Robert Paterson: Military

Social Capital - Are we at the edge of a Copernican revolution in OD?

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 10:41:14 GMT

A theme of my posting is to examine why so many people today are so deeply unhappy about their work life. Recently I have been looking at our need to have a higher purpose and at our need to have a more collegial relationship in the hierarchy.

I have posted two great articles by Ross Mayfield below because it seems clear to me that we have another basic flaw in how we organize - except for the military who have never forgotten - we are mainly are ignorant of the inherent numbers and structures that facilitate the optimal human relationships.

I bet also a dinner that there is not a text book on HR that talks about natural networks as opposed to formal departments and which then includes the theory of magic numbers for optimal relationships. My bet is that organizational theory today is an artificial construct just like the Ptolemaic view of the Universe. What is really on the table here is another Copernican revolution for organization based, now as then, on observation of reality that we are humans rather than acceptance of a doctrine based on the hope that we are machines. .

Gods and Generals - A Review

Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:53:04 GMT

This very long film film, 223 minutes, has just been released in DVD (July 2003). Most of the formal reviews have panned the film. I have now seen it twice and I feel compelled to make a case for it being actually a great film. I don't mean to use the adjective lightly. I mean great in scale and in its humanity: it addresses mythic material in an epic form. The initial reaction to the film was poor in the mainstream press. It was too long. It contained many subplots and themes that could have been excised to increase the pace. It did not pay enough attention to the evils of slavery. That the religiosity of Jackson and the pedantry of Chamberlain were jarring.

I think that these are criticisms of those that are so entrenched in their "modern" world view, that they cannot access the most moving of all forms of human communication- the Homeric Epic.

When I was a boy I read the Odyssey and Moby Dick. At the age of 9, these appeared to me to be only adventure stories. I think that most of the reviewers of Gods and Generals used this type of lens to "see" the film. I am going to be a bit mean now, but maybe this is the only level that they were prepared to experience life? One reviewer complained about the lack of blood! One thought that the subplot with Jackson and the little girl had pedophilic undertones? Many complained that not enough had been done to show the evils of slavery - they wanted more cruelty on the screen. In particular, many felt exceptionally uncomfortable about Jackson's faith in God and his willingness to converse with God at all times. All negative reviews felt crushed by the pace and the length of the film. Maybe if they were to read the Odyssey and Moby Dick today, would they would make the same type of criticisms? I suspect that they would find the books long-winded, slow, with too many subplots. Many would find the scene where Ishmael and the Harpooner share a bed at the beginning of the book homo-erotic. They would miss the meaning completely as they did with this film.

I fear that we, as moderns, have been cut off from the epic by the pace and the superficiality of modern life. It is hard for us to go beneath the surface any more.

Maybe the DVD and a bottle of wine can help to expand the frame. I sat enthralled and mostly in tears throughout the 3 hours plus of this film. Central to my emotion, was the interplay between choice and destiny.

At the heart of the film is the clash of two civilizations. We witness, with Jackson's death at the end of the film, the first step of the death of an heroic world where character is central. Where relationships are intense between people and where God, Place and Family are worth dying for. The South relies on imagination, flexibility and skill but is overwhelmed by a machine world where economic power is central. Where human relationships are replaced by machine parts

The first part of the film shows the issue of choice and duty. Lee cannot take up the leadership of the Union Army as he owes his greater allegiance to his "country" Virginia. I fear that many modern reviewers simply miss this point. They cannot know the role that Lee, Jackson and other southern leaders have previously played in the Army of the union in Mexico. Nor do they know of their time at the Point. Many of these men were as brothers. Armistead and Hancock are best friends. Pete Longstreet was the best man at Grant's wedding!. Lee had been a central figure in Mexico and had the enduring trust of Winfield Scott. The men who lead both sides had joined the Army of the United State and gave their oath at a time when oaths meant something. But for the Southerners, they answered a higher calling, their "country".

We who are so mobile today, Americans move on average every 5 years, have no experience anymore of what it might be like to be part of a stable society. We know little of the power of place.

The film offers a number of these choices to us at its outset. A son rejects his father's appeal to move back to the North with him. Jackson's first father in law leaves the south to wipe the dirt from his feet on crossing the Potomac. These are powerful and poignant choices. We watch Jim Lewis, a slave, sign up to serve his country too as Jackson's cook. This is no fabrication of the director. Lewis walked behind Jackson's coffin alone holding Jackson's horse at his funeral. In an epic, there is no simple relationship. The film shows the paradox of the burden of slavery in the context of the relationships. Masters and slaves were also people who shared a place and had feelings toward each other. Jim prays to be free but is also a native Virginian and is the friend and confidant of Jackson.

