The Military We Have Vs. The Military We Need – Defense One

Posted by timmreardon on 06/29/2020
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BY GREGORY D. FOSTERPROFESSOR, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

We only pretend to build armed forces to confront the threats we face.

“Disruptive change” is probably the most rhetorically popular, yet intellectually vacuous, turn of phrase now in use throughout the U.S. defense establishment. For an inherently conservative, parochial institution whose conception of the future is dominated by its preference for a canonical past, disruptive change is an attractive meme meant to convey progressive imagery to audiences inside and outside who might otherwise be inclined to expose the institution’s well-established lack of imagination and originality.

What is seen as the blueprint for disruptive change is the National Defense Strategy, or NDS, promulgated by the Trump administration’s first Defense Secretary, James Mattis, and his Marine brother in arms, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. Together, they passed this ideological tract off as a legitimate strategy based on bona fide strategic thinking to indoctrinate the defense establishment and its bureaucratic and political disciples. Their successors and their successors’ subordinates have unquestioningly and unthinkingly endorsed the stultifying received truths of the document, so much so that any thought of meaningful transformative change within the institution, however much needed, seems frustratingly out of the question in the absence of some jolt to the system.

The NDS — here’s the unclassified summary — epitomizes the intellectual stagnation that pervades the military. It is predicated on the asserted “truths” that:

  • The U.S. military, in the years preceding the Trump administration, was emasculated and rendered largely impotent by forcing it to focus on frivolous, tangential threats and missions such as countering violent extremism.
  • The United States has been disadvantaged and is in danger of being unseated from its rightful position of primacy in all domains of warfare – land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – by reformist powers bent on challenging U.S. global supremacy.
  • The world we face today and in the years ahead is defined by great-power competition (presumably involving the use of traditional, military-centered great-power means to achieve traditional great-power ends of superiority and dominance).
  • To properly compete in this great-power arena, our organizational, doctrinal, and technological emphases must be based, above all else, on “lethality” (meaning, by implication, killing power and destructive capacity fed by large-scale industrial innovation and sustained by big-war mobilization measures).

How woefully and dangerously outmoded, outdated, self-serving, self-deluding, and self-perpetuating such received truths are. This is Cold War redivivus; Old War become New War. One need only compare the rhetoric of misuse associated with the wars we conduct that don’t coincide with our idealized conception of war – be it Vietnam or the Global War on Terrorism – with the reality of the methods we use and the defense posture we maintain to prosecute such wars. And one need only compare great-power, big-war rhetoric with the realities today of pandemic disease, cyberattacks, climate-induced natural disasters, and violent, rogue-actor extremism.

We live today in a postmodern age defined, as with all conceptions of postmodernism, by irony and the need for fundamental redefinition of hallowed concepts and terms. Ironically speaking, old strengths (such as wealth, size, and population) have become new weaknesses; old advantages (such as technological superiority or expansive overseas presence) have become new disadvantages; old successes (like the end of the Cold War) have become new failures; old friends have become new enemies; and old forms of plenty (e.g., nuclear supremacy) have become new forms of scarcity (e.g., nuclear peace). Terms of reference once considered clear, immutable, and sacrosanct – war, peace, security, aggression, intervention, sovereignty, power – now beg for redefinition.

In the grand evolution of war in which we are unsuspectingly involved, we have passed from a deep historical period of “Hot War” dating to antiquity, in which the use of military force was the central element in the conduct of statecraft; to the prolonged period of Cold War familiar to us all, in which the non-use of force (at least against our principal adversary, the Soviet Union), and the attendant avoidance of large-scale war, was the defining element; to the present period of “New War,” in which the use of non-military power and non-traditional uses of the military are – or, to be more accurate, should be – at the heart of statecraft; to a yet-to-be-recognized, much less realized, period of “No War,” the normative strategic end-state we should be seeking, in which militaries as we have known them become essentially irrelevant. To reach such an idealized – many would say unrealistic and unrealizable – end-state, arguably will require as preconditions the attainment of denuclearization, delethalization, and ultimately demilitarization. Demilitarization can be brought about only by the military: not a militaristic military committed to the supernal mission of warfighting, but a military organized, equipped, trained, and deployed in dramatically new ways that redefine what militaries properly do.

Related: How ‘Great-Power Competition’ Became Washington’s Favorite Frame

Related: How to Get the National Defense Strategy Out of Its Mideast Rut

If we were to have a truly healthy state of civil-military relations, which we don’t, two of its cardinal defining elements would be a strategically effective (not just a militarily effective) military and a properly subordinated military-industrial complex that supports rather than dictates our military posture. In fact, in the cosmic international pecking order that differentiates superpowers from great powers, great powers from major powers, and major powers from minor powers, the possession of a strategically effective military is one of the principal indicators of standing and status. By any measure, the military we have today not only isn’t strategically effective, it isn’t even militarily effective. We don’t win wars. We don’t prevent wars. We certainly don’t eliminate wars. But we do feed escalation, provocation, and mirror imaging. Even if we were to claim a militarily effective military, we would have no choice but to admit that its defining features are all the things a truly strategically effective military wouldn’t be: disproportionately destructive, indiscriminately lethal, exorbitantly expensive, overly provocative and escalatory, unduly consumptive, largely alienated from society, and environmentally damaging.

At root, our problem derives from our prevailing frame of reference: Defense, narrowly conceived, dominates security, broadly conceived. Military power dominates non-military power. Wars of choice dominate wars of necessity, rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. Tactics dominates strategy. Unilateralism (and the attendant felt need for self-sufficiency) dominates multilateralism (with the attendant imperative for collective decision-making and action). Conventional, high-intensity capabilities dominate unconventional, low-intensity capabilities. Technology dominates doctrine and force structure, and high technology dominates appropriate technology. Means dominate ends. And, finally, logistics dominates operations, after all is said and done.

