Leading Change and Selling Ideas
I recently re-read two change management articles from one of my favorite HBR authors Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
Five Tips for Leading Campaigns for Change
- Memorable messages.
- Stories.
- Action tools and roles.
- Coalitions of partners.
- “Point of action” nudges.
- Seek many inputs.
- Do your homework.
- Make the rounds.
- See critics in private and hear them out.
- Make the benefits clear.
- Be specific.
- Show that you can deliver.
Click on the titles to read her full articles and visit my Change page for additional reading.
Frank Kendall, DoD Acquisition @ CSIS
Frank Kendall, Acting Under Secretary of Defense, AT&L spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on The Acquisition Implications of the DoD Strategic Guidance and the FY2013 Budget.
See the full transcript here.
The DoD’s Race Against the Machine
The DoD’s new Defense Strategy and Budget Priorities clearly show its in its own Race Against the Machine.
As the DoD sunsets two wars and cuts $487B from its budget over the next decade, it is clear that advanced technology will shape the future force. The DoD is increasing unmanned systems, cyber operations, and information, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities while decreasing personnel, manned fighter aircraft, ships, and bases. Secretary Panetta said DoD must “leverage the lessons of recent conflicts and stay ahead of the most lethal and disruptive threats of the future.”
Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describes how the Digital Revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Computers increase productivity across all industries enabling products to be developed faster, cheaper, and at higher quality. Technology has automated farm and factory work and is quickly penetrating the Service industry. They profile some of the recent breathtaking technological breakthroughs:
- IBM’s Watson besting human champions at Jeopardy
- Google’s automated cars that can drive in traffic on roads and highways by themselves
- Siri, the personal assistant on Apple’s iPhones, understands human speech well enough to answer a broad range of everyday requests
The well known Moore’s Law applies to a broad range of IT measures doubling every 18 months from processor speeds, storage capacity, network bandwidth, and energy consumption. As we’re decades into the Digital Age, the authors highlight how we’re now reaching the exciting steep part of the exponential curve.
The latest DoD trend is from manned aircraft to remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) – AKA unmanned systems or drones. RPAs now account for 31% of all military aircraft (7,494 RPAs vs 10,767 manned) – a rapid increase from the 5% in 2005. The manned aircraft mafia still command 92% of the aircraft procurement budget with pricey manned systems like F-35, Next Generation Bomber, and KC-46 dominating future budgets. The DoD spent $26B on RPAs since 2001. See more details in the US Unmanned Aerial Systems Congressional report and the 2009 UAS Flight Plan (Hat tip: Danger Room).
The one technological misstep was the budget decision to cancel the Air Force’s Global Hawk Block 30 program and extend the 1950s era U-2 program. The rationale was the Global Hawk Block 30 development and operational costs were at best comparable to the dinosaur of manned aircraft. My initial reaction was to compare this to a scenario where NASA retires the Space Shuttle fleet to return to the Apollo program. The DoD isn’t taking a 60 year step back, but will continue to invest in Global Hawk Block 40, NATO’s Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) and the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) – ideally at a higher ROI. The challenge with the DoD and Defense Industry developing advanced technology solutions is they design 10+ year programs unable to leverage the benefits of Moore’s Law. Until the DoD is able to adopt Agile practices with small, frequent capability deliveries to users, they will continue to squander exciting technological advancements and billions of taxpayer dollars.
Cyberspace meanwhile has emerged as the new operational domain where cyber attacks can achieve the same operational effects at an order of magnitude cheaper, faster, and safer than conventional military operations. NATO forces launched 100 cruise missiles into Libya in 2011 at $1 million each to disable their air defenses. DoD leadership considered launching a cyber attack that could have achieved the same results at a fraction of the costs. The DoD is aggressively debating strategies and policies while developing capabilities and partnerships to execute Cyberspace operations.
As personnel costs continue to rise, particularly from healthcare, the DoD is making tough budget decisions to invest in technological advancements to achieve its missions.
- Air Force is cutting 286 aircraft and 10,000 airmen while adding Predators and Reapers
- Army will cut 100,000 soldiers, while funding their Predator version, the Grey Eagle
- Navy is investing in their robo-copter and X-47B
- In addition to cutting personnel and large weapon systems, the DoD is calling for two new rounds of base closures
Most of the personnel reductions are a result of ending two major wars, which required a considerable ramp up of personnel post 9/11. Yet the long term US budget outlook will continue to put pressure on Defense budgets. An increasingly networked world brings ever more complex challenges, requiring agile, impactful, and responsive military solutions. For DoD to achieve considerable cost savings, increases in mission effectiveness, and be responsive to emerging threats, it must continue to embrace the Digital Revolution.
