Disruptive Thinkers: A Response
05.02.2012 at 10:06pm
Ben Kohlmann posted a lengthy reply to his critics at the Disruptive Thinkers blog. A short excerpt follows.
I don’t know everything – I know very little. I know I know very little. But I want to know more. And I’m going to ask the stupid questions and get things wrong (as many of you are referencing now…). All the while I’m learning, connecting and figuring out a better way.This is the genesis of Disruptive Thinking. It is not an “us vs them” paradigm, pitting one generation against another. It is understanding the importance of “conceptual blending” and that military personnel may not have the best or only solutions to military problems. It’s understanding that our civilian peers, not in the government, have been shaping our world in ways we hardly even understand. How many of us have truly been affected by the economic downturn of the past four years? We’ve had unprecedented increases in resources, so how could we? We can learn from non-government civilians, as they can from us. It’s taking that entrepreneurial mindset and applying it within a rigid hierarchy to come up with innovative solutions and real institutional change.
His argument has become shtick: enlisted soldiers and junior officers naturally get it and understand “disruptive” thinking while those pesky (to use his exact words) “frustratingly conventional superiors” don’t.
I guess old age and a colonelcy disqualifies me from the cool kid’s gets it club. 🙂
Gian,
I find your response neither thoughtful nor particularly respectful. Wouldn’t it be better to engage his ideas than label them so you can write them off?
Maybe you can help me understand something: Why did Mr. Gates find the Pentagon “Not on a wartime footing” in 2007, long after most senior Pentagon Establishment commands were headed by senior officers who had been on combat deployments? Was Mr. Gates wrong, or did the Generals and Colonels really have systemic difficulties identifying technologies useful for the war, and support them?
TJ
It is hard to argue with the facts that:
1. The Department of Defense is a mind-numbing, self-perpetuating bureaucracy, of cobbled together self-serving “Services.”
2. That Military promotion systems are designed to reduce the number of “disruptive thinkers” as service members advance in grade in a very Darwinian way.
Making true changes to the procurement and promotion systems to address these shortfalls may make things less orderly, but it would also help us achieve the loft terms (“agile” “flexible” etc) we like to use to describe ourselves. How does the old saying go, “It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you are surrounded by turkeys”? In the military, its hard to soar when you are surrounded by “Eagles” as well. Or those pesky former Eagles now holding down their corner of the bureaucracy. (I should know, I am, after all, a former Eagle with my own little corner to work…).
We need to not personalize observations like those that Ben makes. They are generalizations rooted in reasonable assessments of the facts. For many they fit, for too few others they do not.
I think Ben made several good points in his response, but agree with a comment in another post relating to Ben’s article that he needs a senior mentor to help him communicate his ideas more effectively and avoid the condescending tone that turns off the very people he needs to influence.
His point about a sharp 25 y/o civilian, who was considered an innovative thinker and was sought out by our senior officers for his ideas, and then was largely ignored when he pinned on his butter bars five years later is a common story. In the military you are not the sum of your of skills and intellect, but rather you are your rank in the eyes of most military officers. I recall Ralph Peters at one of his presentations stating when he was in the Pentagon as a LTC no one would give him the time of day, but once he retired and wrote a book all the sudden he was viewed as an expert and he had more influence out of uniform than in it. The military is very much a system that tends to, but not always, ignore up and coming talent. Gen Petraeus realized this and frequently reached out to younger officers directly to get the ground truth. This frustrated the hell out of the traditionalists because the sacred chain of command was violated, but he realized you couldn’t get the truth when it was filtered through multiple levels of command. This doesn’t mean seniority shouldn’t be respected and quite frankly I have seen more innovation from senior officers (though a small percentage) than I have from junior and midgrade officers who are often focused on making the next grade and doing so my conforming to the mold. Do they have to conform to get promoted? In most cases I would argue they don’t, but it is the safest path.
