A633.3.4.RB – Complexity Science

A633.3.4.RB – Complexity Science

Reflect on your own organization's strategy or an organization that is familiar to you.  -How has it evolved over time?

            Surprisingly enough one would think that the self-proclaimed greatest Army in the world would evolve greatly over time. In some areas it has, but for many unfortunately it hasn’t. It’s no surprise that technologically our military is leaps and bounds more superior to many others, but one key area that we are lacking is the adaptive leadership strategy to support it. One of our greatest hurdle is that our systems aren’t able to support the amount of change that is being forced down our throat. Plus I’d remiss not mentioning that our budget clearly doesn’t support the high paced operational tempo to match the current threat environment. Boot (2017), shows that “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis explained to the House Armed Services Committee that having returned to the military after four years of retirement, he was “shocked by what I’ve seen with our readiness to fight.” I’m currently IN the fight, and trust me the pain is real, and no relief is on the foreseeable horizon. So to answer the question plainly, technologically it has greatly changed, but not much at an organizational level. I do however have to admit that just about all the Army’s divisions have currently shifted to Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) to better relieve stress on a few specialized units that were deploying over and over again. Again however, the core structure of the organization within embody the same historical functional silo. So some macro change to help relieve stress, but at the micro level, business as usual.

-Discuss each stage of development and how feedback and strategy formulation have changed over time.

Historically the military has had very clear boundaries of responsibility being land, sea, air, and special operations. I was in the Army pre 9-11, and our military really didn’t train much unilaterally, and sort of stay in our own lanes. Once we were quickly poured into a joint-branch / multi-nationally fight in Afghanistan, some serious lessons were quickly being learned. Not only do different nations speak different languages, but we were in the military as well. This was a hard realization at first and also very consequential, but cross-functional training did however shed light in areas that proved to eventually be very beneficial. Now that we are formed in the for mentioned BCT’s, and working close at hand with a variety of partnered forces, our training doctrine and standard operating procedures (SOP) are slowly starting to actually reflect the capacity to which we fight. The types of feedback that drove a lot of this change unfortunately came in the form of lives sacrificed in the name of poor preparation. These actions drove political pressures to take a hard look from the top down. I did recently see a lot of anticipated change my through professional military education (PME) gate that shows just about all strategic doctrine is written as Joint Branch. Before this recent change, everything in the Army was Army Regulation (AR), and Navy Regulation (NR), and so on. Now the change is a bit clearer, but the mindset and culture at the macro level is slowly starting to catch up. Better than nothing I guess…

-Consider the next steps in your company's evolution and describe what it will look like in 10 years and where you will be.

            The military’s evolution is normally found in troop capacity, and realized through cyclical repetition. Serbu (2017) reveals that for “2017 alone recruiters suddenly had to find and onboard 6,000 more enlistees than the 62,500 they’d planned for the year, the largest “in-year” recruiting increase in the Army’s history.” It’s unfortunate that the military isn’t really an efficient machine where productivity is really ever realized through innovation or restructuring initiatives. Rather the sheer size of her formation, and all the cool tools we get to play with is how it’s unfortunately judged. The formation has made some recent changes that allow for a better understanding for cross-functional training, but I foresee us once again drifting apart once the global conflicts start to wrap up and we hermit back into a training only force. Hamel (1998) quote “To Planners. Unless you get involved in the quest for the deep secrets of strategy emergence, the best you can hope for is honorable mention in a Dilbert cartoon.” I do understand for many reasons why the Army continues to operate with similar structures, and similar leadership styles. Unfortunately now after 19years of service, I realize that a majority of these reasons don’t coincide with the necessity for simplicity. As for me, hopefully sooner than later I’ll be long gone from this beast!

References

Boot, M. (2017). America’s military doesn’t have enough money to do its job. Retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/22/americas-military-doesnt-have-enough-money-to-do-its-job/

Hamel, G. (1998). Opinion: Strategy innovation and the quest for value. Sloan Management Review, 39(2), 7.

Obolensky, M. N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership, 2nd Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781472447937/

Serbu, J. (2017). After years of drawdowns, Army needs 80,000 new soldiers to meet 2018 growth targets. Retrieved from https://federalnewsradio.com/on-dod/2017/10/after-years-of-drawdowns-army-needs-80000-new-soldiers-to-meet-2018-growth-targets/

A633.2.3.RB- Time for the butter to meet the fly

First off I’d like to reflect in my own words/interpretations about the major points that are going to be discussed.

Obolensky (2014)

Complexity theory- “Complex systems seem to be on the ‘edge of chaos’ & exhibit simple ‘emergent’ behavior.” This differentiates the main points between Chaos and Complexity theories. When chaos has its full potential, it is known to be in a complexity state. The overt actions of this potential is when you’d be in the chaotic phase. The complex theory has four major factors, as listed below:

• Self-organization- starts to occur when catalysts create cause and effect which start to blur, making the resulting factors to become hard to identify, map, and calculate/predict. What positions in organizations will naturally bind together to create one entity that hinges on the other? This process makes it difficult to separate many distinctions.

• Inter-relatedness- constituent parts have many connections (all networked together, hence being more complex). This can be viewed as all the different human interactions that are byproducts of organizing. Relationships can either create newly fostered partnerships, or close others at the same time. Nonverbal communication is a huge area that can bridge the gap, or create oceans between. Most interesting is the fact that none of this is predictable, and is even harder to control. My take is to acknowledge that it will certainly be there.