We witness Chamberlain in a painful confrontation with his wife. He leaves her like a Greek warrior for Troy. She can hardly bear to see him go. What wife could? We see in Chamberlain's going to war with his brother Tom another aspect of the particular acting for the general in epic.

This was the time when units of the army, especially in the south, were formed regionally. 6,000 men served in the Stonewall Brigade, all from the Shenandoah Valley. All were brothers and sons, cousins and Uncles, friends and neighbours. Can we come close to imagining what this was like in our anonymous age? So Tom and his brother, whom he constantly fails to call Colonel, are the mythic brothers for all the brothers. Only 200 of the 6,0000 who served in the Brigade survived the war. The region lost all its men. Since then the US Army deliberately does not have locals serve in the same unit.

In true epic, a single person embodies the larger theme. So Jackson embodies the South. He is a two-sided man. Much of the film explores his tenderness and also his fierceness.

A reviewer pours scorn on the scenes in the film where Jackson develops an intense relationship with a 6 year old girl. Maybe he, the reviewer, needed more context. Jackson had been orphaned at 7. His greatest fear was the loss of loved ones. The girl's greatest fear was that her Daddy would not come home. There is a remarkable Christmas scene, where Jackson asks her what she wants and she tells him that she wants her Daddy to come home. He embraces her and says "All the daddies will come home" - Of course Jackson means that they will all come home to God. Everyone that Jackson had loved has died. His parents, his first wife and his first child. What he fears the most is that his current wife will also die with their child. When this little girl dies of scarlet fever, he breaks down and weeps in front of his staff. One asks how can he weep for this girl when he has not wept for any of his men and even for his friends. Dr McGuire answers that he is weeping now for them all.

We also see his fierce side. He advocates taking no prisoners. He, like Grant, knows that war is not a game. That it should only be pursued with great force so that it can end as soon as possible. Jackson is a man whose life is an adventure. His enduring faith in God enable him to accept his destiny. He fears not his own death knowing that it is inevitable. So he is quite fearless and hence inspiring in battle. This sense of destiny and the immanence of God pervades the film and offers us all a other way of being in the world.

The film, like the Iliad, is an intermix of intense human vignettes with grand battle scenes. A reviewer noted that Ron Maxwell should look at Private Ryan for lessons in how to make a battle scene. Really? This is a different time. Here the issue is to show how men summoned the courage to march into a hail of bullets - to stand yards away from your enemy and to return fire and reload when completely exposed. I found the battle scenes enthralling. 7,000 re-enactors who really know what they are doing knock the spots off any CGI effect. Witnessing the Irish Brigade charge up the hill in a foreshadowing of Gettysburg was a great moment of film. The men accelerating through the fire, crouched as they ran as if they were trying to shelter from rain. Men standing shoulder to shoulder 30 yards from the wall and their enemy. What we see is pure courage.

Ironically we then we see Armistead and Pickett, who were to do the same only 4 months later, comment on the bravery and the folly of such an act. We know that Armistead will die on a wall just like this and that Pickett will have his division and his life destroyed on a wall just like this.. The cheer of anguish and salute of the Irish brigade of the CFA at the wall after they had slaughtered their brothers of the Irish Brigade of the Union was a Homeric moment. This cheer too foreshadows another moment in the future. In the years after the war, a great tradition emerged at Gettysburg. At the reunions, long lines of grey-coated old man would walk stiffly up the hill to Cemetery Ridge where at the wall a long line of old men in blue awaited them. When they reached the wall, their union brothers would reach across and pull them over the wall into their embrace.

The flanking attack at the end of the film just before Jackson's shooting, is also a great moment. For me it is the blend of action with thousands of extras and the score. In silence, the men stand still at the edge of the Wilderness. Then they walk and then run still in silence as the score picks up the pace. It is balletic!

The film takes maybe 20 minutes to show us Jacksons' death. Too long? What we witness is the death not only of one man but the death of the South. From this moment it is downhill all the way. In his single death we see the death of all the 600,000 who died who left their wives and children, their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters all behind. In his death, we also see the end of any chance that leadership in itself could make the difference. Now it will be only a game of mathematics where the numbers and the economic might of the North will grind the South down.

My advice for Ron Maxwell and Ted Turner? The complaint heard regarding both films was that they were too long. Yet we see 13 hours of Band of Brother as being OK. Maybe HBO is the venue of the Last Full Measure? LFM demands an even grander canvass. I cannot see how a 3 hour film can do justice to the scale of the last year 2 years of the war where the scale expands and the drama deepens so much Maybe these films are in fact too short? The modern audience cannot easily take a 3 hour film in a cinema but can take a 13 hour series at home if well made. HBO have shown that they are the masters of this format.

