by Michael O'Neill | Aug 1, 2016 | Complexity, Quote
In popular culture, the term “butterfly effect” is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with “leverage” – the idea of a small think that has a bing impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to a desired end. This misses the point of [Edward] Lorenz’s insight. The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
by Michael O'Neill | Jul 25, 2016 | Complexity, Quote
Attempts to control complex systems by using the kind of mechanical, reductionist thinking championed by thinkers from Newton to Taylor – breaking everything down into component parts, or optimizing individual elements – tend to be pointless at best or destructive at worst.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
by Michael O'Neill | Jul 20, 2016 | Quote
Similarly, management thinker Gary Hamel writes that companies now find themselves in “ecosystems” and “value webs” over which they exert almost no control, giving them little ability to predict or plan their own destinies. In such settings, the ritual of strategic planning, which assumes “the future will be more or less like the present,” is more hinderance than help.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
by Michael O'Neill | Jul 15, 2016 | Complexity, Quote
Complexity produces a fundamentally different situation from the complicated challenges of the past; complicated problems required great effort, but ultimately yielded to prediction. Complexity means that, in spite of our increased abilities to track and measure, the world has become, in many ways, vastly less predictable.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
by Michael O'Neill | Jul 10, 2016 | Knowledge Management, Quote
CENTCOM initially prohibited the Pentagon staffs from viewing their internal web site out of a (common) fear of giving “higher headquarters” visibility into unfinalized planning products. Such absurdities reflect the truth that most organizations are more concerned with how best to control information than how best to share it.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
by Michael O'Neill | Jul 5, 2016 | Knowledge Management, Quote
The problem is that the logic of “need to know” depends on the assumption that somebody – some manager or algorithm or bureaucracy – actually knows who does and does not need to know which material. In order to say definitively that a SEAL ground force does not need awareness of a particular intelligence source, or that an intel analyst does not need to know precisely what happened on any given mission, the commander must be able to say with confidence that those pieces of knowledge have no bearing on what those teams are attempting to do, nor on the situations the analyst may encounter.
Our experience showed us this was never the case.
More than once in Iraq we were close to mounting capture/kill operations only to learn at the last hour that the targets were working undercover for another coalition entity. The organizations structures we had developed in the name of secret and efficiency actively prevented us from talking to each other and assembling a full picture.
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
