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......

Engineers as leaders? Not a crazy idea outside the US

Leading Question: Why are the fastest growing nations lead by engineers while the US (with its slowing economy) is lead by lawyers and business managers?
Two angles:

• US is a mature state and doesn’t desire transformational technologies, as that transformation may destabilize the current US leadership and “efficiencies” in delivering the current solutions at known profit levels with existing cultural covenants
  
  
• Growing nations (China and India) desire the transformation to their economies and cultures that may be brought about by a new technology. Both nations having been born out of severe resource shortages, had fairly recent oppression by foreign powers, and desire to have an edge to improve their situation. Engineers and scientists have been critical historically to provide solutions that enable growth and long term stability to these countries.
  

Consider these two articles from Forbes and Quora about the fact that 4 out of 5 of the top government leaders in China are scientists or engineers. Counter that with the fact that only 22 members of the US Congress (out of 500+) even have a technical degree, most are lawyers. What does this say about US attitude towards innovation and transformation?

Final question for military acquisition: What is the impact to the acquisition system when engineers are told that they will never promote to leadership positions?

• Hypothesis 1: we will tend to acquire more of the same, as there will be few mid/senior experienced engineers available to design/oversee the effort
  
  
• Hypothesis 2: we will severely underestimate the amount of effort and other technical factors of production needed for novel systems, due to senior personnel lacking intuition or knowledge about complex system development
  
  
• Hypothesis 3: new technologies to be acquired by the government, will consistently cost more in total life cycle cost, due to an inability to evaluate technical plans and mitigate foreseeable risks
  

Of course, I wish these were hypotheses, because they tend to happen. Consider when a lead program manager responds that a technical risk doesn't exist because "we didn't write handling that into the contract" or "we don't have funds this year for any mitigation". We've made the business and legal constructs king in our culture, without regard for any technical feasibility. Worse, we want lawyers and MBA educated managers in charge, both of which are very transactional career fields; instead of technologists which tend to offer visions of the future without many bars as to how everyone will contribute.

Ultimately, so long as our system continues to tell engineers that they don't have any opportunities as leaders and that they are "geeks and outcasts", I worry that our national edge will continue to erode. Buck the system, develop your best engineers are leaders, and ride the transformational & innovative wave into future prosperity.

Of course, we may end up with our engineers going to China for better opportunities, but would that really happen? (Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal article referenced indicates that it is happening right now) 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......

Views from inside a true the battle rhythm

As written, our post in 4-Nov-10 about Processes and Battle Rhythms became more poignant in my life now that I'm deployed. Now working in the environment of a command center, the 609th Air & Space Operations Center for Air Forces Central Command, I live, breathe, and task saturate in that rhythm - providing operational assessments from prior periods to senior leadership. Daily, weekly, and monthly, summaries must be created, metrics evaluated against standards, and deviations examined for root causes. Best effort processes are the typical order of the day, since answers arriving after that period's decision point become very difficult for senior leaders to engage.

Why is that? A good reason, at the AOC, the OODA loop for the senior leaders is tightly controlled. We keep these individuals saturated with information and decisions. Arriving out of cycle means that it will take the senior leader (who is honestly very busy) more time to back up into a previous state's information context. Ultimately, the question becomes one of how to queue up our analyzed information (oriented observations, from our previous post) to the senior leader and ensure that future orientations will occur on time for an effective decision that will lead to action.

Unfortunately, acquisition environments tend to believe that information can arrive at any time and should immediately impact all activities. However, in my experience, when senior leaders handle the new information out of cycle, the acquisition office tends to split and fracture. Configuration control is lost ("did this study take that into account?"), plans are changed before courses of direction are decided ("the outcome of this memo is obvious, we should do this to help the boss get ahead!"), and ultimately senior leaders can become so involved with the new bit of information that other, planned decisions are put on hold - and those missed/deferred decisions start a backlog of program delays that can ultimately severely and negatively impact the program.

I have worked with senior leaders who are conscience of their battle rhythm. Although the tempo of the change may not be as desired ("change everything by COB TODAY!"), but instead of loosing the metaphorical bubble on all the other details of the program, their method ensures that the next decisions needing the information will have the new information and be able to make good recommendations for action.

The real question for leaders:

A - Do you want to give immediate, but disoriented direction for action?

OR

B - Do you want your next decision for action to be properly oriented?

I can see where option A gives the appearance of being responsive; although to a systemic thinker, option B is far more responsive, since the systemic leader in option B knows how to influence their battle rhythm (and OODA loop) so that new information impacts critical decisions. Read More......

"But I have a process, why care about Battle Rhythm?"

