• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Deep thoughts about "Transformation"

Infanteer said:
My personal feeling on this is that it is not something you can "create".  "in the world of Art, not everybody can be a Raphael".  

True enough, but even Raphael took art lessons before he became technically proficient enough for him to be able to communicate his genius.

Technology also gives us better capabilities of objectively measuring the capabilities of leaders (again, if used properly).  As many have commented before, WES such as MILES and Simunition (best of all, a combo of both) is ruthlessly efficient at separating winners and losers in realistic combat training.
 

I agree wholeheartedly - and this is where we see if comds are Raphaels, or simply dabblers who are technically proficient.

What is perhaps needed most is inculcating within the institution an allowance for error and a measure of autonomy within subordinates.

The key to unlocking the potential of Mission Command...

In building an institutional foundation based upon critical thought, you would probably move away from the comfort zone of many who rely on "The Way" as dictated from above in manuals, PAM's, and Staff College notes.

Fair enough - but I believe that the comfort zone is the Attack Position...  

It will also seem harder and less concrete of an approach because it will demand of us to be less reliant on quantitative measures to training leaders (we can no longer rely on 7 steps of battle procedure, 10 principles of warfare, 17 steps to launch an attack, etc, etc).  

True - but they provide a good starting point.

However, as we seem to be acknowledging here, the "Transformation" of our Army seems to be leading to a soldier who is more responsive to this sort of approach.

I agree - we are definitely making progress.   I think that you start with the basic, and then develop the genius - I'm just wondering if there may not be some better way to bring that out, and to practice it?  

Dave
 
Just gathering together some of the thoughts about Army Transformation that we've been chatting about.   I think my latest post there was a further development of ideas on a "Revolution in Human Affairs".   As I posted on the first page of the thread, there seems to be a link between "Spatial Diffusion" and "Directive Diffusion" (I love making up my own Military Theory terms   :warstory:) - this is what we're seeing with the "Transformation" from an Industrial Age military to an Information Age one.

I've advocated a "transformation" in the realm of spatial diffusion in the Downward Diffusion of Combined Arms thread. It is a pitch that most of us generally seem to agree with in principle.   It seems that we're grasping for the corresponding "transformation" in directive diffusion with the Transformation Thread.   Not only has a successive downward diffusion in spatial terms ensured that the average soldier/section/platoon becomes more and more lethal in purely physical terms, but the corresponding directive diffusion should make the average soldier/section/platoon more effective on the mental and moral planes as well.   Since we are seeking to set the bar higher, look at the capabilities contained by a modern Special Forces ODA Team; if we can harness that level of ability within line companies and squadrons through spatial and directive transformation, imagine the Combat Power that an average Infantry Platoon will be able to exert - or how about the Combat Power of a group of networked Combat Teams?

Sure, we'll never be able to completely escape the absolute factors that are contained with diffusion.   Despite the fact that 30 soldiers may have the same capabilities as a WWII Rifle company, a platoon cannot sustain attrition like a company can.   But even these factors are reduced through technological advances in issues of sustainment.   Personal Protective Equipment means that a soldier is protected from things that our predecessors were very vulnerable too, medicine means quick turn-around for wounds that were once fatal, etc, etc.   I would factor that these Force Sustainment factors are just as relevent as more effective weapons systems in the spatial diffusion of lethal firepower.

So, if the Information Age, through transformation on spatial and directive levels, is to increase the ability of the soldier/section/platoon/etc/etc by an exponential factor, how are we to derive doctrine to utilize this phenomenon?   Currently, it appears that we're doing things in a backwards and faulty manner.   The Army has adopted a new doctrine in the last 10 years based upon "maneuverist" principles.   However, the problem is that this doctrine is a cut-and-paste, hackneyed approach to developing true transformation.   Our doctrine was a belated follow-on to the doctrinal evolution seen in the US Army's AirLand Battle and the USMC's FMFM1: Warfighting, both of which came about with the rise of the maneuverist school in the 70's (Dupuy, Lind, Van Crevald, etc) who had an acute fascination for the capabilities of the German Army.   German Doctrine (which our Army has been so keen to adapt piecemeal) was a unique process based upon their own cultural and historical approach to war.   As many have pointed out, both on these forums and in journals like the ADTB (retd Col. Chuck Olivero's articles come to mind), simply "grafting" what they did onto what we intend to do is a faulty approach to doctrine.