The largest potential for advancement and cost savings is in business operations. Portfolio management software and data analytics can be leveraged in managing hundred billion dollar budgets instead of Power Point slides and 1960s budget software (I’m not kidding). Many base support operations can be digitized and automated, saving billions in personnel costs. Global military logistics operations can improve integration of technology into their processes as UPS and FedEx have perfected years ago. DoD can radically transform headquarters operations by breaking the data silos, enabling broad collaboration, and fostering enterprise knowledge repositories.
Leveraging advanced technology and human innovation enables more efficient and effective operations while providing exciting new capabilities and opportunities to achieve our strategic military objectives.
Management, Hierarchy, and Bureaucracy
Gary Hammel’s recent Harvard Business Review cover story First, Let’s Fire All the Managers is packed with great one liners on management today. While this blog was designed to focus on new management practices leveraging digital technologies, many recent posts have focused on the management aspects. I believe the Pentagon has some fundamental bureaucratic culture issues that must be addressed before any technological solutions can be introduced. Here are a few nuggets from the article:
- Management is the least efficient activity in your organization.
- Inefficiency stems from a top-heavy management model that is cumbersome and costly.
- A hierarchy of managers exacts a hefty tax on any organization.
- The most powerful managers are the ones furthest from frontline realities.
- Decisions made on an Olympian peak prove to be unworkable on the ground.
- Control is the philosophical cornerstone of bureaucracy.
- In a bureaucracy, managers are enforcers who ensure that employees follow rules, adhere to standards, and meet budgets.
Gary’s article then profiles a leading California tomato company that has successfully operated for decades without managers. Employees have broad freedoms to determine their workload and expenses, negotiate with each other on interactions and salaries, and focus on clear missions. While this model is too radical for most companies, it’s a non-starter for DoD. But he does pose some interesting questions that every organization should think about:
- Wouldn’t it be great if we could achieve high levels of coordination without a supervisory superstructure?
- Wouldn’t it be terrific if we could get the freedom and flexibility of an open market with the control and coordination of a tightly knit hierarchy?
Now this is where digital enterprise collaboration tools enable a modern culture to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. While managers aren’t going to be replaced by machines (entirely), organizations that effectively integrate IT tools can share knowledge, address issues, and develop innovative solutions faster and cheaper while reducing the bureaucratic hierarchy.
IBM THINK: A Forum on the Future of Leadership
See more of the thought provoking videos and knowledge at IBM’s 100 Forum: THINK
Kindle Highlights and Collective Intelligence
As an avid reader of books, blogs, and articles, I’m always looking for ways to capture the key nuggets of knowledge to organize, apply, and share in the future. I currently use Google Docs to capture my notes from these various sources, but it has been a challenge to keep my research organized. My Kindle is loaded with business, technology, and innovation books, with many highlights throughout. Kindle has a great feature of sharing the most popular highlights from all Kindle readers, a crowdsourced collection of the most valued points from the book. As Amazon publishes the popular highlights of all their Kindle books on each product page, that has truly opened up a powerful knowledge source. They even publish the most highlighted passages or books of all time.
People can go to Amazon and pull up a book, say MacroWikinomics by Don Tapscott and read the 10 most popular highlights. They can then click on many of the related books like Innovator’s DNA by Clayton Christensen and read the 10 top highlights there. You can spend hours learning the most valuable points of countless interrelated books. As there are dozens of books on my Amazon Wish list to eventually get to, reading the highlights provides a succinct digest of all the books in the time it takes to read a chapter or two.
Ideally pulling the top highlights and the network relationships of the books to a separate site would save you from scrolling through the Amazon pages and better present the knowledge for readers. As Amazon built these features to get users to their site and buy more books, they would oppose that approach.
As you learn new nuggets of knowledge, how do you capture them so they’re not forgotten tomorrow or a 
month from now? How do you organize your knowledge repository to sort, expand, and retrieve that knowledge as an external hard drive to your brain? How do you share and integrate your knowledge with others in your team, company, or enterprise?
