Book Review: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure”, Tim Harford, Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 10, 2011, ISBN-10: 034100969

This book is listed on the 2012 Chief of Staff of the US Air Force Professional Reading Program

The book focuses on how Peter Palchinsky in Russia/USSR exemplified and codified 3 principals to successful projects and initiatives:

• First: seek out new ideas and try new things
• Second: when trying something new, do it on a scale where failure is survivable
• Third: seek out feedback and learn from your mistakes as you go along

The first idea is that true innovation and transformation need to be predicated by early and often experimentation. This idea for trying new things is obvious, only doing what has been done before gets the same results. In order to truly adapt, overcome challenges, changes are necessary. However, the key is to make changes at scales where failure is survivable.

This notion of survivable failure comes to a head when addressing centralized planned projects. He notes several problems with centralized planning, an overestimated the value of centralized knowledge. From that, he addresses how a central bureau’s information is unlikely to address the specifics on the ground, and when integrated over many parts, can tend to destabilize the whole project. He uses a quote that is more direct: "Your first try will be wrong. Budget and design for it," Aza Raskin, designer of Firefox.

Some corroborating evidence was used in citing a study between highly speculative research grants by Howard Huges Medical Institute (HHMI) and the centrally directed NIH MERIT scholarships, which were judged more conservatively in the scope of the whole NIH research portfolio. IN this study, projects selected by HHMI are more likely to be breakthrough and more likely to fail - but ultimately much more skewed to the upside in terms of importance and value to society.

Now, he is also an advocate of measuring the Ultimately, this is the third Palchinsky principal, because getting the feedback, knowing if you are doing any good, is how you will be able to learn from mistakes – and likely even know if you made a mistake at all. Key in the measurement is the controlled experiment nature of how the measurements were taken.

However, not all experiments can be controlled: there do exist "Fundamentally Unidentified Questions" (FUQ'd questions- neat acronym) - questions for when we can measure, calculate and extrapolate from our existing knowledge, but cannot conduct controlled experiments (such as does carbon dioxide cause global warming) - to defeat people claiming that questions are FUQ'd, scientists and innovators must have an identification strategy for what they are going to measure and control.

In his final chapter, Mr. Hartford sums up his application of Palchinsky’s principals thusly, "the ability to adapt requires this sense of security, an inner confidence that the cost of failure is a cost we will be able to bear. Sometimes that takes real courage; at other times, all that is needed is the happy self-delusion of a lost three-year-old. Whatever the source, we need that willingness to risk failure. Without it, we will never truly succeed."

While some management theories indicate that stress is good for innovation, the key here is to create survivable stress – eustress – by which innovation is driven, but avoids overly conservative behavior that generally inhibits the bigger innovations and adaptations.

Overall, I recommend this book for the ideas and perspective on how to innovate in systemic contexts. Large, sweeping initiatives will likely not succeed, but targeted and frequent innovations will explore the space of possibilities more quickly and are more likely to take hold. A good message for upcoming systemic leaders. Read More......

Book Review: Hubble Space Telescope SE Case Study

James J. Mattice (SES, Ret.), Hubble Space Telescope SE Case Study, Air Force Institute of Technology, Center for Systems Engineering, 10 Mar 2005
Free Download from the USAF http://www.afit.edu/cse/casedocs/files/Hubble%20SE%20Case%20Study.pdf

This soup-to-nuts look at the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) takes the reader through the programmatics and engineering from 1962 through 2005. The bulk of the reading is focused on the system development efforts from 1977 through the first on-orbit servicing mission (1993) in which corrective optics were installed. Mattice presents a combination of “just the facts, ma'am” passages interspersed with interpretations, captured as learning points for the student.

Beyond the learning points identified by Mattice, several systemic leadership observations can be easily identified. The HST program was plagued with multiple examples of transactional and management-by-exception approaches that are incongruous for such a novel system development. Ultimately, for the optical system contractor, the relationship with the associate-prime contractor and the two NASA centers was very formally by contract, with little to no insight, accountability, nor communication. Ultimately, this arrangement contributed to the optical system flaw that had to be corrected on the 1993 on-orbit service mission. Further, the relationship between the two NASA centers, Goddard and Marshall, was by a very specific set of allocated responsibilities by NASA Headquarters and the U.S. Congress. Mattice gave a compelling example of this in the disconnects between the servicing concept development (Goddard) and the launch design/development (Marshall), which required many redesigns.

However, this development was not only transactional. For example, later in the program (1983), a transformational approach to requirements development and management was attempted by creating the Space Telescope Science Institute. This institute fundamentally changed how the NASA centers and contractors interacted with the scientific community (the primary end users for the HST), and moved the users to discuss the HST at the appropriate level.

This case study is not very long, only 46 pages in the main body, which makes it very approachable and digestible to students of systems engineering and program management. Mattice meets the goals set forth by the Air Force Institute of Technology by describing the technical, political, and programmatic context of the case. Mattice mentioned interviews with the Hubble Program Manager (1981-1986) and the Chief Engineer (1974-1988), although almost no description of these key players is given, which is typical for engineering case studies.