Although we pretend to orient and structure our military around the threats we face, in point of fact our approach is very much capabilities-based; we have the military we want, and we insist on imposing that preferred force on the situations we face, invariably with unsatisfactory results. The ideal would be a state of affairs in which recognized vulnerabilities determine what our interests are; interests would determine what circumstances and actors constitute threats; those threats would be the basis for determining requirements; and those requirements would dictate the capabilities we seek to have on hand. In practice, the reality is just the opposite; our preferred capabilities determine everything else.

While we persist in the pursuit of capabilities for competing in a great-power world that satisfies our hunger for the heaviest, most expensive, most destructive and lethal armaments in the world, and that mollifies industrial actors that provide jobs and contribute big bucks to politicians, the threats we actually face today demand something quite different. The wars we face today are entirely wars of choice. No existing conflict, nor any reasonably to be anticipated, demands our involvement. And the wars we face are far removed from the total wars of the distant past and even farther removed from an idealized state of stable peace we have yet to seriously pursue, much less achieve. No, our wars occupy the space between limited war and violent peace; and the prime defining characteristics of these wars are twofold: they are asymmetric, hybrid wars; and, as such, they are inherently unwinnable.

So, pandemics, natural disasters, cyberattacks, and random acts of violent extremism are very real, very serious, very deadly, and very demanding. They are the threats we face and will continue to face in perpetuity. Traditional wars against China and Russia are unrealistic, highly unlikely fantasy. China and Russia, if they are to oppose us, will do so asymmetrically, as they already are; not symmetrically in a manner that would justify and legitimize our misplaced preparations and capabilities. Do we prepare for the most serious wars we won’t face or the most likely “wars” we will face? The answer should be more obvious than it is: not the former, but the latter.

To cope effectively with the actual threats that confront us, we must decide, for starters, what the military’s role properly ought to be: to serve itself (in the manner of a self-interested interest group); to serve the regime in power; to serve the state; or to serve society and even humanity (as grandiose as that might sound)? And no less must we decide what the military’s proper function ought to be: to prepare for and wage war; to secure and preserve peace; or something in between, like providing for the common defense, or preventing war, or providing for security? “All of the above” is too vague an answer, and “they’re all the same” is too simplistic. A military whose raison d’être is preparing for and waging war – the military we have – is demonstrably different from one that seeks to secure and preserve peace – the one we need.

The military we have is heavy, destructive, lethal, blunt, combat-oriented, technology-dominant, general purpose, unilaterally capable, provocative, escalatory, expensive (gluttonously so), and unsustainable. It is basically a hard-power warfighting machine, totally captive of and obsessed with its own warfighting/warfighter verbiage, useful primarily for tacit threatmaking based on ostensibly superior capabilities, and prepared – arguably – only for traditional, conventional war (even though deployed for a variety of missions).

The military we need would be quite the opposite: light, constructive, predominantly nonlethal, precise, noncombat-oriented, manpower-dominant, tailored, multilaterally-capable/-dependent, reassuring, de-escalatory, affordable, and sustainable. It would be a strategically effective force, designed to respond to a robust array of complex, most-frequently-occurring emergencies – peacekeeping, nation-building, humanitarian assistance, disaster response – that ultimately contribute most demonstrably to the overarching normative strategic aim of enduring global peace.

Should such sweeping, transformative overhaul ever become a reality? Yes – if peace is actually our ultimate aim. Could it take place? Unlikely – given the intellectual shortcomings of the defense establishment in particular, and the national security community in general. These are heretical, heterodox ideas that can take root and be acted upon only as an outgrowth of new thinking that is in inexcusably short supply in government and think tank thought factories. In the final analysis, though, the military will have to take the lead – and want to take the lead – in dramatically reforming itself because politicians have major vested interests, political and economic, in preserving the status quo and in letting the military dictate its own fate. Whether the military has the intellectual wherewithal to measure up to such a challenge is a matter for high hopes, but measured expectations. But if we are to produce a future that is better than the past, we shouldn’t give up on hope. 

  • Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the National Defense University, a West Point graduate, and a decorated Vietnam War veteran. The views expressed here are his own. FULL BIO

Article link: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/06/military-we-have-vs-military-we-need/166470/

The US Intel Community Is Being Disrupted – Defense One

Posted by timmreardon on 06/24/2020
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Intel1BY ZACHERY TYSON BROWN READ BIO JUNE 23, 2020

Intelligence agencies aren’t businesses, but they’d better learn from private-sector giants gone by.

American intelligence needs a new business model that’s better suited to an era of novel threats, abundant information, and changing user preferences. The next generation of national security leaders expects more—more customization, more contribution, and above all, more access.

Intelligence officers are likely to bristle at the comparison—intelligence isn’t a business, nor are its officers motivated by profit. But the intelligence community’s leaders should borrow a few of the private sector’s concepts to help them better understand and adapt to the successive waves of disruption that are undermining the foundations of their institution they lead.

Business models are stories about how an enterprise works. They are built from assumptions about the competitive environment and the kinds of problems that people need to solve. Good business models have compelling value propositions that explain how a product or service the business offers solves those problems. Successful businesses offer better solutions than their competitors.

When the intelligence community was established at the beginning of the Cold War, its business model and its value proposition were straightforward. The community’s architects held the assumption, reasonably at the time, that only a well-funded, centralized conglomerate could build and operate the prohibitively expensive technical collection platforms necessary to pierce the Iron Curtain and obtain useful information about the Soviet Union. Borrowing from the private sector’s best practices of the day, they created a multi-divisional hierarchy of agencies, each a semi-autonomous unit with its own customer base and “brand” to manage. Atop this apparatus sat the National Security Council, a body created as a coordinating forum but that quickly became something more like a board of directors.

Throughout the Cold War, the assumptions that buttressed this “classified collection business model” held. Unassailable barriers to entry prevented any serious competition, and the general scarcity of information regarding the Soviets meant the intelligence community’s views were at least heard, if not always adhered to. It effectively enjoyed a monopoly—or, more precisely an oligopoly—over its mission “to inform national security decisions.”

But sooner or later, every business model fails. They are disrupted—which means broken—either naturally through market forces (which are really just the continually changing social, political, and technological milieu) that undo the assumptions they were built upon, or by the emergence of competitors with better models. Disruptions occur when someone uses a new technology—a better tool, a faster process, a more efficient organizational structure—to create a new business model that is so much cheaper, faster, or more convenient for customers that it renders the old one obsolete.