Ron and Ted - please do not give up. I know that you want to make a difference. Having the 3 films made would be an act of great historic import. The birth story of the US is the Civil War. This is the furnace from which has come our modern age. LFM above all shows how Lincoln and Grant understood this and how our own time was created. We have to see how these titanic forces were mobilized and applied to understand who we are today.

We have to go to the Mississippi. We have to follow Sherman to Atlanta. We have to go into the Wilderness again and we have to end up at the entrenchment, at the first mine and we have to find our way to the small courthouse where we have to witness the meeting of Lee in his best uniform and Grant in his dusty clothes. We have to see that all of Lee's brilliance was of no avail once a new leader emerged that understood what the real job was - to wear Lee's army down to nothing. We have to see how Lee was bled not just of numbers but of talented subordinates and friends. We have to endure all of this with him to see why at the end he can make the choice not to throw away the last remnant of his army. We have to see that he did give indeed the last full measure. We have to see how, in spite of all of what has happened, all the horror and slaughter, that honour still remains. We have to see the supreme moment of coincidence, when Chamberlain leads the guard of Unions troops in salute their defeated brothers as they march off into history.

Technology or Culture?

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 10:23:36 GMT

TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANIZATIONAL UNIFICATION: This blog is really transformational for me. Just when I think I have heard all perspectives, I'm awakened to new viewpoints. Case in point... I was with a very respectable customer today. It was clear that these folks get the value of human interaction given the market they are in (PURE knowledge creation and subsequent value generation), but architecture somehow gets in the way.

Halfway through our discussion, a very bright fellow in the crowd offers that "decentralized software disrupts the value that we, as a corporation, bring to the table. These highly valued employees will just leave us, as teams, if we allow edge-based agility. We give them POWER." Sigh... Shrug... Fascinating...

As we slog through the adoption of emergent technologies, it is clear to me that technology isn't the issue. In fact, it is a complete NON-ISSUE. I'm reminded by my anthropology buddies that technology is a mere tool. Until the tribe adapts it's social viewpoint (read: culture, values, memes, networks), technology is nothing but an enabler versus a real change agent.

[Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog]

Michael is spot on. If you want to see how powerful his insight is there is a gem of a book called "The Dynamics of military revolution" edited by Knox and Murray. They look at many epoch changing technical innovations in the military such as the introduction of longbows, muskets, rifles etc and show that it takes about a generation, or a bad war, to make the social adjustment. IE consider the rifle. At the beginning of the civil war, tactics demanded that men line up facing each other and pour it on. By the end of the war, everyone who could get into trench did so. BUT the Europeans missed the whole point and spent much of the first 6 months on WWI charging into machine gun and rifle fire. In WWII, the French and the Brits had in total more tanks than the Germans but they deployed them as infantry support weapons. The german, by losing the last war, had created an entirely new method - Blitzkrieg. The key is to make the cultural shift and then the doctrine shift. You deploy the new in a new way. if you deploy the new in the old way - 'we keep all the knowldge inside', you fail.

UPEI - A Summer online course on the new networked economy

Thu, 22 May 2003 13:17:01 GMT

The link takes you to the course outline that I am teaching online for the next 6 weeks. I plan to post some of my responses to my students questions and some of their ideas as a periodic series..

The course looks deeply into why our machine model for organization has become the problem today and how the application of natural models is overwhelming the machine.

Fri, 16 May 2003 20:30:47 GMT

David Reed writes that security doesn't create trust - that building security into a system is more likely to foster mistrust:

"I think there may indeed be technological mechanisms that promote trust*. But don't try to tell me that security technology creates trust. It can't. At best it's neutral, and upon reflection, most times it increases mistrust and fear."

His footnote about technological mechanisms that promote trust says:

"Humans gain trust by interacting and 'getting to know' people. Transparent technologies that make it easy to see what people and companies are up to (in a sense the opposite of firewalls) are what help me trust. I like Reagan's saying: 'trust, but verify'. It implies that trust requires means for openness, not firewalls and secretiveness."

This is related to the comparison between hard security and soft security that I wrote about recently. Soft security is supportive of trust - it says that I trust you to behave responsibly and in good faith (although I will hold you accountable if you don't). Hard security, insofar as it is about trust at all, is often an admission that there is no trust and that we must impose constraints and controls (technical, legal or social) in order to interact.

[Making Connections]

All that I ahve heard about the brits and the US military in places like Bosnia and now Iraq fit this idea. The Brits interact with the locals - the US stays in the bubble. Who is more secure?

