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A RESILIENT DIALOGUE: PREFACE

Steve DeAngelis of ERMB continued our discussion of resilience with a new post on the interface of technology, organizational culture and individual action. A critical excerpt:

“ But the organization becomes truly resilient when its leaders, managers and staff are willing to reach across those departmental lines themselves — when they collaborate to bring all of the organization’s resources to bear on the threat or the opportunity. Technology supports resilience — but true resilience also requires cultural and psychological comfort, as well as intensive training in the operation of resilient systems. Resilience requires a constant interplay between technological and human factors, with each reinforcing the other.

In the past, we’ve described resilience as the ability — of an individual, or an organization, or a nation state, or a trans-national system — to draw on all available resources in the face of a challenge. There is clearly a cultural component to this. Londoners were resilient in the face of the Underground bombings — and New Yorkers were resilient in the face of the September 11 attacks — in some measure because of a shared culture and heritage that they could draw on. They knew how to think about the challenge and how to rise to meet it. The same can hold true in an organizational setting — the people in a resilient organization know how to respond, have access to systems that support resilience, and know how to use them.”

This is a very apt description of the resiliency dynamic ( the cool part of interacting with sharp thinkers like Mr. DeAngelis is the speed with which they can extend or deepen any point of discussion) and here’s why:

Most of us have been educated to think in terms of compartmentalization, isolation, sequence and hierarchy which would be the entirely wrong paradigm for considering the effects of phenomena like resilience. Instead, we should reorient our cognitive perspective toward integration, synergy, interdependence, feedback and simultaneity – a more useful framework for understanding networked behavior. Resiliency has its greatest effects as a systemic characteristic and as such, it is a conceptual tool for systems analysis or engineering.

What therefore do we need to ask ourselves to pursue resiliency on a practical, useful level ? Here are some of the concepts and questions I would like to consider in future exchanges with Steve ( since the tech “platforms” aspect currently being discussed by Tom Barnett and John Robb are far, far, far outside my area of expertise, I’ll leave that subject to them and for Steve):

The strategic edge provided by resilient cultures.

Engineering resiliency and cultural evolution

Can resiliency be a two-edged sword?

The psychology of resiliency

Educating for resiliency

The ” flow” of the resilient moment.

Comments, criticism, suggestions from readers are solicited.

BUILDING INSTITUTIONS VS. NATIONS OR STATES [ UPDATED ]

Very interesting discussion going on over at Dr. Barnett’s over a TCS Daily review of Blueprint For Action by Max Borders, the TCS managing editor and think tank scholar. In his review of BFA, Max wrote:

“And it is in Barnett’s recommended process of transforming Gap states into Core states that we see the age-old tension between theory and practice start to emerge. Before attempting to expose this tension, we should note that Barnett’s Blueprint for Action is a worthwhile effort. Still, it falls short — not due to the Wherefores carefully elaborated the first book, but due to some of the Hows elaborated in the sequel. The shortcomings of the second stage of Barnett’s grand strategy — implementation — are, in some respects, due to what Friedrich Hayek called “the fatal conceit.” In other words, Barnett focuses too much on nation-building and not enough on institution-building

…The most important aspect of any SysAdmin effort should be institution-building, not just nation-building. This is where the UN and the quasi-governmental behemoths have failed so utterly in just about everything they’ve done. To build a nation without transfusing vital institutions is to build a house of cards ready to collapse. To wit: India and China are in no position to contribute to institution-building, as they’re still grappling with the internal transformation of their own institutions. The most successful Core states are the states that look the most like the US in their institutions. So while you might want Britain or Australia to contribute to institution-building, you’re not likely to want Russia or Brazil to do so.”

( Hat tip to Bruce Kesler )

Borders review deserves to be read in its entirety, but the point about institutions has become a focal point of discussion. Tom responded in his own post:

“His larger critique that I focus too much on nation-building vice institution-building is at worst a misrepresentation of my ideas (BFA is full of discussion on the latter, which, quite frankly, is logically indistinguishable from the former–to wit, what is a nation but a collection of institutions?) and at best an argumentative ploy (reminding me of the criticism that “Barnett should think less about shrinkíng the Gap and more about growing the Core,” to which I reply “Fine, call it whatever you want.”).

