adventures in 21st century organizational design

Adventures in 21st CenturyOrganizational Design

Arik Johnson

Creating a Global MultidisciplinaryIntelligence Collaborative

The Difference Between What You Think You Know

And What YouActually Know

STOCHASM

Strategyis a Response to

Intelligence

Unsound Strategy, Policy and Decisions are the Product of an Intelligence Agenda

Dictated from Above

The Impact of theHighly Improbable

The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, called the triplet of opacity:

1. the illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks they know what is going on in a world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize;

2. the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality); and,

3. the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative or learned people, particularly when they create categories – or "Platonify."

THE BLACK SWAN

U.S. Intelligence Community

Failed to Evolve

Unexpected new threats from non-traditional enemies like al Qaeda emerged on the geopolitical stage in the vacuum of America's return to international economic, political and cultural hegemony after the end of the Cold War.

This was a failure of policy, management, capability, and, above all, a failure of imagination.

Thomas S. KeanChairman, 9/11 Commission

The report assumes that there is a single, readily identifiable enemy. This is the routine way of political thinking, that took shape during the Cold War. Anyone with knowledge of the Arab countries and the Muslim world in general would know that this isn‟t the case.

Amir Teheri

INTELLIGENCE 2.0• The Era of Asymmetric Interpretation

• Intelligence 1.0 was focused on acquisition of Competitive Advantage through Asymmetries of Information, usually short-lived and high risk to the firm's reputation and ethics.

• Transition to an open source world of "info-glut" where information gaps are increasingly difficult to obtain and interpretation becomes far more important.

• Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 makes culture much more important. Everyone in the organization must become casually-engaged as virtual members of the intelligence team.

Intelligence 2.0 Continuum Includes BothDecisive & Incisive Sensing

Incisive

Scanning for Trends, there is no “Decision” to be made

Recognize “Pattern Vector” of History

Implications for the Reader

Bottom-Up Exposition

Driven by Trends

Outcome is Observation Itself

Emergent & Skeptical

Decisive

Frame of Reference is the Decision

Compares Options & Outcomes

Recommendations & Trust

Top-Down Imposition

Driven by Issues

Decision & Action vs. „Nariyuki‟

Factual & Hypothetical

Managers caught in this kind of competition almost universally say they dislike it and wish they could find a better alternative. They often know instinctively that innovation is the only way they can break free from the pack. But they simply don‟t know where to begin.

Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Competing head-to-head can be cutthroat especially when markets are flat or growing slowly.

The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Although spiders and starfish may look alike, starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one, and the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don‟t just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are changing the rules of strategy and competition and are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations.

Spider organizations are centralized and built around org charts; on the other hand, Starfish organizations tend to organize around a shared worldview or ideology.

And the Internet has helped them flourish.

THE STARFISH & THE SPIDER

How do we get our Starfish to the Blue Ocean?

Is there anything in our world today that

kind of reminds you of a Starfish?

Scoble’s Social Media Starfish

What would the circus do?

Create a “Big Tent” large enough for adjacentanalytical disciplines but small enough to

maintain a cohesive identity

Why do some ideas die while others thrive?

www.MadetoStick.com

- via the -

Socio-SemanticWeb

Quantum MemeticDiffusion

CORNERSTONE PRINCIPLE

If the Intelligence Collaborative is not going to be primarily about money, let’s agree not to accept money; results of this structure are manifold:

1. Curiosity is your only credentialing requirement and enthusiasm is your ticket inside

2. Ideas are coin of the realm, not actual coin3. No interference from governments, suitors or interlocutors4. No need for budgets, governors, employees, incorporations, assets,

sunk costs, monuments to maintain, etc… in other words, no drag5. Members share and share alike, donating resources when needed, as

true collaborators might

Meeting Face-to-Face in Metropolitan Centers Worldwide

Washington 22 October 2009

Amsterdam 04 November 2009

Shanghai 13 November 2009

Your City Pick a date, topic, venue, sponsors (or go Dutch)

Propagating the Meme

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

WordPress

YouTube

More to come…

Need help? Feel free to ask:

Email: Arik.Johnson@AuroraWDC.com

Phone: +1-920-624-2020

Twitter: @ArikJohnson

Skype: ArikJohnson

What’s Next?