A
comprehensive video regarding self-organizing groups,
A video record broken into ten parts:
1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7B5pFSq7XA
Long introduction. Just wait it out.
2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhzRQfhOITA
“Will not be successful….”
3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIUEepb_Sww
“And he shows up at 9 o’clock in the morning….”
4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff4AAhEtmP4
“Whether it is steel production…. General system theory….”
5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7ztQIh--68
“No computer could ever sort that out….”
6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wN-Cc0D6Y
“Often surprised how many people do not know what command and
control is….”
7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf6b9tiCZ4c
“It’s almost impossible to think in terms of …fisherman who
remembers image was….”
8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1zsYuMEPWA
“Logical and biological….”
9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFzzdSh5N7k
Squad sent to take a hill without knowing why.
10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyboxT3r9i8&list=PLFB34220E7FEBD948&index=10
Videos and Books by Lt. General Paul von Riper
Podcast interview by a military radio station staff member.:
Go here
and then hit the "POD" button just under the date.
In this interview General von Riper lists several books when asked
by
the interviewer what he would recommend for people pursuing a
military
career:
Carl von Clausewitz On War
(avoid
1962 edition)
SLA Marshall, The Armed Forces
Officer
Colin Gray, Fighting Talk
Gary Kline Sources of Power
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast
and
Slow
James Gleick, Chaos
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity:
The
Emerging Science at the Edge
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions
General von Riper discusses three kinds leadership climate:
1. One kind of leader announces what organization is going to do,
and
subordinates are not allowed to ask questions. His attitude is,
"Don't
challenge the boss."
2. Another kind of leader indicates that all ideas are welcome,
provides an open door for open discussions, but he cannot bring
forth a
resolution. The discussion drags on interminably.
3. The third kind of leader opens up everything for questions,
suggestions, arguments, debates, intellectual gunfight, and all that
counts is the merit of the idea. However, this leader will
bring
things to a conclusion when external circumstances require that
something be done, or when he decides that no new and useful ground
is
being open. Subordinates prefer this kind of leadership. They all
feel
that they have received a fair hearing even if someone else's idea
gets
accepted. These disccussions also leave a better climate for future
discussions.
General von Riper says of John Boyd that many scholars regard him as
the most prominent and deepest thinker in terms of military
theory that the US has ever produced.
Reading Notes on Gen. Paul Van Riper, "The Foundation of
Strategic
Thinking," available (after registering) here.
General Paul van Riper argues that Carl von Clausewitz's trinity
(passion, probability, and reason) needs to be connected with the
ideas
of operational art and operational design in order to get through to
some way of adequately thinking about strategy.
Several levels of planning must be included to put military strategy
in
its proper context. Above military strategy there needs to be the
nation's grand strategy or national security strategy. Below
military
there need to be operational art to settle upon the means or tactics
that will comport well with the political objectives implicit in the
nation's strategy and will also be effective in combat. This
three-level explication is in general agreement with the way
planning
was done during World War II.
The whole picture changes, however, when planners realize that they
must take account of the non-rigidity of connections between what is
done and what is thereby effected. The same action performed under
different conditions will produce different results, unlike what
happens when the throttle of a well-functioning engine is opened.
One
reason why plans start to fail as soon as they are first put into
action is because the way things connect in organic systems are not
same as the way things connect in systems composed of discrete
components that are rigidly linked together.
Another wrinkle develops when a military planner tries to determine
the
causal connections the pass among what would have been discrete
components if the topic of research was a new jet engine. There are
no
discrete components in an organic system. We can butcher an animal
and
see how the heart connects to the lungs an maybe make out some other
main connections, but how a change in breathing rate, brought on by
an
exciting memory perhaps, will influence the beating of the heart in
the
living organism is something that we have no way to figure out.
Systems
with more than two components that each interact with the others are
instances of the three-body problem, and physicists and
mathematicians
have established that it is impossible to predict how the actions of
such a system will involve. Carl von Clausewitz himself gave the
illustration of a pendulum bob centered over three equally spaced
magnets. Every swing of the pendulum will be different. Clausewitz
used
the magnets as analogs for passion, probability, and reason, the
three
factors that he believed to be essential components in war.
A third wrinkle involves the difficulty in thinking about a system
that
is not composed of discrete parts. In the beginning, nothing may
stand
out as an important factor in the operation of the system. Observers
must impose parts on the system by doing something analogous to
drawing
boundaries around what are suspected to be important factors. Master
Sun, in his Art of War,
divides the day into three parts, and maintains
that enemy troops (and one's own trips as well) will have different
pitches of enthusiasm for fighting during each of these periods. So
theorizing about how to handle an evolving situation involves
tentatively defining significant parts of the enemy's system,
forming
hypotheses about how they work and how they influence each other,
acting on those hypotheses, and adjusting one's model accordingly
(while keeping in mind that it is not exactly the same system now as
it
was when you last gathered information about it).
The ordinary kind of system, exemplified by an automobile, is
classified as linear, and the second kind of system, the kind
applicable to wars and many kinds of complex natural systems, is
classified as non-linear. In a non-linear system, the same input
applied at different times (with the other parts of the system
probably
in different states than before) can have unexpected or
unpredictable
results. Descriptions of the second class of systems are handled
under
the branch of mathematics called chaos theory.
In the past, military strategies have been formed after specific
enemies have been detected. However, even if a potential enemy or a
real enemy is detected, relying on that narrow band of information
to
define the problem that the nation is trying to prepare against will
be
inadequate in today's world.
Planners need to secure a clear understanding of how the military is
to
operate under present and near-future conditions. "Bottom line, the
first order of business in all types of defense planning is to come
some understanding of the emerging security environment, and to
determine who might be an enemy."
"All strategies possess some degree of abstraction while tactics are
always particular. The challenge is to convert the relative
abstraction
of strategy to the mechanics of tactic. Operational art serves as a
bridge from strategy to tactics, while the operational level tends
to
erect boundaries between the two. Operational art’s very purpose
is to force discourse between policy makers, strategists and
operational commanders. There can be no politics or strategy-free
zone
where operational artists practice their role professionally. The
principal means of operational art is operational design whose
purpose
is to arrange campaigns and major operations in time and space to
fulfill the aims of strategy, which in turn is to accomplish the
goals
of policy."