What You Know Is What You Foresee
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 5:46PM DATELINE: USAIR commuter from Reagan to Indy, 3 October 2006
My day of red-teaming with other big brains was interesting enough. Think I got at least two columns out of it (ideas that came to me when I wanted to explain why I thought differently from others). One thing reinforced: how you view the future depends on what you know, so each expert tends to come armed with predictions that match his or her background--no matter how narrow.
Lesson for me? If you want to think systematically about the future, eschew functional expertise and vertical thinking and embrace horizontal knowledge and the generalist within.
Yes, you'll be "wrong" more often in any one venue (as experts will constantly argue how "unrealistic" your vision is WRT their subject matter), but you'll also always be more relevant to a wider array of people (yes, there is a real world beyond the Beltway).
At airport, I picked up a second copy of John Nagl's "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife," his history of past counter-insurgency campaigns. A cult hit inside the Army and Marines, his expanded edition comes with a new forward that describes his year on the ground in the Sunni Triangle.
A nice surprise: Nagl favorably references PNM in the forward. I am seriously honored.
Reader Comments (9)
Congrats Tom - cool mention !
Horizontal thinking is vital - it's more generative of insight, flexible and creative. It also keeps your brain from getting fat and lazy and your attention honed.
True. Horizontal is the way to go.
Also, I've always wondered though how satisfied academics and big corporate/government types can red-team. I guess it probably explains the mess we are in.
I used Nagl's book for several papers I have written and it seems quite obvious that what he says supports the ideas espoused in the PNM so Tom should not be surprised at the mention. The SysAdmin force is a good example of an updated form of the British forces Nagl mentions in Malaya.
Cheers
Yes, it's like the old adage, "Every problem looks like a nail when the only thing in your toolbox is a hammer."
It is not important WHAT you are, but how you interact with your counterpart A specialist is not effective unless they understand how they fit into the big picture. The generalist whole argument may dissolve if they do not understand the finer points of some specific area.
It is where the specialist and genralist meet that one sees the intersection of good policy and effective implimentation.
BTW: Tom, thought you'd offer some observation on the Packers shellacking. Farve looks totally disinterested in playing anymore. On that 4th and short inside Eagle territory on comes the field goal unit and Farve meekly trots off the field. In better days, Farve would have been screaming to go for it.
Tom,
Anyone who's started a business and succeeded, operates on these (your) premises. "An entrepreneur is someone with a clear concise vision of the future, which no one else shares."
The specialists (accountants, legal, HR, technical et al) object because the generalist must see each of their specialties as a simple black box, and subjugate all of them, order to get on with it.
Tom,
I just read the following interview with former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman: http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=40438
His calling for a 600-ship navy and sabre rattling over China's naval ambitions strike me as a little bit of Cold Warrior rhetoric. I appreciate his criticism of the way post-"Mission Accomplished" Iraq has been (mis)managed, but it seems he's not paying attention to new rulesets.
Have you any experience with Lehman? Perhaps we should send him a copy of TPNM and BPFA? :)
My God, Lehman must have fallen into a tar pit and ossified into stone.
I do wonder on Brett, but I hate the idea of him playing anywhere else.
I do like interacting with specialists. I just don't like brainstorming or red-teaming with them. It gets competitive to the point of pointlessness.
come on lehman said don't go to iraq and if we do we're there for 30 yrs.
and if we are what is his point? the navy should have nuked afghanistan during his sec. nav. tenure and we should fight terror with nuke subs?
loved lehman as sec. nav. but hey- new platform of thought that he needs to adjust to.