In the early Cold War years, when the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts were first being made, there was considerable internal USG debate as to whether to use these media organizations as vehicles for black propaganda and disinformation campaigns against the Soviet Bloc or to keep their journalistic mission uncontaminated by PSYOPS meddling. Forgoing the short-term benefits of crude propaganda paid longterm dividends as the credibility of these organizations gave them believability, authenticity and most importantly – moral authority -in the eyes of their target audience. It wasn’t so much that the Soviet nomenklatura that tuned in to the VOA on their illegally imported foreign radios thought that everything Western media reported was true -they just knew most of what their own Communist media reported was false. Credibility once lost, is lost.
Decentralized input of information and analysis accelerates the correction of mistaken assumptions. Transparency enhances credibility and discourages shilling by the negative feedback it immediately produces so decisions produced carry greater weight for having been systematically vetted by an unforgivingly ruthless process of open examination that respects the cultural norms of official institutions to a far smaller degree. This does not guarantee perfection or prevent all errors, blind spots can be a collective as well as an individual phenomenon, but it reduces some of the wanton distortion of insider groupthink.
LINKS:
“Open Source Center Runs Closed Intel Shop” –Shloky
“Getting wiki with it ” – Haft Of The Spear
“Breaking the analyst / collector divide” and “Google adds Wiki to the Blog” –Kent’s Imperative
“Security: Power To The People” – John Robb
“Of Moral Resilience and Technical Resilience” – Opposed System Design
“COUNTERING 4GW: STATE RESILIENCE, NOT STATE BUILDING, IS KEY” – Zenpundit
“The virtuous circle on security: the slippery slope to resiliency” – Thomas P.M. Barnett
“Civilizations, Complexity & Resilience” – Stephen DeAngelis
“Self-organizing Rule Sets” – Stephen DeAngelis
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Anonymous:
December 19th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Chris Anderson’s list of tactics is extremely similar to my small foray into management. That was before the internet, mostly face-to-face. But the general idea is the same:
Have a well-understood objective
Let everyone on the team know what everyone else is doing.
Not quite sure about this, but process was an important part of our tactics.
Hey! They were the ones doing the work! (This includes the last three of Chris’s points. It was a great feeling for all of us for the workers to come up with the proposals on how to get to the goal and for me to see what great people were working for me.)
It really works, and it’s fun and makes everyone feel good.
CKR
mark:
December 19th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Hi CKR
“It really works, and it’s fun and makes everyone feel good.”
Except for those managers who rely more on the authority of their hierarchical position than they do knowledge or skill-sets to command respect. This kind of paradigm is threatening to their status.
As you had knowledge and skills, you could self-confidently implement such a system. Not sure if this would be welcomed everywhere but I agree, it would be a heck of a lot more fun.
Larry Dunbar:
December 19th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
“Except for those managers who rely more on the authority of their hierarchical position than they do knowledge or skill-sets to command respect.”
It really comes down to: if the manager is a theory X or theory Y type of person.
Anonymous:
December 19th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
Well, yeah, I eventually got thrown out of that job. But my team made it clear they didn’t want me to go.
CKR
mark:
December 20th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
“Well, yeah, I eventually got thrown out of that job”
Ha! Been there. When an organization is healthy, getting canned is usually a result of incompetence but when the organization is dysfunctional, getting fired is usually a mark of personal excellence.