Although there is nothing wrong with looking to the Germans (we all know that I'm guilty of that   ;D), the important factor is to look not at what they did with regards to doctrine (aufstragstactik and all that) but rather how they approached the problems they faced.   Their experiences in the stalemate of of WWI led them to decentralize tactical approaches - it was not developed by some Staff Officer in a cozy Berlin office, rather transformation came about in a very decentralized and ad hoc manner through trial-and-error on both the Western and Eastern fronts by different units and branches of the Army.   In what would become the evolution of the Stosstruppe tactics, which when spiced up with Armour came to be called Blitzkrieg, was infact an adaption of organization and doctrine to the specific demands of spatial and directive diffusion that came out of a Industrial Age,Total War setting.

Transformation is going to require a similar institutional evolution.   Grafting a 70-year German approach to fighting onto our Army in the form of B-GL-300-000 (Canada's Army), B-GL-300-001 (Operational Level Doctrine for the Canadian Army), and B-Gl-300-002 (Land Force Tactical Doctrine) simply isn't going to cut it.   Rather, we also need to look towards   decentralized, ad hoc and diffuse experimentation in order to derive the appropriate level of both spatial and directive diffusion withing our modern, Information Age military.   Decision-making, flexibility, SOP's, and operational and tactical approaches should be pushed down to the lowest levels of operational units - for being at the "coal-face", they are much more likely to have a real "intuition" about how to utilize the capabilities of an Information age force then a gaggle of senior figures cooped up in an office in Ottawa (sorry to those that are, but you know what I mean).   As well, we should look to what our American brothers are up to, because 3 years on the war footing is liable to lead to some profound changes in the way our society approaches warfare (just as 6 years of total war in WWII did in the last century).  

Returning to the combined "critical education/field exposure" approach to making officers that I alluded to above, when we teach new Officers the techniques to handling a platoon or troop in a tactical level we should also dedicate time to forcing them to think critically about things like "Arab cultural approaches to war", "Media and conflict", and "Transitioning through the Three-Blocks".   If generational transformation is going the way we think it is here, then perhaps the "rank-and-file" of our leadership will be more attuned to this - the advantage is that by moving away from the dogmatic, procedural approach to developing leaders by exposing them to lessons in a way which allows them to consider a greater variety of contexts in which their command we be placed into, then more and more possibilities and approaches become available to the thinking leader.

The role of the Army's top leadership in this should not be as the Apostle of transformation and doctrine, but rather as the Facilitator - it should oversee, coordinate, and network all the different "drivers" of transformation, the soldiers, commanders, and small-units out in the operational environment, to ensure that the endless input of information into our Army's institutional databank can be accessed, interpreted, and best used by other groups.   Transformation is mostly likely going to be a "ground-up" process, and everyone needs to do their best to either be a "Young Turk" (in figurative terms) or to pave the way for them to.

Anyways, enough rambling from me....

Infanteer Out
 
PPCLI Guy said:
True enough, but even Raphael took art lessons before he became technically proficient enough for him to be able to communicate his genius.

"Although Raphael would be influenced by major artists in Florence and Rome, Urbino constituted the basis for all his subsequent learning. Furthermore, the cultural vitality of the city probably stimulated the exceptional precociousness of the young artist, who, even at the beginning of the 16th century, when he was scarcely 17 years old, already displayed an extraordinary talent."