Ben suggests young physicists are more creative, yet I have seen little evidence of that in my reading of history. New technologies are developed by compiling existing technologies in new ways, so it is somewhat logical (perhaps not disruptive) to believe senior personnel who have wide range of experiences and more knowledge have the potential to be more creative than their younger counterparts. Ben mentioned his mentor was a retired Navy O6, one I suspect that I know well based on Ben’s writing. If it is the same officer he was always creative, but based on his broader range of experience and exposure to more ideas over time I think he is more creative now than he was years ago. If you’re creative your creative, if you’re a conformist you’re a conformist. It is a personality trait that has little to do with time.
I think the laudatory comments about Mark Zuckerberg are often overdone, that technology existed, he didn’t create it, he turned into a successful business. Congrats for doing so, but let’s not confuse that with real creativity. Furthermore, in response a mid-grade NCO saying he would stay in if he was made a General, that is quite a leap in logic in your part to assume he would have been a good one because he may be elected as Mayor of a large city (which is the result of a media campaign, not leadership, only time will tell if he is a leader or not). I can’t think of too many Mayors I would want leading my son into combat. Even if they’re capable leaders they don’t have the skill sets for combat.
Ben if you fix NMCI I’ll buy you a case of beer, and if you find anyone in uniform running NMCI let us know so we can send them our complaints to them. Ben asks what types of conflicts we are more likely to get into over the next few decades? That is always the question everyone wants answered, but no one can. There are those who think irregular warfare will be the way of future, but that line of thinking is based on the world dynamics today and not supportable when you take a closer look at global trends. The real question is not what type of conflicts we will be in, since no one knows (no one Ben), but what type of conflicts we must be prepared to win to ensure the security of our nation? These are two very different questions that may lead us in two separate directions.
You have a lot of good ideas, but unfortunately you don’t sell them well. If you would study our military history a little more, which is full of disruptive thinkers and leaders I think you would moderate your tone. Many senior leaders in our services have been frustrated with the same bureaucracy you’re expressing discontent with. The leaders actually change it, not just make condescending remarks about it. I also encourage you seek out an additional mentor that can help you communicate your ideas more effectively, because hopefully your ultimate goal is to make a difference. New ideas are always rejected by traditionalists, they always have been, but there are many likeminded people out there that can help you if you don’t burn all your bridges before you get to them.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the reverence applied to “the entreprenurial mindset”. Not that entrepreneurship is a bad thing at all, but like most concepts, if we stoop to the point of worshiping it we may overlook some things.
It’s important to remember the extent to which failure is a part of entrepreneurship. We all know who Mark Zuckerberg is, does anyone know who founded Friendster? Does anyone remember the names of the legion of disruptive young tech entrepreneurs who set forth innovative dot-com ideas in the late 90s? Many of them lost their shirts, and the shirts of their investors. All well and good: they and their investors risked their own dime on their own time, and what happens happens. In the public world, though, where somebody somewhere has to make decisions about risking money that isn’t theirs, somebody has to be a bit less cavalier. Is restraint in that department fear of new ideas, or is it a judicious approach to risk? Possibly a bit of both… but if we’re going to go hell-bent on adopting an entrepreneurial attitude, let’s not forget the risks involved and the certainty that there will be failures.
Please do not take my criticisms the wrong way as LT Kohlmann has been extremely influential in raising these issues. You already see Naval HQ calling for junior leader conferences to hear some of the ideas that younger warfighters think might be valuable. However, ironically, I find that many of his and similar old-timer ideas are critical of Baby Boomer disruptive thinking, beginning with this thought:
First, procurement failures. I once wrote a paper comparing the Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 procurement processes. The latter was a debacle, and at the time I extolled the former. Boy was I wrong. In 2004, the JSF was promised to be delivered in 2010 at $60 million a copy. Now in 2012, we will be lucky to get it in 2018 for $161 million per airframe. Meanwhile, I’m flying jets nearly as old as I am, with literally thousands of more hours than their initial life was planned for.
