The Last Mile of the Market

How Networks, Participation and Responsible Autonomy

Support Mission Command and Transform Personnel
Management

John Verdon
Personnel Outlook Research
Organization and Operational Dynamics

Lieutenant-Commander Bruce C. Forrester

SSO Social Networking
ADM(IM)/DGIMSP/SMA(GI)/DGPS(GI)

Zhigang Wang
Future Personnel Concepts
Personnel and Family Support Research

DGMPRA TM 2009-022
November 2009

Defence R&D Canada

Director General Military Personnel Research & Analysis

Chief Military Personnel

The Last Mile of the Market
How Networks, Participation and Responsible Autonomy Support
Mission Command and Transform Personnel Management

John Verdon
Personnel Outlook Research
Organizational and Operational Dynamics

Lieutenant-Commander Bruce C. Forrester

SSO Social Networking
ADM(IM)/DGIMSP/SMA(GI)/DGPS(GI)

Zhigang Wang
Future Personnel Concepts
Personnel and Family Support Research

Director General Military Personnel Research & Analysis

Technical Memorandum
DGMPRA TM 2009-022
November 2009
 Principal Author

(Original signed by)

John Verdon, MA

Approved by

(Original signed by)

Douglas Pelchat, BA
Section Head – Personnel Generation Research

Approved for release by

(Original signed by)

Kelly Farley, PhD
Chief Scientist – Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as the
official position of the Canadian Forces, nor of the Department of National Defence.

© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of National Defence, 2009.
© Sa Majesté la Reine (en droit du Canada), telle que représentée par le ministre de la Défense nationale, 2009.
Abstract ……..

The paradigm of the last mile is intended to convey how the concept and narrative of responsible
autonomy allows societies founded on market-system economics to harness emergent complexity,
self-organization and achieve many ends most efficiently without direct central control of
resources or processes. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production
enable the extension of responsible autonomy in a way that both challenges and can augment
traditional hierarchical approaches to control.

The paper is one of a series of papers that explore the human and HR implications of an
organization that embraces network enabled capability. The ultimate goal of this series of
papers is to lay the groundwork for a larger project – of developing a comprehensive theory and
philosophy for personnel management in the 21st century – a comprehensive HR Concept that
integrates personnel management with the Capability Domain Concepts. It is for this reason,
that we cover so much conceptual territory. Such a concept is necessary to the CF to fully and
effectively enable mission command. We argue that the future is already here, a future that is
built on the past (including an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift) and yet remains open to be
determined and created by all of us.

To tell this story we cover a large conceptual territory. We start with the birth of the market,
move to concepts of organizational architecture, complexity, mission command, and human
capital. Finally we weave these together with the concepts of peer-production and responsible
autonomy as a new network-enabled mode of production, and a personnel platform that provides
for non-hierarchical exchanges enabling the right people to be connected to the right situation
at the right time. The development of a personnel platform (personnel concepts, structures and
processes) for responsible autonomy will enable the CF to more fully harness new and emergent
personnel capabilities including:

a. Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about;

b. Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job;

c. Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure;

d. Increasing productivity;

e. A deep culture of collaboration and achieving ends without direct control of resources;

f. Increasing Decision-Action dominance and greater operational agility.

In essence, responsible autonomy and peer-production within an appropriate organizational

paradigm is a human capability multiplier – one that would allow the CF to ease its management
burden, more fully leverage the professionalism of its people, enhance its capacity to educate and
train effectively and efficiently, and increase its operational agility while mitigating the friction
of the posting cycle and the turbulence of continual transformation and training. Furthermore,
network-enabled capabilities shift the organizational focus from an emphasis on control via the
chain-of-command to a command centric web of distributed control. This also means less tail,
more teeth, more types of teeth, and better prepared teeth.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 i
Résumé ….....

Le paradigme du dernier kilomètre vise à transmettre la façon dont le concept et la nature de

l’autonomie responsable permettent aux sociétés fondées sur une économie de marché d’exploiter
la complexité émergente et l’autoorganisation et de réaliser plusieurs fins plus efficacement
sans contrôle central direct des ressources ou des processus. Les technologies de réseau, les
architectures de participation et la production par les pairs favorisent l’élargissement de
l’autonomie responsable d’une manière qui remet en question les approches hiérarchiques
classiques à l’égard du contrôle tout en pouvant les accroître.

Le document fait partie d’une série de documents qui examine les conséquences pour l’être
humain et les RH d’une organisation qui adopte les opérations facilitées par réseaux. Le but
ultime de cette série de documents consiste à poser les jalons en vue d’un projet plus étendu –
celui d’élaborer une théorie et une philosophie exhaustives en matière de gestion du personnel
au 21e siècle – un concept global des RH qui intègre la gestion du personnel aux concepts de
domaines de compétences. C’est pour cette raison que nous couvrons un territoire conceptuel si
vaste. Les FC ont besoin d’un tel concept pour faciliter le commandement de mission pleinement
et efficacement. Nous affirmons que l’avenir est déjà là, un avenir qui se fonde sur le passé
(y compris un changement de paradigme fondamental continu), mais qui reste ouvert à être
déterminé et créé par nous tous.

Pour raconter l’histoire de ce phénomène, nous couvrons un vaste territoire conceptuel. Nous
commençons par la naissance du marché et poursuivons en abordant les concepts d’architecture
organisationnelle, de complexité, de commandement de mission et de capital humain. Finalement,
nous les intégrons aux concepts de production par les pairs et d’autonomie responsable comme
nouveau mode de production réseaucentrique et plateforme du personnel qui favorisent des
échanges non hiérarchiques permettant aux bonnes personnes d’être liées à la bonne situation
au bon moment. L’élaboration d’une plateforme du personnel (concepts, structures et processus
liés au personnel) pour l’autonomie responsable permettra aux FC d’exploiter plus pleinement
les capacités du personnel nouvelles et émergentes, dont :

a. Participation : en soutenant les intérêts (liés au travail) qui passionnent les travailleurs;

b. Continuité des efforts au-delà des frontières d’un poste particulier;

c. Spécialisation élargie : au-delà des limites de la structure professionnelle;

d. Productivité accrue;

e. Culture de collaboration forte et atteinte d’objectifs sans contrôle direct des ressources;

f. Prédominance accrue de la prise de décisions et de mesures (intervention) et agilité

opérationnelle améliorée.

Essentiellement, l’autonomie responsable et la production par les pairs dans le cadre d’un
paradigme organisationnel approprié constitue un multiplicateur de la capacité humaine – qui
permettrait aux FC d’alléger leurs tâches de gestion, de mieux tirer profit du professionnalisme

ii DGMPRA TM 2009-022
de ses membres, d’améliorer sa capacité à éduquer et à former avec efficacité et efficience
et d’augmenter son agilité opérationnelle tout en atténuant les conflits liés au cycle d’affectation
et les perturbations causées par la transformation et la formation continues. De plus, les
opérations facilitées par réseaux ont fait passer la priorité organisationnelle du contrôle par le
biais de la chaîne de commandement à un réseau axé sur le commandement du contrôle réparti.
Cette situation signifie également moins de forces de soutien, plus de forces de combat, plus
de types de forces de combat et des forces de combat mieux préparées.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 iii

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iv DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Executive summary

The Last Mile of the Market: How Networks, Participation and

Responsible Autonomy Support Mission Command and
Transform Personnel Management
John Verdon; Bruce C. Forrester; Zhigang Wang; DGMPRA TM 2009-022;
Defence R&D Canada – DGMPRA; November 2009.

This paper continues to explore the implications network-enabled capability and particularly
of peer-production as presented in the previous paper Understanding the Impact of Network
Technologies on the Design of Work – Social and Peer Production.1 It is intended as one of a
series of papers that explore the human and HR implications of an organization that embraces
network enabled capability. The ultimate goal of this series of papers is to lay the groundwork
for a larger project – of developing a comprehensive theory and philosophy for personnel
management in the 21st century – a comprehensive HR Concept that integrates personnel
management with the Capability Domain Concepts. It is for this reason, that we cover so
much conceptual territory.

The paper aims to outline a future or advanced concept related to managing people in the CF
and to explain why this concept is necessary – which, in brief is to fully and effectively enable
mission command as well as the people enabling technologies of networks. In order to do
this, our arguments will show that the future is already here, a future that is built on the past
(including an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift) and yet remains open to be determined
and created by all of us.

To tell this story we cover a large conceptual territory. We start with the birth of the market,
move to concepts of organizational architecture, complexity, mission command, and human
capital. Finally we weave these together with the concepts of peer-production and responsible
autonomy as a new network-enabled mode of production, and a personnel platform that provides
for non-hierarchical exchanges enabling the right people to be connected to the right situation
at the right time.

Why is so much territory covered? One of our aims is to provide a sense of scope, a
reconnaissance of the intangible conceptual environment within which leaders and managers
must navigate organizational change and transformation in the 21st century. The problem
with complexity is that when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, an elaboration of the
part(s) does not provide sufficient understanding of the true nature of the whole. What we aim
to provide is a sense of the key concepts in this network landscape and their inter-relationships
so that the ‘whole’ that emerges out of the ‘parts and their interactions’ makes sense.

Our central argument is that network technologies, architectures of participation and new insights
based on the development of complexity science represent a dramatic disruptive challenge to
1
Verdon, J., Forrester, B., Tanner, L. (2007). Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies on
the Design of Work – Social and Peer Production. Technical Memorandum DMPFD TM 2007-04,
April 2007.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 v
industrial institutions as well as organizational structures and processes. The challenges are
both general, as well as to human resource and personnel management in particular. These
technologies provide a new and evolving social architecture of participation and an infrastructural
platform capability inciting the emergence of new concepts of how organizations are structured,
how people can be managed and developed, and how learning and work can be accomplished.
This paradigm shift mirrors the decentralization of control instituted by the political and social
movements away from command economies toward political-economies embracing more
balanced market systems. An evolution is anticipated from industrial control-hierarchy
organizations to network-enabled, complex, and adaptive organizations within dynamic
and evolving environments.

An architecture of participation is defined as the design of system structures to optimize user

participation and contribution, by minimizing any barriers to entry. Thus, as societies and
populations become larger, more diverse and economies became more complex – increasing the
mechanisms enabling greater autonomy lowered the barrier to participation and enabled these
political-social economies to adapt, evolve and thrive.

Disruptive technology is defined as technological innovations that unexpectedly and dramatically

displace established technologies and industries, by their nature they tend to initially lack
refinement, are riddled with performance problems, have no proven practical application
and appeal to a limited audience. They eventually enable a whole new population of consumers
access to products, services or experience historically accessible to small populations of the rich
or the skilled. A classic example of the advent of the car (horseless carriage) which initially
underperformed the horse but eventually displaced whole industries that depended/supported
horse-based transportation and fostered whole new industries to support and augment the
automobile and faster travel.