Wikipedia is a fantastic tool to capture and share human intelligence. Many companies and enterprises have leveraged related tools for their knowledge platforms. Some of these tools are still difficult for the average user to properly create or edit a Wikipedia like page. The cultural resistance to this new approach is also limiting our full potential.
If every day people took the time to add the knowledge they gained to a central online repository, it would instantly become a company’s most valuable resource. The platform needs to be able to present the most popular highlights for others so they don’t have to read through 50 page reports or long winded emails. Much like the Borg in Star Trek is organized as an interconnected collective, adopting this strategy enables every individual to be vastly more effective in their daily work and the organization as a whole to gain a huge competitive advantage.
MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence poses the research question: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?
10 Jack Welch Rules for the Pentagon
DoD’s massive budget cuts are going to drive a transformation one way or another. There are some great lessons from Jack Welch that may help shape the future of the Pentagon. Here are 10 of his rules that I believe the Pentagon leadership must adopt today. [My comments]
- Manage Less. “We are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told what to do by management.” Let your people do their what you hired them to do.
[DoD's countless policies, reports, reviews, and oversight crush productivity, morale, and innovation.] - Articulate Your Vision. “Leaders inspire people with clear visions of how things can be done better.” Leaders do not provide a step-by-step instruction manual for their teams, they let their vision inspire action.
[Instead of writing more policy or holding more reviews, share your vision with subordinate organizations and more importantly, those on the front lines] - Simplify. Keeping it simple. “Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.” Simplicity is not easy, but is effective.
[Could others in your organization convey the key tenets of your vision or strategy?] - See Change as an Opportunity. Change is a big part of the reality in business. This reminds me of the old Chinese proverb that the icon for danger is the same as the one for opportunity.
[Budget cuts provide an opportunity to eliminate non-value added processes, reports, organizations, individuals, and systems to be more streamlined, agile, and competitive going forward.] - Get Good Ideas from Everywhere. New ideas are the lifeblood of business. “The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action – fast.” The best ideas of all usually change the entire game–vs. trying to improve it.
[DARPA and the IC have leveraged the wisdom of the crowds to develop innovative solutions - have you?] - Get Rid of Bureaucracy. The way to harness the power of your people is “to turn them loose, and get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet and the functional barriers out of their way.” Keep bureaucracy to the absolute minimum required to scale with predictability and quality.
[The DoD bureaucracy imposes greater risks to programs than the risks they intend to mitigate.] - Create a Learning Culture. “The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere – and to rapidly convert this learning into action – is its ultimate competitive advantage.” When you stop learning you are dead.
[Leverage the web to amass the collective knowledge of the DoD and external sources.] - Involve Everyone. Business is all about capturing intellect from every person. The way to engender enthusiasm it to allow employees far more freedom and far more responsibility. If people are not involved, they have little reason to be creative and add more to the pie.
[As Nilofer Merchant writes: Get those on the front lines involved in developing strategies and solutions.] - Constantly Focus on Innovation. “You have just got to constantly focus on innovation. And more competitors. You’ve got to constantly produce more for less through intellectual capital. Shun the incremental, and look for the quantum leap.” Again, something very true in today’s technology world where no leaders can emerge from anywhere – if they have a solution that is far more innovative to all others.
[Divorce strategic plans from the decades old CONOPS mentality - develop innovative alternatives to achieve strategic objectives - you'll find 10X solutions are out there.] - Live Speed. “Speed is everything. It is the indispensable ingredient of competitiveness.” Everyone who gets the market second is a “me too” follower.
[Stop wasting time with excessive documentation, reviews, and analysis to get the perfect long term solution (which you'll never achieve) - deliver users some initial capabilities today and build upon them tomorrow.]
Management Innovation
Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) has 25 great Moonshots – challenges designed to focus the energies of management innovators everywhere. What needs to be done to create organizations that are fit for the future? Here are three of my favorites:
Make direction setting bottom-up and outside-in
“All stakeholders need a role in setting strategic direction.”
As the pace of change accelerates and the business environment becomes more complex, it will become increasingly difficult for any small group of senior executives to chart the path of corporate renewal. That’s why the responsibility for defining direction must be broadly shared—with all organizational members and interested external constituencies. Only a broad, participatory process can engender wholehearted and widespread commitment to proactive change. When it comes to setting direction, influence should be a product of foresight and insight rather than power and position.