Years ago, I wrote a paper and sent it to all the PMs of the Armored System Modernization Plan who had planned in the early 90s to make tank-sized everything. Everything heavy was not smart, but neither was Secretary of Defense Cheney’s attempt to kill the V-22 or to stop C-17 production at 120 instead of the more than 210 we have today. We all get it wrong sometimes.
The same article appeared in Armor magazine right after Desert Storm, but of course led nowhere, because many of my ideas were flawed. Stryker was similar to some of those ideas and FCS also would have been in terms of air deployment of armor. The difference? One program executed compromises well, and the other searched for pie-in-the-sky. FCS also had some poor assumptions that excluded security operations and engineers assuming that joint ISR could find all threats, kind of like AirSea Battle thinks it can find hidden military targets.
Ben’s $ analysis is why the business world and MBAs are not a good aspirational model for the military. Selling things often requires, shall we say, exaggeration of competing features resulting in less than truth in advertising. Talented public relations, lobbying, and journalistic spin doctors find ways to compare dissimilar numbers and nonfactuals. Who wants to bet that the $60 million predicted cost (years before such predictions could be realistically made) did not include the engine or R&D expenses while the $161 million value does and includes mandated production slow-downs.
Of course LT Ben and friends might argue that production slow-downs are the F-35’s fault. Is it that, or is it the result of F-22 lessons? Many conveniently overlook that retrofitting features onto F-22 through incremental upgrades (which the F-35 slow-down prevents) will cost an additional at least $9-11 billion.It was originally planned to cost $16 billion which would have added $100 million to each aircraft’s price. And the often quoted $140 million cost of F-22 does not include R&D or the price of TWO costly engines. When R&D and engines are added, the cost is considerably more than twice the $161 million F-35 price. The latter also supports three services and 22 carriers vs one service launching solely from missile-targeted airfields.
LT Ben continues:
20 year procurement timelines with hundreds of billions of dollars in increased lifetime costs (most recent estimate, $1.47 trillion) is no way to go through life when the world changes in mere months and years. Sure, it’s useful (maybe…) against China, but would you Marines in the crowd rather have A-10s and AC-130 gunships or a pristine JSF with maybe a couple weapons providing CAS? What types of conflicts are we more likely to get into over the next few decades?
How long would those AC-130s and A-10s last against current let alone future radar air defense threats? How successful have we been at predicting future conflicts? If you sat down and calculated how much you would spend on cars or houses over the next 50 years and used inflated dollars in the process, would you experience sticker shock? You also never hear from naysayers that three unrelated new fighter starts for three services or upgraded current aircraft would cost considerably more than $1.5 trillion and would field much later or be less survivable than the F-35.
Let’s jump back to the late 1960’s when late model F-4s were costing about $13 million in today’s dollars. Folks are complaining that this new-fangled F-16 and F-15 will cost waaaay too much. Imagine if they had compared the cost of the F-4 to the $30 million F-15 in then dollars and decided to upgrade the F-4. Now jump 30-40 years into the future to OIF/OEF(heck 20 years to Desert Storm) and imagine the bean-counters and disruptive naysayers had kept upgraded F-4s.
Now jump 40 years to today and 80 years to 2050. How do you think upgraded non-stealthy F-16s, Harriers, and F-18C/Ds would fare against J-20s, PakFA, S400/S-500, 2S7, etc in the year 2050? Does anyone really believe a twin-engine stealthy F/A-XX would be cheaper than an F-35 or ready just as soon? How would that help gain the extra 11 carriers and hidden land sites that F-35B brings to the table?
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/05/04/report-navys-nextjetitis-irks-sibling-services/ You got it right in part when you talked about senior retirees trying to influence procurement.