Iraq - The Intellectual trail behind the war - How 20 years of hard work have paid off

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 18:13:43 GMT

Many business leaders are beginning to think about the lessons of the Iraq war. Some questions might be:

How did the US Forces manage such coordination between the Army, the Navy (Marines) and the Airforce when we can't get any of our silos to talk to each other?
How did they move so fast - when a "pause" was just a few hours - why can't we move that fast?
How did they get the initiative and hold it? Why do we merely defend?
How do they plan when so much is so uncertain? They surely have a bigger logistics and movement problem than we do but they were able to keep their flexibility when we can't.
How have they been so successful in integrating new technology so well? Why can't we use ours - What do they know that we don't about collaboration?
How come they have the leaders that I want but can't seem to find?
How come Non Coms and enlisted men perform so well when my workers are so unmotivated?

Here is a collection of powerful papers (some quite long which are best printed) that tell the story. The story begins in defeat and failure when a group of captains, Majors and Colonels came back from Vietnam determined not to put their Army and the nation through such an experience again. Our 20th century organizational model came from the success of the military in two world wars. Once again it will be worth looking at the intellectual underpinnings of the US Army and Marine Corps to see the network structures for the 21st century that have replaced the traditional Command and control system of the 20th.

This is a browse, save and print collection for the real student

The Genesis Paper of 1984 - This was written by Colonel Huba Wass de Czege. See how most of this has come to pass
The Big Book - Hope is not a Method by Sullivan and Harper - the lead up to Desert Storm and the Downsizing of the Army
The New Definition of War - Maj Don Vandergriff is the HR Basil Liddell Hart of our time
Boyd - The Core Idea for Shock and Awe - Boyd is the single most influential thinker of the last 100 years on war
Culture and the Evolution of Warfare - More by Don Vandergriff
OODA Loops Time and Mind - Chester Richards on the Use of OODA in Business and War
War as a Cyclical event - Mike Alexander on the Cycles of War
OODA - Ken Good's outstanding piece - the Origin of Shock and Awe
Shock and awe - The original idea - follow the links in thinking

Weblogs and the Structural Environment in Organization - Lessons from the US Army and BP

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:08:13 GMT

THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION: This phrase has been rattling around my sub-conscious for a couple of weeks now. Ray Ozzie and I spoke at a government event a couple of weeks ago where I met JC Herz. JC was talking about the power of weblogs in organizations. She spoke of the power of weblogs to deliver organization-wide edge awareness, and more importantly, provide weak signal amplification of thoughts and ideas that would be lost without the medium. At several points in the presentation, she referenced the notion of the "physics of information" which caught my attention.

JC is on to something here. The Physics of Information could be defined similarly to how we look at the physics of nature: Information is made up of matter, and when consumed by people, creates energy. The "matter" of information is data, and when information contains multiple data points, it delivers meaning. It's also clear that information yields energy. Larry Prusak convinced me several years ago that information is cool, but it's the energy that's created when it is consumed and shared by people that transforms organizational thinking and decision process. It's the collision of people and information that creates the energy which drives decision superiority and/or innovation, and it is borne from highly stochastic, collaborative interactions. But the real operational challenge is understanding the affect of information matter, and understanding what causes the resultant energy.

While process improvement is quite interesting, understanding the physics of the information can make enterprise processes scream, thereby ensuring the maximum extraction of value because it can be directed at specific workgroups. Raw meta identification based solely on information matter is only half the job. Tagging the information with constituencies that will turn the information into energy is the missing link in many organizations.

[Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog]

I suspect that we need more than the technology of blogging to get the most effective"collision" that Michael talks about above. The US Army and BP have worked hard to shift the culture towards cooperation and to find the structural links between the tactical and the strategic that can be bridged with the technology.

What does this mean in practice? At one of my clients, a major Family Restaurant chain in Canada, we are trying the following. At the restaurant level we plan to set up the process of using After Action Reviews (AARs) to capture the key experience-based lessons that occur at the work unit. How to deal with rowdy customers, how to take 5 minutes off the order time, what to do when short staffed etc. The Franchisee participates in the local AAR. The Franchisees will be linked with either a weblog or by Groove to each other and will be set up as a Community of Practice. Not only will the lessons from the front line be talked about here but also the strategic direction of the enterprise. Larger topics such as how best to open a new restaurant, new menu items, HR issues etc will be talked about here.

I have had a lot of help in this design from Col Ed Guthrie, who worked for General Sullivan (Hope is not a Method) Ed was a key driver behind the Army's ability to learn and cooperate across the silos. The results have been showcased in Iraq. Ed has worked with a number of firms since his retirement including BP. Ed is one of the clearest thinkers on the topic of how you change the culture and install the connecting structures.