With the advent of the Capability Maturity Model (CMMI and its relatives) everyone wanted to put their system and software development activities into well defined (level 3!) processes. We were sure to measure those processes (level 4!) and ensure we are quantitatively improving (level 5!). Ultimately, the goal would be to have a well defined process to ensure that given the same inputs, we get the same outputs, in a control fashion that efficiently expends resources. Essentially, most processes focus on maintenance of invariants (baseline, basis of estimate, confidence, risk posture, function across interfaces, etc).

Battle rhythms, on the other hand, sequence a leader’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop. By sequencing the the flow of any type of project information (observations) through analysis to provide perspective (orient) to help a leader’s direction (decisions) lead to coherent activities (action). However, the goal is only coherent action, indeed a battle rhythm receiving different inputs make take radically different, but coherent, action depending on the leader, even if the analysis activities are highly regimented processes to ensure the quality of the analysis.

So based on this, why take a step back from this great improvement in formally defining system and software processes to talk about systems and software leadership's battle rhythm. Honestly, in comparison to the formality of process definition, describing a battle rhythm seems to some to be a less mature concept.

But the power of battle rhythms are their simplicity; sequence the OODA functions. Battle rhythms must exist on human timelines for items that require on going decisions - for the most part that means daily, weekly, (rarely) monthly, and (very rarely) annually. Examples of battle rhythms include: handling of action items from higher management / headquarters (daily), financial reconciliation (weekly), project assessments of progress to goals (typically monthly), personnel appraisal and development (annually), mission operational planning (such as the the 72 hour Air Tasking Order battle rhythm), and mission execution (the individual pilot's life on a daily level). While the engineering review board process may be a defined process, the battle rhythm is the means that a chief engineer is able to ensure all factors are included when reviewing a technical artifact. Indeed, that battle rhythm will look very different for a military weapon software development than for a commercial, cloud-computing entertainment software development.

Although battle rhythms are simple, there is no single battle rhythm; even for a single function, there are a near infinite number of implementations. Fortunately, organizations tend to value successful battle rhythms, so effort tends to be expended to capture the essence of a battle rhythm's template (key attributes that attempt to abstract away individual considerations). These
battle rhythm prototypes tend to be saved and distributed. In the military, highly successful battle rhythms get integrated into doctrine. Outside the military, many behavior based leadership books recommend different battle rhythms for leaders. However, the important item when applying these prototypes is to consider the modifications needed for the battle rhythm to be useful for an individual leader. All of these describe various information items that should be analyzed to support a decision on action.

I can hear the process zealots saying "ah ha - sequencing of information - that's a process!" NO! The key difference is that battle rhythms are used to get to coherent action, but they do not necessarily maintain invariants. Processes specify behavior to ensure that the same inputs lead to the same outputs; and the underlying assumption that the inputs can and will be repeated often enough to validate the control. Battle rhythms, on the other hand, have to operate (decide and act) even if the inputs are missing/low quality and further the battle rhythm does NOT guarantee that the same inputs yield the same output, since the output is a decision from a leader (and different leaders will give different outputs). Battle rhythms do not prescribe decisions, only orchestrate the OODA loop.

So hopefully, this provides some some insight and points of distinction that lead us to consider battle rhythm in the system leadership context. This article is meant not to be critical of process definition in all contexts, but instead focused on aggressively differentiating defined processes from battle rhythms. Indeed, back to our systemic leadership roots, the systemic leader shouldn’t focus solely on decisions within the process, but instead should focus on shaping the battle rhythm to ensure effective action to achieve the leader’s vision. Read More......

The Transformation of the Leader

"The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader" - Derek Sivers
(reference url: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html)

Watch the link above. In the three short minutes, you'll see transformational leadership applied and an entire systemic come into being. Derek entitled the talk "How to Start a Movement" and commenced with the bold claim that a movement would be started and unfold in just three short minutes. He delivers.

Derek successfully articulated something here that I had been trying to understand for ages: the transformation of the leader during transformational leadership. The mental shift of the leader accepting and mentoring the first follower is a key idea. In the video, the follower then goes out an works with the additional followers. Watching closely, you can see that the third and subsequent followers are closer to this first follower-leader than the original leader.

Of course, we imprint the leadership discussion onto what is externally people dancing in a field. But if we assume the original leader's vision was a dancing crowd, then the development of the follower-leader is the critical transformation leadership activity. Indeed, keeping transactional control over all the members of the dance would likely have been very counter-productive to achieving the vision of a dancing crowd.

Individual homework assignment: figure out if your leadership is contributing to developing the essential follower-leaders needed to achieve your vision. Read More......