I recommend this case study to acquisition and systems engineering professionals, especially those in the space system development domains. In a couple of hours, a reader can identify and internalize many lessons that are still relevant to systems acquisition today. Read More......

Book Review: Shop Class as Soulcraft

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Matthew B. Crawford, Penguin Books, 256 pages, ISBN-10: 0143117467, 2010

Overall impression
Ever wonder how engineers can be more educated, yet less experienced? Have you wondered what the value of hands-on experience is? Wonder how, when using the best model of engineering, a system can fail? In reading Matthew’s work, I quickly built up an understanding of why my intuition rebelled against prescriptive engineering models being useful for growing the next generation of experienced engineers. First, we’ll look at a key systemic leadership take away from having read this book, followed by an overall review of the book itself.

Key take away for Systemic Leadership
In analyzing his experiences in knowledge work, after achieving his PhD in Philosophy, he had a starveling observation: “if occasions for the exercise of judgment are diminished, the moral-cognitive virtue of attentiveness will atrophy.” Applied broadly from the systemic perspective, we have a situation in which prescriptive models of how to do work (formal systems engineering or software engineering models) actually counters our desire to develop experienced engineers. Essentially, detailed, solution-agnostic engineering checklists drive our engineers to be less attentiveness and have less detailed knowledge about what lies underneath. In other areas, he observes that knowledge work and education alone is insufficient to have people who have intuition to form a problem solving strategy when information is incomplete or imperfect. Ultimately, he also observes how the best minds and most motivated people will generally not choose to work in environments which are highly controlled by these intellectual models of what is to be done. This leads to “a vicious circle in which degraded work plays a pedagogical role, forming workers into material that is ill suited for anything by the over-determined world of careless labor.”

Book literature review – approachability, readability, etc.
Overall, “Shop craft as Soulcraft” was a easy read, very approachable, generally using personal narrative stories to illuminate broad areas of inquiry. Yes, there are portions that use precise, philosophical language, but those parts are generally the conclusions at the end of each chapter. If you are interested in the philosophical implications of the stories told in a chapter, this is great. If you aren’t, skip the last few chapters and you won’t miss too much.
The reader must understand that Matthew exposes quite a bit of bias against modern knowledge work, assuming that people want to understand the world around them. While this can be argued one way or the other or the general population, my interest in understanding engineers makes that assumption inherently valid (as the job of the engineer is to understand how something works). Ultimately, if you are disillusioned with “Office Space” type work, you’ll find this book provides some well-articulated discussion points for your use. On the other hand, if you understand the value to society and people of aggregating knowledge to decrease the expertise (and cost) needed to deliver products, you may have problems overcoming the personal experience biases that Matthew exposes.

Overall: I enjoyed this book, and the author was both approachable and capable of keeping my mental focus. Read More......

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

(Note: I finished this book just a day before the controversy noted below broke - this review is based on the pre-controversy reading - some notes follow)

This book is listed on the 2011 Chief of Staff of the US Air Force Professional Reading Program

“Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time”, Greg Mortenson, David Relin, Penguin Books, ISBN-10: 0143038252, 2007

One person can make a difference. Greg Mortenson shows us how he made a difference to the children of Northern Pakistan. He doesn’t sugar coat this as an easy effort, numerous disappointments and difficulties are along his winding journal to build schools in the Baltistan region. I’m not qualified to comment on the literary style, but Greg’s story is sufficient compelling to pull me through the book.

The portion of the book that most spoke to me was Greg’s humble style in learning the Balti culture and providing what they need, not what he thought they needed. By becoming family with the chief elder of the village of Korphe, Haji Ali, Greg learned that Haji Ali’s greatest desire for his community was a school. Their goals were not so much to explicitly give a specific capability to people, but to transform the lives of everyone. Transformational action is at the core of systemic leadership; perceive the societal, structural need, and provide a solution that enables the society to grow and improve itself. That is the core of systemic thinking.

Another thing to note is how completely the pursuit of this goal consumed Greg’s life. He doesn’t describe his pursuit of the goal as a “labor” or a “job”, but as his passion. The book starts with Greg’s failed assault on K-2, and him committing to providing schools. Quickly, we see Greg switch from mountain climbing to school building; later in the book he notes how out of shape he feels, since he hadn’t been climbing. We could debate if Greg’s efforts were an obsession or a passion. I think that a reader should note that Greg’s level of commitment was necessary to achieve the goal he chose. While this is an inspiring example, people can and should remember that many levels of service can be valuable and transform the lives of others – but commit a sufficient level of effort to achieve the goal.

Overall, I recommend this book for the positive inspiration and example of systemic leadership portrayed.

Recent controversy: http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/04/17/three.cups.of.tea.controversy/index.html

From reading the article at CNN, I feel my review still stands, regardless of the outcome of the main claims that the books is more idealized than reality. Used as an example of systemic leadership, the story works. Further, the observations of effort/commitment to achieve a goal of this isze are likely to hold and do not seem to be at the heart of the controversy. Ultimately, objective truth about anyone who is portrayed as a hero is hard to achieve. My recommendation for people to read the book isn't for the factual information on a would-be hero, but instead I recommend the book, as I stated, as an example of systemic leadership - changing people by changing the system, in this case by offering schools. Read More......