Women in Society - the Power of War in rebalancing the Sexes

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 11:15:47 GMT

Is war all bad?

One of the unintended consequences of the two World Wars was the emancipation of women from the home. What this picture tells me, as does the reality that American Women are in harm's way, is that once again, War will act as a driver for further breaches to the glass ceiling. I suspect that in the back of our men and women's minds was the feeling that when push came to shove, men were still the only game in town. Rosie showed that the workplace was open to women. Iraq I think is showing that there is no limit to the norms of women's participation in all aspects of Western Society.

War does result in much suffering but it has unintended benefits. The end of slavery. The end of aristocratic government. The end of many dictatorships. The emancipation of women. I am not advocating war - I am saying that a kneejerk negative denies a reality. That in life everything that happens to us that seems bad can have positives and much of what happens that is good has negatives.

Parallels in History - Powell = Agrippa and the Founding of Empire

Tue, 01 Apr 2003 23:55:44 GMT

I got an email yesterday with the following story:

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.
He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."
It became very quiet in the room.

Great story. But whenever I get anything like this I always check, usually at The Urban Legands site. Sure enough, they have the scoop on this story. As so often turns out with a great story, reality is quite different. In this case, reality is actually much more interesting and displays why I have a tremendous amount of respect for Powell. The big conference was the World Economic Forum at Davos in January and you can read the entire transcript of his speech and the Q/A afterwards. It was a former Archbishop who asked a question and it was not whether we were empire building in Iraq. It was a somewhat convoluted question dealing with the proper use of soft or hard power, when to use each and how we should. He was worried that the US may be relying too much on hard power instead of soft power. Powell then gave an incredibly eloquent answer, expressing the views of most Americans. Simply, We do not like to use hard power. We prefer soft but if hard is the only way, we will not shirk from using it. Read his response. It is much better than this short synopsis. I do not disagree with this. I think many people worldwide would agree that hard, military power has to be used. The disagreement comes deciding what point must be reached before hard power needs to be used. My favorite quote from his repsonse is this:
I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan. So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.
After he finishes this, there is loud applause. Not a silent room. A lot of people agree with him. Then he next speaks the part that was quoted in the story, although there is substantial editting to make it more powerful and, in fact, more miltaristic and disrepectful of the audience. His real words are just as important and heartfelt but they do not have the hard edge that is present in the story.
We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

Not as pretty as the story. Powell's answer to this one question was interrupted twice by applause. His entire speech was interrupted 8 times. The audience treated him with respect, as he did the audience. The first question was put to him by the Secretary General of Amnesty International. The one following was by a businessman. Both asked very good questions in a respectful fashion. Powell answered both with the same measure of respect, never dismissive in his response. He showed a strong sense of humility and a sharp sense of history. The truth is SOOO much more complex and interesting than the skewed message in the email. If you want to get tears in your eyes, read the answer to the last question. The moderator asked Powell how 9/11 had affected him personally. This man is someone I would trust with my country. My major worry has been that his views have become more marginalized in the Administration over the past year, if not longer. There are strong neoconservative views opposing his moderate ones. When several advisors wanted to go after Saddam within days of 9/11, not because Iraq was involved but because it fit their strategic views, Powell more than anyone else forced the focus back to Osama. If Powell can avoid the long knives and forge a strong political career separate from Bush, he could have a huge effect on the future course of America. At least in my (not so humble) opinion. How his career will play out is not knowable but here is one person's opinion. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

There is something essentially noble about Colin Powell. When I think of him I think of the finer points of the Roman character. In particular I think of Agrippa who was the man who enabled Octavian to become Augustus. If you don't know whom I am talking about check the link and see if you can see where I am going with this.

While history does not repeat itself, maybe it comes close in pattern. There is something about the man that tells us even today, before history has had its perspective, that he is special. An immigrant from Jamaica whose career is the examplar of the American dream - who shows us that in the American forces, the Field Marshall's baton is in any private's pack. Who belies the need for affrmative action by the excellence of his ability and of his character. Who is the ideal "Servant Leader".

Maybe I have had too much single malt this evening - but I feel that true tragedy is when a great man serves a lesser.

Boyd - The Ultimate OODA diagram?

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:34:10 GMT

Wonderful!