Borders’ points about the complexity of the challenge are all good and his emphasis on, and articulation of, the goals of institution-building are most welcome. But he needs to put his considerable brainpower to the “how’ answers, not just the “how not” summaries of past experience. “

As I commented at Tom’s, the issue here is primarily one of scale ( a point on which Max strenuously dissents) though nations and states are separate questions. I’m pretty sure we can build states which are nothing more than a large network enjoying the function of sovereignty and a monopoly over the legal use of force. Inevitably, any Sys Admin force will have to build both institutions and the state simultaneously to some degree in order to create a zone of security and order in which civil society and the market can evolve and thrive. I don’t see this issue as an either-or proposition but “both”.

Nations are another question. A functional, competent, state can certainly help the nation-formation process ( Prussia 17-19th century) and a dysfunctional, corrupt or illegitimate state can impede it ( Mobuto’s Congo, today’s Nigeria) but the sense of nationhood comes from the heritage of a shared experience that bridges tribal, sectarian or other associational primary loyalties. We can encourage that or discourage it but I’m not sure that such a thing as a ” nation” in the organic sense can be built.

UPDATE:

I wanted to call your attention to a recent post by Eddie at Live From the FDNF who has given a lot of thought this past year to humanitarian intervention problems. In “Sys-Admin Academy & Exchange“, Eddie throws out a number of intriguing yet pragmatic ideas regarding Sys Admin possibilities.

CURRENTLY READING

Curing Analytic Pathologies:Pathways to Improved Intelligence Analysis by Jeffrey R. Cooper.

If, like me, you enjoy contemplating issues of human cognition, intelligence analysis, reforming the CIA and IC bureaucratic culture, you will probably find this a fascinating read. If not…well…it is 73 pages of what I just described. :O)

Hat tip to Defense Tech.

Hat tip to Secrecy News ( which I will soon add to the blogroll).

ANCIENT ROME AND GLOBALIZATION

An interesting and well-crafted essay by Harold James at HNN that fuses analogies with imperial Rome and Great Britain with Schumpeterine creative destruction. ” Our Roman Predicament ” postulates what the Old Marxists might have called the “contradiction of capitalism”, that geopolitical success of the liberal order undermines itself. A nod to cyclicalism, a theory that stretches back to Polybius:

“In these monumental and parallel works, Smith and Gibbon explored what I term the “Roman predicament”: the way that peaceful commerce is frequently seen as a way of building a stable, prosperous and integrated international society. At the same time, the peaceful liberal economic order leads to domestic clashes and also to international rivalry and even wars. The conflicts disturb and eventually destroy the commercial system and the bases of prosperity and integration. These interactions seem to be a vicious spiral, or a trap from which it seems almost impossible to escape. The liberal commercial world order subverts and destroys itself, and Smith’s gloomy concluding chapters are a long away from the apparently optimistic beginning with the immense productivity gains possible as a result of the division of labor.

…Today there are no grounds for thinking that the United States – or the global economic system – has reached any kind of inherent limit to growth. The pace of technical innovation even seems to be increasing, and the U.S. is one of the world’s most dynamic and innovative societies.

The possibility of an unraveling of the U.S. position comes rather from political developments that respond to the uncertainties of the new economy as well as the new security situation. Some of the backlash stems from fears of immigration, even though it is precisely the openness to immigration that has made the U.S. so dynamic. Our political and social psychology responds to globalization by imagining an idealized safe and closed off world. The more we think of the military and security challenge, the more likely we are to try to close ourselves off. “

I am not persuaded by James argument of the decisive nature of inequality, which he correctly diagnoses as evidence of economic growth. Human beings have an immense capacity to tolerate political and economic systems that produce both real and relative inequality – what they tolerate poorly is personal regression to a lower status. Peasants, who are acclimated to famine, have rebellions; the newly hungry urbanite though, will make a revolution.