There are plenty of examples of business-model disruption, but the one most salient to the intelligence community is that of 20th-century photography giant Eastman-Kodak. Kodak’s tragedy is the story of an institution whose biggest impediment—like the intelligence community—was a legacy its leaders failed to overcome.

What Kodak’s leaders belatedly discovered was that while their path of least resistance was up—building a better camera every year—the most dangerous threat to their business model came from below. No one denied Kodak’s cameras were qualitatively superior to newer digital alternatives, but it didn’t matter in the end because the competition’s models were cheaper, faster, and more convenient.

Like Kodak, the intelligence community’s leaders know the world has changed. Like Kodak, the agencies they lead own every aspect of the intelligence production cycle—from the satellites in the sky and the technicians who exploit the data they gather, to the analysts who refine that data into “finished” reports and the distribution channels that determine who gets to see them. And just like Kodak, the intelligence community’s last-century business model is beginning to be disrupted by competitors it has never faced before, competitors who quite simply couldn’t exist in the closed, information-scarce context of the Cold War.

The information revolution has sparked the growth of an ecosystem of competitors who offer not only intelligence-like products like news aggregation and data analytics, but full-on strategic intelligence services such as on-demand overhead imagery collection and long-term forecasting and analysis. And while intelligence officers might tell themselves that these aren’t as sophisticated or authoritative as the information that they, themselves, can provide, the fact is that it often doesn’t matter, because they are “good enough” to satisfy most users’ immediate needs.

The reason disruptive innovations are so disruptive is that big institutions are often blinded by their success. As their business model becomes dominant, they are tempted to mistake their way of doing things for the way of doing things. But just by proving a value proposition, they invite imitation. Through the continuous improvement of their products, they facilitate commoditization. This eventually lowers barriers to entry, even as it overshoots the minimal functionality the majority of users need. Big companies often then find themselves immobilized by sunk costs, and unable to appeal to broader segments of users who increasingly can’t afford or aren’t interested in their now exquisite product.

Like Kodak, whose entire physical plant revolved around film, Americans have spent billions improving the classified collection business model. Our intelligence agencies have engineered an elaborate technical architecture that encompasses the globe, practically perfecting their ability to gather secrets. By one admittedly rough estimate, this armature of acquisition produces 50,000 finished intelligence reports every year.

Unfortunately, many of these reports go unread by anyone but other intelligence officers, because the “sources and methods” from which they’re derived require such strict security measures that only a small handful of people ever actually get to see them. The vast majority of the national security workforce—to say nothing of the wider government—are effectively priced out, unable to access the fruits of the intelligence community’s labor. So while the intelligence community may like to think of itself as “speaking truth to power,” the fact is it is often only talking to itself.

That’s a big problem because broad accessibility is where real value is created today. Value is how the user benefits. It is why the user chooses a particular product or service. Today, value comes from the edge, where it is collaboratively generated by the creative abrasion of what were once “producers” and “consumers.” This is why disaggregated platforms like Twitter, whose corporate mission is “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers,” are so successful.

Now is a vital moment in our nation’s history. Threats to our security, our prosperity, and even our liberty itself are as grave as any faced by past generations, and the latitude America once enjoyed is long gone. If we hope to pilot the proverbial ship of state safely through the uncharted waters of the 21st-century, American leaders must make sound decisions.

So, what should the intelligence community’s role in decision-making be?

Merely acquiring information—a resource that is now both abundant and, for the most part, free—doesn’t cut it anymore. The problem of information scarcity that the intelligence community was created to solve no longer exists. Rather than squaring off against a monolithic adversary hidden behind a wall of secrecy, the United States today faces an array of greater and lesser threats—some conventional, others novel, all of them connected in various ways, many of which act quite openly.

Reform within the existing model won’t suffice. Another rearrangement of the proverbial deck chairs, the creation of a new agency responsible for the crisis du jour, or the movement of missions and authorities from one office to another won’t help much, either. These are more like sidesteps than solutions, akin to when a declining business shunts an unprofitable division or reassigns a struggling brand as it scrambles to eke out the last bit of value from their broken business model before it fails.

It’s time to reframe our conception of intelligence itself. To do so, we must strive to differentiate between mission and tradition—between things today’s users find valuable, and things that are just the way we’ve always done it.

To succeed today, the intelligence community needs a business model fit for today’s challenges—one that solves the sorts of problems today’s leaders have. It needs a value proposition compelling enough to justify the sustained investment of the American people, and, because value is generated throughout the network rather than from the top down, it must be accessible enough to benefit the entire national security enterprise—whose concerns are, of course, far broader than in the past.

Rather than merely informing decisions, intelligence should actively help its users to make better ones. The decision in question might be whether or not to authorize a lethal drone strike in Syria, which economic pressure points to apply against a great power competitor, or how limited budget dollars should be invested to build resilience against cyber-attacks. Regardless, all intelligence should have the same aim: helping leaders make better choices.

This requires a shift in how we think of intelligence. Instead of “products” to be delivered, we should see intelligence as an intangible, continuous, user-focused service that expands its users’ mental map of the world and helps them to navigate it more easily by building context and understanding, with them, rather than dictating judgments at them.

This shift would enable the sort of strategic sensemaking that helps organizations to see beyond immediate challenges and recognize strategic threats before they metastasize. In short, we should start to view intelligence officers themselves as the product, collaborating with users to create value for the national security enterprise.

To do that, the community must traffic in trust, and trust depends on transparency. This doesn’t mean dragging all the skeletons out of the closet or recklessly revealing national secrets. What it does mean is becoming much more comfortable operating “in the open,” being much clearer about how analytic judgments were reached, and speaking far more regularly and plainly with both the public and their elected representatives.

The business model analogy only takes us so far. At the end of the day, the intelligence community is not a business; it is a vital public institution. As such it remains only a loosely-federated medley of competing and unequal federal agencies, too-often subject to bureaucratic knife-fights or at the mercy of political caprice.