What happens when the battle rhythm is disrupted?

Of course, a battle rhythm isn't a process and the leader not a process asset. Even though there may be a healthy battle rhythm to cue up decisions to a leader, sometimes events must take the leader out of the office and away from the immediate team. Customers must be briefed, higher headquarters placated, previously unknown opportunities exploited. Even with a well established battle rhythm, meetings will conflict. Of course, this is the time for the transformational leader to shine. For if the leader doesn't want to be a process asset (something required to do the work), or a barrier to decisions being made (by forcing them to wait until the leader's return), then the systemic leader must prepare deputies, subordinates, and team members to be able to chart those short courses until the leader is next available.

How is this done? Many techniques are covered in the literature (setting standards, etc.), but most important is preparing the team to own the work and ensure they understand the vision for the end objective. Hear what I'm not saying: I didn't mention setting thresholds, transactional delegations of authority, or ensuring people know their boundaries. A transformational, systemic leader has prepared the team to execute, and while the leader's personal presence may be appreciated by the team, the team should understand the group vision and have sufficient ownership to march out without explicit instructions. Read More......

Thoughts on the "Engineering Battle Rhythm" of Configuration Management

We discussed battle rhythm being important. Even started some definition of Battle Rhythm on the wiki. But now let's look at one close to my heart, the engineering battle rhythm.

In the newest wiki page, Engineering Battle Rhythm, I'm starting a discussion on the nature and impact of various engineering processes and the inherent rhythm that grows up around them in an acquisition organization. The most infamous SE process is that of Configuration Management (CM), and especially the very painful Request For Change (RFC). Nothing can strike fear and doubt into an innovator's heart faster than a first meeting with the configuration managers and all the associated boards and reviews inherent to an RFC.

Of course, what I'm hoping to examine is how to operate as a Systemic Leader in that very process heavy and entrenched battle rhythm of formalized systems engineering processes (such as CM). I'm starting to apply this at work, so hopefully I'll have some perspective and experiences to share and see if any of my thoughts survive their first encounter with "the enemy" (be that enemy the configuration manager or merely reality). Read More......

On Battle Rhythm

From our wiki article on Battle Rhythm, we noted an US Army manual that cited a lack of battle rhythm can cause various issues such as leader fatigue and the leader being missing from critical decisions.

In my new job, there seemed to be various battle rhythms starting to develop. Initially, I was content to let the chiefs pick their rhythm. However, over time, I'm beginning to see that establishing a battle rhythm is very difficult, even for the most accomplished of senior leaders. Working in this new office, with a charter unlike any other office within the command, the selected battle rhythm (and several iterations thereafter) have yet to adequately serve the senior leaders.

On the topic of staff coordination and senior staff meetings, finding the right day to go with the command's decision cycle in our role as an integrator is hard. Initially, we chose the day of the week and time that worked best for the seniors. However, that time ended up being immediately after all the command decision meetings, which meant everyone only really knew the immediate out briefs. In our command, the real actions tend to flow a day or so after the meetings.

However, by moving the staff coordination to the start of the week, which would seem to be the optimal date for the command's decision process time line, we haven't had as much staff participation in the meetings. Since the office's charter is to perform coordination and integration (a kind of portfolio manager), many of the staff have subordinate commands to attend on that same day.

Even for a small office, this inability to effectively coordinate action has resulted in seniors (and their deputies, such as me) getting fatigued and scrambling to figure out where the next critical decision point lay and get someone prepared to be there.

Of course, since I'm matrixed from the system engineering organization to this coordination office, that gives me two battle rhythms to attempt to satisfy with my boss. Additionally, my parent organization's battle rhythm is well suited for engineers of single systems, but my boss and I have to service a portfolio manager, which makes our efforts unique compared with our peers.

My initial thought that is to consider integrated work/decision environments, such as operating from a war room, so that we can get the best picture of the environment. However, I do hesitate, because although getting the complete information picture appeals to me as a systems engineer, knowing that the seniors lack a battle rhythm that I can know when/where to inject that gained information makes me question if the effort will bear fruit (and here, fruit is reducing leader fatigue and getting leaders to the critical decisions sufficiently prepared).

The one light is that we just this week got a full set of deputies assigned and we seem to be working well together. If we can establish the battle rhythm in the near future, we should be able to start getting our seniors in the right places. Read More......

Hands on with Systemic Leadership

Well, been busy the past few months getting settled into a new job standing up a new organization (yes, adding to the bureaucracy). I was tapped as an "enterprise systems engineer" responsible to provide architectures, concepts of operations, requirements, and other technical support to future visions.

