Recently Joe Felter, Pete Newell, and Steve Blank published what they called “An organizational road map for Pentagon to deter China, win in Ukraine” which doubles down on the premise that an Office of Strategic Capital and the existing Defense Innovation Unit would solve several of the U.S. Department of Defense’s agility and adaptability challenges. 

While the article’s title was promising – the actual proposed solutions are lacking in that this proposal raises three concerns in either what it lacks or what it proposes: 

(1)    Absent from the proposal was a change-management framework to drive transformative change at the Department of Defense. The authors seem to think that one or two offices (in this case Office of Strategic Capital and the existing Defense Innovation Unit) could move the titanic that is the U.S. DoD, however DIU so far has not had transformative impact and – as this article will detail – belief in a single office to drive change probably is misplaced. 

(2)    Present in the proposal, and arguably flawed, is the idea of “two tracking” Office of the Secretary of Defense’s research and engineering organization in half: Keep the current organization focused on the status quo; and create a peer organization. We have seen this before, when Gartner in the mid-2010s also pitched “Bimodal IT” – one group focused on “legacy IT” and another on “agile, fast-moving IT”. As the mid-2010s can attest, splitting your organization this way creates culture clashes that help no one. After all, who wants to be dubbed “keepers of the status quo” – meanwhile being given the license to “move fast and break things” removes the other new group from having an empathy for the very system they are trying to transform. 

(3)    Absent in the proposal except for the above, is any understanding that Innovation is not an outcome or something to assign to just a part of the organization. The proposal noticeably does not discuss the transformation necessary across the DoD’s entire workforce (little is talked about talent management or retention). The article pointedly does not assign the job of being innovative or transformative to everyone in the DoD, even at little scales that could become bigger scales in total. By absolving the DoD workforce of this responsibility, this article contends the authors do a “process foul” by not recognizing the DoD works best when certain tenets are held across the entire department. 

The Past is Prologue – Considering a Force of the Future in 2015

Back in 2015, a senior staffer from the Office of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Undersecretary for Personnel & Readiness gave me a call and said they were 6 months behind schedule on one of the top three priorities for then-SECDEF Carter, namely his planned “Force of the Future” initiative. They asked if I could help – specifically for free over weekends and weeknights (because I was already with the USG and could not be paid more). In response, I said I would if I could build a small strike Team. USD(P&R) said “sure” – if they also were willing to work for free too.

Fortunately, eleven other friends and colleagues signed up to help. We had about 2 months to get it back on track (again, for free since we were already working for the USG in separate roles). We asked the DoD if they had defined the personnel problems they wanted to solve – i.e., define the problem before you focus on the solutions – and they had not. Moreover, when we looked at the “solutions” (despite the absence of a problem definition) – they had 900+ recommendations with about 50% or more focusing on Chief Learning Officer activities because, surprise, the personnel the different service components had volunteered to help were mostly Learning Officers themselves so of course their recommendations were biased to them.

Ultimately the agile X-Cell of twelve people working pro bono was able to reverse engineer a problem definition from the SECDEF’s public speeches and then use that problem definition to first rack and stack, and then prioritize as well as deprioritize recommendations, relative to the problems DoD faced re: personnel. At the time, the biggest issue we found was not about size – the biggest issues were a lack of real-time data on the talent the DoD did and did not have, as well as the talent they would need and not need for the near-future. Also, USD(P&R) had no viable Theory of Change for how they would actually *implement* the changes to the DoD workforce – let alone a recognition that you cannot provide 900+ recommendations and expect them to stick.

What the 2015 X-Cell Found the Department of Defense Should Do

The motley DoD X-Cell worked with the Department to eventually reduce that number of recommendations to about 90-or-so, but even then, the twelve person X-Cell rightfully said it should be ten or less in our collective opinion. Moreover, we pointed out that such change cannot be driven solely from the top – SECDEFs come and go after all. We also said that such change cannot be driven solely from the bottom either – as in 2015 there were too many Innovation Inflation flowers blooming then without the ability to “cross the chasm” into successful scalable, institutionalization activities. The DoD back then risked scattershot “Innoflation” that looked like innovation but missed the opportunity to institutionalize anything they did with the rest of big DoD.