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/bio/r/raphael/biograph.html
 
The military genius, like the artistic one, will require little introduction to the field.   In the time it takes the average leader to gain competency in low level command, a Genius could probably take a Brigade and come out on top.   Mozart was hammering away on the keyboard at three and was composing music at five.   Genius will be exceptional, and all we should do is ensure that the system will allow for it to rise rapidly with the rest of us ready to follow.   Constraining it with the norms and regulations of the "central mass" will only serve to dampen the contributions it can make to our institution.

That being said, an orchestra is lacking, no matter how good one may play, without the rest of the instruments (...or, Wayne Gretzky needed Messier, Kurri, and Fuhr to rack up all his records...).   I think our exploration here is not looking for the genius, but rather on how to develop and accomadate the corpus of our future leadership, the competant and successful painters who went to art school and found out that they were pretty good at it.

I agree wholeheartedly - and this is where we see if comds are Raphaels, or simply dabblers who are technically proficient.

...or those who can't paint and are getting by because they know the world of Art Marketing....

The key to unlocking the potential of Mission Command...

Yep, I agree as well.   It has always been a key to success, whether exercised by Rommel, Currie, Napoleon, or Epameinondas.   To me, this is a universal principle that is always surrounded by concepts relative to time and space.   I have a feeling that unlocking "Mission Command" for an Information Army is going to require a completely different approach that was utilized to do so in the Industrial Age.

Fair enough - but I believe that the comfort zone is the Attack Position...

"in order to express ourselves distinctly, we must say, that the defensive form of War is in itself stronger than the offensive."

Clausewitz


;)

True - but they provide a good starting point.

...which I admitted on the thread (somewhere).   The problem is when the starting point is viewed as The Way as opposed to The Springboard....

I'm just wondering if there may not be some better way to bring that out, and to practice it?

Hmm....everyone adopt the thinking postion!!!   ;D
 
Infanteer said:
The military genius, like the artistic one, will require little introduction to the field. In the time it takes the average leader to gain competency in low level command, a Genius could probably take a Brigade and come out on top.  Mozart was hammering away on the keyboard at three and was composing music at five.  Genius will be exceptional, and all we should do is ensure that the system will allow for it to rise rapidly with the rest of us ready to follow.  Constraining it with the norms and regulations of the "central mass" will only serve to dampen the contributions it can make to our institution.
Since you brought it up, how should the military accomodate these geniuses, esp. in peace time army?
Hmm....everyone adopt the thinking postion!!!  ;D
The infantry thinking position?  :o :o :o
 
RoyalHighlandFusilier said:
Since you brought it up, how should the military accomodate these geniuses, esp. in peace time army?

Faster promotions, better access to command appointments and career courses, etc, etc.  One interesting proposal I've seen was giving them a separate career track (Vandergriff - The Path to Victory).  The trick is to find measures which can objectively identify innate abilities to command troops in conflict situations and to have the system recognized by those who are assessed by it as being fair and accurate.

The infantry thinking position?   :o :o :o

This is a thread on transformation, isn't it.... ;D

Just another point of Transformation that I've had bouncing around in my head - it may require its own thread.  We've been focusing on how Information Age transformation is going to empower the soldier and more specifically, the leader.  Does anyone see changes to the Staff system that is prevalent throughout our Army from the Unit to National Command?  Will new developments based around spatial and directive diffusion lead to changes in Staff duties/positions and/or Staff and Command relationships?

A good article to start thinking about Staff Transformation (it is, after all, the other half of the "Command and Staff" equation) is Lt Col Jacques Hamel's The Command and Staff System in the Information Age: Is the Continental Staff System Dead?.

Cheers,
Infanteer
 
Wow, the thinking position still hurts after all these years. Not enough practice, I guess.

True genius, in the sense of a Mozart or Leonardo is not something we can predict, and only a fairly "loose" structure will have the flexibility to accommodate such a person when they show up. Actually, even Leonardo needed some "direction", his patrons were quite lax in allowing him to drop commissions (the Duke S'forza's horse was not completed for 500 years, a record of some sort). http://www.leonardoshorse.org/index.asp

Norman Dixon proposed that unsuccessful military leaders shared common psychological factors in their makeup, which overroad and transcended factors such as intelligence, personal courage, education or experience. If this thesis is true, then there must be common psychological factors for successful leaders as well. Perhaps we need to add formal testing for psychological traits to identify the people with good potential, and maybe psychological adjustment for people who are two rigid and inflexible in their thought patterns.

