Please note that I am very carefully trying to avoid stating any position regarding what decisions got made, in the interest of focusing on the underlying process of decision-making and mental-model adaptation itself. How did that work? Did it work well? How could it be tweaked so it would work better, not just for one specific instance, but in the general case, from now on?
In short, what can we learn from this experience that will be a permanent step upwards in how we make important decisions collectively, as a country, with both free-speech and a command structure to balance. What can we learn that we can apply to any organization's leadership?
The "unity" above the "diversity" of these two almost-opposing interests is the theme. Where is the sweet spot that we can rise-above the conflict and satisfy both interests without compromising either?
That's the serious question all sides should agree is worth asking.
Then, when we're done looking at the smaller problem we need to spin to a different lens and look at the larger question of how the American people and Congress worked in terms of utilizing information, interests, and politics to make the decisions involved. Did that work? Are people happy, looking back? Can that be improved? Can we learn something?
If so, what? If not, why not?
Is something interfering with our ability to learn from the past and adapt to the future? If so, what is it? What can we do about it? As with "the Toyota Way", we need to do what we were discouraged from doing in grade school, and keep on asking "Why?" at least 5 times trying to dig back to "root-causes" and go far enough to find the upstream things that can, in fact, be changed.
The lesson we should have learned from looking at Toyota's spectacular performance, and the "Making the Impossible Possible" video, is that mostly what is in the way tends to be simply cynicism and the incorrect belief that "nothing can be done" and "We have to live with that." Toyota's lesson in "lean processing" is "No you don't. In fact you must not put up with it. Stop and fix it!"
It often turns out that the cynicism is both unjustified and unsupportable. Change can happen, over time, a little bit at a time, with persistent efforts by everyone. Toyota has proved that.
Maybe, there are better ways and better models for us consulting with each other to make hard decisions about emotionally charged issues.
So, today's NY Times has a relevant article that hits many of those points, particularly the dynamic tension between keeping the command and control structure (and the US Constitution) in place, but also keeping the flow of surprising news going upward, so that we're not trying to violate the basic law of cybernetics and operate with the eyes disconnected from the hand.
For those at my talk Friday, here's the relevant image:
I added emphasis to the excerpts below.
At an Army School for Officers, Blunt Talk about Iraq
New York Times
October 14, 2007
by Elisabeth Bumiller
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Here at the intellectual center of the United States Army, two elite officers were deep in debate at lunch on a recent day over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq — the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.
No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public.
“You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.
... Here at the base on the bluffs above the Missouri River,... rising young officers are on a different journey — an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.
Discussions between a New York Times reporter and dozens of young majors in five Leavenworth classrooms over two days — all unusual for their frankness in an Army that has traditionally presented a facade of solidarity to the outside world — showed a divide in opinion. Officers were split over whether Mr. Rumsfeld, the military leaders or both deserved blame for what they said were the major errors in the war: ...
But the consensus was that not even after Vietnam was the Army’s internal criticism as harsh or the second-guessing so painful, and that airing the arguments on the record, as sanctioned by Leavenworth’s senior commanders, was part of a concerted effort to force change.
On one level, second-guessing is institutionalized at Leavenworth, home to the Combined Arms Center, a research center that includes the Command and General Staff College for midcareer officers, the School of Advanced Military Studies for the most elite and the Center for Army Lessons Learned, which collects and disseminates battlefield data.
...The goal at Leavenworth is to adapt the Army to the changing battlefield without repeating the mistakes of the past.
Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, “A Failure in Generalship,” written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results,” Colonel Yingling wrote.
The article has been required class reading at Leavenworth, where young officers debate whether Colonel Yingling was right to question senior commanders ...
Discussions nonetheless focused on where young officers might draw a “red line,” the point at which they would defy a command from the civilians — the president and the defense secretary — who lead the military.
“We have an obligation that if our civilian leaders give us an order, unless it is illegal, immoral or unethical, then we’re supposed to execute it, and to not do so would be considered insubordinate,” said Major Timothy Jacobsen, another student. “How do you define what is truly illegal, immoral or unethical? At what point do you cross that threshold where this is no longer right, I need to raise my hand or resign or go to the media?”
But Colonel Fontenot, who commanded a battalion in the Persian Gulf war and a brigade in Bosnia and has since retired, said he questioned whether Americans really wanted a four-star general to stand up publicly and say no to the president of a nation where civilians control the armed forces.
For the sake of argument, a question was posed: If enough four-star generals had done that, would it have stopped the war?
“Yeah, we’d call it a coup d’etat,” Colonel Fontenot said. “Do you want to have a coup d’etat? You kind of have to decide what you want. Do you like the Constitution, or are you so upset about the Iraq war that you’re willing to dismiss the Constitution in just this one instance and hopefully things will be O.K.? I don’t think so.”
Some of the young officers were unimpressed by retired officers who spoke up against Mr. Rumsfeld in April 2006. The retired generals had little to lose, they argued, and their words would have mattered more had they been on active duty. “Why didn’t you do that while you were still in uniform?” Maj. James Hardaway, 36, asked.
Yet, Major Hardaway said, General Shinseki had shown there was a great cost, at least under Mr. Rumsfeld. “Evidence shows that when you do do that in uniform, bad things can happen,” he said. “So, it’s sort of a dichotomy of, should I do the right thing, even if I get punished?”
One question that silenced many of the officers was a simple one: Should the war have been fought?
“That’s a big, open question,” General Caldwell said after a long pause.
No comments:
Post a Comment