The community’s leaders have recognized the need for change, highlighting the need to modernize analytic tradecraft, sketching out a plan to integrate artificial intelligence, and pushing for greater transparency overall. The community itself is well-positioned to adopt new concepts and to leverage new technologies to meet its users’ changing needs, should it choose to do so—intelligence officers are bright, diligent, and famously dedicated to the mission of keeping Americans safe. They have, over nearly two decades of war, performed admirably all over the world—often in austere conditions, and not infrequently under fire. Several of them have paid the ultimate price.

But the intelligence community can’t afford to rest on its laurels. Past pedigree counts for little in today’s world, and previous success guarantees nothing. As former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon put it, “We’ve never been as good as we are now, but we have to be better.”

  • Zachery Tyson Brown is an intelligence specialist and strategic futurist who works at the intersection of national security, disruptive technologies, and organizational design. He is a Security Fellow at the Truman National Security Project, a proclaimed U.S. Army “Mad Scientist,” and serves on … Full bio

Innovation in a crisis: Why it is more critical than ever – McKinsey & Company

Posted by timmreardon on 06/22/2020
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By Jordan Bar Am, Laura Furstenthal, Felicitas Jorge, and Erik Roth
John F. Kennedy once observed that the word “crisis” in Chinese is composed of two characters—one representing danger, the other opportunity. He may not have been entirely correct on the linguistics, but the sentiment is true enough: a crisis presents a choice. This is particularly true today.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended nearly every aspect of life, from the personal (how people live and work) to the professional (how companies interact with their customers, how customers choose and purchase products and services, how supply chains deliver them). In our recent survey of more than 200 organizations across industries, more than 90 percent of executives said they expect the fallout from COVID-19 to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years, with almost as many asserting that the crisis will have a lasting impact on their customers’ needs (Exhibit 1).

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However, more than three-quarters also agreed that the crisis will create significant new opportunities for growth, although this varies significantly by industry (Exhibit 2).

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Of course, seeing the opportunities emerging from this crisis is not the same as being able to seize them. Fewer than 30 percent of these same executives feel confident that they are prepared to address the changes they see coming. The area in which they feel the most challenged is delivering net new growth opportunities (Exhibit 3).
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How are executives responding? As might be expected, they are largely focusing on maintaining business continuity, especially in their core. Executives must weigh cutting costs, driving productivity, and implementing safety measures against supporting innovation-led growth. Unsurprisingly, investments in innovation are suffering. The executives in our survey strongly believe that they will return to innovation-related initiatives once the world has stabilized, the core business is secure, and the path forward is clearer. However, only a quarter reported that capturing new growth was a top priority (first- or second-order) today, compared to roughly 60 percent before the crisis hit (Exhibit 4).
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This decline in focus on innovation is evident across every industry we surveyed; the sole exception is pharmaceuticals and medical products, where we see an almost 30-percent increase in the immediate focus on innovation (Exhibit 5).
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The case for innovation

Our survey and subsequent interviews with business leaders tell us that many companies are deprioritizing innovation to concentrate on four things: shoring up their core business, pursuing known opportunity spaces, conserving cash and minimizing risk, and waiting until “there is more clarity.” However, we believe that, particularly in times of crisis more urgent actions to take include:

  • adapting the core to meet shifting customer needs
  • identifying and quickly addressing new opportunity areas being created by the changing landscape
  • reevaluating the innovation initiative portfolio and ensuring resources are allocated appropriately
  • building the foundation for postcrisis growth in order to remain competitive in the recovery period

Many businesses simply cannot operate as they have in the past. What made a company successful historically may no longer be possible during or after the crisis. Customers may struggle to pay. Channels may have radically shifted to accommodate new needs or work around new constraints. A stable regulatory context may have changed, potentially creating opportunities that never existed before. The assumptions that supported years of stable, predictable growth may no longer be valid.

Competitive advantages shift dynamically as business models adapt to new market realities, and the core capabilities that made an organization distinctive may suddenly be less differentiating. While the rise of digital has been mounting similar pressures for more than a decade, the current crisis has significantly exacerbated and accelerated its disruptive force. Sudden pivots observed during the COVID-19 pandemic include:

  • Changes to sales models. Firms with significant field forces can no longer rely on in-person coverage to outcompete. According to McKinsey’s B2B Decision-Maker Pulse survey, 96 percent of businesses have changed their go-to-market model since the pandemic hit, with the overwhelming majority turning to multiple forms of digital engagement with customers. Sales coverage has been completely redefined as companies discover that virtual technology allows them to do things that were nearly impossible previously, such as assembling the “perfect team” of experts for every sales pitch. In this digital sales sphere, smaller firms can often “match up” to even their biggest competitors.
  • Need for new offerings. Food distributors that traditionally supplied restaurants are setting up digital direct-to-consumer channels as the crisis decimated their core restaurant sales. Similarly, the entertainment industry is generating new content (for example, sports retrospectives) to fill the void in programming created by the suspension in sports leagues. Even museums are creating and streaming digital content to enable people to enjoy their offerings from the comfort and safety of home (for instance, Getty’s “life Imitating art” challenge).
  • Rapid changes in customer behavior. For years, videoconferencing providers enjoyed steady growth by focusing on corporate customers. This market typically required expensive deployments, often involving the physical installation of specialized equipment and training to ensure high-quality connections. Now Zoom, with its simple setup and almost viral connectivity, has become the “Kleenex” of the videoconference world. Practically overnight, the world has grown accustomed to “zooming” for myriad purposes, including the arts, religion, fitness, and social connections with colleagues, friends, and family.
  • Influx of competitors from different industries. Medical-device firms that historically had a narrow competitive set and were insulated by a complex and highly technical regulatory approval process are facing competition from previously unimagined new entrants such as home appliance manufacturers and automakers, as regulations are relaxed to meet critical needs. Who could have predicted the rapid approval and success of GM and Dyson as ventilator manufacturers?