I also found James section on rule-sets superficial and weak:

“The central problem is that we need rules for the functioning of complex societies, whether on a national (state) level, or in international relations. But we do not always comply voluntarily with rules, and rules require some enforcement. In addition rules need to be formulated. The enforcement and the promulgation of rules are both consequences of power, and power is concentrated and unequally distributed. Even when we think of voluntarily negotiated rules, there is the memory of some act of power, the long shadow of a hegemomic strength – the shadow of Rome – falling on the negotiators. The propensity for subversion and destruction of a rule-based order comes about because and whenever there is a perception that rules are arbitrary, unjust, and reflect the imposition of particular interests in a high-handed imperial display of power. “

That section cried out for deeper treatment.

Rules need to be enforced, certainly but they do not simply flow out of ” hegemonic power” but must reflect the conditions in which the hegemonic power, so-called, operates. They need to match reality, partly as a matter of functionality and so as to also have legitimacy in the eyes of the ruled. Legitimacy comes in part from the character of the power attempting to secure compliance but the rule itself must make sense or provide a recognizable benefit. Rules rise or fall on securing at least the grudging voluntary compliance from the vast majority of society. Catch-22 situations breed resistance and can result in a hoplesss task in terms of enforcement ( Napoleon’s Continental System proved so unenforceable that the French government eventually granted exemptions to legitimize some of the ongoing smuggling and profit from it).

Despite having numerous disagreements with the author on a nuber of levels, I still found it a stimulating piece of synthesis.

DIMENSIONS OF RESILIENCE

Steve DeAngelis, founder of Enterra Solutions was kind enough to comment on my recent post over at his Enterprise Resilience Management Blog:

“This is an important discussion. While we’re grateful for Mark’s positive comments about Development in a Box, we are even more grateful that we can join a conversation about the ways in which the Enterprise Resilience Management framework interacts with and transforms organizational culture. Enterprise Resilience Management is not just a technology solution — though it has a significant technology component. And it is not just a management methodology, though it starts with a comprehensive assessment of critical assets and the processes and best practices that support them. Rather, the framework combines best practices and technology to create an entirely new organizational architecture. Methodology and technology, working together, break down the barriers between organizational silos and create new systems — both cultural and technological — for whole-organization response.

The resilience of an organization depends only in part on its willingness to adopt new technologies. Resilience also depends on the ability of people — leaders, line managers and staff — to create a resilient culture.”

Very true. An important point which leads me to explain why I consider “Resilience” to be a meta-principle governing an emerging world where the governing paradigm will be a complex system of systems. Evidence of resilience as a phenomena is manifested across both an enormous scale of magnitude and in multiple domains, including:

1. Complexity Theory

2. Network Theory

3. Ecological-Environmental-Economic systems

4. Social Networks

5. Security Policy and Counterterrorism

6. Human Psychology ( see NYT here)

There are probably infinite possibilities here.

I would expect that any in any adaptive complex system , regardless of the field in which it is traditionally categorized, evidence of resilient characteristics will be readily discoverable ( at least until you reach quantum or cosmological extremes of scale, there I’d have to hedge my hypothesis and let more qualified people speak to that). I would further suggest, more to Steve’s point in his post, that overlapping levels of resilience will be highly beneficial.

An organization with a resilient culture will help its employees or members become more resilient themselves by providing a shared “cognitive template” or schema that encourages the practice of resilient behaviors, which with time, may become internalized. Conversely, psychological resiliency among key personnel – the leaders and “hubs” of the organization’s social network – are indispensible in building a coherent organization from the ground up or weathering a severe crisis. Resilient leadership operating in a resilient organizational culture are apt to be synergistically reinforcing and, therefore, likelier to pass on the institution and its mores to successive generations.

How many generations ? If you think of corporations, states and organized religions in terms of their formal structures, the timeline now runs into centuries. In a few cases, thousands of years.

Now that’s what I call being resilient.