Introduction and remarks to open SDI Miami

The German campaign in France in May 1940 introduced the world to the word Blitzkrieg – ‘lightning war’ – with a terrific shock. In just six weeks the Wehrmacht decisively defeated an enemy with whom only twenty years before it had struggled in vain for over four years. It did so by deploying agility against superior strength. Agility enabled it to deliver shock and surprise, and to control tempo – the number of events in a given period of time which require a competitive response. The campaign ended when the competitive response was zero. Agility is valuable in business as well as in war, and it is much talked about today in both contexts. In his keynote presentation, Stephen Bungay will use the example of the German Army to examine what it takes to build and use organisational agility in the context of strategy, and will suggest that it is the tip of an iceberg for operational and competitive excellence. In a description of the events of 1940, he will show how the Germans deployed an operational capability built up over decades to strategic effect, bringing out the different roles played by the top leadership, the distributed leaders, and individuals right down to ordinary soldiers. He will then step back in time and explain how this capability itself evolved, starting with a leadership culture developed in the Prussian Army in the 19th century and fostered by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and embodied in Doctrine. He will then trace how that culture and doctrine enabled the development of a set of capabilities which were first fully deployed in 1918, but ultimately failed. Learning from that failure, the German Army solved each of the problems that had led to their defeat and developed those capabilities further to create the operational features of what became known as Blitzkrieg. Its elements are fundamental to any organisation which seeks to be agile, and are as valid today as they were 80 or 160 years ago.

Deng Xiaoping once described managing the economy as crossing the river by feeling the stones—in other words have a direction but be adaptive. But in a world of constant change, how do you determine the right thing to do? Which pebble to tread on? How do you understand where you’re going and where you need to go? How do you know if your strategy is right? Is there even such a thing? Simon Wardley examines the issue of situational awareness and explains how it applies to technology. Using examples from government and the commercial world, he explores how you can map your environment, identify opportunities to exploit, and learn to play the game.

What does leadership mean to you? How do you develop more capacity in yourself and those within your organization to both manage and lead? How can you better understand the interpersonal dynamics of social interaction and gain greater self understanding to allow for better decision making and improved outcomes in your organization? Leadership development requires experimenting with your own behaviors in order to foster flexibility, build resilience, and engender trust. Dr. Ginzel's work enables executives to develop a sense-making mindset similar to how design thinkers explore problem and solution spaces with ethnography and rapid prototyping. Thinking more like a social psychologist is the key to leading through dynamic uncertainty and market complexities. People generally act as though the causes of action emanate from inside the person. However, in strong situations (contexts modulated by time and actors), behavior is more likely due to factors external to the person. As an executive, it is important to recognize the important role you play as a part of someone else’s environment and use your new understanding of contingencies to design and lead better systems. Dr. Ginzel helps executives to make better choices by understanding that they have more control over the various factors in people’s context and situations - such as the work environment, rewards, structures, peers, physical space, nature of the work itself, than they do over people’s internal dispositions or personality. Rather than try to change people, executives can improve outcomes by building stronger situations that yield high performance.

TBD

Doctrine is a concept developed within the military to aid the execution and enablement of policy and strategy, but has found success in a business context as well. Doctrine and strategy can be thought of as synergistic. Effective doctrines unlock new strategic opportunities, while clear strategies give focus to doctrinal development. In this talk I’ll introduce doctrine, which consists of the fundamental principles, tactics, procedure, frames, and command language that acts to guide decision making for agile teams. The principles are not supposed to be checklists or constraining sets of rules, but instead meant to foster the initiative needed for people (either soldiers or knowledge workers), to be adaptive, creative problem solvers. A learning doctrine can provide a basis for incorporating new ideas, technologies, and organizational designs. Today’s businesses face an imbalance; they devise clever strategies, but largely ignore the potential of doctrine for creating new strategic options. I’ll redress this imbalance and explore how to use doctrine for competitive advantage using two examples. In the years before World War II, the United States Navy developed an extremely flexible doctrine that rapidly integrated combat lessons and continuously evolved. Admiral Ernest J. King’s strategic decision to quickly take the offensive in the South Pacific in mid-1942 leveraged the potential of this approach. As American tactics were refined, naval combat was transformed. Lessons from the fighting led to new methods and structures that enabled victory in the Pacific. Earlier in my career, my team faced a similar challenge. We were “agile,” but lacked a vision for success. A strategic decision focused our efforts on a specific market segment; as we gained experience, we rapidly refined of our approach and procedures. We evolved faster than our competition. We were successful in the emerging mobile solutions space through the synergistic use of clear strategy and a learning doctrine.

The stakes in US Navy operations are high, even when there is no combat. It is serious business. Beyond all discussion, the environment itself at sea is absolutely unforgiving. The US Navy is a force made up of 430,000 Americans - uniformed active and reserve women and men always ready to put lives on the line. This takes commitment, discipline, obedience, self-sacrifice, teamwork, and trust in the person to the right and to the left. Fore-handedness, speed of decision, clear communication, attention to detail are all vital so nobody gets killed . I will share lessons I’ve learned over four decades -- how LEADERSHIP and ETHICS come into play in a large and mature global organization required to be ready for “prompt and sustained combat operations at sea” in order to defend the United States, act as good stewards for billions of taxpayers dollars every year, and be conservative with the lives of our sailors (your children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews). I’ll describe to you the importance of INNOVATION after three years as Director, CNO Strategic Studies Group, and how hard it is within a large organization, yet how important it is for the future of any enterprise to try to continually rejuvenate itself -- to calculate risk, identify talent, to think differently, to protect the mavericks, to fight complacency, and keep from going stale. If some other team eats the US Navy’s lunch, it’s a big deal. Though you might not be readying your ship to sail around the globe, I think you might find these lessons useful, especially if you work with high performance teams. The standard of excellence in the US Navy is hard, harsh, and not always scalable -- excellence sometimes means just surviving -- wicked hard team situations often of high risk, confusion, fear, dissonance, speed, and more.