To keep people's minds supple to deal with changing environments and threats, we need to keep piling on challenges to leaders and potential leaders. Yes, give them the pams and SOP's for foundations, but keep cranking up the pressure with free play enemies, non standard environments, and adventure training. Make all courses like SAS Selection, and accept that many people really don't have "what it takes", and high failure rates are not a reflection of the school or instructors. (I would like to reverse the current situation and launch investigations of courses which have a low washout rate).

In garrison, keep people on their toes with mental games. Why not sit down a platoon to solve a murder mystery or compete in a version of "Junkyard Wars" once a month? Adventure training like "eco challenge" races also test leadership. practical fieldcraft and fitness, make them part of everyones training.

If we use a combination of techniques like this to select and train our soldiers and their leaders, within a few years we will have a force which people today will hardly recognize. These people will be able to outlast, out think and out fight the soldiers of today, using tools and equipment in ways most of us would find quite unorthadox. The MGS will still suck, but they will use it in ways that mask its weakness and play to any strengths of the system tactically, operationally and even strategically. This is my hope, anyway.
 
I agree with a_majoor on this one.

Genius, while measurable, is not predictable.  By this I mean that trying to find areas of expertise and trying to predict whether that expertise is a match I don't think is likely.

Two Mechanical examples.  The US Army tried to predict the type of Tank it was going to need to fight the next conflict.  They got the Abrams.  The Abrams worked magnificently in Gulf War 1.  It excelled on the End Run to Baghdad in Gulf War 2 but it has proved to be of lesser value (still valuable but not as valuable and more vulnerable) in the Counter-Insurgency fight.  Modifications to both the Vehicle and the Force structure are occuring in response to a need on the ground.  That need is being driven by the tactics of the enemy.  While it may have been a predicted need it was discounted in favour of higher planning priorities during peacetime.

Likewise could we find the perfect General in Peacetime, or would that General devise a strategy that would become a publicly disseminated doctrine that would cause the enemy to react outside the planning envelope and force another strategic rethink once battle was joined?

The other example is of the C130J.  I can't find it now but I just read an article describing some Pentagon Inspector's report on the C130J.  Basically it said that the C130J should not be fielded because it isn't up to the planning specs.  Implicit in this is if it isn't up to specs it is either a danger or a waste of resources.  Meanwhile C130Js have been deployed to the field in Iraq and the Squadron Commander is reporting something like 96% readiness and 2 aircraft doing the work of three with fewer aircrew per aircraft.  Similar slams were taken at the Stryker which the troops in the field have credited with saving lives and which likewise have very high readiness numbers. 

It we were to find some magic formulation to predict the perfect General would we run the risk of a: looking for the perfect at the expense of the best or b: finding the perfect General for the wrong battle.

Would Orde Wingate have done as well as Patton with the 3rd Army? Would Skorzeny have performed as well as Rommel in North Africa?

I think the answer lies not in "The Man on the White Horse" but in the flexibility and the resilience of the institution to buy time and figure out how the enemy is fighting the battle.

Here I think Clausewitz has it wrong.  While the defence is stronger than the offence in the long haul on a conventional battlefield, all factors favour the offence in an unconventional hit and run offensive campaign with no fixed FEBA.  They have the ultimate force multiplier - Surprise.  Strategically, Operationally, Tactically, in time and in space.  Until you can discern a pattern, assuming there is a pattern, you can't predict their future actions and take steps to defend against them.

Corollary to that is you have to go on a counter-offensive against their decision makers and active units.

 
I think the answer lies not in "The Man on the White Horse" but in the flexibility and the resilience of the institution to buy time and figure out how the enemy is fighting the battle.

