Example of how to conduct innovation…

How to take a losing organization of average talent, and make it a winner.

While I concede, as demonstrated in previous blogs, that conditions are bad in our country, there are examples of people “down in the trenches” or on the street living their lives the best they can.  I love finding examples of innovation in light of a culture of political correctness, rules and risk aversion. Also importantly are examples abound everywhere, just not in the military. It is important for us who want to develop and lead learning organizations the willingness to learn regardless the source (as well as from good and bad examples).

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Good Leaders Make Tough Choices…

I continue to contend that we the people are guilty of our own forthcoming catastrophes not only looming on the horizon, but beginning to occur today.

We keep electing the same “cheerleaders.”

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Secretary of Defense Honors John Boyd-The How To?

4th Generation Warfare requires and will continue require leaders that have resounding strength of character and are adaptaing, and in turn developing their subordinates and units to be the same.

The question I would poise to Secretary of Defense Gates after he honored Boyd, and asked officers to emulate him is the “how-to?”

When Army General Peter Schoomaker assumed the responsibilities as Army Chief of Staff in the summer of 2003, I had hope that he would lead change in the Army culture. I still believe after meeting him and emailing him, that he was sincere in changing the Army culture to adapt to 4th Generation Warfare, but the careerists of status-quo waited him out. In his tenure as Chief of Staff, Adaptability became one of the big buzz words alongside change the culture. I would make many officers uncomfortable when asked to attend conferences and meetings when I would ask “How to?”

How do you propose we develop adaptability and nurture those leaders that demonstrate strength of character? What laws, policies and practices, more so beliefs, do we have to address to ensure we develop adaptability and protect leaders of character? I would never get much of an answer.

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Evolutionary Adaptability

In any organization promotion and selection, as well as evaluation tools, provide the primary “power levers for changing or maintaining culture.” These critical tools, presented as inherently fair, determine awards and control access to positions of influence and control.” They provide specific instructions when tasking subordinates due to an obsession with certainty. The individual as well as the “system” carefully monitor the execution of their instructions, and track all activities and outcomes with the finest attention to detail. Unfortunately, “professional systems and structures are not very adaptable.”

If any organization is to become adaptive, a “Learning Organization,” it must ensure that its personnel system supports its move to a learning organization, and not the other way around where a retained personnel system limits the evolution to adaptability. The organization must learn to be adaptive, while creating and supporting adaptive institutions. The thread of evolutionary adaptability must exist everywhere. It starts with doctrine and strategic leaders, and filters down to daily activities, threads through policies and beliefs, winding its way from the training base to the those teams deployed in the conduct of an array of possible future missions. An environment must be in place to support and nurture the adaptability an organization says it wants in its leaders and employees.

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Evolutionary Adaptability

Thank you Fred for an outstanding answer(s) to the questions posted earlier! Your insights are more important because you are a leader in an organization that deals with 4GW scenarios on daily basis. I may also say that you have demonstrated moral courage because you have implemented innovative techniques to develop you people’s cognitive ability alongside the emphasis on physical courage, physical training and shooting that most law enforcement focus on (all important, but the tangible is easier to deal with while subordinating the mental development to a “nice to know if we have time to do it”).

What I am going to get into more over the next few weeks as I can post (I am going to be on the road the next three weeks working with Army cadre/instructors regarding adaptability development at three different locations) is the most important, and usually missing from all the theoretical discussions of evolving an organization to be adaptive (or called “Learning Organization”) is the “How To.” I am also looking for excellent insights from others, such as Fred Leland, on actual implementation of Boyd’s ideas (which Dr. Chet Richards does well explaining Boyd’s theories to audiences) to their organizations. Another person recently told me from Fort Sill, OK that what they [the Army] is looking for amongst all the theories of adaptability and decision making (cognitive development) was taking the “theory to reality.” Or, as I say, taking the rhetoric to reality.

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