I like LT Ben and can’t emphasize how much he reminds me of myself. I watched his video of a panel of junior officers and he (like myself) was the least capable of verbally expressing ideas and showed the most attitude initially before cooling down. In his blog he admits to being an introvert and he clearly writes better than he verbally expresses ideas. When you look at Steve Jobs, the Facebook founder, the early Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Boyd, you find folks who are not obvious examples of early extroversion, brilliant politically-correct orators and team players. Maybe some traits go with the innovator territory. However, isn’t there a greater need for those who can take current equipment and ideas and make them work?
The idea of crowd-sourcing and groups of disruptive thinkers has been tried. They are called committees and rarely are as successful or innovative unless the group has some requisite expertise in the area they are trying to change…and they are not engineers who in practice are number-crunchers and not leaders. There is a place for innovators and a place for executers.
I hesitate to bring up this reality unexpressed in all the talk of disruptive thinking: the contrast of the Me Generation vs. Baby Boomers. Let’s admit it, boomer kids were overpraised, got plenty of trophies for being average, and want it all now. Tell me how we identify these young disruptive thinkers/executers vs. the average guy who is not as great or a rare 30-something non-techno or athlete world leader in the private sector.
After all, the Greatest Generation that parented the baby boomers had to walk 20 miles to school in the snow and many of them were only average. The Baby Boomers might have biked to school that was 2 miles away, but many of us turned out average as executers even if we excel at innovation. Which talent does the military need more? The Me Generation had a car and drove to school while talking on their cell phones. However, I’m confident that ample average specimens exist in your ranks as illustrated by Occupy Wall Street…and they want it all now without ever having a job or doing what you guys put up with in two wars.
Most of you Generation Xer servicemembers are combat-tested (like many Vietnam vets), but that does not mean you are qualified to become immediate Generals. Near as I can see, plenty of Baby Boomer generals and colonels had as much or more time in combat as Xer leaders. Younger guys may have the personality to win elections…as even smooth talking community organizers have proven. You can go to combat, see your small sector, and still not be an effective executer at higher levels putting big ideas into practice.
Today’s late 20s and early 30s do know considerably more about electronics and computers…just in time to have your GPS and communications jammed and have viruses introduced into all your advanced computers. It’s difficult to feel sympathy for Ben’s complaints about today’s flight hours in an F-18 compared to yearly flight hours I got as a Army Cold War helicopter pilot. Those flight hours also cost considerably less per hour. In an era when simulator technology is so superb, why can’t the OODA loop be taught in F-35 simulators that introduce threat and dogfighting scenarios impossible to duplicate at reasonable cost in the real thing.
Guess one conclusion after reading LT Ben’s many reasonable and some not so great ideas, is that he is batting about 50/50 like the rest of us. Unfortunately, many things that the Me Generation does not seem to like were the great innovative ideas of the Baby Boomers such as LCS, F-35 and stealth, and UAS/RPAs (that don’t swarm autonomously requiring lots of maintenance and ground handling, on board computing power, and unrealistic combat ID from tiny sensors).
COIN also was a baby boomer idea in two wars and its current practice, along with body armor, MRAPs, and attack/assault/cargo helicopters and MV-22, and SOF raids have greatly reduced casualties vis-à-vis wars fought by the Greatest Generation and their parents/grandparents.
And our forefathers had the benefit of walking 50-miles-to-a-one-room-candle-lit schoolhouse to have time to think of new things like the automobile and electric light. If nothing else, far more members of the Me Generation have survived today’s wars to come home to foster future great ideas to help their own kids survive and thrive in deterring tomorrow’s conflicts. Imagine the great ideas we could have had sooner if we had not killed so many of our could-have-been great thinkers in past wars.
I received this today and although it applies to teachers, I think it also has application for disruptive thinkers as well as and perhaps more importantly the leaders of disruptive thinkers.
Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Teachers
by Alex Tabarrok on May 6, 2012 at 7:03 am in Education, History, Philosophy | Permalink
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/05/bertrand-russells-10-commandments-for-teachers.html
Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.