Yep, I agree with you here, Kirkhill - this is why Scharnhorst & co. developed the notion of the professional Officer Corps; a nation could not afford to sit around and wait for another Napoleon to win its battles, it had to be ready at all times.   As I pointed out earlier, this thread is probing the transformation of the corpus of the Army, the capable, intelligent, dedicated (and now, wired) professional soldier.  

Here I think Clausewitz has it wrong.   While the defence is stronger than the offence in the long haul on a conventional battlefield, all factors favour the offence in an unconventional hit and run offensive campaign with no fixed FEBA.   They have the ultimate force multiplier - Surprise.   Strategically, Operationally, Tactically, in time and in space.   Until you can discern a pattern, assuming there is a pattern, you can't predict their future actions and take steps to defend against them.

Corollary to that is you have to go on a counter-offensive against their decision makers and active units.

The attacker/defender advantage is so dependent on time, space, context, and whether you a referring to tactical, operational or strategic levels of war that to say one or the other is superior without considering the circumstances often leads to glaring errors of omission.   The world's first Industrial-era Total War, the US Civil War, ended up with 80% of the battles being won by the defender.   However, the war was finally ended when both Sherman and Grant went on the offensive and used maneuver (Sherman at Atlanta) or attrition (Grant in the 40 Days and Petersburg) to defeat the enemy.   Conversely, look what happened when the Spring Offensive of 1918 - tactical offensive victories were dashed upon the rocks of a strategic Allied defence backed up by rail and it ultimately bled white what was left of the German Army.   The Tet Offensive was disasterous for the NVA at the physical, tactical level (and completely destroyed the VC as a fighting force) but strategically it was a victory on the moral level for the North Vietnamese cause.  

Which is "better" or "superior" is slippery at best, depending on your perspective I guess.   Both the Offensive and the Defensive have the opportunity to be a "superior" form of war, but only if the commander is smart enough and determined enough (and lucky as well) to utilize them at the right times.
 
Scharnhorst!!!! ::)  Shoulda known.... ;D :salute:
 
I will probably get the exact working wrong, but I read several years back that the old-school German Army had a somewhat unique method of categorizing officers.  It went something like this:

Officers who are smart and lazy should be elevated to the highest levels of command.

Officers who are smart and hardworking should be made part of the General Staff.

Officers who are stupid and lazy will make fine Regimental officers (hey, wait a minute...I'm a Regimental officer...).

Officers who are stupid and hardworking are a menace and should be identified and removed from service at the earliest opportunity.

I cannot produce the source for this, but it is funny and has a ring of truth even if it may just be a myth.  How does this apply to the discusion?  Perhaps only to point out that there are different kinds of officers and being cut out for one type does not mean that one is cut out for the other.  A great general may make a poor staff officer and vice versa.  Hopefully our system is able to realize where its officer's talents lay and assign them appropriately and not simply send them through a rigid series of appointments.

Returning to a more serious note, I think that a key requirement for our leaders is adaptability.  The negative effects of unrealistic training exercises, faulty doctrine, wrong equipment and changes in technology can be overcome by adaptive leaders.  This also means that we should not fire those who fail in WES or SIMNET battles as long as they learn from mistakes and display the ability to adapt.

Cheers,

2B  ;D
 
I think a really important idea was brought up here:
"That is why I am a fan of, for want of a better phrase, stepped elitism.  As an infantry example, rifle company, rifle to support, support to recce, recce to para, para to JTF2.  "Elites" give something for the youngsters to aspire to, serve as role models, supply homes for experienced soldiers that are happier or more capable as operators than leaders,  and also bring capabilities that the youngsters don't.  In particular they are capable of independent action.  They can also be a place where leaders can mature prior to returning to bolster the 19 year olds."
    The organization of the modern army is going to have to allow for different levels of independent action based not on rank, but by level of unit ability.  Rifle companies, or regular armoured formations can be expected to follow orders and implement standard tactical doctrine. Recce are expected to wander astray as their training, instinct, and ability to read the tactical situation and information merit. Para and JTF2 being the pinnacle of training who have shown perfect situational awareness at other levels of function can and should act independently of higher direction in the tactical environment, in the same fashion that "Guards"  elite tank formations are expected to exploit momentary openings in the battlefield to make or exploit breaches.  It is not that this is asking troops to violate orders, it is simply stating that the battlefield environment changes faster than higher levels of command can be aware of, and order the exploitation of these changes.  By asking those soldiers who have the greatest training in gathering, interpreting, and acting on battlefield information, we allow them to anticipate orders, rather than wait for them.  In the first world war, how many thousands died because sand table generals made decisions based on information that was outdated before they got it, and irrelevant before it could be acted on?  The modern battlefield only gets faster, as our troops advance in training and experience, their freedom to act must increase, or we are back to the sand table again.
 