The Market System:

Imagine it’s 1795, and you’re a shopkeeper somewhere in Spain. You no longer believe,
as the ancient Egyptians did, that your king is literally a god living on earth. But you
still believe that he has a divine right to rule over you. You can’t imagine any country
being governed well without a king who is responsible for the protection and control
of is subjects.
You have heard of the strange rebellion in North America in which the British colonists
claimed that they could govern themselves without any king at all. You’ve also
heard about the recent bloodshed in France that ended with a group of so-called
revolutionaries killing their king, replacing the government, and destroying, almost
overnight, so many good things. These events seem to you like profound mistakes,
foolhardy experiments that are bound to fail.
It just doesn’t make sense to say – as the democratic revolutionaries do – that people can
govern themselves. That’s a contradiction in terms, like saying that children could raise
themselves or farm animals could run a farm. People can try it, you think, but it certainly
couldn’t work as well as having a wise and just king.2

2
Malone, T. (2004). The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your
Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Harvard Business School Press, p. 3.

vi DGMPRA TM 2009-022
The ideas of a market system, and democracy (Smith’s Wealth of Nations and America’s
Declaration of Independence were published in the same year) both represent the modern social
embodiment of an long evolving and unfolding narrative of responsible autonomy. The metaphor
of the market is intended represent the powerful paradigm of self-organization, one that is most
significant in its embrace of complexity and the challenge of achieving effects without direct
control of all necessary resources. This paradigm also embraces other concepts such as
heterarchy, and responsible autonomy.

A market system is an exchange system that is unparalleled in allocating resources (with

corresponding coordination of activities). Effectiveness requires both a sound regulatory regime
and a decentralized self-organization: “The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty,
and of perfect equality, is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest
degree of prosperity to all … classes” (Smith, 1776, p. 726).

The market system as an organizing paradigm, is a powerful illustration that as a society we have
already embraced the ideas of a self-organized distributed control in the very a concrete way and
would not accept a reversion to a centrally controlled economy or society. And yet this paradigm
strikes many as unworkable within the boundaries of our organizations.

We see the market system as a generative (enabling and inviting continual improvement)
platform demanding and unleashing: responsible autonomy and self-organization; efficient
allocation of resources; coordination of related activities and impartial trusted exchange.
At minimum it presupposes legitimate:

a. Laws and principles of individual and property rights;

b. Social technologies of contract, exchange, credit, transparent aggregation of

information, etc.;

c. Standards – weight, measure, currency/value, etc.;

d. Literacy to comprehend standards, price, information, etc.; and

e. Recourse and enforcement mechanisms.

Thus the last mile is a metaphor for the need to embed responsible autonomy within the military
organizational structure as a new type of personnel platform and space for non-hierarchical
(impersonal) exchange and collaboration. This is absolutely necessary to enable people
to use network technologies and power organizational learning and operational agility.
More importantly, responsible autonomy will serve as a keystone concept in the development
of a larger integrated 21st Century personnel concept.

Organizations on the other hand, are platforms for harnessing collective human effort. The
architectural principles of their design are constrained by material, technological, and social
frameworks, as well as by invisible structures contained in our paradigms. Perhaps the most
important framework however, is the institutional framework. North (2005) defines institutions
as the rules of the game and organizations as the players in the game. At minimum an
institutional framework consists of:

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 vii

 a. Power structure specifying decisioning and governance;

b. Property rights structures that define incentives; and

c. Social structures – norms and conventions defining informal incentives.

The institutional framework is a human made creation whose function is neither automatic nor
‘natural’ and it must adapt to changes in technology, information and human capital to continue
to function optimally.

Organizational Architecture: The traditional organization is designed as an engineered machine

and depicted as a control hierarchy. In turn the hierarchy limits the complexity of possible
collective behaviours of the system. Increasing the size of the organization and/or variety within
it both increases coordination costs and limits internal complexity. At each level of the hierarchy,
local control/coordination must be passed upward through the local controller until the highest
level is reached. This implies that the collective actions of the system in which the parts of the
system affect other parts of the system must be no more complex than the controller. In human
hierarchies the collective behaviour must be simple enough to be represented by a single human
being3. This limits the span of control to that which an individual can effectively manage.
Trying to mitigate this limit with more managers and correspondingly reduced spans of control
is useful only to the point where the collective behaviour required by the organization does not
increase internal complexity beyond the management capacity of the highest level of the control
hierarchy. However, more management increases overhead costs and consumes ingenuity and
innovation capital, reducing agility and adaptability. The hierarchy amplifies the scale of the
behaviour controlled but it does not increase its complexity.

The machine-organization determines the hierarchic and occupational structures framing a highly
specified division of labour, which in turn define relatively linear career trajectories. The design
is top-down, separating the designer from the tool. The purpose of the machine as organization
determines the required inputs and expected outputs. Although labour is viewed as an input,
the worker is transformed into a replaceable ‘cog’ (task-specified job) constituting the machine
and enabling it to function effectively. The worker, as any other ‘part’, is replaced as needed.
Of course efficient replace-ability implies a high degree of standardization.

A confounding problem with this framework relates to the side effects that a military organization
is particularly vulnerable to, namely the turbulence of a fluid posting cycle. For example, ‘jobs’
(designed and analysed as cogs within a machine) are filled by a constant turnover of personnel,
which assumes a stable environment and a generally unchanging ‘output/product’. Under this
assumption the flow of personnel creates costs in terms of efficiency related to the time that
incumbents require to achieve competence and cost related to training. However these costs
are somewhat mitigated by the development of human capital as personnel gain experience
in different parts of the organization. The cost-benefit analysis is dramatically different
when the situation is one of regular/constant transformation and change within an organization.
In this case, the human capital invested in and developed as an incumbent occupies a particular
job/cog is largely unused or wasted when personnel move to new positions. The need to focus
on immediate situations of running the organization and changing the organization often leaves

3
Ibid

viii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

no room for personnel to provide insight, personal knowledge and lessons-learned to the new
incumbents of previously held positions. Another way of seeing this problem is as a problem
of lost opportunity costs related to an ability to exploit or use the full range of human capital –
a capital that requires tremendous investment in time and resource to develop.

Complexity: Human resource management continues to be largely determined by this

organization-as-machine schematic. In stark contrast, the metaphor more appropriate to the
21st Century (embracing complexity and rapid, continuous transformation) is to understand
and design an organization as a complex evolving system.

However, the external complexity of an organization, the complexity of the environments within
which an organization operates, in turn, can vary from stable and relatively stable to dynamic
changing and highly complex. When the organization’s external complexity changes and begins
to exceed its internal complexity, the chances of failure loom high. Therefore, the organization
should endeavour to increase its internal complexity sufficiently to be able to generate successful
response to environmental demands. This is the role of competition (creation of sufficient
variety) in evolution and the market system.4

There is a profound distinction to be made between the complex and complicated. Complex
systems are non-reducible, non-linear, producing ‘emergent’ capabilities (greater-than-the-
sum-of-their-parts). All modern militaries have recognized that the operational environments
are complex and becoming increasingly so. Complex problems often require unique
or customized solutions and complex environments require organizational agility in the
development of customized resources configured to the complexity of the environment.
The capacity of an individual (person or organization) to adapt to a particular environment
depends on the ability of the individual to outmatch the environmental demands – thus internal
complexity must match or exceed external complexity for in order to successfully overcome
challenging environmental demands.

Key to an organizational capacity to generate the type of internal complexity that can meet and
overcome external complexity is enabling responsible autonomy. Thus far we have argued that
the market system powered by responsible autonomy enabled a society to enhance the internal
complexity of its economy in a decentralized and self-organizing manner. We will next
examine the concept of mission command as the concept relates to both complexity and
responsible autonomy.

Mission Command: Mission Command is a platform for harnessing the power of decentralized
execution of command intent through the delegation of command authority. The concept of
decentralized execution is a partial concept that is more precisely or completely captured with
the concept of responsible autonomy. We discuss the complementary roles that common intent
and responsible autonomy play in mission command, especially as they relate to complexity.
Thus the primary premise of this paper is that there is a deep parallel between:

a. The continual evolution of the market system and responsible autonomy,

(in order to adapt to a growing complexity in the human environment); and

4
Ibid, Figure 1 below is an unmodified version except for the title.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 ix
 b. The development of mission command (in order to adapt to a growing complexity
of the operational environment).

In Table 1 we also draw out the parallels between a market system and mission command.

Table 1: The Last Mile of the Market and Mission Command

Adam Smith’s Market System Mission Command

The Relationships Between The Relationships Between
Freedom to Pursue Interests Distributed control
Individual Autonomy Responsible Autonomy
Impersonal Exchange Non-Hierarchical Exchange
With the People Enabling With the People Enabling
Technologies and Institutions Technologies and Institutions
The Transparency of – The Transparency of –
Trusted Price Mechanism Trusted Situational Awareness
Common Regulatory Framework Common Intent
Results in Results in
Invisible Hand of Market Self-Synchronization
Invisible Hand of Implicit Intent

Human Capital: For Adam Smith, the annual labour of a nation is its source and measure
of wealth. He defined the productive capacity of people as human capital. Since Smith,
the concepts of human, social, cultural, intellectual capital continue to be more extensively
elaborated. However, classic economic theory posits three factors – land, labour and capital.
We argue that this theoretical framework is insufficient neither for the 21st Century knowledge-
based economy, nor for a military organization so dependent on leadership for harnessing human
will. In line with this we offer an alternative framework in which human agency provides the
encompassing factor consistent with the key role of human will and enables the concept of capital
to more easily include the more intangible human, social, cultural dimensions of capital. The
exercise of will and responsible autonomy are synonymous ideas. We believe that the knowledge
of the military profession resides primarily in the minds of its members.

There is an imperative to understand human (and social, cultural) capital, the investment made to
obtain, develop and use this capital and most importantly to continue to generate increased human
capital capability. Like physical and other forms of capital, human capital also requires sacrifice
in time, effort and other resources to be acquired. Acquiring human capital depends on training,
education, learning and experience. We offer an elaboration of learning implications which can
result from the platforms of responsible autonomy and the last mile of the market (including the
long tail, network technologies and architectures of participation).

x DGMPRA TM 2009-022
With the advent of the network society and the acceleration of science and technology progress –
several assumptions about organizational structure and education and training are being
challenged including:

a. From Place-Centric to Person-Centric world;

b. From Training to Learning-How-To-Learn;

c. From Authority-Down to Bi-Directionality;

d. From the Transfer of knowledge to Knowledge Creation;

e. From Orchestrated Capabilities to Emergent Capabilities;

f. From the Power of Individual Learning to The power of Real-Time

Collective Learning;

g. From Training to Re-Training and Re-Re-training;

h. From Individual Intelligence to Intelligence Amplification;

i. From job to Work;

j. From Contract to Commitment; and

k. From Job Security to Employability Security.

