maybe even destroy it to keep it from the enemy. Mission accomplished, because either the enemy cannot control the overlook or it may no longer even exist. You may be surprised to learn that we no longer need Hamburger Hill because the enemy now uses drone overflights and does not even need overlooks. Congratulations, your mission is a resounding success. And you lose half your platoon. And the war.
So now we come to our example in governance.
Even the most clearly designed projects are at risk of this kind of mission creep, especially when the reasons for the mission’s goals are not well understood or when the pressure to achieve a mission’s immediate indicators are more compelling than achieving the mission’s longer-term goals. Many projects are applauded as being successful simply because they achieve impressive benchmarks,- though they may be the wrong benchmarks. For example, we are quick to applaud that 100,000 meals have been distributed by humanitarian workers in a disaster zone without even thinking that in so doing, local farmers have been driven into bankruptcy and the local economy is now unable to feed itself when the humanitarian workers leave the disaster area. This happens after every hurricane, cyclone, earthquake, and drought, resettlement. Setting a benchmark of distributing 100,000 meals may appeal to an uninformed desire to help, but is thoroughly irresponsible if it is not coupled with building a corresponding program for food security.
I recently managed a project in which one field component required helping hundreds of small neighboring farmers plant several kilometers of pineapple along the ridges connecting their land. The idea, a technically sound one, was to prevent soil erosion. The pineapple would grow fast and produce income, and their roots would hold the soil and prevent erosion and catastrophic soil loss. The field manager for that activity, a Natural Resource Specialist, easily explained the strategy to the farmers, with whom he got along very well, and everyone was on board with the activity and within a few weeks, before I even had a chance to visit the activity, more than twice the target length of pineapple hedgerows had been planted. Awesome. When I visited the area every single farmer expressed enthusiasm with the activity and wanted more similar programs. The funding agency was impressed and encouraged me to pay the field manager a bonus.
What could possibly be a problem?
In that farming community, like in many other farming communities, farmers get together and voluntarily pool their labor to help their neighbors accomplish urgent tasks. These are important community activities where neighbors will get together and help each other to quickly plough a field or erect a barn in the short period before a storm or tornado season is expected. Farmers all over the U.S. Midwest have “barn raising” events when over just a few days farmers will build a barn for their neighbor, who feeds his neighbor-helpers with grilled chicken or sandwiches, and who happily returns the favor when needed. In my project site the same thing happens, except the shared meal is rice and beans or manioc and corn stew. It’s a way of getting things done and building community. But the Natural Resource Specialist field manager paid each of the farmers to help his neighbor plant the pineapple hedgerows, a collaborative activity that they would previously rolled up their sleeves and happily helped each other with. Now each of the farmers wanted to get paid for every community environmental activity the project promoted, and no sense of community would develop around environmental activities of environmental importance to the area. If the activity called for the village getting together to invest time and effort, it would no longer take off. Remember our first case: Hamburger Hill was taken, but the war was lost. This is an example how replacing trust and community collaboration with money very quickly destroyed community collaboration. Being built on trust, it’s one of the most important institutions of governance.
Imagine how the farming system in the U.S. Midwest would have developed without farmers trusting that they could count on each other’s support.
Trust is one of the most easily broken parts of governance.
I work for a major logistics company and see the sunk cost fallacy being implemented by engineers, to the clear long-term detriment of the company.
Thanks for sharing this very informative piece that clearly demonstrates how outsiders with lack of knowledge about communities and the importance of building and maintaining trust erode governance and cooperation. I have seen it so often, what is required in the scenario is to make the stakeholders so vested in the activity that they are willing to invest to achieve the overall relevant objective. The objective was to protect the land that was being eroded which impact the farmers’ lives and livelihood, an approach should also address the fact that the reaping and marketing of the pineapples were added incentives that all farmers would have access to but the primary objective was the preservation of lives and livelihood. The framing of the issue is what is most important, too often success is measured by milestones that are sometimes merely tangential to the objectives. The amount of pineapple received is good but the real sustainable goal is preservation of life and livelihood.
Best