In reading about innovation, we have many marvelous examples where successful firms incorporated technology by changing their business model. Rather than digitizing paper, they considered the intersection of organizational imperatives and technology and considered how the business may be done differently.
Some firms (and Agencies!) went a bit far. I am still haunted by the story [...]
Category Archives: National Security
How Will The IC Harness Magic?
Posted in National Security 1 Comment
Don’t Connect the Dots, Watch the Noise
Originally appeared in Inside Knowledge Magazine 10 Sep 2008, Vol 12, Issue 1.
On 12 September, 2001, I received an e-mail from the CEO of my company (a federal contracting firm located just outside Washington DC). As F-16s continued their combat air patrols over my neighbourhood, I read, paraphrasing: ‘John, yesterday [9-11] was a failure of knowledge [...]
Also posted in Governance 5 Comments
Standing on the Toes of Giants
Regarding my reference above, Gary Klein defines the Recognition-Primed Decision model thus : “[it] fuses two processes: the way decision makers size up the situation to decide which course of action makes sense, and the way they evaluate to evaluation that course of action by imagining it.” (p.24) Klein, in a his ground-breaking work regarding decision-making, shares the findings from a decade doing field research: decisions are not made according to classic methods of rational choice theory, but closer to Simon’s satisficing model . … Some excellent points are made by Bill Kaplan in comments to my original pos t, and by some justifiably emotional voices on the email chain I referenced earlier: Grassroots efforts do exist and thrive, but they have failed to scale across the Department or to effect the lasting change for which we all hope.
The Day DoD KM Died
Yesterday, I was most privileged to sit in on a session with some of the senior folk in DoD Knowledge Management (KM). The setup encouraged an intimate conversation among these government leaders, with twice more their number sitting and observing (a well-placed gag rule limited conversation to the table people only). Each Service was represented, [...]
Also posted in KM History 20 Comments
PNSR: Knowledge Management and the Market Dynamics of U.S. National Security
The following is a “revised and extended” version of my remarks at the PNSR Futures Conference this week in Washington D.C. (PNSR = Project on National Security Reform.)
FINDING: The national security system is not organization, nor even a system of shared purpose. My observations lead me to believe it is better described as an ad [...]
Also posted in KM History 4 Comments
Foresight and Public Policy in a Complex World
In talking about foresight, I’m reminded that this is not an attribute but a process. No one “has” foresight, we look ahead – we envision.
In turbulent times, when we’re reminded of the Black Swan effects and the connected nature of things, we tremble at our inability to predict. Truth is, our ability to predict only occurs when [...]
Also posted in Complexity 1 Comment
National Security Reform and Classification Policy
“The [U.S. national security] system fails to know what it knows, to make sense of information and trends in order to understand an increasingly complex global environment, to make effective and informed decisions, and to learn over time what works—and what does not work.”
In a blog posted to the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, Stephen [...]
Posted in National Security 7 Comments