A Platform for Responsible Autonomy: Thus far we have traversed the path of the market
system, organizational architectures, complexity, mission command and human capital. Before
we address the last mile and the platform of responsible autonomy we examine some of the
remaining anomalies of a control hierarchy. These anomalies include:

a. Misaligned perspectives including: leadership-management; operational-systemic;

and cohort-based;

b. The pace of change and the resulting context as eternal transformation; and

c. Unintended consequences of the implicit incentives of the traditional career structure.

The concept of creating a market-like platform for peer-production and responsible autonomy
within the organization aims to provide an emergent internal capability to support the Integrated
Capstone Concept and thus better enable the adaptive capability to successfully handle increasing
internal and external complexity. The concept of platform for responsible autonomy is essentially
simple. Each member has control-ownership of a portion of their time to contribute to the
organization as they see fit. This is the concept of the ‘last mile of the market’. The member-
owned portion of their time in conjunction with enabling network technologies would provide

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xi
the organization with a market-like corporate-level resource pool, group-forming network, and
peer-production5 space – the last mile of the market.

We then restructure the organization by restructuring its smallest part – the job and person time.
Table 2 below lays this out – the percentages listed are intended simply to help illustrate
the concept.

Table 2: Restructuring the Organization for the Last Mil

Percent Time Ownership and Purpose Architecture

Owned by job:
J = 70% Hierarchy
Running the organization – being the cog in the machine
Owned by organization:
O = 15% Heterarchy
Transforming the organization – refitting, longer term strategy
Owned by individual:
Responsible
i = 15% Pursuit of personal interest as it contributes to the
Autonomy
organization and one’s self

The time traditionally constituted as a person’s ‘job obligation’ is divided up: 70% of the time
of each of the worker ‘owned’ by their current ‘job/role’, 15% is ‘owned by the corporate level
of the organization and finally 15% is owned by individual worker.

In this way the ‘job-cog’ is dedicated to running the organization with 70% of the person’s
time under hierarchical control. Transformation and strategic requirements efforts would have
15% of the HR time creating a heterarchical structure. Finally, each individual would own
15% of their ‘job-cog’ time to contribute to peer-production initiatives chosen on the basis
of their interests. This person-owned time, in conjunction with enabling technologies would
create a market-like exchange economy and personnel platform – a group-forming network, and
peer-production6 space – the last mile of the market. It is easy to conceive of a sliding scale of
person-owned time based on experience and professional development. The specific portion is
not important. The point is to visualize a way to create such a space and how it could be used.

Restructuring its smallest part – the job and person time – allows an organization to integrate
all three organizational architectures – Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Responsible Autonomy, and
would allow the following benefits:

a. Engagement: by being able to pursue the (work-related) interests that they are serious
or passionate about, workers experience a deeper engagement and a subsequent
halo effects;

5
For a discussion of network/Web 2.0 technologies and peer-production see Verdon, J., Forrester, B.,
& Tanner, L. (2007). Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies on the Design of Work –
Social and Peer Production. Technical Memorandum DMPFD TM 2007-04, April 2007.
6
For a discussion of network/Web 2.0 technologies and peer-production see Verdon, et al. 2007.

xii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

 b. Continuity: by mitigating the internal ‘fog and friction’ of the posting cycle as
important transformation initiatives can achieve greater continuity by the support
and augmentation enabled by peer-production;

c. Extended Specialization: the specialization of talent and therefore the division of labour
can be extended beyond the limits of the occupational structure of the organization;

d. Enhance Generalization: more efficiently and effectively allows personnel to utilize

the whole of the experiences across the organization and for the organization to exploit
the knowledge it has invested so much to develop;

e. Increasing productivity: as a result of all of the above;

f. A deep culture of collaboration consistent with the doctrine of command intent

and self-organization and embedding within leadership at all levels experience
with achieving effects with resources they do not directly control; and

g. Achieving decision-action dominance: through greater agility and option acceleration

as a result of a more rapid search through a larger solution space. Essentially to have
greater analysis provided to a situation and ultimately to better exploit openings,
accelerate strategies and/or recover from a mishap.

It is important to note that this concept does not require all members to be equally capable
of optimizing a time/space for responsible autonomy. Many personnel may not be capable or
want to be more than being a ‘cog’ in the organization. However, the unprecedented benefit of
networks is the capacity to support a cultural shift whereby the organization can costlessly harvest
even a one-time-only contribution/lessons-learned from anyone, anywhere in the organization.
This cultural change is completely consistent with and would be the foundation for a culture that
embraces the need to share.

Conclusion: What is evident is that the last mile of the market and responsible autonomy is really
a complex constellation of interdependent and co-creating concepts that include: the market
system; the material institution and the emerging institution of the long tail; organizational
architectures (hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy); complexity; mission command;
human capital and more. Figure 1 below presents these more graphically.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xiii

 Learning Training

Human
Trusted Capital Ubiquitous
Situational Digital
Awareness Environment

Operational Peer-Production
Agility
Sense-Making Platforms
Complex Systems
Military Last Mile of Market
Professionalism Responsible Autonomy

Mission Organizational
Command Architecture
The Long Tail

Network
Comprehensive, Technologies
Effects & Network-Enable Architectures of
Approaches Participation

Figure 1: Constellation of Concepts: The Last Mile of the Market and Responsible Autonomy

As organizations learn how to operationally integrate the demands, opportunities, challenges

and capabilities of network technologies and architectures of participation the traditional
cultures, concepts and paradigms will transform. These emerging architectures will of course
not completely displace the traditional hierarchies – rather they offer a fundamentally new
platform for the coordination of human capability. The concepts of peer-production and
responsible autonomy that we have briefly outlined will play a key role in this new mode
of production – especially as platform of near costless coordination to ultimately multiply
organizational capability.

The personnel management system, although conceived as a machine-like system within

a machine-like organization is, at heart, a stubbornly complex system simply because it is
about harnessing people and developing their capabilities. Understanding the CF personnel
management/HR system as a complex system has significant implications, including how
we will conceive and transform: occupational and career structures; training, development
and learning (as the development of human, social and cultural capital); recruitment; and the
incentives inherent to retention, compensation, recognition and reward.

xiv DGMPRA TM 2009-022

In essence, the concepts of the last mile, responsible autonomy and peer-production within
an appropriate organizational paradigm enable the right person to be connected to the right
situation at the right time. A personnel platform of responsible autonomy becomes a human
capability multiplier - it can allow the CF to ease its management burden, leverage the
professionalism of its people, mitigate the friction of the posting cycle and the turbulence of
continual transformation and training. The last mile and responsible autonomy helps enable
knowledge to flow – increasing the organization’s ‘human and social capital’. Relationships,
trust, and a sense of professional community (as social capital) are critical factors that set the
conditions for effective connections and conversations and set the stage for current and future
operational agility and increase the speed of operational cohesion.

Most fundamentally, network-enabled capabilities shift the organizational focus from an

emphasis on control via the chain-of-command to a command centric web of distributed control.
These concepts are about operational agility, getting the job done, and finding solutions to real
problems as they are needed. This also means less tail, more teeth, more types of teeth, and better
prepared teeth.

The challenge in developing a space for a richer, more agile layer of connections within an
existing organization, is a question of finding the right way to integrate more initiative-based
entrepreneurial operations capability with the traditional control hierarchy – essentially to
increase the capability to search a larger solution space. The imperative to create such a layer
includes the benefits of:

a. Reduced transaction, coordination, control and opportunity costs (time, effort, people,
capability) – more teeth less tail;

b. Integrate continuous learning, and thus power effective operational agility;.

c. Leveraging much more of the human capital that we already invest so much to develop;

d. Increasing the pool of available skills, knowledge and judgment that can be brought to
bear – to allow the organization to marshal more of its human capability/capital for
productive and operational ends; and

e. Better capability to generate integrated security solutions.

The imperative to conceive and design an organization as a complex evolving system has
significant implications for all aspects of the very complex human management system including
its occupational structure, training, and learning. HR must be able to facilitate the development
of integrated security solutions and a system that enables the CF to marshal all of its human
capabilities, where and when needed. This is consistent with the ongoing challenges of
transformation – running the organization and changing the organization.

Recommendations: The last mile and responsible autonomy remain advanced concepts that
require considerably more development, experimentation and evaluation. The challenge of the
last mile concerns how organizations will harness the power of these technologies to in turn
harness the full productive capabilities (the human capital) of their personnel and enable
organizational/operational agility.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xv
A few recommendations are listed below.

a. Enable the full use of these technologies within our organization7 – give the tools
to people and they will use them;

b. Continue to develop these concepts and others – including:

(1) The elaboration of a new research paradigm with corresponding new

methodologies, approaches and uses of new and emerging technological
and computational capabilities;

(2) Network individualism – the implication of a network society on the formation

of individual and social human identity;

(3) Social, cultural and human capital;

(4) The types of work amenable to peer-production, etc.;

(5) Transparency – where the ‘need-to-know’ orientation is displaced

by a ’need-to-share’ orientation, in order to make information and
knowledge accessible for timely knowledge generation and agility;

(6) Privacy – where anonymity is not the default position used to protect individual
rights (and the right to not be unduly interfered with). Rather other mechanisms
in keeping with transparency must be developed;

(7) Trust – how to develop and sustain a trusted situational awareness that enables trust
between people, information and organizations within a digital network
environment; and

(8) Risk – what is an appropriate framework to evaluate responsible autonomy and the
use and development of human capital.

c. Conduct social network analysis of the network people are actually using to get
work done, to elicit contribution to ongoing work and projects and to exert influence.
Include the issues of boundary as the understanding of how people can come to be
included or excluded;

d. Develop an agent-based modeling platform to further develop and refine these and
other related concepts. Responsible autonomy is not anarchy and is intended to
augment and permeate existing structures to enable agility. Agent-based modeling
research will enable significant efficiencies in exploring the rule sets for optimum
operational effectiveness.

7
For a list of these technologies see Verdon et al 2007. There are also numerous other recent books
and publications enumerating and elaborating on their use.

xvi DGMPRA TM 2009-022

Sommaire .....

The Last Mile of the Market: How Networks, Participation and

Responsible Autonomy Support Mission Command and
Transform Personnel Management
John Verdon; Bruce C. Forrester; Zhigang Wang; DGMPRA TM 2009-022; R & D
pour la défense Canada – DRASPM; Novembre 2009.

Le document poursuit l’étude des conséquences des opérations facilitées par réseaux et
particulièrement de la production par les pairs tel que présenté dans le précédent document,
Comprendre l’incidence des technologies de réseau sur la conception du travail – aspect social
et contenu généré par l’utilisateur.1 Il fait partie d’une série de documents qui examine les
conséquences pour l’être humain et les RH d’une organisation qui adopte les opérations facilitées
par réseaux. Le but ultime de cette série de documents consiste à poser les jalons en vue d’un
projet plus étendu – celui d’élaborer une théorie et une philosophie exhaustives en matière de
gestion du personnel au 21e siècle – un concept global des RH qui intègre la gestion du personnel
aux concepts de domaines de compétences. C’est pour cette raison que nous couvrons un
territoire conceptuel si vaste.