Behind the scenes we made two concrete suggestions – the first of which I will present here. There was a proposal to (1) have DoD operate with some discretionary part of its budget, say 5%, on spotlight efforts that did transform at scale how the DoD workforce and processes operated. We also made a proposal (2) that DARPA could incubate novel approaches to analytics so that the DoD could answer how many and which U.S. Army personnel both know Farsi and are trained in human terrain activities in less than 3 hours instead of 3-4 weeks.

Fast-forward to today and these ideas still have merit, so in the spirit of sharing these ideas so that others may refine, rework, and revamp these ideas potentially for further use – I will share these two ideas here starting with the first one. Post number two should follow soon after this one later today too and discuss the novel approaches to analytics for the Department too.

Proposed (Back Then): A DoD Coordinating Office of Future Force Ventures

Let’s be frank: there are too many Innovation Inflation flowers blooming across the Department of Defense and insufficient scaling across one-off prototypes to the services. Part of the challenge is incumbents do not want to see their programs be disrupted – even if it is in the interest of the Department and the nation’s defense. Part of the challenge is risk-taking is rarely rewarded. If something does not work, pioneers’ risk being shunned and rebuked or called before Congress.

Some parts of the Department lack an agile mindset that incorporates the recognition that to “FAIL” is an acronym and Iterative Learning is necessary – specifically that there will be First Attempts at Iterative Learning (FAILs), followed by Second Attempts at Iterative Learning, Third Attempts at Iterative Learning, and more.

PROJECT CORONA back in the early 1960s explored thirteen times on the rocket pad before finally getting into space – and it was not until attempt number twenty-one that it was fully successful. Similar “adaptive learning” thinking is needed for our current decade and beyond.

The proposal in 2015 was for a U.S. Department of Defense’s Coordinating Office of Future Force Ventures focused internally on “in situ” fielding of new workforce technologies, process improvements (as tech without process adaptations misses the mark), new incentives (as process adaptations without rewards also miss the mark), policy improvements, and new ways of working at scale and speed for the DoD. To make that happen would require a three-step lifecycle: (1) experiment, (2) demonstrate, (3) institutionalize.

In the time that followed the 2015 X-Cell, SECDEF Carter and subsequent SECDEFs took some of these ideas and got the experiment part going – but the harder “institutionalize across the department” part remains the chasm to be crossed. To solve that, the proposal at the time basically was to have a Department-wide internal-only VC with up to 5% discretion to bring more resources, personnel, or outside expertise for initiatives that are moving the ball forward with one or multiple Services. Employ the friendly rivalries of the Service to outperform each other to motivate delivery of results at speed. Rotate personnel in and out of these projects – as Innovation is not done by a single office (sorry DIU), instead it is done DoD-wide with everyone playing a role. Recognize as well that contractors can be your friends or foes – and most quietly will smile and passive aggressively stale against anything that risks eroding their bottom line. So, the SECDEF and Congress will need to provide top cover for this DoD wide activity. Let DARPA serve as the outside incubator of an advanced analytics function to better understand the current and future workforce, to include what contractors/contracts are working, stalled, and need to be killed.

The Coordinating Office of Future Force Ventures would need to have a subordinate office focused on Digital HR Services. At the time in 2015, the DoD was spending $11 billion or more on HR functions – and it was our estimate that process improvements could literally pay for this entire effort if Congress was willing to apply pressure to be efficient with regards to HR activities and recognize some incumbent contractors might not like that, but others would be motivated to deliver results differently and better.

Not Resting the Hopes on a Single Office (Or Pair of Offices)

To be clear, the 2015 proposal of a Coordinating Office of Future Force Ventures was expressly not to pin the hopes of DoD-wide innovation and transformation on a single office – or in the case of the recent proposal Joe Felter, Pete Newell, and Steve Blank, two offices. 