Businesses can gain long-term advantages by understanding such shifts and the opportunities they present. In past crises, companies that invested in innovation delivered superior growth and performance postcrisis. Organizations that maintained their innovation focus through the 2009 financial crisis, for example, emerged stronger, outperforming the market average by more than 30 percent and continuing to deliver accelerated growth over the subsequent three to five years (Exhibit 6).

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Crises, especially the one we are experiencing now, have a significant financial and human toll, stranding assets and human capital and causing significant social and economic dislocation. However, many of these dynamics are ingredients for disruption from which new business models emerge. For example, the sharing economy rose out of the 2009 financial crisis as technology enabled the creation of marketplaces for underutilized assets just as people were seeking much-needed new sources of income, catching incumbents unprepared. The SARS epidemic that ravaged Asia in 2002 and led its citizens to shelter in place was the impetus for growth and widespread adoption of e-commerce in that region, making China the epicenter of innovation around social commerce. The more recent focus on the climate change crisis has driven significant growth in solar equipment and electric cars, as well as innovation around more “earth-friendly” foods such plant-based meat substitutes.

How should companies that believe in the innovation imperative pivot to pursue it today? What follows are our recommendations for ways to approach the recovery from this crisis that can significantly increase the value captured from innovation-led growth.

The recipe for emerging as an innovation leader

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In earlier research, we introduced the Eight Essentials of Innovation—the critical practices that have the greatest impact on innovation success. We subsequently showed that mastering the Eight Essentials leads to significantly higher performance, with organizations that excel at most of these practices delivering 2.4 times higher economic profit. Mastering these innovation essentials is even more important now, as companies prepare to return to growth coming out of the crisis. The immediate challenge is motivating teams to bring intense focus, speed, and agility to delivering new sources of value. Crises are like adrenaline for innovation, causing barriers that once took years to overcome to evaporate in a matter of days. Entrenched orthodoxies on “the way things are done” are replaced with “the new way we do things” almost overnight.

To emerge as leaders from this crisis, companies can rely on the Eight Essentials of Innovation as a formula and a road map for success. While all of the Eight Essentials matter, our earlier research has shown that in times of broad economic stability, two of them—Aspire and Choose—are most important for generating immediate outsized impact. In times of crisis, however, we observe that other essentials take on greater significance, suggesting a different order of action (Exhibit 7). We recommend prioritizing Discover, Evolve, and Choose; these three will guide an organization in reorienting its focus, as needed. Then leaders can address Aspire to reset their guiding “North Star,” Accelerate and Scale to invest at the right levels and speed given potential changes in end markets, Extend to develop new types of ecosystems, and finally Mobilize to put in place the appropriate talent and incentives to activate the innovation plans.

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Discover. The market context during a crisis is dynamic, with little certainty about what will define the world when things stabilize. Having a powerful approach to analyzing this type of landscape requires the ability to Discover. It is critical for companies to overinvest in rediscovering what matters to customers now and understanding the impact those changing needs will have on their business. As Henry Ford once remarked, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’”

Crises tend to reshape spending patterns, which in turn change how attractive an end market may be. For example, many consumer-facing companies must now contend with the likelihood that brick-and-mortar retail may never return to its glory days, as many stores become mini-distribution hubs for e-commerce. Whereas the commercial real estate market used to place a premium on the highest floors of office buildings, concerns about confined crowds in elevators and high-density work spaces may now flip these valuations on their heads.

Collecting and synthesizing market insights should not be a siloed task left to a dedicated function or agency. Entire organizations, from sales and customer service to marketing and operations, can be activated to monitor change and interpret its impact. Every customer touchpoint is a new opportunity to learn. Having the ability to rapidly synthesize the many signals coming into an organization, recognize new patterns of customer behavior, and take action quickly can give companies a head start in the innovation race.

Organizing this information so that it can be rapidly converted into to new products, services, customer experiences, and business models is critical. First, it means having a way to clearly define and prioritize valuable problems to solve for customers. To identify a valuable problem, companies need to determine a clear “who” (a specific customer description), develop a fact-based understanding of the burning challenge this customer faces, and specify the outcome they hope to achieve by solving it. This strict definition helps to separate fuzzy and unhelpful questions from clear customer needs for which a solution can be precisely assessed.

Businesses can further prioritize among various valuable problems to solve using an equation that factors in the size of the potential market, the value that customers place on a solution, and the relative satisfaction of alternatives to the proposed solution (Exhibit 8). Once businesses have identified the most valuable and relevant problems to solve, they can use concept-generation approaches to arrive at hundreds of ideas within a day (see sidebar, “Concept-generation tools.”). Leaders can then leverage rapid formats such as pitch panels to further prioritize and refine the concepts. As American chemist Linus Pauling advised, “The way to get to good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”
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Evolve. Today, countless companies are seeing dramatic shifts in their profit pools and the economics that support their operations. Crises like the one we are living through today are watershed moments for companies to Evolve. Successfully managing a business model shift first requires determining which aspects of the model have been impaired and are unlikely to return. If a company derived an advantage from a field sales force that can no longer call on customers or brick-and-mortar storefronts that now have reduced foot traffic, for example, it will need to pivot to develop a digital approach. While some of these challenges may ease as lockdowns are lifted, other market dynamics and ways of working may be permanently altered. As recent research shows, Chinese consumers’ offline consumption dropped almost 70 percent with shelter in place restrictions and only half of that volume returned after the lockdown was lifted; likewise, consumer adoption of telemedicine appears to be sticking. That, in turn, will have implications for an organization’s assets, tools, and capabilities.

Experimenting with alternative business models—by asking, for instance, “What if we were acquired by organization X today?”—can be a great way to test what an organization could accomplish by evolving its business model. Removing constraints and questioning previous assumptions about what will generate the most value are powerful ways to conceive new business and economic models.

Choose. So, how does one fund the innovation required to make this kind of pivot? Revisit the innovation pipeline with fresh eyes and reprioritize resourcing. Challenging the core assumptions that support each initiative can determine which initiatives to continue, pivot, or cut. One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to let assumptions become assertions. The value, timing, and risk of initiatives will likely change in the “next normal” as market dynamics evolve and customers rethink their needs and associated spending.