Breaking the Phalanx - Col Douglas MacGregor

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 19:22:02 GMT

MacGregor is another of the young turks who is questioning the reliance of stuff rather than doctrine and a new view of how to organize to go to war.America goes to war with a sledge hammer. He thinks its needs a rapier. Why? How will America destroy Iraq by air and hope to set up a democratic new ally? In the end a soldier has to take the ground and only he can do it in a way that reduces the losses of the enemy and hence the hope for peace after victory. His new book Breaking the Phalanx is not perhaps for the layman but offers a very well thought out position on the scale of the new organization - more of Brigade size and how to link organizations by information

A New Understanding of War - 4th Generation Warfare and its predecessors

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 19:02:57 GMT

As we stand on the edge of war here is the first of a series of articles that showcase the best thinking that I have found on the future of war.

This the first by 3 disciples of Boyd Chuck Spinney, John Sayen and Don Vandergriff. They paint a depressing view of how the US military has been captured by its past success, by bureaucracy and by the idea that technology on its own is the answer. They argue that it is the human aspect combined with all the tools that will be the key. They will explain to you what is meant by 4th generation war or Manoeuvre warfare. They argue that the US tradition of attrition warfare is as outdated as say IBM PC's taking on Dell.

Boyd - The Man and His Ideas by Grant Hammond

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 18:57:32 GMT

"Boyd begins with the premise that the business of life is life"

"For Boyd, the concept of moral leverage is critical to one’s strategy of conflict. Without an understanding of how to minimize our friction and increase that of our adversary in a moral-mental-physical sense, we are not likely to be victorious and hence, survive and prosper. People must believe in the cause that they fight for, must affirm what it is they stand and die for, must seek to live for some higher good or goal than merely themselves. Knowing merely what they are against, the negative motivation of hate, revenge or retribution is insufficient to galvanize a society to win a compelling victory and institute a lasting peace. Such notions may be far removed from the considerations of many, but Boyd is philosopher as well as a tactician, a strategist with a conscience, whose view of conflict and war makes room for, indeed could not exist without, concern for moral leverage as well as physical force."

Boyd has so many disciples who write well about him - here is Grant Hammond's introduction to his life and to his ideas - a good starting point if you want to know more

OODA - Boyd and the True Meaning of Customer focus and Innovation

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 16:48:49 GMT

Chester Richards shows us how OODA really works in Business. He shows us the deeper meaning of being Customer Focused; of Innovation and Defending your Market. He shows how using OODA helps you see into the mindset aspect of these issues. How to become intertwined with your customer so that you know them as you know yourself. How to see Innovation not as a new product but as a method of taking the market initiative. How to see that the only good market defense is an offensive that destabilizes your opponent.

John Boyd - The Best Review of the OODA Loop there is

Sat, 08 Feb 2003 12:40:16 GMT

There is a lot available that will describe the OODA Loop - This is the outstanding review

Magic Numbers - The Evolutionary Rules for Ideal Team Size

Fri, 07 Feb 2003 18:26:05 GMT

What is a team? Are there thresholds for effective team size? The growing science of the understanding of Magic Numbers suggest that there are. If we breach them we lose trust and we increase social friction.

If we were to understand these team size thresholds better - we would need less "management" and we would have more collaboration. If we understood them better we could implement supporting technology such as weblogs and Groove better as well.

This series of linked articles is derived from work by the late John Pfeiffer, Robin Dunbar and Malcolm Gladwell

Culture - What divides us most

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 20:23:18 GMT

Here is an excellent and short view of Geert Hofstede's work on Culture

Why is time speeding up? Ray Kurzweill's Timeline

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 11:16:09 GMT

It feesl like time is speeding up. Is this an illusion? No it really is - Have a look at RK's timeline

The Cycles of War

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 21:20:37 GMT

Mike Alexander is one of the leading writers on the nature of cycles. Here is his seminal work on the Cycles of War

Networks and War - Know your Enemy

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 18:37:23 GMT

Here is an excellent review of what we will be facing in Netwar. We can also think about this type of threat in business as well.

"To be precise, the term netwar refers to an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age. These protagonists are likely to consist of dispersed organizations, small groups, and individuals who communicate, coordinate, and conduct their campaigns in an internetted manner, often without a central command. Thus, netwar differs from modes of conflict and crime in which the protagonists prefer to develop large, formal, stand-alone, hierarchical organizations, doctrines, and strategies as in past efforts, for example, to build centralized movements along Leninist lines. Thus, for example, netwar is about the Zapatistas more than the Fidelistas, Hamas more than the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the American Christian Patriot movement more than the Ku Klux Klan, and the Asian Triads more than the Cosa Nostra [8].