Le document vise à donner un aperçu d’un concept futur ou avancé lié à la gestion des
personnes dans les FC et à expliquer pourquoi ce concept est nécessaire – en bref, pour faciliter
le commandement de mission pleinement et efficacement ainsi que les technologies habilitantes
de réseaux. À ces fins, nos arguments montreront que l’avenir est déjà là, un avenir qui se fonde
sur le passé (y compris un changement de paradigme fondamental continu), mais qui reste ouvert
à être déterminé et créé par nous tous.

Pour raconter l’histoire de ce phénomène, nous couvrons un vaste territoire conceptuel. Nous
commençons par la naissance du marché et poursuivons en abordant les concepts d’architecture
organisationnelle, de complexité, de commandement de mission et de capital humain. Finalement,
nous les intégrons aux concepts de production par les pairs et d’autonomie responsable comme
nouveau mode de production réseaucentrique et plateforme du personnel qui favorisent des
échanges non hiérarchiques permettant aux bonnes personnes d’être liées à la bonne situation
au bon moment.

Pourquoi couvrons-nous un territoire si vaste? L’un de nos objectifs consiste à fournir un aperçu
de la portée et une reconnaissance de l’environnement conceptuel intangible dans lequel les
dirigeants et les gestionnaires doivent guider le changement et la transformation de l’organisation
au 21e siècle. Le problème que présente la complexité est que lorsque le tout est plus grand que

____________________
1
Verdon, John; Forrester, Bruce; Tanner, Leesa. 2007. Comprendre l’incidence des technologies de
réseau sur la conception du travail – aspect social et contenu généré par l’utilisateur. Document
technique. DMPFD TM 2007-04. Avril 2007.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xvii

la somme des parties, l’élaboration des parties ne procure pas une compréhension suffisante
de la véritable nature du tout. Ce que nous voulons offrir est une idée des concepts-clés de ce
paysage de réseaux et de leurs interrelations afin que le « tout » formé des « parties » et de leurs
« interactions » ait du sens.

Notre argument central est que les technologies de réseaux, les architectures de participation
et les nouvelles idées fondées sur le développement de la science de la complexité représentent
une perturbation importante pour les institutions industrielles ainsi que pour les structures et
les processus organisationnels. Les défis sont généraux, ainsi que particuliers à la gestion des
ressources humaines et du personnel. Ces technologies fournissent une architecture sociale de
participation nouvelle et en évolution et une capacité de la plateforme d’infrastructure entraînant
l’émergence de nouveaux concepts relatifs à la façon dont les organisations sont structurées, dont
on peut gérer et former les personnes et dont on peut réaliser l’apprentissage et le travail. Ce
changement de paradigme reflète la décentralisation du contrôle instituée par les mouvements
politiques et sociaux qui passent des économies dirigées vers les économies politiques adoptant
des régimes de marché plus équilibrés. On prévoit une évolution des organisations industrielles
comportant une hiérarchie de contrôle vers des organisations réseaucentriques, complexes et
adaptatives au sein d’environnements dynamiques et en évolution.

Une architecture de participation se définit comme la conception de structures de systèmes dans

le but d’optimiser la participation et la contribution des utilisateurs, en réduisant tout obstacle
à l’entrée. Par conséquent, à mesure que les sociétés et les populations se sont agrandies
et diversifiées et que les économies se sont complexifiées, l’augmentation des mécanismes
favorisant une plus grande autonomie a réduit les obstacles à la participation et a permis
à ces économies sociopolitiques de s’adapter, d’évoluer et de prospérer.

Une technologie perturbatrice désigne des innovations technologiques qui supplantent

inopinément et considérablement les technologies et les industries établies; par nature, elles
ont tendance à manquer initialement de peaufinage, sont truffées de problèmes de performance,
n’ont pas d’application pratique reconnue et intéressent un public restreint. Elles permettent
ensuite à une nouvelle population de consommateurs d’accéder aux produits, aux services ou aux
expériences auparavant accessibles à de petites populations de personnes riches ou qualifiées.
Un exemple classique est l’apparition de l’automobile (voiture sans chevaux); au départ, elle
avait un rendement inférieur à celui du cheval, mais elle a finalement supplanté l’ensemble des
industries qui dépendaient du transport par chevaux ou le soutenaient et a encouragé toutes
les nouvelles industries à soutenir et à promouvoir l’automobile et les déplacements plus rapides.

Le régime de marché :

Imaginez que vous êtes un commerçant, quelque part en Espagne, en 1795.

Contrairement aux Égyptiens de l’Antiquité, vous ne croyez pas que votre roi est un dieu
vivant sur Terre. Cependant, vous continuez à croire qu’il a un droit divin de diriger
votre vie. Vous ne pouvez concevoir qu’un pays soit bien gouverné sans un roi pour
protéger et contrôler ses sujets. Vous avez entendu parler de l’étrange révolte en
Amérique du Nord pendant laquelle les colons anglais déclaraient qu’ils pouvaient
se gouverner eux-mêmes sans l’existence d’un roi. Vous avez aussi entendez parler
du carnage, survenu dernièrement en France, qui a pris fin par l’assassinat du roi par

xviii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

 un groupe de soi-disant révolutionnaires, qui ont remplacé le gouvernement en place
et détruit tant de bonnes choses en presque une nuit. Ces évènements sont pour vous de
profondes erreurs, des essais périlleux voués à l’échec. C’est insensé d’affirmer, comme
les révolutionnaires démocratiques le font, que le peuple puisse se gouverner lui-même.
Cette affirmation est contradictoire, comme de dire que les enfants pourraient être élevés
par eux-mêmes ou que les animaux d’une ferme pourraient diriger la ferme. Certes, vous
pensez que le peuple peut essayer de le faire, mais les résultats ne seront pas aussi
concrets qu’avec un roi sage et juste.2

Les idées du régime de marché et de la démocratie (Wealth of Nations [Richesse des nations]
d’Adam Smith et la Declaration of Independence [Déclaration de l’indépendance] des États-Unis
étaient publiés la même année) représentent toutes deux l’incarnation moderne et sociale d’un
long récit évolutif et de plus en plus apparent d’une autonomie responsable. Cette métaphore
du marché est voulue, et représente le paradigme puissant de l’auto-organisation. Ce dernier joue
un rôle prépondérant dans la manière d’aborder les sujets complexes, et il peut relever des défis
comme produire un effet sans contrôle direct sur toutes les ressources nécessaires. Ce paradigme
comprend aussi d’autres concepts comme l’hétérarchie et l’autonomie responsable.

Un régime de marché est un système d’échange qui est sans précédent quant à l’affectation
de ressources (avec la coordination des activités connexes). L’efficacité exige un régime
de réglementation et une auto-organisation décentralisée : « La création d’une justice parfaite,
d’une liberté parfaite, et d’une égalité parfaite est le très simple secret qui garantit efficacement
le plus haut niveau de prospérité à toutes les… classes. » [traduction] (Smith, 1776, p. 726).

Le régime de marché, en tant que paradigme de l’organisation, est une forte illustration qui
montre que comme société nous avons déjà adopté les idées d’une manière très concrète d’un
pouvoir réparti et fondé sur l’auto-organisation, et que nous n’accepterions pas un retour à une
économie ou à une société contrôlée par un pouvoir central. Et pourtant, nombre de personnes
considèrent ce paradigme irréalisable dans les limites de nos organisations.

Le régime de marché est perçu comme une plateforme générative, qui progresse de façon
continue, mais qui est exigeante et effrénée : l’autonomie responsable et l’auto-organisation,
l’affectation efficace des ressources, la coordination des activités connexes ainsi que les
échanges impartiaux et fiables. Ce type de régime reconnaît, à tout le moins, comme légitime :

a. les principes et les droits de la personne ainsi que les droits de propriété;

b. les technologies sociales de contrat, d’échange, de crédit, de regroupement transparent

des renseignements, etc. ;

c. les normes : le poids, la mesure, la monnaie/la valeur, etc. ;

d. le niveau d’alphabétisation minimum pour comprendre les normes, les prix

et l’information, etc. ; et

e. le recours et la mise en œuvre de mécanismes.

____________________
2
Malone, T. (2004). The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your
Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Harvard Business School Press. p. 3.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xix

Par conséquent, « The Last Mile » [le dernier kilomètre] est une métaphore qui représente
le besoin d’instaurer une autonomie responsable au sein de la structure organisationnelle
militaire comme un nouveau type de plateforme et d’espace personnels pour des échanges
et des collaborations non hiérarchiques (impersonnels). Il est absolument nécessaire
de donner la possibilité aux gens d’utiliser les technologies de réseaux et les théories du
savoir organisationnel du pouvoir et de la maniabilité opérationnelle. Plus important encore,
l’autonomie responsable servira de concept clé dans l’élaboration d’une notion personnelle
élargie et intégrée du 21e siècle.

Les organisations, quant à elles, sont des plateformes pour exploiter l’effort collectif des
hommes. Les principes architecturaux de leur conception sont limités par des cadres matériels,
technologiques et sociaux et aussi par des structures invisibles contenues dans nos paradigmes.
Cependant, peut-être que le cadre le plus important est le cadre institutionnel. North (2005)
définit les institutions comme les règles du jeu et les organisations comme les joueurs. Une
structure institutionnelle comprend au minimum :

a. une structure au pouvoir pour prendre les décisions et assurer la gouvernance;

b. des structures responsables des droits de propriété qui définissent les mesures
incitatives; et

c. des structures sociales, soit des normes et des conventions qui définissent les mesures
incitatives non officielles.

Le cadre institutionnel est une création de l’homme dont les fonctions ne sont ni automatiques ni
« naturelles ». Ces dernières doivent s’adapter aux changements technologiques, de l’information
et du capital humain pour continuer à fonctionner de façon optimale.