• Adaptive nature- being able to read the white noise, decipher the matrix code, put many external factors together in order to make preemptive strategic moves. Company actions should emulate amebic movements because without complex behavior in a complex world, your company will become basic, and we all know what happens when you become basic. Basically, you’ll be back to the basics without even having a basic job.

• Emergence- through evolution, importance is noticed independently creating a convergence on the same importance simultaneously, thus creating several interdependencies.

Butterfly effect- “the effort you put in will dictate the result you get out. Yet within complex organizations, small changes can yield large results.” Normally effort in equal’s effort out, and in the Army we have a similar saying that is “piss poor planning provides piss poor results” (6PR). This isn’t always the case especially when dealing with complex systems, where the smallest change can have dramatic results.

Identify 2 examples where “small changes yield large results” in your organization-

            Frist one that I’ve seen recently is the presence of me to my new organization. The former Standards Pilot (SP) was exiting the Army and his attitude towards the company mission didn’t present a lot of effort or care. On my arrival I noticed a dereliction in many lower level operations and initially couldn’t put my finger on the problem, especially since I was good friends with the SP and knew he had been a great performer in our previous assignments. I had to care and put forth so much effort initially because if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t be promoted, a common motivator that we all share. My individual actions had so many effects even I didn’t have to be very vocal about my disgust with the performance of many others. I didn’t want to drive down the morale within the organization, because it was unusually high.  I reluctantly decided to be more passive than usual, and the results I achieved were remarkable. Performance was back up to par, and morale stayed at the same level, a win/win in my book!

            Second was enacting an incentive program that allowed for those who excel to get rewarded for it openly. A lot of the time in the military, you are stuck focusing a majority of your time with those who are poor performers, causing those who excel to do a bulk of the work and not really get rewarded for it. It's forbidden to just promote anybody at specific times when they are performing at a higher level; we just have to wait a majority of the time… However, with our new incentive program, those who excel aren't stuck doing the same basic training with everybody else, for a simple example physical training (PT). There is really no better motivator when a poor performer is the only one stuck doing basic training alone with a supervisor, and the rest of the team has pressed on to better quality of life. Trust me, these hits hard to many! Incentives do need to be managed carefully as to not “split” the team per se, they take a lot of time from leadership, but I find such a simple program allows productivity to reach its full potential.

What are the implications of complexity theory for you and your organization and how can you use this to drive improvements-

Having an understanding that a system is constantly on the verge of being chaotic really is the alarm for attentiveness, which helps drive leaders to stay sharp. In the mud of the chaos is usually a solution to the inherent problem, and knowing that the potential is there, is the first step in cutting the error chain. A lot of the time when I witness chaos, I also see what I’d like to call Band-Aid leadership, which is really the root cause of the problem. This type of leadership is really no leadership at all; I also refer to it as kicking the ball down the road leadership. Putting Band-Aids on problems just cause it to heal up temporarily, but will ultimately rear its ugly head or manifest multiple heads down the road causing chaos to grow exponentially. This eventuality can quickly get very out of hand. Keeping a lid on complexity theory is really the key to success. Be adaptive in both your strategic planning process, and leadership style. Currently we are living in interconnected web of complexity that is suffocated by a culture that begs for adaptive change. Having the right metrics in place that allow individuals and large scale operations to identify, digest, absorb, implement, and execute change seamlessly won’t become stuck in my aforementioned “basic” status.

References

Obolensky, M. N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership, 2nd Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781472447937/

Wow, after some time evaluating what I have just observed in such a short time I am truly amazed at what I've just witnessed. In certain locations on the planet, I can't even recognize Earth at all! The changes are astounding for some, and others are rather heartbreaking.

Inequality:

                First off, it seems as though many societies have made leaps and bounds to bridge the gap on inequalities in general, but one area that seems to be on the verge or starting to decline is racial inequality. It's a bit startling to see that there is such animosity between races, and at the same time, the "want" for equality seems to be a shared commonality for most. Bridging gaps is a rather painstaking paramount that all societies struggle with throughout history. How do you finally close loop on such misfortunes? How do societies forgive and press on? Why do we keep the paradox at bay whilst uncovering the true nature of the problem at hand? I certainly don't have all the answers, and am clearly no theologian, but being part of the problem unknowingly is speculative, and even more perspective.

Environmental pace of change:

                This is no real surprise to me after witnessing the "Big Bang" in population. Even though this is a predictable factor, is certainly is not one that I swallow kindly, nor should anybody else. Investing in your home is probably one of the most deficient elements that I'm beginning to understand now that I'm boots on the ground for a minute. The lack of a harmonious approach during a critical point in time is certainly alarming. The numbers are there but some of the science is unexplained because of so many different elemental factors. The current society certainly "thinks" they understand the planet well, but I'd have to say that even the planet doesn't always understand because it's an evolutionary element. Example, many people proclaim that one would be a great mother someday because they embody the sought after traits of motherhood, but I'd argue that adaptability is probably the most important trait of all. I think Earth exemplifies this trait the most, and certainly can sustain a great deal of stress that her children put on her. Respect for nature is really where I'm going with all this, because mother scorn is certainly no storm I'm wanting to witness!

Quality of leadership:

                My initial thoughts are that this all comes back to exposure and experiences. It's only natural to have a huge gap in leader quality because they certainly aren't born. Good leaders will explain openly and honestly to anybody that they themselves at one point in time were mediocre leaders or even poor ones. This all falls in line with the structure and discipline for how organizations are formed. Surely, an organization isn't going to have junior leaders that lack credible experience be the time of the spear. This process takes a lot of time and effort by many in order to create a well rounder head figure. Time is really the only way in my mind to bridge the gap; I think it's intended to be that way ;)