War, Chaos, and Business
All forms of “maneuver,” (used faute de mieux) rely on paradoxes and the quest to resolve them rather than resorting to trade-offs. Maneuver warfare, for example, gets both better control and pumped up initiative, characteristics that trade off under traditional, top-down control systems. The Toyota Production System (TPS) turns out vehicles that exhibit [...]
KATRINA: “BROTHERHOOD VS. BUREAUCRACY”
BY DAVID RHODES
Republished with permission from the May 2006 issue of Fire Engineering
[CR: This is a wonderful study of the ideas in my previous post, Resilient Structures, and in John Robb's work on resilience on his blog, Global Guerrillas. It demonstrates how groups, with the proper preparation and under the right [...]
[Note; links to Boyd's presentations go to the John Boyd Compendium page on DNI, where all of Boyd's work is available free of charge in a variety of formats.]
After a while, human organizations seem to deteriorate. Often the individuals in them will be busy, spending long hours going to meetings, producing PowerPoints, [...]
Several of my recent posts have mentioned the SPGR (Systematizing the Person-Group Relationship) methodology for measuring how well groups will do utilizing mission-type leadership (Auftragstaktik).
The methodology’s originator has published an academic paper on the subject. For those with access to such journals, the reference is:
Sjøvold, E., Systematizing Person-Group relations (SPGR): A Field Theory of [...]
As some readers may not know, my favorite hot sauce, Fire from the Mountain Chipotle, is made just outside Boone, NC. The Chipotle is medium hot — about like Tabasco® — with a wonderful smoked pepper flavor.