In this job, there are people, like a former President of a Harris division, who are very interested in understanding how to best set up the organization based on the specific leadership capabilities, personal traits, and other factors of the senior leaders. Fortunately, so far the office is relatively flat in organization, so I have insight into the workings of the seniors.

I'm hoping to start posting my observations from this experience - good, bad, and ugly to see how paying attention to the systemic (or in places where we fail to pay attention) leads to what kinds of behaviors in the organization. Read More......

Systemic Leadership Core Model Drafted

First off, we have a wiki for Systemic Leadership. We are still filling out the initial content. This is a place for you to read, and possibly engage directly in the development of this systemic leadership concept we've been talking about on this blog. The wiki contains links to our publications so far. We've loaded those onto Google Docs, so that you can see the various routes we have taken.

Now, we introduce our draft systemic leadership model. After spending much time looking on relational factors of a model, and specifically avoiding reduction, we have seen a simple pattern emerge. In this model, we consider the relationship between a leader and a team as core element operating to achieve some endeavor (project, program, etc) in an environment. While relating leaders and teams to do a project is normal in most leadership constructs, we add in the notion of a battle rhythm.

The US Army uses battle rhythms extensively and is generally concerned if a rhythm is lacking (See section I-66 of RM 4-02.2 for examples of what may happen if the rhythm isn't known). For the systemic model, the decisions needed for the endeavor are presented through the team to the leaders in accordance with the battle rhythm. Good battle rhythms ensure that the leader is present at the right time, with the right supporting information, to make the right decisions. Poor rhythms interfere with the right information getting to the leader at the right time in some fashion. For example, insisting on defining an interface with an external user that may not be needed by either party for several years may take attention away from other critical decisions that the leader must make.

Now, this is a draft model, we welcome comments or thoughts on how you think this model may help leaders take a more systemic view at leading their programs. 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......

Transformational AF SOS?

I recently graduated from the US Air Force's second Basic Developmental Education (BDE) course, which is better known as Squadron Officer School (SOS). The curriculum of SOS is undergoing a revision (as indicated here). One aspect I noticed was the retirement of Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory in favor of the Full Range of Leadership Model (FRLM) as the model of choice to mid-career AF Captains. Of course, the AF added its own spin on FRLM.

One aspect that was taught by my flight commander and the main lecturer was that both transformational and transactional leadership preferences have their place at different times. The claim boils down to that being a master "Management by Exception" (MBE) leader could be preferred over "Inspirational Motivation" in some circumstances. One example discussed was the under-fire scenario. In this scenario, the effective AF leader would use MBE to direct their troops, relying on the base relationship and training that the leader set with inspirational motivation to prepare the forces for battle. Transactional and transformational, under this theory, are now viewed as equal - the traditional "up and to the right" from laissez-faire up through transactional and up to transformational is replaced with a model in which laissez-fair is discounted and transactional and transformational are put on an equal horizontal footing.

This issue was debated at a fevered pitch in my flight room. A special forces officer commenting that transactional leadership is essentially dead and that he get the best results in the field using idealized influence and inspirational motivation. Other officers commented that sometimes the leader's attention may be over too many issues, so that using a more transactional approach can ensure a critical, single operation succeeds.

SOS did help prepare young officers to use the FRLM. SOS used several different methods: a lecture on FRLM, some discussion classes that attempts to build strategies for using FRLM in our home units, and a self assessment for each officer against the FRLM. Unfortunately, we used a different model to assess each other later in the course, which may be an artifact of being in the middle of the curriculum revision.

So, does this view hold? What issues do you see in advocating transactional preferences as being equal to transformational preferences? Read More......

Mentoring in a Systemic Leadership Context

These thoughts inspired by "Leaders urge airmen to turn to peer mentors" from the USAF AIM Points (here)

Mentoring is a key concept in transformational leadership. Mentoring, in the personal communication mode, that leads to the development of personnel into what the larger organization needs them to be can be very powerful. I have personally sought out my own mentors, choosing those who have excelled, lead successful projects, and do so composure and tact. By looking towards these people, I hope to learn their lessons and being applying them in my own way.

Mandatory mentoring, on the other hand, tends to become a "check the box" activity. In different circumstances, I saw other people do their mandatory mentoring with people they didn't know and not caring to learn from them. My wife always hated her mandatory mentoring sessions with women in higher-up management roles - you see, my wife wanted to become a master engineer, and wanted nothing to do with supervision and management. She couldn't learn what she needed to succeed from her mentor.