There are three quick — yet ultimately superficial — adaptations that organizations confronting rapid change often find tempting but should avoid. These apply to organizational change in general, and more specifically to organizations attempting digital transformations.

(1)    Avoid creating a transformation office unconnected to the rest of the organization: Transformation is everyone’s responsibility. Creating a disconnected office that does not include staff drawn or rotated in from the rest of the organization risks creating a culture of “cool kids” isolated from the rest of the workforce. This also risks dismissing those individuals already doing valuable transformation work elsewhere in the organization. 

(2)    Avoid digitizing processes without rethinking the organization’s business model: Focusing solely on IT misses the primary point that a rapidly changing world requires new business models. Just digitizing existing manual processes overlooks massive opportunities to improve how the organization works — and meaningful improvement must include transforming how the organization operates. 

(3)    Avoid just hiring a lone “chief ______ officer”: This pins the entire hopes of the organization on one individual, when in fact helping the organization adapt to the shifting future of work is everyone’s responsibility. Expertise only comes from experiments, and thus all C-suite leaders must recognize the need to deliver results that matter by using existing business models while also experimenting with new and better ones in parallel.

Why Adapting to a Changing World Is Hard

Organizations (and most people) are not prone to change when things are going well – or at least “good enough.” When an organization is doing well, the few prescient voices scanning the future and urging the organization to change its business model are ignored, marginalized, or worse.

When the external environment in which an organization operates changes, and the existing business processes no longer work, there usually remains a lot of denial that the world has changed. Often leaders and managers will revert to the refrain of “if we just get back to our principles of X years ago, then the organization will be fine.” Organizations that deny the world has changed will push to work harder at the old business model, or perhaps make an incremental improvement, attempting to get back to the old days that were so successful.

It is only when things get terribly bad that an organization might finally embrace those voices that express the urgent need to do something completely different in an unfamiliar environment. This is akin to waiting until an airplane has unexpectedly descended from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to less than 2,000 feet with the hopes of pulling the plane, with all its weight and inertia, back up before it hits the ground.

In such “truly bad” scenarios, some organizations might risk doing one of the quick yet ultimately superficial adaptations. It is important to note that any one of those strategies is not entirely bad if there are more meaningful actions accompanying it. Leaders need to recognize that a quick adaptation rarely, if ever, helps an existing organization through the challenging work of adapting to a changing world.

Three Meaningful Strategies to Deliver Results

The last decade has shown that global, social, and marketplace shifts triggered by advances in technology and digital data — are rapidly transforming the nature of work and how existing organizations in both the private and public sector can best adapt to global change.

This explains the popularity of startups, which unlike existing organizations, lack legacy processes or technologies. Startup founders can reimagine a new way of doing business without the burden of how things “used to work” in their organization. Yet even startups today will accumulate similar legacy burdens. In the next three to four years how they previously worked when they started will no longer fit with the latest disruptive technology landscape, changing marketplace, and public demand.

So how can both established and relatively new organizations find new ways to be nimble and adaptive? For the Department of Defense – which represents an established organization – here are three more meaningful strategies to pursue transformation across the entire Department:  

(1)    Reward delivering results differently and better: Instead of striving to change organizational cultures (plural) head-on, an organization’s C-suite should visibly give permission — and reward — to those parts of the existing organization that deliver results differently and better. This will incentivize the more change-averse parts of your organization to expand their search space and provide top-cover to those prescient voices who can see future trends and successfully translate them into implementation and delivery of positive outcomes.

(2)    Adapt the practiced values and goals of an organization to the changing world instead of attempting to change mission statements: Organizations that remain nimble and adaptive do so by explicitly recognizing that outcomes matter, and what an organization aims for and values on a regular basis in practice is much more important than any mission statement. What individuals in an organization perceive as intrinsically valued and rewarded will motivate them to adapt in ways that are long lasting. This then translates delivering results differently and better and ultimately transforms organizational cultures.

