Breaking the Bureaucracy
Marc, I really enjoyed this post. We have so much talent in the free world that is stifled by government bureaucracy when we attempt to pull it into the defense establishment, not exactly a "locked" bureaucracy, but one that adapts too slowly in a time of rapid change. Our bureaucracy acts like a restriction plate in a race car that effectively limits its top speed.
The talent we need to deal with today's non-traditional/irregular threats (maybe they are traditional/regular by this point, and we're simply living in the past) lies largely in the civilian world in small companies and within talented individuals (not the large defense companies, which are as bureaucratic as the military). The challenge is to incorporate this talent without destroying the talent.
Posted by Marc,
We are improving, but the speed of our evolution is restrained by the bureaucracy, while our more nimble foes can adapt much more quickly. It would be a different story if the deciding factor was who could develop the best fighter jet or stealth bomber. It doesn't take a lot of money to compete with us in the infosphere (blogs, twitter, other social networking sites, publically available encryption systems for e-mail, etc.). So how do we does a large, locked in bureaucracy compete and dominate in this sphere?Hi Bill,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Moore
The implications identified in this article should be enough to wake most up to some rather frightening implications of what the future holds for us. Are we prepared to operate effectively in this environment?
The extremely short answer is "no,
Many of us frequently reach outside the big machine for needed expertise, and SWJ is one example. Other examples are small companies forming like Terrogence Ltd. and Palantir that are agile enough to stay competitive with the threat (if they're left in the free market/open market system. Of course the challenge is getting money from the bureaucracy to fund this talent (relatively small in the big picture). You submit your requirement up through a long chain of approvers, many who don't understand your requirements, and are liable to kill the request before it sees the light of day (death in the middle). Yet you hear our leaders tell us we need to adapt. Much easier said than done.There are two central "problems" that are driving this phenomenon at the structural level. The first is that many necessary resources have been "locked" in "hard" organizational structures (classic, centralized and bureaucratic organizations). This "locking", however, has also allowed for an increasing split intra-organizationally between those parts of the organization that monitor the environment and those that "produce" the organizations "product". Increasingly, there is a divergence between the interests of these organizational sub-sections (cf Nuala Beck's Shifting Gears). So, in order for people to access the resources they actually need (vs. what they are told they need), they go increasingly outside of the formal system.
Exactly, but we can only share ideas outside the structure, getting the funding is another issue.I said there were two central "problems", and this brings us to the second one, which is how do you communicate with people who have the resources (knowledge, information, etc.) that you need? One of the ideas behind the establishment of centralized bureaucratic organizations was to create a formal communications structure: a common language (e.g. doctrine, etc.), expectations of who should "know" something (the concept of an office vs. a person), and methodologies for communications (e.g. procedures, memos, etc.). When this communications structure becomes less than needed to meet the immediately important environments of those effected by it, people will start to go outside of it; which is what the irhabi crowd is doing and, also, what the SWC crowd is doing.
On the messaging part I agree, and I see a trend towards decentralization, but that isn't the only issue. We need to restructure the staff, restructure the funding approval process, restructure the fighting force, etc., and we need to be able to do it quickly. More later.I said "no, but...", what I was getting at was that it is actually impossible for an organization with relatively poor communications structures to compete with one that has much better information structures. Now, here's where the "but..." comes in....
In order to effectively compete, you have to formalize the organizational use of those communications structures that are outside of the organization. This means that the organization has to give up some of its core tenets, such as centralized control over the "message" and the forms of communications.
Originally Posted by Bill Moore
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