Ultimately, the organization does need to place value on people getting a chance to mentor and be mentored. This enables the training of the next generation to be done "above the line", and not have the mentor and mentored feel like they are "slacking". But if too much value is placed on mentoring, the activity runs the risk of becoming an organizational mandate, a contingent-reward, or worse - a directed activity.

Does your organization do mentoring? How do you feel about your mentoring relationships? Read More......

Initial Foray into Systemic Leadership

Systemic Leadership is a theoretical leadership construct being developed by Captain DeWitt Latimer and myself. It did not spring forth fully formed but rather has evolved based on the realities of leadership in the 21st century. We will be providing additional and extensive materials that help develop the theoretical framework for the theory as the blog expands. However, before I address the theoretical model I would like to provide the readers with insight into the components that have helped to formulate this theory.

It would be difficult for any theory to spring forth unparented and the development of Systemic Leadership is no exception to that rule. In the following series of blog entries I will be discussing the relevance, content , and current impact of the following theories; (a) the Living Systems Theory developed by James G. Miller, (b) the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator developed by Katharine Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, (c) Psychological Types developed by Charles G. Jung, (d) Transformational Leadership developed by James M. Burns, and (e) the Full Range of Leadership developed by Bernard Bass and James Avolio. These are the principal theoretical underpinnings to Systemic Leadership.

Before I enter into a discussion of this construct I would like to make sure that the readers understand that Systemic Leadership (SL) is not attempting to present just another leadership theory. There are certainly more than enough theories about leaders and leadership to keep multitudes of leadership researchers occupied and equally numerous self-help leadership ventures to provide seminars a-plenty that purport to have the answer to good/sound/effective leadership. I classify the sponsors of all such theoretical work to either be academic leadership researchers or leadership consultants. The one keeps expanding the scope of questions about leadership as a concept while the other provides canned answers (processes) to prospective leaders or interested lay people.

SL as a theory has a much more pragmatic purpose in mind - to provide the necessary leverage to managers and leaders in their pursuit of organizational and task success. DeWitt and I have made a pact between us that this work will have application relevance from the very beginning or the work will not continue!

We welcome you, the readers, to participate in the further development and continued refinement of Systemic Leadership Theory. Leaders have demonstrated across the centurys that leadership theories have a limited place in the grand scheme of things but they need to be more relevant if we are to understand how leadership becomes a real lever for success in the 21st century. Read More......

News article on new USAFA Leadership Center

Today's USAF AIM Points feature article was:

Academy to transform character development program

The article discusses the development of a new leadership and character development center at the USAF Academy (USAFA) in Colorado. Although the article doesn't describe the new curriculum, which I am very interested in learning more about, it does start me thinking about good questions for the new center director.

Knowing how leadership was taught to me at my commissioning source, in the Air & Space Basic Course, and in my correspondence course for Squadron Officer School, the focus was on the Übermensch of leaders with very specific traits: charismatic, outgoing, and married to their one vision of the future. We know these leaders had the right traits because their visions came true. They were unlike all those other leaders whose visions didn't come true, but were none the less charismatic and outgoing.

My wondering is will USAFA continue trying to develop Übermensch leaders, or will they focus on helping the students discover the students' individual leadership preferences and help them build plans for using their strengths and overcoming areas that... well aren't preferred by that individual?

This idea of developing mitigation to a leader's leadership preferences is central to the journal paper Frank and I wrote a few years ago (and honestly, we need to blog about shortly). Considering that each system is a different mix of challenges, by which different leadership preferences are needed, then leaders can only excel if they are either lucky enough to only encounter problems matching to their preferred way of solving problems or have developed contingency plans for problems that the leader would normally try sub-optimal methods.

Our challenge, as systemic leaders is to understand how to reign in our preferences and develop plans that help us see when our preferred methods may not yield fruit and intentionally choose other methods that are more likely to succeed.

If this type of leadership self-exploration is going to be embraced at USAFA, then my hats off to them. But until they provide something for us to review, we will have to seek other ways of getting our message out and hoping they hear the good word. Read More......

Systemic Views from the Web

I listen to IEEE Spectrum Radio (here). Often that podcast takes a broad view of issues in various marketplaces. The article below relates to our previous post about Black Swan Events.

"Mediocrity beats unpredictability", here, posted in January 2009. The article starts off with "The holiday shopping season was a disaster for retailers... Only a select few did better than last year, including Walmart and Apple. ...ask yourself: which is better—a store with lots of stuff, some great, some not, or a consistent experience?" This is a discussion on why people choose consistency (even if mediocre) over randomly great/not-so-good. Arguably, this demonstrates one way in which the normal group behavior of people seems to avoid risk and uncertainty. 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......