Architecture organisationnelle : L’organisation traditionnelle est conçue comme une machine

d’ingénierie et représentée comme une hiérarchie de contrôle. Chacun leur tour la hiérarchie
limite la complexité de possibles comportements collectifs du système. L’augmentation de
l’effectif de l’organisation et de sa variété augmentent les coûts de coordination et limitent la
complexité interne. À chaque niveau de la hiérarchie, le contrôle et la coordination locaux doivent
passer par le contrôleur local jusqu’à ce que le niveau le plus haut soit atteint. Cela implique que
les actions collectives du système dans lesquelles les parties du système affectent d’autres parties
du système ne doivent pas être plus complexes que celles du contrôleur. Dans les hiérarchies
humaines, le comportement collectif doit être assez simple pour être représenté par une seule
personne3. Ainsi, l’étendue des responsabilités qu’une personne peut gérer est limitée.
L’atténuation de cette limite par l’ajout d’administrateurs réduirait par conséquent l’étendue des
responsabilités, mais cette méthode est utile seulement dans la mesure où le comportement
collectif requis par l’organisation n’augmente pas la complexité interne au-dessus de la capacité
de gestion du niveau le plus haut de la hiérarchie de contrôle. Cependant, une gestion accrue
augmente les frais généraux, « dépense » le capital d’ingéniosité et d’innovation, ce qui réduit la
maniabilité et la faculté d’adaptation. La hiérarchie agrandit l’échelle du comportement contrôlé,
mais elle n’augmente pas sa complexité.

xx DGMPRA TM 2009-022
La machine-organisation détermine les structures hiérarchiques et occupationnelles pour une
division de travail hautement spécifique, qui à son tour définit des trajectoires de carrières
relativement linéaires. Le modèle est directif séparant le concepteur de l’outil. Le but de la
machine en tant qu’organisation détermine les entrées nécessaires et les sorties attendues.
Bien que le travail soit perçu comme une entrée, le travailleur est transformé en un « rouage »
remplaçable (travail avec des tâches spécifiques) qui constitue la machine et qui lui permet
de bien fonctionner. Le travailleur, comme toutes les autres « parties », est remplacé lorsque
nécessaire. Bien entendu, un remplacement efficace demande un haut degré de normalisation.

Un problème étonnant lié à ce cadre concerne les effets secondaires auxquels une organisation
militaire est particulièrement vulnérable; des effets qu’on appelle la turbulence d’un cycle
d’affectation fluctuant. Par exemple, les « emplois » (conçus et analysés tels des rouages dans une
machine) sont soumis à une rotation constante du personnel, qui permet un environnement stable
et une production généralement invariable. Selon cette hypothèse, le roulement du personnel créé
des coûts en termes d’efficacité reliée au temps, car il faut considérer le temps de probation des
travailleurs et celui relatif à la formation. Cependant, ces coûts sont quelque peu réduits par le
développement du capital humain au fur et à mesure que le personnel gagne de l’expérience
dans les différents postes de l’organisation. L’analyse des coûts et des bénéfices est totalement
différente lorsque l’on passe d’une situation où les transformations sont régulières/constantes
à une situation où les changements sont différents au sein d’une même organisation. Dans ce cas,
le capital humain investi et développé, comme un travailleur qui occupe un emploi/un rouage
particulier de la machine, est en grande partie non utilisé ou gaspillé lorsque le personnel est
affecté à des nouveaux postes. L’exigence de se concentrer sur la situation immédiate de faire
fonctionner l’organisation et d’en changer l’effectif continuellement ne laisse aucune place au
personnel pour partager des idées, des connaissances personnelles et des leçons apprises aux
nouveaux travailleurs de postes occupés précédemment. On peut aussi voir ce problème comme
celui d’un manque de coût d’option lié à une capacité d’exploiter ou d’utiliser tout le capital
humain; un capital qui exige des investissements considérables de temps et de ressources pour
se développer.

Complexité : La gestion des ressources humaines continue d’être largement déterminée par
cette organisation schématisée comme une machine. À l’opposé, la métaphore plus appropriée
au 21e siècle (qui englobe la complexité et la transformation rapide et continue) consiste
à comprendre et concevoir une organisation comme un système complexe en évolution.

Toutefois, la complexité externe d’une organisation, la complexité des environnements dans

lesquels une organisation exerce ses activités peuvent, à leur tour, varier d’un état stable et
relativement stable à une dynamique évolutive et très complexe. Quand la complexité externe
d’une organisation change et commence à dépasser sa complexité interne, les chances d’échec
paraissent élevées. Par conséquent, l’organisation doit tenter d’augmenter suffisamment sa
complexité interne afin d’être en mesure de fournir une réponse efficace aux exigences
environnementales. C’est le rôle de la concurrence (création d’une variété suffisante) en
évolution et du régime de marché.4

____________________
3
Ibid.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxi

Il y a une très grande distinction à faire entre complexe et compliqué. Les systèmes complexes
sont non-réductibles, non-linéaires et produisent des capacités « émergentes » (plus grande que
la somme de ses parties). Toutes les armées modernes ont reconnu que les environnements
opérationnels sont complexes, et ce, de plus en plus. Les problèmes complexes requièrent souvent
des solutions uniques ou personnalisées et les environnements complexes requièrent une agilité
organisationnelle dans le développement de ressources personnalisées configurées pour la
complexité de l’environnement. La capacité d’un individu (personne ou organisation) à s’adapter
à un environnement particulier dépend de sa capacité à dominer les exigences environnementales.
Ainsi, la complexité interne doit égaler ou surpasser la complexité externe afin de surmonter avec
succès les exigences environnementales stimulantes.

La clé pour qu’une capacité organisationnelle génère le type de complexité interne permettant
de surmonter la complexité externe est de permettre l’autonomie responsable. Jusqu’à présent,
nous avons soutenu que le régime de marché alimenté par l’autonomie responsable permet
à une société d’accroître la complexité interne de son économie de manière décentralisée et
auto-organisée. Nous examinerons ensuite le concept de commandement de mission, car ce
dernier fait à la fois référence à la complexité et à l’autonomie responsable.

Commandement de mission : Le commandement de mission est une plate-forme exploitant

la puissance de l’exécution décentralisée de l’intention de commandement par la délégation de
l’autorité de commandement. Le concept d’exécution décentralisée est un concept totalement ou
en partie associé au concept d’autonomie responsable. Nous discutons des rôles complémentaires
que jouent l’intention de commandement et l’autonomie responsable dans le commandement de
mission, particulièrement parce qu’ils font référence à la complexité. Ainsi, le fondement premier
de ce document est de dire qu’il existe un parallèle évident entre :

a. L’évolution continue du système de marché et l’autonomie responsable (afin de

s’adapter à une complexité croissante dans l’environnement humain); et

b. le développement du commandement de mission (afin de s’adapter à une complexité

croissante dans l’environnement opérationnel).

Le tableau 1 établit un parallèle entre le régime de marché et le commandement de mission.

____________________
4
Ibid, Figure 1 ci-dessous est une version non modifiée à l’exception du titre.

xxii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

 Tableau 1 : Le dernier kilomètre du marché et le commandement de mission

Régime de marché d’Adam Smith Commandement de mission

Le rapport entre
La liberté de servir ses propres intérêts
L’autonomie individuelle
L’échange impersonnel
Avec les personnes qui favorisent les
technologies et les institutions
La transparence du –
mécanisme fiable des prix
cadre réglementaire commun
Engendre
La main invisible du marché
Le rapport entre
Le contrôle réparti
L’autonomie responsable
L’échange non hiérarchique
Avec les personnes qui favorisent les
technologies et les institutions
La transparence de –
la connaissance fiable de la situation
l’intention commune
Engendre
L’auto-synchronisation de la main
invisible guidant l’intention implicite

Capital humain : Selon Adam Smith, le travail annuel est la source et la mesure de la richesse
d’une nation. Le capital humain équivaut à la capacité productive des individus. Depuis Smith,
les concepts du capital intellectuel, culturel, social et humain continuent d’évoluer et de
s’enrichir. Cependant, la théorie économique classique postule trois facteurs : la terre, la main-
d’œuvre et le capital. Nous soutenons que ce cadre théorique est insuffisant pour l’économie du
21e siècle axée sur les connaissances ou pour une organisation militaire dépendante du leadership
pour harnacher la volonté. Dans le même esprit, nous proposons un cadre de rechange dans
lequel les humains offrent un facteur englobant compatible avec le rôle essentiel de la volonté
et qui permet au concept de capital d’inclure plus facilement les dimensions plus intangibles
du capital : culturelles, sociales et humaines. L’usage de la volonté et l’autonomie responsable
sont synonymes. Nous croyons que la connaissance de la carrière militaire réside principalement
dans l’esprit de ses membres.

Il est impératif de comprendre le capital humain (et social et culturel), l’investissement nécessaire
pour obtenir, développer et utiliser ce capital, et plus important encore, d’augmenter la capacité
du capital humain. À l’instar du capital physique, l’acquisition du capital humain exige des
sacrifices en temps, en effort et en ressources de tous ordres. Le capital humain s’acquiert
par la formation, l’éducation, l’apprentissage et l’expérience. Nous proposons d’élaborer les
implications de l’apprentissage qui peuvent découler des plateformes de l’autonomie responsable
et du dernier kilomètre du marché (y compris les technologies réseaucentriques de soutien et les
architectures de participation).

Avec l’avènement de la société réseautée et l’accélération des progrès scientifiques et

technologiques, plusieurs hypothèses concernant la structure organisationnelle, l’éducation
et l’apprentissage sont remises en question, notamment :

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxiii

 a. D’un monde centré sur les lieux à un monde centré sur les personnes;

b. La formation et « apprendre à apprendre »;

c. La délégation du pouvoir décisionnel et le pouvoir bidirectionnel;

d. Le transfert des connaissances et la création des connaissances;

e. Les capacités orchestrées et les capacités émergentes;

f. Le pouvoir d’apprentissage d’une personne et celui de l’apprentissage collectif en

temps réel;

g. La formation et le recyclage professionnel;

h. L’intelligence individuelle et l’amplification de l’intelligence;

i. L’emploi et le travail;

j. Le contrat et l’engagement; et

k. La sécurité d’emploi et la sécurité d’employabilité.

Une plateforme en matière d’autonomie responsable : Jusqu’à présent, nous avons emprunté
la voie du régime de marché, des architectures organisationnelles, de la complexité, du
commandement de mission et du capital humain. Avant d’aborder le dernier kilomètre et la
plateforme de l’autonomie responsable, nous nous penchons sur quelques anomalies associées
à la hiérarchie de contrôle, notamment :

a. Les perspectives décalées, y compris celles du leadership et de la gestion, la perspective

opérationnelle et systémique et les perspectives fondées sur les cohortes;

b. Le rythme des changements et le contexte qui en découle, en tant que transformation

perpétuelle; et

c. Les conséquences imprévues des mesures incitatives inhérentes à la structure

traditionnelle de la carrière.

Le concept de création d’une plateforme de marché destinée à la production par les pairs et
de l’autonomie responsable au sein de l’organisation vise à développer la capacité interne
émergente. Cette capacité permet de soutenir le concept-cadre intégré, et par conséquent,
d’améliorer la capacité d’adaptation pour mieux maîtriser la complexité interne et externe en
constante progression. Le concept d’une plateforme de l’autonomie responsable est d’une grande
simplicité. Chaque membre exerce le contrôle, comme il l’entend, du temps qu’il consacre à
l’organisation. C’est le concept du « dernier kilomètre du marché ». Le temps qu’un membre
consacre à l’organisation, en liaison avec les technologies réseaucentriques, permettra à
l’organisation de développer une réserve de ressources, des réseaux formateurs de groupes
et un espace de production par les pairs5 – le dernier kilomètre du marché.

xxiv DGMPRA TM 2009-022

Nous devons alors restructurer l’organisation à partir de son plus petit maillon : le travail et
le temps d’une personne. Le tableau 2 en fait état. Les pourcentages indiqués ne servent qu’à
illustrer le concept.

