Technology and the Art of Command
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
"There is no better example of the need for embracing change whilst maintaining a sense of continuity than in the requirements for future command and control."
Joint High Level Operational Concept
UK Ministry of Defence
The Summer 2006 edition of RUSI Defence Systems, which I receive by virtue of my membership of RUSI (the London based Royal United Services Institute) contains an interesting article titled 'The Impact of Technology on the Art of Command.'
Written by Roger Mendham, defense advisor at LogicaCMG, the article obviously concerns the art of military command. However, it has several important insights for strategy in professional service firms.
The culture of command, Mendham says, is very different in the 21st Century, to previous times. The shape of the battlefield is no longer predictable, neither are the nature of the threats. He might just as easily be talking about the 21st Century marketplace, as experienced by the firms that operate in it. He goes on to say that although the basic principles of command have remained constant, they are now vastly more enabled because of advances in technology.
Technology has of course been applied to addressing a wide variety of needs in professional service firms for some time now, too. Knowledge management, e-Discovery, tracking of work processes and accounting spring to mind as obvious examples. Improving the "command and control" functions, however, is not an area that typically reaches the top of the priority list. Unlike in the military, where this need is almost paramount.
Command and control, when all is said and done, is about decisions. Firstly, it is about collecting information that is required for situational awareness. Secondly, it is about rapidly making sense of that information to extract the intelligence that commanders need to support their decisions. Thirdly, it is about the decision making process itself, which typically requires input from a variety of different people.
The three core functions can be expanded, from a professional services firm perspective, as follows:
Situational Awareness
There are a variety of disciplines, technologies and methodologies that can be deployed in order to give the firm's leaders an increasingly clear 'picture' of their market in general and, more specifically, their competitive position. Competitive intelligence, management of client and other data to determine strategically important trends, tracking developments in clients' markets and competitor benchmarking are all examples. All can be technology-enabled to a greater or lesser degree. Most professional service firms are still playing 'catch-up' with most if not all of these concepts themselves, let alone using technology to enhance them, though.
Sensemaking
Mendham uses the term understanding but I find the American term 'sensemaking' far more descriptive. This involves taking the enormous flood of data that the first function can produce and making sense of it so that it can be communicated to the firm's leaders in a format that is useful. Absorbing information is a cognitive process, says Mendham, and data visualization tools can be used to reduce complexity by collating information and presenting the results visually, enabling the firm's leaders to quickly get to the gist of what the data is telling them.
Decision Making
Inevitably, the data will almost always suggest a range of possible actions. Decision making is ultimately the personal task of the commander, but due to the complexity of the modern battlespace, decisions often require input from a range of people who may be spread across the world. Video conferencing and collaborative working environments are examples of technologies that enable this collective participation in the decision making process.
Mendham goes on to say that modern military strategy is seeing a split between the functions of "command" and "control." Traditionally, these have been a closely coupled pair. This made sense while both had a single focus, but this is no longer necessarily true given the complexity and fluidity of the modern, dynamic battlespace. Technology, again, provides the means for separating the two functions. Thus, the commander on the ground can exercise command over his troops while the actual control function is well to the rear, or even several remote locations simultaneously, perhaps even across the world.
This also resonates well with a law firm, for instance, where in the traditional partnership model both command and control have vested in the partnership as a whole. While control has remained the domain of the owners of the firm, command has moved to a delegated authority such as a managing partner or director, a CEO or perhaps a management committee. Nothing new there, obviously. The more corporatised the firm, the greater this split between command and control. What is probably new to most firms is the notion of learning from current military best practice how to go about using technology to improve the strategic decision making process.
Videoconferencing is also nothing new. Firms have a long way to go, though, to develop technology-enhanced collaborative work environments that can allow a similar level and breadth of participation in the strategic decision-making processes in the firm.
One of the best examples that I have heard of recently is 'jamming' at IBM. (See here for a piece on a jam done worldwide with the UN that involved over 39,000 people from 158 countries, too.) Using jamming, IBM asks for and gets input from literally thousands of IBM employees over just a few days, into issues of strategic concern to the corporation. The input is codified and separated into themes as the process is underway, eventually leading to a range of alternatives. Employees are then typically invited to provide input into which alternatives are the best, further supporting the decision-making process.
Emerging tools such as RSS feeds, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools will undoubtedly gain more mainstream use over the next few years. Anyone that follows the Microsoft Executive Email blog will have come across several recent postings about how opportunities for improvements in collaboration will evolve over the next few years, just in terms of what Microsoft products will aim to enable. If you haven't seen them, read Bill Gates on The Unified Communications Revolution; also Beyond Business Intelligence: Delivering a Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Information Management; and The New World of Work.
Personally, I believe that this area is vastly underutilized as a source of competitive advantage for professional service firms. It is not a matter of whether or not firms will move in this direction but, rather, which firms will move first.
Comments, as always, are most welcome and may be posted below.
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