Reconstructing the innovation portfolio based on what will drive the most value enables leaders to reallocate resources toward the best “next normal” opportunities and away from opportunities for which previous assumptions no longer apply. As an example, a consumer-packaged-goods company that planned to launch a product line centered around health enthusiasts in gyms may decide to shift resources toward building its direct-to-consumer e-commerce business that had been sidelined previously because of historic beliefs that demand was too small and customer adoption of virtual channels too limited. Today those beliefs may have reversed.

Aspire. Setting a new aspiration should act as a North Star that defines a combination of capabilities and strengths that will persist in the post-pandemic world. To do that, leaders may need to reframe their business and challenge orthodoxies that shaped the previous aspiration. As an example, the work-from-home technology platforms that once saw themselves as compliments to an office-based model could now envision their business as competition for the likes of WeWork and the biggest commercial real estate firms. They could also position themselves to become the platforms of choice for older generations of consumers, now savvier in the use of digital technology, to communicate with family and friends.

Accelerate and Scale. The global pandemic has significantly accelerated the pace at which companies are bringing new ideas to market, including massively expediting some regulatory processes and applying pressure on industry ecosystems to deliver scarce products and services in new ways. In a matter of weeks, some companies pivoted their existing manufacturing to support COVID-19 response: industrial companies are producing ventilators and hygienic masks, luxury brands are making hand sanitizer, and distilleries are producing disinfectant alcohol. Given the accelerated pace at which products and services are launched directly into market, it is critically important to ensure that supply chains and other enablers of scale keep pace to meet demand.

Extend and Mobilize. In some cases, businesses can leverage external partnerships to Extend their organization’s reach and, in so doing, realize a higher return on innovation investment, mitigate risk, and help shape regulatory policies. One of the major early lessons of the COVID-19 crisis is that competitors and firms from completely different industries can suddenly become allies. We have seen this in the more than 15 pharmaceutical companies that agreed to share compound libraries in the search for a coronavirus therapy, and in the public-private partnerships created to help flatten the infection curve and prepare for the reopening of economies.

To enable such extensions, organizations will benefit from instilling an agile culture and working model that help Mobilize innovation. Speed is an important driver of innovation success, as is the ability to persist despite the hardships that a crisis imposes.

The essential practices underpinning distinctive innovation have not changed in this time of crisis, but the relative emphasis and urgency of where businesses should focus has. Whereas in our 2019 article “The innovation commitment” we highlighted Aspire and Choose as disproportionately important during times of stable economic growth, we believe the uncertainty and severity of the current crisis requires leaders, first and foremost, to re-Discover customer needs and Evolve their business models to meet those needs.

Above all, organizations need to realize that innovation, now more than ever, is a choice. Regardless of the relative emphasis and order, we believe that the Eight Essentials of Innovation, which for years have helped leading innovators more than double the total returns to shareholders compared to laggards, will continue to be critical in navigating and emerging even stronger from this crisis.

The Biggest Obstacles to Innovation in Large Companies – HBR

Posted by timmreardon on 06/22/2020
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by Scott Kirsner
July 30, 2018
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It turns out that the word “innovation” is not a Harry Potter-esque magical incantation that, once spoken, renders companies more inventive, creative, and entrepreneurial. The word can be uttered by a CEO speaking to employees or Wall Street analysts. It can be emblazoned on the door to a new innovation center in Silicon Valley. It can be inserted into people’s job titles. (Yes, even Toys R Us had a head of innovation.)

But there are thorny cultural, strategic, political, and budget issues that must be confronted by CEOs and other leaders if they want to ensure that their organizations can be hospitable to — rather than hostile to — new ideas.

In a survey fielded earlier this year for Innovation Leader, an online resource for corporate innovation teams of which I am editor, we asked about the most common obstacles to innovation in large companies. (To be constructive, we also asked about the things that foster innovation.) The responses, from 270 corporate leaders in strategy, innovation, and research and development roles, were illuminating.

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We invited survey respondents to cite as many factors as they wanted from a list. The top five obstacles were each cited by at least one-third of respondents. They were:

Politics, turf wars, and a lack of alignment (cited by 55% of respondents.)

Some business units or functions believe they’re already doing innovation on their own, and that any sort of new initiative is edging into their terrain — and potentially competing for resources. Some may be hoping that the CEO’s “favorite child” of the moment, a new Chief Innovation Officer or Chief Digital Officer, will go away if ignored.

“Any time you start something new like [an innovation initiative], that cuts across many areas, there’s a potential for people feeling like you’re in their backyard,” says Michael Britt, a senior vice president who heads the Energy Innovation Center at Southern Company, a major utility operator. That’s especially true, he adds, when the core business is successful and doing well.

Senior leaders may not be able to squash every political squabble, but they can be clear about what the innovation or new ventures group is expected to do, and how others are expected to support it.

Cultural issues (45% of respondents.)

The culture at large companies is typically built on a foundation of operational excellence and predictable growth. Change-makers trying to conduct experiments are rarely greeted with open arms — especially when they’re working on an idea that may cannibalize stable businesses or upend today’s distribution model.

And big companies, like elephants, have long memories. Many long-timers can remember — and will happily detail in meetings — all of the “historical attempts [at innovation] that didn’t pan out – and it may just not have been the right time,” says Stacey Butler, director of innovation at NRG Energy.

Influencing the culture at established companies can seem, at times, like trying to walk into an art museum and just make a few small tweaks to the marble statues: no one wants you to do it, and almost anything you do will provoke a strong reaction. But creating new places where people can gather to work on projects — subcultures within the larger culture — can be constructive. So can designing new kinds of incentives, recognizing and rewarding the behaviors you want to encourage, and bringing in new, more diverse viewpoints and types of talent to the company.

Inability to act on signals crucial to the future of the business (42% of respondents.)