Create a democracy of information
“People at the front lines should be at least as well informed as those in the executive suite.”
Most organizations control information in order to control people. Yet, increasingly, value is created where first-level employees meet customers — and the most value is created when those people have the information and the permission to do the right thing for customers at the right moment. Information transparency doesn’t just produce happy employees and happy customers, it’s a key ingredient in building resilience. Adaptability suffers when employees lack the freedom to act quickly and the data to act intelligently. The costs of information hoarding are quickly becoming untenable. Companies must build holographic information systems that give every employee a 3-D view of critical performance metrics and key priorities.
Retool management for an open and borderless world
“As the distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ disappears, managers must learn how to manage beyond the legal boundaries of the enterprise.”
Emerging business models increasingly rely on value-creating networks and forms of social production that transcend organizational boundaries. In these environments, management tools that rely on the use of positional power are likely to be ineffective or counterproductive. In a network of volunteers or legally independent agents, the “leader” has to energize and enlarge the community rather than manage it from above. Success therefore requires developing new approaches to mobilizing and coordinating human efforts.
Learn more about reinventing management including hundreds of stories, hacks, and barriers at Management Innovation eXchange.
Mastering the Fundamentals: RSS Reader
Two years ago I had the opportunity to brief a room full of Air Force executives (and another 20 on video teleconference) on Enterprise 2.0. I only had 5-10 minutes at the end of a staff meeting to make the pitch and I wasn’t successful in achieving broad adoption. I knew their awareness of blogs, wikis, and social networks was limited, so I felt the need to cover the basics. The point in the meeting that I knew it was a lost cause was when I said: “So you’re all familiar with Wikipedia…” and see a room full of blank stares. Oh boy.
In hindsight I realized my pitch was all wrong. I should have lead more with the benefits to their daily operations and less on the 101 details. With such a complex message I should have pushed for a separate venue with more than a few minutes to convey the ideas. But it did remind me that before I can go into the advanced concepts and applications of digital technology to redefine Pentagon operations, we must educate the community on the fundamentals. There are so many great tools out there to transform their daily work, but they simply don’t know which ones and how to apply them.
Over a series of posts I’ll cover the fundamentals of these digital tools to provide novices a foundation to build upon and spark ideas to improve their operations. I’ll start with RSS and RSS Readers.
RSS is Really Simple Syndication is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. RSS feeds can be read using software called an RSS reader, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URI or by clicking a feed icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. (Source: Wikipedia)
Google Reader is the leading RSS Reader.
Google Reader is a critical part of my daily routine to stay current on dozens of sites. It has proven invaluable in knowing and sharing the latest industry news with colleagues and sponsors. It also recommends related items and sources that I otherwise would have never found.
I strongly encourage all knowledge workers to setup an RSS reader like Google Reader.
- Add the feeds of your regular newspapers, magazines and websites
- Add the links on my Blogroll and Defense News sites (see right)
- Setup news alerts for key words (e.g. C4ISR, Cyber), leaders, and organizations
- Program and portfolio managers should establish alerts for their program names
Instead of reading newspapers, magazines, or individual sites, you’ll read the same material in half the time or you can cover 2-3 times the material in the same amount of time. You’ll gain knowledge, time, and a step ahead of others. What are you waiting for?
Remote Digital Clinics
Reading the annual lists of Innovations and Inventions is always a good source of inspiration and PopSci’s 2011 Invention Awards sparked a medical innovation idea. Leveraging two of the 2011 inventions along with existing innovations and an episode of House for inspiration, I came up with an idea in the advancement of Telemedicine:
Imagine a network of remote clinics where patients interact with medical professionals via webcams and a suite of self service or remotely controlled devices.
2011 Inventions
Medical Mirror – A MIT grad student transforms a simple webcam into a heart rate monitor and displays the information on a mirror. Future advancements could measure other vitals including respiratory rate and blood-oxygen saturation.- Antenatal Screening Kit – Draw a line with their innovative pen onto filter paper to test urine for disease. This screening method cost a third of a cent per use, a fraction of the 50 cent dipstick alternative and the test is easy enough to be used and interpreted by anyone.
Existing Innovations
- Telemedicine use of telecommunication and IT in order to provide clinical health care at a distance
- Wireless Health Care – An emerging suite of wireless devices and trail programs with the Dept of Veterans Affairs video-conferences with chronically ill veterans.