(3)    Champion everyone across the organization to be positive #ChangeAgents: Specifically, #ChangeAgents are leaders who “illuminate the way” and manage the friction of stepping outside the status quo. Meaningful change happens across an organization when everyone realizes that anyone in an organization can be a change agent. There is no need to be a designated manager or supervisor. There is no need to receive formal authority to do so. By individually making improvements in the context of our own roles, this work will reverberate across an existing organization and collectively will adapt better to our changing world.

Circling Back to the 2015 X-Cell and Considering 2023 and Beyond

Given the three earlier referenced superficial adaptations to avoid – and the three just mentioned meaningful adaptations to pursue across the DoD – this article contends that the Department can transform itself by recognizing the DoD works best when certain tenets are held across the entire department. Dividing the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s research and engineering organization in half will result in culture clashes that help no one. 

In contrast, rewarding innovation, transformation, and adaptability across the entire Department wherever it happens will be a tandem competition (across the Services) and collaboration mentality that brings the whole DoD to the level of agility necessary to thrive in 2023 and beyond. 

Specifically, if the DoD should have the ability to rotate folks in and out regularly across the Department into the Coordinating Office of Future Force Ventures – as Innovation is not done by a single office (sorry DIU), instead it is done DoD-wide with everyone playing a role. Such an office would help with “in situ” fielding of new workforce technologies, process improvements (as tech without process adaptations misses the mark), new incentives (as process adaptations without rewards also miss the mark), policy improvements, and new ways of working at scale and speed for the DoD. By “in situ” this means in the Department at all levels – not just limited to one part or Team. 

The proposed endeavor would employ the rivalries of the Service to outperform each other to motivate delivery of results at speed. We called this the “melting the iceberg” approach that was not just top-down or bottom-up, instead it used sunlight and salt across the Department to melt resistance to adaptation. 

The Coordinating Office for Future Force Ventures would need to have a subordinate office focused on Digital HR Services. At the time in 2015, the DoD was spending $11 billion or more on HR functions – and it was our estimate that process improvements could literally pay for this entire effort if Congress was willing to apply pressure to be efficient with regards to HR activities and recognize some incumbent contractors might not like that, but others would be motivated to deliver results differently and better. The idea was that top-level Departmental leadership would pose questions and challenges to drive the Office to get better at using data to identify gaps and future needs in the DoD’s workforce. 

Moreover, in contrast to the current state of DIU and Defense Digital Services, the proposed Coordinating Office of Future Focused Ventures would engage external partners as well as internal “change agents” from across the Department to experiment, demonstrate, and institutionalize new processes, technologies, and new ways of working. 

Eight years later, in retrospect the DoD seems to have attempted to tackle Digital Services but missed the Workforce Transformation part to include the people, processes, and policy shifts that need to go along with such an embrace of digital. The DoD of today is missing the necessary “institutionalization” of interesting, yet limited, prototypes as well as the necessary involve-everyone-in-innovation as it is a collective team sport mentality. 

The opportunity remains. Perhaps some of these ideas shared here can jumpstart ideas for 2023 and beyond.

Dr. David A. Bray is a Distinguished Fellow at the non-partisan Henry L. Stimson Center, non-resident Distinguished Fellow with the Business Executives for National Security, and a CEO and transformation leader for different “under the radar” tech and data ventures seeking to get started in novel situations. He also is Principal at LeadDoAdapt Ventures and has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments, including bioterrorism preparedness and response from 2000-2005, Executive Director for a bipartisan National Commission on R&D, providing non-partisan leadership as a federal agency Senior Executive, work with the U.S. Navy and Marines on improving organizational adaptability, and with U.S. Special Operation Command’s J5 Directorate on the challenges of countering disinformation online. He has received both the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award and the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. David accepted a leadership role in December 2019 to direct the successful bipartisan Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data that included Senator Mark Warner, Senator Rob Portman, Rep. Suzan DelBene, and Rep. Michael McCaul. From 2017 to the start of 2020, David also served as Executive Director for the People-Centered Internet coalition Chaired by Internet co-originator Vint Cerf and was named a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition starting in 2018. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” under 40 and he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. For twelve different startups, he has served as President, CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, and Strategic Advisor roles.