Statement from StratFor regarding state of the Army

[selil]

An interesting point about technology innovation is that almost none is done by large companies. Small companies or small units that are autonomous of large companies do technological innovation. An organizational leadership scholar once told me it was effective span of control by the leaders. Vision and enthusiasm can only be pushed out by leaders to a certain number of individuals.

When was the last time you heard somebody in governmental or business leadership positions talking about vision and it didn't sound pedantic or hollow? When you can't create consensus in an organization (even at the platoon leader level) you are left with tools like fear and authority to get the job done. Those two tools being in direct contradiction to vision and innovation.

I was only a corporal in the Marines so my leadership was learned much in law enforcement and business. In once case running a 100 million dollar project my span of control was 15 subordinates with a team total of 135 or so on my project. The VP I worked for was an Army colonel and he laughed when i set up the project in teams of 5, with three teams of five being a section, and three sections per department... The organization ran lean, ran fast, and came in on-time and under budget.

I learned from that job the worst thing an organization can do is give you everything you ask for. A lean staffing profile is much better than bloated. It was a hard lesson but I learned that work is not done by the leaders and in general they just get in the way. Vision and mission is done by leaders and their effectiveness should be rated on their ability to communicate that to the leaves of the organization.

I know with the amount of military leadership here none of that would be much of a surprise.

Of course at the end of the project they disbanded the team and sent the CEO to jail but that is another story.

[Jimbo]

No the Army has not been dilberted...

Any large organization takes a while change, like turning a large ship. Schoomaker has done that so far. If you want to look at kicking and screaming. Go to thread on the AF and COIN doctrine, that will show real aversion to change. The Army has identified some friction points, and they are reducing them, such as the turn around time on doctrine changes. No government as a whole, has a ton of other issues, that make any big company appear the paradigm for dynamicism and efficiency.

[wm]

Future tense? You are more optimistic than I am.



If we carry on the analogy between the military and business organizations, and it's a good one given how much cultural "genetic" (aka memetic) material has passed between them, then what about the Board of Directors? I have yet to see, barring the current examples in Israel, any Western nation really going after politicians for incompetence. Maybe the Western nations should consider the advantages of putting together something like SEC for politician overwatch, similar to Canada's Auditor General or the US GAO, but with the power to indite politicians for incompetence and malfeasance.

Marc

Marc,
The US has the capability to recall or impeach its elected officials--sort of like the stockholders voting out the board. We have an issue with citizen apathy that usually precludes this option from being exercised. In fact we have the voter apathy problem to such a great degree that we keep re-electing incompetents. The other real problem is what to do with all of the "bad egg" political appointees and other government civil servants.
Does Canada have a solution for these issues. The Roman Republic at least had the Censors and the annual "audit" of its provincial procurators and propraetors (remember Cicero's speeches?). But, of course, Rome didn't have universal citizenship.

[marct]

Hi WM,

Marc,
The US has the capability to recall or impeach its elected officials--sort of like the stockholders voting out the board. We have an issue with citizen apathy that usually precludes this option from being exercised. In fact we have the voter apathy problem to such a great degree that we keep re-electing incompetents. The other real problem is what to do with all of the "bad egg" political appointees and other government civil servants.
Does Canada have a solution for these issues.

Not really. We have a multi-party set-up and a very strict split between our head of government (the Prime Minister) and our head of State (The Queen). What that translates to is that it is usually easier to attack the head of government or any politician and force a resignation. We don't have impeachment, either, since our members of parliament, including the Prime Minister, only represent their own ridings.

On the voter apathy problem, we do have it as well, but our voter registration system is radically different from the US. We send out people to register all potential voters and have a very large staff at Elections Canada devoted to keeping the voters lists constantly updated. As to re-electing incompetents, that's a problem endemic in any democracy back to Athens .

On the issue of "bad egg" appointees and civil servants, we do have a way of dealing with them via the Auditor General, but she currently only has moral suasion.

The Roman Republic at least had the Censors and the annual "audit" of its provincial procurators and propraetors (remember Cicero's speeches?). But, of course, Rome didn't have universal citizenship.

Yup, then again no Western democracy has universal suffrage or citizenship either, so that is a moot point. As I mentioned, the closest we come s the annual Auditor General's report. The AG is a fascinating office in many ways. First, the AG is appointed for a set time period (6 years I believe) and is required to find and expose government inefficiency. Second, he AG is explicitly required to publish their reports, and many of them have been scathing. Third, the AG is guaranteed a Golden Parachute when hey leave the position on the grounds that they will be so unpopular that they will probably never get a government appointment again. As I said, an interesting position; I just wish she had a few more powers .