Book Review: A Book of Five Rings

Written by Shinmen Musashi circa 1645, "A book of Five Rings" is an interesting set of lessons on learning the warrior path. What strikes me most about the work is the systemic nature of Musashi's observations on how to best learn to be a warrior.

The main premise of the book is to teach a military commander on the tactics of war. For example, in the "Fire Book", the three methods of forestalling the enemy apply equally to the 1-on-1 duelist and the 1,000's-on-1,000's and can be equated to what I have recently learned on strategy at the USAF's Squadron Officer School. This mindset taken, of the interrelation between building of character, self-discipline, building on basics of swordsmanship/combat-arms, and the commander, is similar to what we are discussing here in the Systemic Leadership blog.

In Systemic Leadership, we do advocate that the basic training (such as DAU for young acquisition professionals) should end up producing qualified program directors and program executive officers. In a true systemic sense, like Musashi, this training is best if it builds on itself and we teach the young professionals what will be useful as seniors.

Overall, I recommend this book for its classic take on integrating multiple disciplines together into a systemic whole. Ultimately, many readings are needed to fully appreciate the subtleties of the book. A book, which by the way, is very short - my version (Translated by Vicor Harris in 1974) is only 95 pages, and over half of that are notes, background, and translation points. Read More......

Black Swan Part I

Just started reading Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable." I picked the book up on Wednesday on my return trip from Los Angeles and talking with Frank. I was able to get through part one on the flight. This isn't so much a book review, as a discussion of how reading this book impacts thoughts on systemic approaches to leadership.

A "Black Swan Event" is something that is rare (specifically outliers), has extreme impact (changes world views), and has retrospective (but not predictive) predictability. In essence, Black Swan Events are those rare things that we never really thought would happen (because if we really thought that, we would have prepared), has a great effect upon us, and in retrospect we feel that the event was obvious in its cause and retrospective predictability. Examples given include: Europeans sighting their first ever black swan in Australia, 1980's market crash, 9/11, World War II, and others (the 2008/2009 "recession" could be viewed as a black swan event also). Taleb conjectures that the rate of occurrence of black swan events will increase as our systems become more complex, interconnected, and interdependent.

Taleb does an outstanding job in part one explaining the interplay between humans, statistics (randomness), and our limited ability to handle things that haven't happened before. This manifests itself in his addressing common logical fallicies that people engage in while talking about statistical concepts. For example, any cancer patient should know the difference between "No Evidence of Disease" and "Evidence of No Disease". The former is what doctors are able to determine after cancer treatments, the later is what an optimistic patient may (falsely) believe after being told there is no evidence of the cancer. Of course, the truth is we can never be sure that something doesn't exist, but we can say that we found no evidence that it does.

This brings us to our first concept from the book, that many acquisition program managers believe that they can determine that their program is healthy, while they really should be trying to determine if there is no evidence of severe problems. From talking with several very transactional oriented program managers, many state that their programs are healthy because "nobody has shown me any problem". And then a black swan event will occur, something that the transactional PM wasn't watching for in their carefully crafted list of risk items. Unfortunately, the PM in this case is likely to end up in the same emotional roller-coaster as the cancer patient, learning that "recurrence" really means that we didn't see the evidence earlier. Audit agencies will enter and determine that the black swan event was indeed predictable (but not admitting that the predictability is only with the benefit of hindsight), if only the PM had tracked some other metrics or made some other decisions.

In another example, Taleb discusses how at a conference on randomness at a casino that the casino indicated that none of their biggest 5 losses were due to anything their models had predicted. Indeed, problems such as kidnappings, attempted bombings, employees not sending in tax forms (hiding the forms), and others lost the casino more money than any other source, such as cheating. This brings up that although casinos understand and manage the risk of cheaters, whales (high limit gamblers), and other aspects around their principal statistical risk model very well, the real black swan events come from previously unexpected other sources.

To a transformational leader, obviously opening the aperture by developing subordinates to consider and lead proactive responses to those events that could be fatal to the project is a key idea. But the systemic leader must go further and identify ways to reward the team for identifying risks outside the principal project, learn how to handle information about risks with ultra-low probabilities, and restructure the network of of the program to more effectively contain or eliminate risks.

In our first paper (posted about here), we discussed the 1996 Ariane 5 launch failure. This failure can be ascribed to a black swan event of forms:

• Before the launch, everyone thought the probability of a software defect really causing a loss of that mission was very low
  
• During the boost phase, a software error caused the Ariane 5 to self-destruct (loss of mission) - truly an extreme impact on the mission
  
• And lastly, in retrospect, the failure cause was obvious, as well as the way to prevent that type of failure in the future

I think that using the constructs presented by Taleb about conceptualizing the highly improbable (which strangely enough, may be very probable in highly complex, interconnected, and interdependent systems) may be a good mental skill for a systemic leader to know.

More about this book next week, as I get to part two.
Read More......