The term netwar is meant to call attention to the prospect that network-based conflict and crime will become major phenomena in the decades ahead. Various actors across the spectrum are already evolving in this direction. This includes familiar adversaries who are modifying their structures and strategies to take advantage of networked designs - e.g., transnational terrorist groups, black-market proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), drug and other crime syndicates, fundamentalist and ethnonationalist movements, intellectual property pirates, and immigration and refugee smugglers. Some urban gangs, back-country militias, and militant single-issue groups in the United States and elsewhere have also developed netwar-like attributes. The netwar spectrum also includes a new generation of social revolutionaries, radicals, and activists who are beginning to create information-age ideologies, in which identities and loyalties may shift from the nation state to the transnational level of "global civil society." New kinds of actors, such as anarchistic and nihilistic leagues of computer-hacking "cyboteurs," may also engage in netwar.

Many - if not most - netwar actors will be nonstate, even stateless. Some may be agents of a state, but others may try to turn states into their agents. Also, a netwar actor may be both subnational and transnational in scope. Odd hybrids and symbioses are likely. Furthermore, some bad actors (e.g., terrorist and criminal groups) may threaten U.S. and other nations' interests, but other actors (e.g., NGO activists in Burma or Mexico) may not - indeed, some actors who at times turn to netwar strategies and tactics, such as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), may have salutary liberalizing effects. In fact, many militant yet mainly peaceable social netwars are being waged around the world by democratic opponents of authoritarian regimes and by protestors against various risky government and corporate policies - and many of these people may well be agents of positive change, even though in some cases their ideas and actions may seem contrary to particular U.S. interests and policies. Finally, some netwar actors may aim at destruction, but more may aim mainly at disruption and disorientation [9]. Again, many variations are possible. The September terror attacks in New York and the Washington, D.C. area, for example, feature a mix of physical destruction and economic disruption."

82nd Airborne fails

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 01:24:52 GMT

The 82nd Airborne has tipped the scale against the US in Afghanistan.

The issue again is culture - see the foreigner as the untermenchen and you lose the hearts and minds and hence the war

Task Force Hawk - When big doesn't work

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 00:40:15 GMT

Task Force Hawk is THE story for the US military today. It is all about how the Army failed to move and deploy a unit of Apache Helicpters 800 miles in Europe to Kosovo. The issue - a culture based on bigger is better - where every threat has to be countered = no effectiveness. The main link takes you to some excellent interviews with very senior Army folks such as the Chief of Staff who are aware of their problems but are having a tough time getting the right things done. Many Chiefs have tried in the last 20 years as well. Maybe only the crisis of war can tip the system to reform.

"The Task Force Hawk experience underscored how little the US Army, by its own leadership's candid

admission, had done since Desert Storm to increase its capacity to get to an emergent theater of operations rapidly and with sufficient forces to offer a credible combat presence. Shortly after the Gulf War, the Army's leadership for a time entertained the thought of reorganizing the service so it might become more agile by abandoning its structure of 10 combat divisions and opting instead for 25 "mobile combat groups" of around 5,000 troops each. Ultimately, however, the Army backed away from that proposed reform, doing itself out of any ability to deploy a strong armored force rapidly and retaining the unpalatable alternatives of either airlifting several thousand lightly armed infantrymen to a threatened theater within days or shipping a contingent of 70-ton M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks over the course of several months."

Cohesion - What is it and what makes it work?

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 18:57:28 GMT

Cohesion has a good and a dark side

"Conceptualising themselves as belonging to the group, and considering their goals to be aligned with it, members of a cohesive group are prepared to sacrifice their immediate self-interest for the overall good of the group. There is a sense of service, illustrated by the oath which youths swore at the age of 18 during the Athenian heyday: I will hand on my fatherland, not diminished but larger and better. Similarly, during the second world war, American soldiers expressed a desire to stay with their unit rather than be promoted elsewhere or go on sick leave, for fear of 'letting the other guys down'. Obviously, when all the members of a group feel like this it stands an elevated chance of success at whatever task it sets itself. There is less bickering and conflict, such as would slow the group down and divert its energies. Instead, there is a greater sense of purpose and commitment, and mutual supporting to help all members realise their potential.

During the Korean war, for instance, allied prisoners were subjected to a programme of brainwashing intended to break down their spirit and cause them to embrace communism. There was widespread collaboration, morale of the allied prisoners was generally lower than in any previous war and many died in captivity. However, one nation proved an exception.

The Turkish prisoners avoided this general syndrome by maintaining a high level of cohesion. The senior Turkish officer informed his Korean captors 'I am responsible for the Turkish soldiers. If you want anything doing you come to me and I will relay your orders to my men. If you do not like this, you can kill me. Then my second-in-command will be responsible. You can kill him too but then the third senior officer will take over. And so on down the chain of command until there are only two privates left. Then the senior private will be in charge.' This attitude was reiterated by the soldiers, who exerted pressure on each other to ensure that they continued to obey their officers.

