Minute Six

No plan survives the first five minutes of contact with reality – so how should we prepare for what follows?

Kevin Fong has spent his working life in high-risk, high-performance teams – flying as doctor with the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, working with NASA’s human space flight directorate, and serving as National Clinical Adviser to NHS England during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as being part of the UK’s frontline response to several major incidents and terror attacks.

Drawing on these experiences, Minute Six provides key insights into how teams and organisations succeed against the odds and why they sometimes fail. Fong explains why decisions in the face of irreducible uncertainty are the ultimate team sport, and the success of teamwork depends in turn on the crucial partnership between humans and technology. But too often we misunderstand the place of the human in the loop and why – when it comes to managing the unknown – the edge of chaos is a good place for us to be.

Minute Six is a timely and essential survival guide for an increasingly complex, volatile and uncertain world.