We asked about two related barriers in our survey: how well does your company “pick up” on signals of change, and how well does it act on them? Only 18% of respondents said that their companies had trouble with the former — so at most companies, there’s awareness of disruptive startups entering their sector, or changing customer purchase behaviors. The problem is acting on those signals. When your “forward scouts” see something important, what mechanisms exist to set up collaborations with outside vendors or startups, or run a quick pilot test with a function or business unit? Too many companies wait for the annual strategic off-site to roll around before they address the changing dynamics of their market.

Lack of budget (41% of respondents.)

At many of the largest companies, in industries like aerospace and technology, limited budgets are not an obstacle. Over decades, these industries have built up large R&D functions that are expected to crank out new ideas that the company will be able to leverage. But nearly 40% of the respondents to our survey said their innovation efforts had an annual budget of under $5 million, and 23% were below the $1 million mark. (We asked respondents to include both salaries of team members and direct spending.) Many of those lower budgets are in industries that haven’t historically had an R&D department, like retail, hospitality, and financial services.

In most cases, that budget level produces a small innovation team that may be doing some concept development work, trend scouting, or training employees on innovation methodologies — but isn’t having a broad impact on the company.

“With a budget of less than $1 million, it seems like the job is to build a case for innovation investment, versus [doing the work of] innovation itself,” says Rick Waldron, a former Nike executive who ran the apparel company’s innovation accelerator until last year. That level of funding, Waldron suggests, can be used to “bring senior management along on the journey and educate them” with a few concrete project examples that “will be the key to unlocking more resources for an innovation program.”

Lack of the right strategy or vision (36% of respondents.)

This answer includes a multitude of sins. Are employees clear on what kind of innovation they’re supposed to be doing? Are they looking for ideas to streamline operations and serve customers better, or developing new business models around existing products? Without a coherent strategy and clear vision for what the company aims to achieve, innovation efforts wind up feeling scattershot and isolated.

Interestingly, survey respondents said that their least significant was the “lack of CEO support”; just 10% of survey respondents said that it was constraining innovation at their company. The CEO, it turns out, doesn’t wield a sledgehammer that can demolish any obstacle that blocks a team of smart employees with a good idea.

What can help? Clear expectations set about why innovation is necessary. Appropriate recognition and incentives for people who get involved in making positive change happen. Regular communication and bridge-building between innovation teams, and the functions and business units they require as partners. Measures of progress that illuminate not only the performance of the innovation group, but also the functions and business units that they work with to implement their ideas.

One key enabler of innovation, referenced by more than half of our survey respondents, was the “ability to test, learn, and iterate.” How well does your company run quick-and-dirty experiments, gather the results, and then try again?

Finally, long-term commitment is essential. Corporate cultures reject many new initiatives if people believe they are the flavor-of-the-month. (One write-in response to our question about obstacles to innovation was, “Leadership ADHD.”) When CEOs and other leaders talk about innovation, they need to make it clear it will be more like a daily exercise regimen — part of the way things are done here, from now on — than a magical incantation that delivers instant results.

Head shot of Scott Kirsner

Scott Kirsner is the editor of Innovation Leader, an information service for corporate innovation executives, and a long-time business columnist for the Boston Globe.

Article link: https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2018/07/the-biggest-obstacles-to-innovation-in-large-companies

Deployment of DOD electronic health record modernization paused – Fedscoop

Posted by timmreardon on 04/06/2020
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

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The deployment of the Department of Defense‘s new electronic health record system has been paused while all efforts are funneled to responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Military Health System (MHS) GENESIS program is delaying the deployment of new systems at DOD medical facilities but still aims to remain on schedule with modernizing its back-end IT.

“There are currently no changes to the schedule,” Cori Hughes, director of program integration, told FedScoop in an email. “We have made a few adjustments to our daily activities to ensure we do not distract our providers from their efforts to support the current pandemic.”

The Cerner-based system is to be linked with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ $10 billion EHR modernization program, which is also based on Cerner software for maximum interoperability between the two. Once completed, the program aims to have all military and veteran health data on one cloud system with integrated modern electronic health services.

MHS GENESIS was planned to be deployed to new bases every three months starting this spring. It is unclear when the deployment will resume with the ongoing pandemic response.

“We want to ensure our providers can remain focused on the pandemic and not be distracted with MHS GENESIS deployment activities,” Hughes said of the MHS system deployment. “In collaboration with our acquisition leadership and our functional champion, we will suspend MHS GENESIS deployment activities that distract our providers during their support of the COVID pandemic.”

The VA did not respond to requests for comment on whether it will be delaying its planned July go-live for the new Cerner system in its Spokane, Washington hospital due to the coronavirus. The VA’s program is currently in the training phase for the new interfaces clinicians in Spokane will use on the Cerner system, but it is unclear if the wave of COVID-19 patients has delayed that. The VA has been hit by an “onslaught” of veterans battling the virus.

Article link: https://www.fedscoop.com/dod-mhs-genesis-electronic-health-records-modernization-delay/

 

Build Your Resilience in the Face of a Crisis – HBR

Posted by timmreardon on 04/05/2020
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by Rasmus Hougaard , Jacqueline Carter and Moses Mohan
March 19, 2020.

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As the spread and far-reaching impacts of Covid-19 dominate the world news, we have all been witnessing and experiencing the parallel spread of worry, anxiety, and instability. Indeed, in a crisis, our mental state often seems only to exacerbate an already extremely challenging situation, becoming a major obstacle in itself. Why is this and how can we change it? As the CEO of a firm that brings mindfulness to companies to unlock new ways of thinking and working, let me share a bit about how the mind responds to crises, like the threat of a pandemic.

Even without a constant barrage of bad or worrisome news, your mind’s natural tendency is to get distracted. Our most recent study found that 58% of employees reported an inability to regulate their attention at work. As the mind wanders, research has shown that it easily gets trapped into patterns and negative thinking. During times of crisis — such as those we are living through now — this tendency is exacerbated, and the mind can become even more hooked by obsessive thinking, as well as feelings of fear and helplessness. It’s why we find ourselves reading story after horrible story of quarantined passengers on a cruise ship, even though we’ve never stepped foot on a cruise ship, nor do we plan to.