2Bravo said:
Officers who are smart and lazy should be elevated to the highest levels of command.

Officers who are smart and hardworking should be made part of the General Staff.

Officers who are stupid and lazy will make fine Regimental officers (hey, wait a minute...I'm a Regimental officer...).

Officers who are stupid and hardworking are a menace and should be identified and removed from service at the earliest opportunity.

This is often attributed to Von Moltke the elder, but the version I heard is somewhat different:

The smart but lazy officer should be a staff officer, for he shall find the easiest means of accomplishing the task

The smart and industrious officer is the ideal regimental officer

The lazy and stupid officer is an unfortunate byproduct of any system

The industrious and stupid officer is a distinct danger to everyone, and should be removed as soon as he is identified!  ;D

Adaptability is the key trait for leaders in any situation, but military leaders have a special responsibility since they deal in lives and have entire societies in their care. In "The Soul of Battle", Victor Davis Hanson examines the lives of three very different generals from vastly separated ages, but discovers the common denominator between  Epaminondas, Sherman and Patton are wide ranges of experience both inside and outside the military, questing minds and recovery from personal failure.

We can simulate some of this by encouraging (or forcing) prospective leaders to take on tasks quite outside their experience ( Epaminondas seems to have been a philosopher and a politician before he was a general; Sherman was an officer, a banker, land surveyor, and school superintendant before he rejoined the army at the start of the Civil War; Patton was an Olympic athlete, expert horseman, learned to sail and fly, and was a life-long student of history before WW II). Successful leaders will need to develop "questing minds"; and many of them will fail at the tasks. The trick is to treat these as learning experiences and allow the candidates to absorb the lessons and encourage them to try again. (Of course the treatment of candidates who experience failure should not be entirely "consequence free").

The actual mechanics of this the readers can debate. Making a leadership candidate manage a resteraunt franchise, or do a masters thesis on a topic chosen at random are two possible approaches. "Eco challenge" adventure training has enough para military elements to be a good fit with normal training, but needs to be done in such a way that it requires a lot of thought rather that brute force to be successful.

This tracks back to some of the observations of "Generation Y"s thought process's. Perhaps the incredible range of options available for kids in the last two decades has force fed the wide range of experiences needed to create an adaptable mind. This should also give us a few pauses when we think about recruiting: are the traditional source of soldiers; people from materially poor environments, being exposed to enough "experience" to make them the sort of soldiers needed for the transformation, or is this an urban phenomena which will require us to focus on upper middle and even "rich" families to supply the right kind of mental material we need?
 
AMajoor,

Your version is certainly kinder to me!  I'm afraid that I do not have a direct source (perhaps someone can help out) and I might have got it completely wrong.  Perhaps the quote I read had been "adpapted" to suit the point of view of the person producing the quote (at school for staff).  One thing that a liked about the first version is that it drew a distinction between the staff officer and the general.  Both are smart but have differences.  Behind the German generals was a professional staff.  Rommel could go out into the desert with the troops and lead because he had a professional staff to run the show in the CP.  Our army seems to believe that one is a progression to the other and I'm not sure if that is the case.