Tableau 2 : Restructuration de l’organisation en prévision du dernier kilomètre

Pourcentage
du temps Appropriation et but Architecture
Ce qui relève du travail :
T = 70 % Fonctionnement de l’organisation : faire partie du rouage de Hiérarchie
la machine
Ce qui relève de l’organisation :
O = 15 % Transformation de l’organisation : refonte, stratégie à plus Hétérarchie
long terme
Ce qui relève de l’individu :
Autonomie
i = 15 % Poursuite des intérêts personnels, car elle contribue à ceux de
responsable
l’organisation et de l’individu

Le temps accordé aux obligations liées au travail se ventile ainsi : 70 % du temps d’un employé
est consacré à l’emploi et au rôle qui lui sont attribués, 15 % « appartient » à l’organisation et le
dernier 15 % « appartient » à l’employé.

De cette façon, le « rouage » de l’emploi est consacré au fonctionnement de l’organisation :

70 % du temps d’une personne est sous contrôle hiérarchique. Les besoins de transformation et
d’efforts stratégiques représentent 15 % du temps des RH pour établir une structure hiérarchique.
Enfin, chaque personne consacrerait 15 % des « rouages » de son emploi à contribuer aux
initiatives de production par les pairs, choisies en fonction de ses intérêts. Le temps d’une
personne, de concert avec les technologies, créerait une économie de marché d’échange et une
plateforme personnelle – un réseau formateur de groupe et un espace pour la production par les
pairs6 – le dernier kilomètre du marché. Il est facile de concevoir une échelle mobile du temps
d’une personne, fondée sur l’expérience et le perfectionnement professionnel. La portion importe
peu. Il faut visualiser la façon de créer un tel espace et son utilisation.

La restructuration à partir de son plus petit maillon, le travail et le temps d’une personne, permet
à une organisation d’intégrer les trois architectures organisationnelles : la hiérarchie, l’hétérarchie
et l’autonomie responsable, et de tirer profit des avantages suivants :

a. Participation : en étant en mesure de soutenir les intérêts (liés au travail) qui

passionnent les travailleurs, on constate une participation accrue de l’effectif
et des effets de halo ultérieurs;

____________________
5
Concernant les technologies de réseau Web 2.0 et la production par les pairs, voir Verdon, John,
Bruce Forrester et Leesa Tanner. Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies on the Design
of Work – Social and Peer Production, document technique, DMPFD TM, avril 2007.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxv

 b. Continuité : en atténuant la friction et le brouillard du cycle d’affectation, les
importantes initiatives de transformation peuvent assurer une continuité accrue
grâce au soutien et à l’augmentation de la production par les pairs;

c. Spécialisation élargie : la spécialisation des talents et, par conséquent, la division

du travail peuvent être élargies au-delà des limites de la structure professionnelle
de l’organisation;

d. Amélioration de la généralisation : permet au personnel d’utiliser plus efficacement

la totalité des expériences de l’organisation et à l’organisation d’exploiter les
connaissances dont elle a tant investi dans le développement;

e. Productivité accrue : à la suite des points énumérés ci-dessus;

f. Une culture de collaboration forte conforme à la doctrine de l’objectif de

commandement et de l’autonomie organisationnelle, et l’intégration au leadership
à tous les niveaux de l’expérience acquise grâce à l’atteinte d’effets sur les ressources
qui ne sont pas contrôlées directement; et

g. Prédominance accrue de la prise de décisions : par une agilité améliorée et une

accélération des options à la suite d’une recherche plus rapide par le biais d’un espace
de solution plus vaste. Pour l’essentiel, avoir une meilleure analyse d’une situation et,
finalement, mieux exploiter les débouchés, accélérer les stratégies et se relever d’un
faux pas.

Il est important de noter que cette notion ne nécessite pas que tous les membres soient en mesure
de maximiser le temps et l’espace pour l’autonomie responsable. Un grand nombre d’effectifs
ne pourront ou ne voudront peut-être pas être plus qu’une dent dans l’engrenage. Cependant,
l’avantage sans précédent des réseaux est la capacité à soutenir un virage culturel dans les cas
où l’organisation peut, sans frais, récolter même une contribution ou une leçon apprise unique de
n’importe quel membre, où qu’il se situe dans l’organisation. Ce virage culturel est le fondement
de cette culture et il est en tout point conforme à une culture qui adopte le besoin de partager.

Conclusion : Il est évident que le dernier kilomètre du marché et l’autonomie responsable

sont une constellation complexe de notions mutuellement complémentaires et créatrices qui
comprennent le système de marché; l’institution matérielle et la nouvelle institution des moyens
de soutien; les architectures organisationnelles (hiérarchie, hétérarchie et autonomie responsable);
la complexité; le commandement de mission; le capital humain; etc. La figure 1 ci-dessous
présente ces notions sous la forme d’un graphique.

____________________
6
Concernant les technologies de réseau Web 2.0 et la production par les pairs, voir Verdon
et autres (2007).

xxvi DGMPRA TM 2009-022

 Apprentissage Instruction

Capital
Connaissance humain Environnement
fiable de la numérique
situation omniprésent
Production par
Maniabilité
les pairs
opérationnelle
Systèmes complexes
logiques Plateformes
Dernier kilomètre du
Professionnalisme marché
militaire Autonomie responsable

Commandement Architecture
de mission organisationnelle
Moyens de
soutien
Architectures de
Approches exhaustives, participation des
fondées sur les effets et technologies réseau
réseaucentriques

Figure 1 : Constellation de notions : le dernier kilomètre et l’autonomie responsable

Les organisations apprennent comment intégrer dans nos opérations les exigences, les occasions,
les défis et les capacités des technologies réseau et des architectures de participation que les
cultures, les concepts et les paradigmes transformeront. Il est évident que ces nouvelles
architectures ne remplaceront pas les hiérarchies traditionnelles, elles offriront plutôt une toute
nouvelle plateforme pour la coordination de la capacité humaine. Les notions de production
par les pairs et d’autonomie responsable dont il a brièvement été question joueront un
rôle prépondérant dans ce nouveau mode de production, surtout en tant que plateforme de
coordination pratiquement sans frais qui, finalement, décuplera la capacité organisationnelle.
Le système de gestion du personnel, bien qu’il soit conçu comme un système machinal dans
une organisation machinale, est, dans son fondement, un système excessivement complexe
simplement parce qu’il a pour objectif de mobiliser les gens et de perfectionner leurs capacités.
La compréhension du système des RH et de gestion du personnel des FC en tant que système
complexe a d’importantes répercussions, y compris comment nous concevons et transformons :
les structures des professions et des carrières; l’instruction, le perfectionnement et l’apprentissage
(comme le développement du capital humain, social et culturel); le recrutement; et les mesures
incitatives inhérentes au maintien en poste, à la rémunération, à la reconnaissance et à
la récompense.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxvii

Pour l’essentiel, les notions de dernier kilomètre, d’autonomie responsable et de production par
les pairs dans un paradigme organisationnel approprié permettent à la bonne personne d’être liée
à la bonne situation au bon moment. Une plateforme d’autonomie responsable du personnel
décuple la capacité humaine. Elle peut permettre aux FC d’alléger leurs tâches de gestion, de
mieux profiter du professionnalisme de leurs membres, d’atténuer les inconvénients liés aux
affectations successives ainsi que les perturbations causées par la transformation et l’instruction
continues. Le dernier kilomètre et l’autonomie responsable aident à fournir les connaissances,
ce qui accroît le « capital social et humain » de l’organisation. Les relations, la confiance et un
sentiment d’appartenance à un groupe professionnel (comme capital social) sont des facteurs
essentiels qui fixent les conditions permettant d’établir des liaisons et des conversations efficaces
et qui mettent la table pour une souplesse opérationnelle actuelle et future et pour l’accélération
de la cohésion opérationnelle.

Fondamentalement, les capacités réseaucentriques font relever le contrôle organisationnel moins

d’une chaîne de commandement et davantage d’un réseau distribué axé sur le commandement.
Ces notions portent sur la souplesse opérationnelle, l’accomplissement des travaux et la recherche
de solutions aux problèmes réels en temps opportun. Cela signifie moins de moyens de soutien,
plus de moyens de combat, une diversification des moyens de combat et aussi des moyens de
combat mieux préparés.

Le défi de créer un espace pour un ensemble de liaisons plus souples et plus riches dans une
organisation existante est assujetti à la découverte de la bonne façon d’intégrer une capacité
d’activités d’entreprise axée sur l’initiative avec une hiérarchie de contrôle traditionnelle,
et ce, essentiellement afin d’accroître la capacité de rechercher un plus grand espace des
solutions. Il est impératif de créer un tel ensemble afin de tirer profit des avantages suivants :

a. réduire les frais de transaction, de coordination, de contrôle et de renonciation (temps,

effort, personnes, capacité) – plus de moyens de combat, moins de moyens de soutien;

b. intégrer l’apprentissage continu et donc la maniabilité opérationnelle efficace du

pouvoir;

c. profiter d’une plus grande partie du capital humain dans lequel nous investissons déjà
tant à des fins de développement;

d. accroître le bassin de compétences, de connaissances et de jugement qui peuvent être

mis à profit afin de permettre aux organisations d’orienter une plus grande partie de la
capacité et du capital humains à des fins de production et d’opérations; et

e. accroître la capacité de produire des solutions de sécurité intégrées.

L’obligation de concevoir une organisation comme un système évolutif complexe a

des répercussions importantes sur tous les aspects du très complexe système de gestion des
ressources humaines, y compris sa structure professionnelle, sa formation et son apprentissage.
Les RH doivent être en mesure de permettre le développement de solutions de sécurité intégrées
et d’un système qui permet aux FC d’orienter toutes ses capacités humaines là et quand le besoin
se fait sentir. Cette exigence est conforme au défi actuel de transformation : exploiter et modifier
l’organisation.

xxviii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

Recommandations : Le dernier kilomètre et l’autonomie responsable demeurent des notions
évoluées qui nécessitent beaucoup plus de développement, d’expérimentation et d’évaluation.
Le défi du dernier kilomètre porte sur la façon dont les organisations exploiteront le pouvoir
de ces technologies afin de tirer le maximum des capacités de production (le capital humain)
de leurs membres et d’accroître la maniabilité organisationnelle et opérationnelle.