The Turks were targeted for brainwashing just like the other allied prisoners. However, they resisted strongly, heckling and making insulting remarks that wore down their captors. Hardly a single one was guilty of even minor degrees of collaboration and although almost half the men were wounded before capture, none died in the camps. In one temporary camp, where none of the 110 Turks died, the Americans lost 400-800 men out of a total of 1500-1800 interned. The Americans themselves attributed this remarkable result to the Turkish cohesion in contrast to their own discohesion.

Interestingly, the principles involved here - united we stand, divided we fall - are captured in the fascist symbol of a bundle of rods (fasces). Separately, the rods may be easily broken. But when they are put together, aligned in the same direction, they are highly resistant. This is interesting because the negative connotations of fascism recall the conservative and oppressive aspect of social cohesion. And this conservatism of a cohesive group can also be a disadvantage. It suppresses initiative and intellectual diversity. When the group faces new and unexpected difficulties, it may find it difficult to generate innovative solutions. Thus, cohesion may prove advantageous in the short run, for dealing with immediate problems, but disadvantageous in the long run when more creative thinking is required."

150 - The magic number

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 17:04:52 GMT

Summary of Dunbar's Work on the Magic Number

Is the issue of Cohesion not directly connected to this idea? Is our ignorance of this need to belong a root cause of much of our workplace depression and illness?

Robin Dunbar - The King of Magic Number Theory - By Malcolm Gladwell an Ace Journalist

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 16:34:56 GMT

Malcolm Gladwell on Robin Dunbar's work on Magic Numbers

"At a certain point, at somewhere between 10 and 15 people, we begin to overload, just as we begin to overload when we have to distinguish between too many tones.

It's a function of the way humans are constructed. Man evolved to feel strongly about few people, short distances, and relatively brief intervals of time; and these are still the dimensions of life that are important to him."

Perhaps the most interesting natural limit, however, is what might be called our social channel capacity. The case for a social capacity has been made, most persuasively, by the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar begins with a simple observation. Primates - monkeys, chimps, baboons, humans - have the biggest brains of all mammals. More important, a specific part of the brain of humans and other primates - the region known as the neocortex, which deals with complex thought and reasoning - is huge by mammal standards.

If you belong to a group of five people, Dunbar points out, you have to keep track of 10 separate relationships: your relationships with the four others in your circle and the six other two-way relationships between the others. That's what it means to know everyone in the circle. You have to understand the personal dynamics of the group, juggle different personalities, keep people happy, manage the demands on your own time and attention, and so on.

If you belong to a group of 20 people, however, there are now 190 two-way relationships to keep track of. 19 involving yourself and 171 involving the rest of the group. That's a fivefold increase in the size of the group, but a twenty fold increase in the amount of information processing needed to "know' the other members of the group. Even a relatively small increase in the size of a group, in other words, creates additional significant social and intellectual burden.

Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement. Dunbar has actually developed an equation, which works for most primates, in which he plugs in what he calls the neocortex ratio of a particular species - the size of the neocortex relative to the size of the brain - and the equation spits out the expected maximum group size of the animal. If you plug in the neocortex ratio for Homo sapiens, you get a group estimate of 147.8 - or roughly 150.

"The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar."

Dunbar has combed through the anthropological literature and found that the number 150 pops up again and again. For example, he looks at 21 different hunter-gatherer societies for which we have solid historical evidence, from the Walbiri of Australia to the Tauade of New Guinea to the Ammassalik of Greenland to the Ona of Tierra del Fuego and found that the average number of people in their villages was 148.4. The same pattern holds true for military organization. "Over the years military planners have arrived at a rule of thumb which dictates that functional] fighting units cannot be substantially larger than 200 men," Dunbar writes. "This, I suspect, is not simply a matter of how the generals in the rear exercise control and coordination, because companies have remained obdurately stuck at this size despite all the advances in communications technology since the First World War. Rather, it is as though the planners have discovered, by trial and error over the centuries, that it is hard to get more than this number of men sufficiently familiar with each other so that they can work together as a functional unit."

It is still possible, of course, to run an army with larger groups. But at a bigger size you have to impose complicated hierarchies and rules and regulations and formal measures to try to command loyalty and cohesion. But below 150, Dunbar argues, it is possible to achieve these same goals informally: "At this size, orders can be implemented and unruly behaviour controlled on the basis of personal loyalties and direct man-to-man contacts. With larger groups, this becomes impossible."