Cheers,

2B
 
I've been following this thread with some interest, as I have to write a paper on the Transfermation of Armed Force. I am wondering if anyone can point me to any good sources of infomation, be it books, articles, or websites, that pertain to the topic at hand.


                                                                                                  Thanks, Bugsy
 
The very best person to get in touch with about transformation would be "Infanteer", and also look at this thread: http://army.ca/forums/threads/24924.15.html
 
Don't pin me for some expert - I just make this stuff up as I go....
 
What, you didn't know that PhD stands for Piled high and Deep, be it knowledge or fertilizer? All kidding aside, I was just wondering if anyone has come across anything of  interest on the topic. This thread is a great starting place to gather ideas, I just need creditable sources to back myself up.
 
From Wired Magazine

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html
Revenge of the Right Brain
Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.
By Daniel H. PinkPage 1 of 2 next »

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.

OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.

The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.

Asia

Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals.

The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go.

But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better.

Automation

Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)

Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams.

Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable.

Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence.

Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.

Abundance

Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take.

But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed.

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough.

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.

Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, copyright © by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in March by Riverhead Books. Printed with permission of the publisher.

Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dp@danpink.com) wrote about Gross National Happiness in issue 12.12.
 
A long article in "New Scientist" outlines 11 ways to improve your brain.

Some of these means include special classes of drugs which activate specific portions of your brain (consider a pill that allows you to say functional and awake for 40 hr at a time), others are fairly common sense (diet and exercise), and some seem a bit out of left field (but what do I know, I only use 10% of my brain anyway  ;D).

If this sort of research can make the payoffs claimed, then a new generation of "super soldiers" may emerge, more dangerous because they have more advanced cognitave facilities than Homo Sapiens Mk 1. Certainly some of these traits will be vital in order to handle the flood of data that is available in the digital age, although there will need to be a lot of experimentation to find the right balance of traits and training to use them effectively. Our brains represent about 3 to 5 million years of primate evolution, and are wired in a particular way for reasons we haven't quite figured out yet. Supercharging the brain might not be such a great idea if the soldiers become psychopaths or plagued by paranoid delusions.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18625011.900
 
CANFORGEN 098/05 CDS 045/05 301137Z MAY 05
CF TRANSFORMATION TEAM CREATED/CDS ACTION TEAM UPDATE
UNCLASSIFIED


REF:CANFORGEN 077/05 CDS 032 211940Z APR 05 CF TRANSFORMATION TEAM



THIS MESSAGE IS TO ADVISE YOU THAT I HAVE CREATED A CANADIAN FORCES TRANSFORMATION TEAM AND APPOINTED MGEN WALTER NATYNCZYK, CHIEF OF TRANSFORMATION, AND BGEN DANIEL GOSSELIN, CHIEF OF STAFF, CANADIAN FORCES TRANSFORMATION TEAM. THE TEAM WILL BEGIN THEIR PRELIMINARY WORK 1 JUN 05 AND MORE SUBSTANTIVE WORK AT THE END OF JUN WHEN THE CDS ACTION TEAMS (CATS) HAVE REPORTED AND I, WITH ALL GENERAL AND FLAG OFFICERS, HAVE EXAMINED THE INITIAL TRANSFORMATION OPTIONS DEVELOPED BY THE CATS


THE CHIEF OF TRANSFORMATION WILL REPORT DIRECTLY TO ME AND WILL HAVE OVERALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CANADIAN FORCES TRANSFORMATION INCLUDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSFORMATION CAMPAIGN PLAN. KEY CF TRANSFORMATION TEAM TASKS WILL INCLUDE:


DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATION PLAN CONSISTENT WITH THE DEFENCE POLICY STATEMENT (DPS) AND CF VISION