Marc

[120mm]

No the Army has not been dilberted...

Any large organization takes a while change, like turning a large ship. Schoomaker has done that so far. If you want to look at kicking and screaming. Go to thread on the AF and COIN doctrine, that will show real aversion to change. The Army has identified some friction points, and they are reducing them, such as the turn around time on doctrine changes. No government as a whole, has a ton of other issues, that make any big company appear the paradigm for dynamicism and efficiency.

But my point is that exactly. Schoomaker is acting like it's a large ship, that he can direct from above. As do nearly all of his upper ranks people. Just look at all the mandatory training that is pushed from the top down, accompanied by innumerable surveys to try to judge the effects.

The technique is stupid. (Make whatever implications vis-a-vis Schoomaker and Co. you'd like based on that statement) And demonstrates that those folks just don't trust anyone underneath them. Which makes the situation worse.

For a brief shining moment, from around 1983 until 1990, there was a time when Auftragstaktik ruled the army. (Or at least the Armored Part). We were encouraged to be flexible and employ basic understanding and trust between superiors/subordinates, or at least that was the theory.

Now, a Corps Headquarters issues FRAGOs to ask a Company level unit to move it's outhouses. And that means that all the "Strategic Corporal" speak is just bull####. If there IS a Transformation, it is to MORE CENTRAL CONTROL, not less.

Sorry, had to vent.

[selil]

Sooo... The consensus seems to be that the Army has be Dilberted?

I ran across an article about this factor with Information Technology. I got to thinking about the concepts and if you switch army, officer, and such in the right places this article could be this thread.

How to Stop the Dilbertization of IT (March 16, 2007)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2104997,00.asp

Talk to someone who has worked in IT for decades and more often than not, they'll regale you with stories of the "good old days," when the workplace was lively and creative juices flowed.

Nowadays it's a different story, they usually say, and place their blame along any number of lines: outsourcing, offshoring, cost-cutting, IT commoditization, reactivity where there was once proactivity, not to mention the shoddy desks in their office in dusty room at the end of the hall.

n the simplest terms: too many IT workplaces have become Dilbert-ized—micromanaged, bureaucratic and stifled creatively. It's become an environment where busy work is praised and morale is low.

IT is isn't fun anymore, and while a lack of fun at work may not seem worth stopping the presses over, the long-term effects of depriving a field of appealing work may very likely look like this: Students are turning away from computer science at an alarming rate. There's a huge talent shortage across the entire field, and, in confidence, enterprise IT workers say they'd probably choose a different career path if they could go back and start over again.

"When I first got involved in IT, it was fun. It was a cool job; you were a hero because you helped people do things," Bruce Skaistis, founder of eGlobal CIO, a consulting firm, told eWEEK. "Now I go in to organizations and it has become drudgery. They seem beat-down, in less nice facilities. If you want to attract better people back into IT you need to make it more fun again. You need to recognize it as a problem."

But how to go about bringing IT's appeal back? Answers come from surprising places. Recipient of the 2006 Turning award and IBM Fellow Emeriti Frances Allen said in a recent interview that the answer lies within the field.

"I believe that there was great excitement early on. You couldn't have had a more wonderful experience than I did at IBM in 1960. We worked through wonderful problems with wonderful people. There was always the sense that there was so much more to do, more than we ever had time for," said Allen.

"The excitement is not as much now, which is unfortunate, because we've really just gotten started."

eWEEK spoke to long-time IT professionals about ways they think the fun and excitement can be brought back to IT. Beyond blaming external factors, they speak of bringing focus back to what is already in-house: professionals eager to love their work again.

Much more at the link......

[Armchairguy]

StratFor is George Friedman, his wife and a very small permanent core staff (not one of whom has an intel background) who churn out high quantities of journalistic reporting posing as "analylsis". The bulk of the work is done by university student interns. In my personal opinion, most of their international product is crap - what little there is of value to be found among the outpouring is readily available elsewhere. And where StratFor charges for access to much of their product, you can find much better (and real analysis, not journalism and commentary) for free elsewhere.

Where StratFor does do good work is more in the areas of monitoring domestic activist/radical groups and consulting on certain aspects of corporate security. Funny how they're known more for what they do worst....

Any links for these for free real analysis sites? I'd love to have them.