Vous trouverez ci-dessous une liste de quelques recommandations :

a. Permettre l’utilisation complète de ces technologies dans notre organisation7 – donnez

les outils aux membres et ils les utiliseront;

b. Poursuivre le développement de ces notions et d’autres concepts, y compris :

(1) L’élaboration d’un nouveau paradigme de recherche avec les nouvelles méthodes,
approches et utilisations correspondantes des nouvelles capacités technologiques et
informatiques;

(2) Individualisme du réseau – la participation d’une société en réseau sur la formation

de l’identité humaine individuelle et sociale;

(3) Capital humain, culturel et social;

(4) Les types de travaux aptes à la production par les pairs, etc.;

(5) Transparence – l’orientation « besoin de savoir » est remplacée par une orientation
« besoin de partager » afin de rendre accessible l’information et les connaissances
pour une production et une maniabilité opportunes des connaissances;

(6) Confidentialité – l’anonymat n’est pas le recours implicite pour protéger les droits
de la personne (et le droit de ne pas être indûment perturbé). Il faut plutôt mettre sur
pied des mécanismes visant à maintenir la transparence.

(7) Confiance – comment développer et maintenir une connaissance éprouvée de la

situation qui établit la confiance entre les personnes, l’information et les
organisations dans un environnement réseau numérique;

(8) Risque – qu’est-ce qu’un cadre approprié pour évaluer l’autonomie responsable ainsi
que l’utilisation et le développement du capital humain.

c. Procéder à une analyse du réseau social que les membres du réseau utilisent
actuellement pour effectuer le travail, encourager la contribution aux travaux et aux
projets en cours et exercer de l’influence. Comprend les problèmes de limites; la
compréhension de la façon dont les membres peuvent en venir à être inclus ou exclus;

____________________
7
Pour une liste de ces technologies, voir Verdon et autres 2007. Il existe également beaucoup d’autres
livres et publications récents qui traitent de leur utilisation.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxix

 d. Élaborer une plateforme de modélisation en mode agent afin de développer et de
peaufiner ces notions et d’autres notions connexes. L’autonomie responsable n’est pas
l’anarchie et elle vise à accroître et à imprégner les structures en place pour favoriser la
maniabilité. La recherche sur la modélisation en mode agent permettra des économies
considérables dans l’exploration des ensembles de règles pour une efficacité
opérationnelle optimale.

xxx DGMPRA TM 2009-022

Table of contents

Abstract …….. ................................................................................................................................. i

Résumé …..... .................................................................................................................................. ii
Executive summary ......................................................................................................................... v
Sommaire .................................................................................................................................... xvii
Table of contents ........................................................................................................................ xxxi
List of figures ........................................................................................................................... xxxiii
List of tables ............................................................................................................................. xxxiii
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. xxxiv
1 Introduction............................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background ................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Aim of the Paper............................................................................................................ 6
2 Birth of the Market ................................................................................................................. 15
3 Organizations as Machines ..................................................................................................... 21
3.1 Preliminary Concepts – Institution, Paradigm, Hierarchy........................................... 21
3.1.1 Organization as Machine .............................................................................. 22
3.2 The Material Institution............................................................................................... 23
3.3 The Mythos of Command............................................................................................ 25
3.4 Organizational Architectures....................................................................................... 27
3.5 The Institution of The Long Tail ................................................................................. 29
4 Organizational Architecture and Complexity ......................................................................... 37
4.1 The Complex Environment ......................................................................................... 41
4.2 Hierarchy and Complexity .......................................................................................... 42
5 Mission Command – Intent..................................................................................................... 48
5.1 Common Intent............................................................................................................ 51
6 Human Capital ........................................................................................................................ 56
6.1 Learning and Agility: Doing is Learning – Learning is Doing ................................... 65
6.1.1 Place-Centric to Person-Centric World......................................................... 67
6.1.2 From Training to Learning-How-To-Learn .................................................. 67
6.1.3 From Authority-Down to Bi-Directionality .................................................. 67
6.1.4 Transfer of Knowledge versus Knowledge Creation .................................... 67
6.1.5 Emergent Capabilities ................................................................................... 68
6.1.5.1 The Power of Real-Time Collective Learning............................ 68
6.1.5.2 Individual Intelligence versus Intelligence Amplification.......... 68
6.1.6 From Job to Work ......................................................................................... 68
6.1.7 From Contract to Commitment ..................................................................... 69
6.1.7.1 Re-Training and Re-re-training .................................................. 69

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxxi

 6.1.7.2 From Job Security to Employability Security ............................ 69
6.1.8 Additional General Competencies ................................................................ 70
7 The Last Mile – Platform for Responsible Autonomy............................................................ 72
7.1 Misaligned Perspectives .............................................................................................. 74
7.2 Eternal Transformation................................................................................................ 75
7.3 Systemic Incentives ..................................................................................................... 75
7.3.1 SOM Syndrome – Systemic Organizational Munchausen’s Syndrome by
Proxy ............................................................................................................. 76
7.4 Peer-Production and Responsible Autonomy.............................................................. 76
7.4.1 Personnel Platform for Peer-Production and Responsible Autonomy .......... 79
7.4.2 Engagement................................................................................................... 80
7.4.3 Continuity...................................................................................................... 81
7.4.4 Extended Specialization and Enhanced Generalization ................................ 81
7.4.5 Increasing Productivity ................................................................................. 81
7.4.6 Culture of Collaboration, the Comprehensive Approach and Achieving
Effects Without Direct Control ..................................................................... 82
7.4.7 Decision-Action Dominance – Operational Agility...................................... 83
8 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 84
9 Recommendations................................................................................................................... 87
References ..... ............................................................................................................................... 89
Distribution list............................................................................................................................ 105

xxxii DGMPRA TM 2009-022

List of figures

Figure 1: The Material Institution ................................................................................................. 23

Figure 2: The Long Tail of Book Sales ......................................................................................... 32
Figure 3: The Long Tail of Book Sales and Transaction Costs..................................................... 32
Figure 4: The Long Tail of Book Sales without Additional Costs ................................................ 33
Figure 5: The Long Tail of Coordination and Transaction Costs.................................................. 34
Figure 6: The Long Tail – Collapse of Coordination Cost............................................................ 35
Figure 7: Organizational Architecture and Environment Relationship ......................................... 40
Figure 8: Organism and Environment Relationship ...................................................................... 45
Figure 9: Continuum of Command Approaches............................................................................ 52
Figure 10: Integrated Complexity Profile and Continuum of Command Approaches .................. 53
Figure 11: The Long Tail – Collapse of Coordination Costs ........................................................ 60
Figure 12: Factors of Production for the 21st Century................................................................... 62
Figure 13: Constellation of Concepts: The Last Mile of the Market and Responsible
Autonomy.................................................................................................................... 84

List of tables

Table 1: The Last Mile of the Market and Mission Command ....................................................... 8
Table 2: Continuum of Organizational Architectures ................................................................... 27
Table 3: Response Type Organizational Architectures ................................................................. 39
Table 4: The Last Mile of the Market and Mission Command ..................................................... 55
Table 5: Restructuring the Organization for the Last Mile ........................................................... 79

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 xxxiii

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Susan Truscott, DGMPRA for the support to pursue this line of thought. I
would also thank LCol Jim Uchiyama for his belief. In addition I would like to express gratitude
to the Network Enabled Operations Symposium Working Group, notably John Bovemkamp and
Sandy Babcock, for including me in the important forum for grappling with the implications of
networks. A great thank you to Dr. Ross Pigeau, Dr. Al Okros and others who took the time to
read and comment on this paper. There are many theorists and others whose works I also cite and
have learned from – to these I am a humble follower. And thanks to all, who have given support,
encouragement and feedback. Finally, I am profoundly grateful to my co-authors.

John Verdon

xxxiv DGMPRA TM 2009-022

1 Introduction8

After more than 30 years in the Canadian Forces, Colonel Jones was nearing retirement.
Looking back on her career, she had four operational tours and held several key positions
at an environmental training school, Environmental HQ, and NDHQ levels.

During one of her last postings, a tour in Afghanistan, Col Jones realized how lucky she was to
have teenage kids who were current with the Internet and the so-called social networking Web
2.0 capabilities. In fact, she realized that her kids (like most new recruits) were digital natives,
while she, like so many experienced military personnel, was only a recent digital immigrant.

The Afghanistan operation was complex and involved collaboration with a multitude of players,
including other government departments, NGOs, International Organizations, Private Voluntary
Organizations, local powers, interest groups and stakeholders. The humanitarian and state
building effects to be achieved involved the CF in contradictions of providing support and
security while simultaneously ensuring the independence (and appearance of independence)
of many useful and important stakeholders. This made formal planning and coordination
of effort delicate and difficult (if not impossible).

As essential as planning was, the agility to adapt and seize initiatives and opportunities as
they emerged was often more valuable. In a sense, the ability to engage in ‘entrepreneurial’
operations was vital in order to seize and keep the initiative within this type of complex
multidimensional operation. Col Jones faced a situation where she not only had to determine
common interests but would also have to marshal resources and people that were not under
her direct command or control in order to achieve important mission aims.

Using Web 2.0 technologies (mostly free and open-source) she was able to create a system for
non-classified discussion, scheduling (calendar), instant messaging, file transfer (video, audio
and text), collaborative knowledge generation (for instance creating key documents through
wikis), good-enough translation (Babylon and Google Translation), coordination and decision
support for many independent organizations (Toucan Navigate & geographic information
systems) and more. The use of free and open-source applications was efficient, effective and
expendable. This system allowed stakeholders to pursue their own interests, make their own
decisions, and also support common interests in a way that preserved both independence and
the appearance of independence. This enabled very effective collaboration. For example the
Red Cross could coordinate their efforts based on ‘publicly available’ information that not only
preserved their independence (critical to their mandate and effectiveness), and yet also support
and produce synergy with the efforts of others.

8
Some aspects of the introductory scenario are adapted from Rasmunssen, E., 2004. From Iraq into
Afghanistan: Lessons in Collaboration for Humanitarian Support. Presentation given at Network-
Enabled Operations Symposium: DND/CF Responding to the new Security Environment.
Nov 30 - Dec 2, 2004. National Arts Center, 53 Elgin Street, Ottawa, Ontario.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 1
She had built an open network, taught and shared it widely, and ultimately it could be left
in place when the CF’s mission was complete. At the end of her tour Col Jones returned
to a garrison posting and was both amazed at the rapid spread of social network technologies
in Canadian society, and dismayed at how slow progress was within the DND/CF.

She could now look forward to retirement, as she now understood how she could continue to
pursue the passion that had been the foundation of her career in the CF. The first thing that
Col Jones did was to sign up for an account on the DNDSocialNet portal. This innovative
site allows members access to immense functionality such as social networking, capturing and
validating lessons learned and experiences, coaching and mentoring. It allows for direct links
to knowledge and document databases. Col Jones started by completing her personal profile
that included her operational experience, areas of expertise and interests. She then went into
the document database and linked some of her best work to her profile. She was able to include
details as to why she felt that these documents were important, who was involved in their
development and who else might find them useful in the future. Each document was tagged using
a folksonomy. Next Col Jones scanned the database of personnel and added all individuals that
she knew and worked with. She was able to add comments about each person. It was at this
point she realized the enormous size of her social network; she had over 200 people with whom
she was able to link.