- American Well a leading telehealth company delivers state-of-the-art Web solutions.
- Technology advancements allow you to remotely unlock your car via OnStar, or turn on the lights, climate control, and security systems in your home with ADT.
- CVS’ Minute Clinic nurse practitioners and physician assistants are trained to diagnose and treat common illnesses, minor injuries, health screenings, vaccinations and physicals.
- A growing number of Mobile Clinics via bus or trailers provide healthcare to low income neighborhoods reducing the burden and costs of Emergency Room visits.
- $300 House a popular reverse innovation challenge from Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar to develop affordable housing. It was first described in a Harvard Business Review blog post and has attracted countless advisers and businesses.
- WebMD’s Symptom Checker provides self service advice for hundreds of symptoms.
- Early adoption of online care by many healhcare companies
- Tricorder X-Prize will award $10 million to the team that develops a mobile solution that can inexpensively diagnose patients by combining expert systems and medical point-of-care data—such as lab-on-a-chip or wireless sensors, provide a recommended course of treatment, and upload all relevant data to the cloud. See also PopSci article.
TV Inspiration
- A 2008 episode of House titled Frozen has Dr. House diagnosing an ill woman in Antarctica via a webcam. He treats her using the supplies available at the remote site and using extreme measures typical of a House drama.
Integrate all these innovations and what can be accomplished?
A patient in a remote location visits a small clinic in a trailer or small building. They step up to a kiosk with WebMD like decision support software to provide an initial triage and capture patient information. Simple medical supplies and Over the Counter medicines could be purchased via an online pharmacy and express shipped to their location.
Those warranting a consult from a medical professional could have their vitals captured via the Medical Mirror, blood pressure monitor found in most pharmacies (when accurate) or leading home devices, a temporal thermometer, and other self service devices and the results uploaded to a secure network.
The patient would then sit in front of a webcam and communicate via Skype with a medical professional (Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, RNs, Doctors, etc) from the global network. Much like today’s office visits, you initially meet with a nurse practitioner, then elevated to a doctor, or specialist when necessary. The network of staff could be anywhere in the country or world with requisite language proficiency.
Advancements in electronic health records would allow patients to visit a remote clinic and securely access and share their medical history with the remote clinic staff. The room could have either a large vending machine type system or dozens of small locked draws that are remotely unlocked to dispense medical supplies and testing kits. If required, patients could collect blood (limited drops vice large quantities) and urine samples and mail them to a lab for testing. If the remote clinic was manned by a staff member, they could assist with checking vitals, collecting samples, and providing medical supplies or OTC medicine.
A network of medical professionals could be established (or leverage existing networks like Doctors Without Borders) that after some training and certification in the remote clinic system could contribute when available. Some hospitals could encourage or require staffs to participate to provide additional experience to new personnel or achieve hospital philanthropic goals. The network could establish a payment system for staff who participate – those who want to work a few extra hours for additional income, or support the network as full time employment.
This network of remote clinics have a variety of potential markets:
- Remote locations across the US with limited health care facilities
- Low income neighborhoods
- Military personnel deployed to remote locations overseas
- Poverty stricken nations
A remote clinic network could serve as a platform for continued medical innovations to provide self-service, preventative care, and other advancements in the industry. Developing a reverse innovation platform similar to the $300 House would launch significant advancements.
Disclaimer: I have zero experience in the medical industry and merely offer this idea up for someone to explore. I realize there are already related systems and components established. I hope this spurs some innovative ideas, and in true crowdsourcing style, please add additional ideas and feedback via the comment section to this post.
10 Technologies the US Military Will Need For the Next War
Sandra Erwin and the folks at National Defense Magazine have a great article on the 10 Technologies the US Military Will Need for the Next War.
- Faster, Quieter, Safer Helicopters
- Weapons That Don’t Kill
- Inventions That Lighten The Soldier’s Load
- Ultra-Light, Super-Survivable Dune Buggies
- Unmanned Mini-Submarines
- High-Speed, Bulletproof Power Boats
- Anytime Anywhere Communications
- Robots That Think for Themselves <– My favorite
- Cheap Liquid Fuel
- Persistent ‘Wide Area’ Surveillance
Hopefully the Pentagon staffs, DARPA, and NDIA’s Industry leaders are already working on advancing these technologies and getting them into the field ASAP. Read the full post at National Defense Magazine.