When your mind gets stuck in this state, a chain reaction begins. Fear begins to narrow your field of vision, and it becomes harder to see the bigger picture and the positive, creative possibilities in front of you.  As perspective shrinks, so too does our tendency to connect with others. Right now, the realities of how the coronavirus spreads can play into our worst fears about others and increase our feelings of isolation, which only adds fuel to our worries.

Watching the past month’s turmoil unfold, I have been reminded of the old Buddhist parable of the second arrow. The Buddha once asked a student: “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? If the person is struck by a second arrow, is it even more painful?” He then went on to explain, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice.”

We are all experiencing the first arrow of the coronavirus these days. We are impacted by travel restrictions, plummeting stock prices, supply shortages etc. But the second arrow — anxiety about getting the virus ourselves, worry that our loved ones will get it, worries about financial implications and all the other dark scenarios flooding the news and social media — is to a large extent of our own making. In short, the first arrow causes unavoidable pain, and our resistance to it creates fertile ground for all the second arrows.

It’s important to remember that these second arrows — our emotional and psychological response to crises — are natural and very human. But the truth is they often bring us more suffering by narrowing and cluttering our mind and keeping us from seeing clearly the best course of action.

The way to overcome this natural tendency is to build our mental resilience through mindfulness. Mental resilience, especially in challenging times like the present, means managing our minds in a way that increases our ability to face the first arrow and to break the second before it strikes us. Resilience is the skill of noticing our own thoughts, unhooking from the non-constructive ones, and rebalancing quickly. This skill can be nurtured and trained. Here are three effective strategies:

First, calm the mind.

When you focus on calming and clearing your mind, you can pay attention to what is really going on around you and what is coming up within you.  You can observe and manage your thoughts and catch them when they start to run away towards doomsday scenarios. You can hold your focus on what you choose (e.g. “Isn’t it a gift to be able to work from home!”) versus what pulls at you with each ping of a breaking news notification (e.g. “Oh no…the stock market has dropped again.”).

This calm and present state is crucial. Right away, it helps keep the mind from wandering and getting hooked, and it reduces the pits of stress and worry that we can easily get stuck in. Even more importantly, the continued practice of unhooking and focusing our minds builds a muscle of resilience that will serve us time and time again. When we practice bringing ourselves back to the present moment, we deepen our capacity to cope and weather all sorts of crises, whether global or personal. (Fortunately, there are a number of free apps available to help calm your mind and increase your own mindfulness.)

Look out the window.

Despair and fear can lead to overreactions. Often, it feels better to be doing something … anything … rather than sitting with uncomfortable emotions. In the past few weeks, I have felt disappointment and frustration with important business initiatives that have been adversely impacted by Covid-19. But I have been trying to meet this frustration with reflection versus immediate reaction. I know my mind has needed space to unhook from the swirl of bad news and to settle into a more stable position from which good planning and leadership can emerge. So, I have been trying to work less and to spend more time looking out my window and reflecting. In doing so, I have been able to find clearer answers about how best to move forward, both personally and as a leader.

Connect with others through compassion.

Unfortunately, many of the circles of community that provide support in times of stress are now closed off to us as cities and governments work to contain the spread of the virus. Schools are shut down, events are cancelled, and businesses have enacted work-from-home policies and travel bans. The natural byproduct of this is a growing sense of isolation and separation from the people and groups who can best quell our fears and anxieties.

The present climate of fear can also create stigmas and judgments about who is to blame and who is to be avoided, along with a dark, survivalist “every person for him/herself” mindset and behaviors.  We can easily forget our shared vulnerability and interdependence.

But meaningful connection can occur even from the recommended six feet of social distance between you and your neighbor — and it begins with compassion. Compassion is the intention to be of benefit to others and it starts in the mind.  Practically speaking, compassion starts by asking yourself one question as you go about your day and connect — virtually and in person — with others: How can I help this person to have a better day?

With that simple question, amazing things begin to happen. The mind expands, the eyes open to who and what is really in front of us, and we see possibilities for ourselves and others that are rich with hope and ripe with opportunity.

Rasmus Hougaard is the founder and managing director of Potential Project, a global leadership and organizational development firm serving Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco and hundreds of other organizations. He is publishing his second book The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results with HBR Press in March 2018.

Jacqueline Carter is a partner and the North American Director of Potential Project. She is co-author of The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results (HBR Press, 2018) as well as co-author with Rasmus Hougaard on their first book One Second Ahead: Enhancing Performance at Work with Mindfulness.

Article link: https://hbr.org/2020/03/build-your-resiliency-in-the-face-of-a-crisis?

VA, DOD launch joint audit of Cerner EHR interoperability efforts – Becker’s Hospital Review

Posted by timmreardon on 04/05/2020
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a comment

Jackie Drees –

The Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspectors general will begin a joint audit this month to assess the agencies’ progress achieving interoperability between their Cerner-built EHR systems, according to a Feb. 24 letter.

The objective of the audit “is to determine the extent to which the actions taken by the DOD and VA in acquiring and implementing a common, commercial EHR system and supporting architecture will achieve interoperability among the departments and with external healthcare providers,” the memorandum states.

VA and DOD are under separate contracts with Cerner to develop and deploy interoperable EHR systems across their care networks. Earlier this month, VA confirmed delays with the rollout of its new system, which was scheduled to deploy March 28 at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Wash. The department postponed the go-live for the end of April because it needs more time to finish building the system to ensure users are properly trained.

DOD is approaching the second wave of its Cerner go-live, with deployments scheduled at 25 sites in June. The department launched the EHR, dubbed MHS Genesis, at four sites in California and Idaho in September 2019. The successful rollout came more than two years after DOD’s initial implementation attempt in February 2017, which was ultimately delayed due to clinician reports of workflow problems such as issues with lab report requests.

VA and DOD will perform the audit at various locations, including the Offices of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Defense Health Agency, VA Office of EHR Modernization and DOD/VA Federal EHR Modernization Program Office.

Article link: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/va-dod-launch-joint-audit-of-cerner-ehr-interoperability-efforts.html