DEVELOPING OPTIONS FOR NEAR-TERM CF RESTRUCTURING CONSISTENT WITH DPS AND CF VISION, FOR CONSIDERATION BY AFC


DEVELOPING OPTIONS FOR THE CREATION OF A STRATEGIC JOINT-STAFF


OVERSEEING, COORDINATING, AND MONITORING OF CF TRANSFORMATION ACTIVITIES


FACILITATING, SUPPORTING AND ENABLING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CF TRANSFORMATION AND


DEVELOPING CF TRANSFORMATION COMMUNICATION PLANS. CDS ACTION TEAMS UPDATE


I ESTABLISHED FOUR CDS ACTION TEAMS IN FEB 05 TO DEVELOP OPTIONS AND PROPOSE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DPS AND THE CF VISION. CAT RECOMMENDATIONS ADDRESS REGULAR AND RESERVE MEMBERS


EACH CAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR AN AREA THAT IS KEY TO CF TRANSFORMATION. THESE AREAS ARE:


CAT 1: COMMAND AND CONTROL - AN OPERATIONALLY FOCUSED, INTEGRATED CF COMMAND AND CONTROL STRUCTURE THAT SUPPORTS CANADIAN FORCES OPERATIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD


CAT 2: FORCE GENERATION - AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO RECRUITING, TRAINING, MOBILIZING AND DEPLOYING CANADIAN FORCES PERSONNEL AND THEIR EQUIPMENT


CAT 3: OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES - EXISTING AND EMERGING OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY AND EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS FOR THE CF NOW AND INTO THE FUTURE AND


CAT 4: INSTITUTIONAL ALIGNMENT - BETTER ALIGN VARIOUS PROCESSES AND ELEMENTS THAT SUPPORT CF OPERATIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD.


THE CATS HAVE WORKED VERY CLOSELY WITH MEMBERS OF AFC OVER THE PAST THREE MONTHS TO DEVELOP RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEAR-TERM ACTIONS, AS WELL AS ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN OVER THE MID-TO-LONGER TERM. IN EARLY JUN 05 THEY WILL REPORT ON THE WORK ACHIEVED TO DATE AND TRANSITION IT TO THE CF TRANSFORMATION TEAM AND DGSP WHO WILL BUILD ON THE SUCCESS OF THE CATS TO FURTHER WORK ON THESE OPTIONS. TRANSFORMATION INFORMATION


I HAVE ALREADY SPOKEN FACE-TO-FACE WITH MORE THAN 8,000 DND EMPLOYEES AND CF PERSONNEL ABOUT THE NEW CF VISION. MY PRESENTATION, AVAILABLE ON MY WEBSITE, WWW.CDS.FORCES.GC.CA , EXPLAINS THE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT FACING CANADA IN THE WORLD TODAY, AND DESCRIBES HOW THE CANADIAN FORCES MUST TRANSFORM TO MEET THREATS IN THIS ENVIRONMENT BECOMING MORE RELEVANT, RESPONSIVE AND EFFECTIVE, THROUGH GREATER FORCE INTEGRATION. CF TRANSFORMATION WILL ALIGN THE CF WITH THE OPERATIONAL REALITY OF THE POST-9/11 WORLD


OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS IS AT THE HEART OF THE TRANSFORMATION AGENDA. AND TRANSFORMATION IS BUILT ON THE MANY LESSONS LEARNED BY ALL MEMBERS OF THE CF FROM PRIVATE TO GENERAL. THE CF BENEFITS FROM THESE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE CUT THEIR TEETH ON OPERATIONS AND KNOW WHAT IS REQUIRED TO REMAIN RELEVANT, RESPONSIVE AND EFFECTVE GOING FORWARD


AND ANCHORING THIS TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVE IS THE EXPERTISE AND ADVICE OF THE DEPARTMENTS CIVILIAN STAFF ON ISSUES AND ACTIVITIES SUCH AS POLICY, PROCUREMENT, HUMAN RESOURCES, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, ADMINISTRATION AND MORE. THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO TRANSFORMATION IS CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS OF THE WHOLE DEFENCE TEAM. AS TRANSFORMATION PROCEEDS, PERIODIC CANFORGENS, MAPLE LEAF ARTICLES AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS TOOLS WILL INFORM THE ENTIRE DEFENCE TEAM ON THE WAY AHEAD
 
Back
Top