Accidental Light

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell seems to be very connected to the stuff that I have been trying to work out here. For those not aware of the book - and there can only be a couple - it looks at “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” where the unconscious can come up with answers and solutions to problems without the participation of the conscious mind and all in the Blink of an eye.

(I was reminded of the book by Dom’s list of books he hadn’t read and then by an act of synchronicity saw it in Alicante airport probably nestled between Dan Brown and Catherine Cookson)

One story struck me in particular. I had always thought that the last bastion of top-down, command-and-control management would be the military as that was the only way that it could be done. It turns out not to be so. Paul van Riper is or was a very senior officer in the marines. It is worth quoting how he approaches management of troops in the field:

The first thing I told our staff is that we would be in command and out of control. By that I mean the overall guidance and the intent were provided by me and the senior leadership, but the forces in the field wouldn’t depend on intricate orders coming from the top.They were to use their own initiative and be innovative as they went forward.

[My emphasis]

Wow! Does he want a job?

He has shown that this approach actually works in real-life and, in another story in the book, in a simulated war game where van Riper’s red (enemy) forces defeated the US (blue) forces. The blue team relied on computer models of economy and infrastructure to target and destroy the red team’s vital points in these networks. They trusted so much in this (essentially) top-down, all encompassing strategy that they were unable to respond when van Riper went about his bottom-up seat-of-the-pants strategy.

Basically, van Riper’s approach is that all war is conducted in a fog. You don’t know what the enemy is thinking, there are too many variables working some of which you know some of which you don’t. In his environment any top-down, strict, revert-to-senior-command strategy will fail as it will not be able to respond to changes in the environment and to the actions of the enemy.

This approach matches in a scarily precise way with how we try and do our business in technology here. We set goals or targets (platonically perfect architectures) and the teams start walking toward these targets. The only rule we set is that each engineering or architectural step a team takes must bring it closer to the platonic ideal. By releasing the entropy in the organiation and allowing (and more importantly backing) individuals and teams to take their own decisions we can respond much better to changes in environment and requirements. But each step is still toward the goal.

There is more to write and think about from Blink, particularly how knowledge, context and experience are the environment essential to unconscious decision making.