Over the next couple of weeks, Jones used her personal blog to recount and record some of her
important “life lessons” gained over the past 30 years. As she did this she realized that many
of these lessons were applicable in today’s military despite the massive changes that had taken
place. So she marked her profile as “available as mentor/coach”. Within a few days, she
received an email from a young infantry captain asking her for some advice with a problem.

Just prior to her retirement, Col Jones was able to share her network and list of tagged
documents with her replacement. She felt that this was much more valuable than the simple
turnovers she was used to receiving. Over the next few months, she was queried several times
online and was able to provide advice and guidance to her replacement. Later that year, after
the initial excitement of retirement wore off, she was hired as a class ‘A’ reservist to work
on DNDSocialNet as a coach/mentor and in a validation position. Her jobs included being
available for younger CF members to provide advice and answer questions as required. She
was also heavily involved in reading, commenting on and rating the hundreds of lessons learned
and blogs on the network. As one of the knowledge validators, she was helping to ensure that
valuable information and knowledge was being highlighted, improved and shared broadly
throughout the military community. She often smiled to herself, knowing that she was still
a valuable, albeit distance and online, member of the greater CF network.

This fictional scenario suggests that today’s leadership can continue to make valuable
contributions to DND even after they retire. Considering Canadian demographic trends, this
will be a windfall. In addition, it suggests that today’s youth (our recruits and younger members)
increasingly tend to be digital natives. The question is whether senior leadership and
management will remain digital immigrants or whether they will encourage and enable
organizational transformation to embrace 21st century capability. Network technologies,
architectures of participation, responsible autonomy and peer-production can allow the CF to
more fully engage its personnel and more fully leverage the human capital in which it invests
so heavily to create. These technologies and approaches offer a real opportunity for continuous

2 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
operational learning and agility as well as an integration of operationally focused formal and
informal learning tools. Further, it could be argued that knowledge management, continuous
learning, operational agility and network decisioning are becoming mutually dependant.

For example in a previous paper9 we outlined how CompanyCommand.Com enabled much more
than rapid and real time distribution of lessons learned. The knowledge of the military profession
resides primarily in the minds of its members. Connecting members in a wiki-based forum
allows the knowledge of the profession-of-arms to flow from those who know to those who need
to know, from those with specific experience to those who need to learn from those experiences
right now. Supporting professional forum coordinators enhances the quality of relationships
between community members, enabling members to determine how and where they can further
serve other members. Person-to-person connections and conversation allow context and trust to
emerge and additional knowledge to flow –this is a measure of the organization’s ‘social capital’.
Relationships, trust, and a professional community (social capital) are critical contextual factors
for effective connections and conversations.

These factors set the stage for current and future operational agility which arguably increase the
speed to operational cohesion. Each positive interaction is a reinforcing process that creates
stronger relationships, more trust, and a greater sense of professional community. A tightly
connected, decentralized network of leaders can quickly link members to knowledge and
resources that might otherwise be inaccessible10. This network organization is transforming
how professional development is taking place allowing a more personal sense of ownership
in professional development.

The mantra of personnel management expands from the right person in the right job at the right
time to include – linking the right person (knowledge) to the right situation (peer-production and
responsible autonomy) at the right time.

The evolution of the operational environment and mission-space has generated a number of
concepts including Mission Command, the Joint, Interagency, Multinational and Public (JIMP);
Defence, Diplomacy, Development (3D); the ‘three-block-war’; and Sir Rupert Smith’s ‘war-
among-people’. Some key questions arise out of the need for new strategic operating concepts.

a. How can the exercise of command be accomplished in increasingly complex

operational environments despite very limited control over key resources?

b. How can effects be achieved through the marshalling of resources outside

of an individual leader’s or an organization’s direct control?

c. How can we develop people, organizations and systems capable

of harnessing complexity?

9
Verdon, J., Forrester, B., Tanner, L. (2007). Understanding the Impact of Network Technologies
on the Design of Work – Social and Peer Production. Technical Memorandum, DMPFD TM 2007-04,
April 2007.
10
Dixon, N.M., Allen, N., Burgess, T., Kilner, P., & Wchweitzer, S. (2005). CompanyCommand:
Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession. Center for the Advancement of Leader Development
& Organizational Learning, West Point, New York.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 3
 d. How can we design organizational structures, processes and capabilities for robust and
rapid adaptation and evolution in response to novel and rapidly developing situations?

e. How do we structure both accountability and distributed control (responsible autonomy)

without further bureaucratic kludge11?

This paper explores both the saliency of these puzzles and some possible approaches to
their solution.

1.1 Background
The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies.12

“Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary

historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms
change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt
new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions
scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places
they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly
transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and
are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing of quite that sort does occur:
there is no geographical transplantation; outside the laboratory everyday affairs usually
continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world
of their research-engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world
is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists
are responding to a different world.” (Thomas S. Kuhn, 1969, p. 111)

Hardware to Software to Everyware – this is the vision of the ubiquitous digital environment,
where we and our things will function in an atmosphere of information.

The advent of the networked society13 and economy implores a paradigm shift no less than that
represented by the industrial revolution and the development of Fordist and Taylorist concepts.
We need: new design principles for organizations (e.g., architectures of participation – designed
for robust member contribution); new aims and new ways to achieve them; and new human
resource management systems to support how people can increase their capabilities through
collaborative networks.

11
A kludge (or, alternatively, kluge) is a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem or difficulty.
In engineering, a kludge is a workaround, typically using unrelated parts cobbled together. Especially
in computer programs, a kludge is often used to fix an unanticipated problem in an earlier kludge; this
is essentially a kind of cruft.
12
Freeman Dyson. Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society.
www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
13
See Castells, 2000-2001 and Wellman, 2001, 2004.

4 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Internet technologies are bringing not just cheaper information, but very cheap coordination14.
The resulting exponential increase in the range and extent of human networks, including social
and peer-production,15 represents a new and emergent mode of production bridging the domains
of the market and the organization. As noted above, knowledge management, continuous
learning, operational agility and network decisioning are becoming synonymous.

[The internet is] “already the most powerful force for globalisation, democratisation,
economic growth and education in history. …

The internet allows self-organisation around common ideals, independent of

conventional institutional controls and regardless of nationalities or languages.
Injustices in different parts of the world become the concern of thousands or millions
of people who then pressure local, regional or international governing systems to
find solutions. …

This unparalleled social power is reinventing citizens’ roles in the political process
and changing institutions, policy-making and governance.” (2008 State of the
Future Report16)

The concept of the “last mile of the market” is intended to evoke a sense of heresy in relation to
conventional thinking about the architectural design of organizations. The phrase ‘the last mile
of the market’ is an allusion to the problem of the last mile of broadband connectivity – the
connection from central hubs to individual homes and therefore the next step in the extension
of self-organization into the interior of the organization. It is not meant to suggest that we are
approaching the final development of the market.

A market system is an exchange economy unparalleled in allocating resources (with

corresponding coordination of activities)17. Effectiveness requires both a sound regulatory regime
and a decentralized self-organization: “The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and
of perfect equality, is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of
prosperity to all … classes” (Smith, 1776, p.726).

14
The difficulty of coordinating a team’s work inspired software engineering’s most famous
dictum, known as Brooks’s Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. reached this gloomy conclusion after leading IBM’s troubled effort to write
software for its 360 mainframes in the 1960s. In his 1975 book, The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks
observed that work proceeds slower on bigger teams because of “coordination costs” – the time
programmers lose keeping one another apprised of their work, Rosenberg, 2007.
15
See Benkler, 2002, 2003, 2006.
16
Quoted in The Independent, Sunday, 13 July 2008 at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/weve-seen-the-future--and-we-may-unotu-be-
doomed-866486.html
17
Conventionally we understand the market as capitalism but it is not capitalism we are talking about.
A basic reading of Adam Smith makes clear that an effective market system is not unfettered anarchy,
nor is it based on laissez-faire ideology.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 5
The metaphor of the market is intended represent the powerful paradigm of self-organization,
one that is most significant in its embrace of complexity and the challenge of achieving effects
without direct control of all necessary resources. This paradigm also embraces other concepts
such as heterarchy18, and responsible autonomy19.

In a previous pape r (Verdon et al. 2007) we argued that peer-production represents an

emerging new way to design how the Canadian Forces can power greater operational agility.
Peer-production defines a new paradigm for the design and management of work processes
that enables the more effective use of a knowledge, near-frictionless coordination, and ultra
specialization. Thus peer-production:

a. Integrates continuous learning which powers effective operational agility;

b. Dramatically reduces the coordination and other transaction costs (time, effort, people)
of many types of activity;

c. Increases the pool of available skills, knowledge and judgment that can be
simultaneously brought to bear;

d. Reduces costs of control (time, effort, people);

e. Increases accountability, responsibility, and responsiveness; and,

f. Allows the organization to marshal more of its human capability/capital for productive
and operational ends.

1.2 Aim of the Paper

This paper is one of a series of papers that explore the human and HR implications of an
organization that embraces network enabled capability. The ultimate goal of this series of
papers is to lay the groundwork for a larger project – of developing a comprehensive theory
and philosophy for personnel management in the 21st century – a comprehensive HR Concept that
integrates personnel management with the Capability Domain Concepts. It is for this reason, that
we cover so much conceptual territory.

The paper aims to outline a future or advanced concept related to managing people in the CF
and to explain why this concept is necessary – which, in brief is to fully and effectively enable
mission command as well as the people enabling technologies of networks. In order to do
this, our arguments will show that the future is already here, a future that is built on the past
(including an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift) and yet remains open to be determined
and created by all of us.

18
See Verdon 2005.
19
See Fairtlough 2005.

6 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
To tell this story we cover a large conceptual territory. We start with the birth of the market,
move to concepts of organizational architecture, complexity, mission command, and human
capital. Finally we weave these together with the concepts of peer-production and responsible
autonomy as a new network-enabled mode of production, and a personnel platform that provides
for non-hierarchical exchanges enabling the right people to be connected to the right situation at
the right time.

Why is so much territory covered? One of our aims is to provide a sense of scope, a
reconnaissance of the intangible conceptual environment within which leaders and managers
must navigate organizational change and transformation in the 21st century. The problem
with complexity is that when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, an elaboration of the
part(s) does not provide sufficient understanding of the true nature of the whole. What we aim
to provide is a sense of the key concepts in this network landscape and their inter-relationships
so that the ‘whole’ that emerges out of the ‘parts and their interactions’ makes sense.

We ask the reader to keep an open mind, there is a lot of conceptual navigation in this paper.
However, we hope that the reader’s engagement with the ideas will be rewarding in that we
offer a conceptual view of the digital transformation of a larger operational, organizational
and institutional environment. We do this with the hope that leaders, managers, members and
workers can more easily determine for themselves where the danger and hazards lie and where
the environment provides advantages and protection. Thus we highlight key features of the
conceptual environment in order to outline a larger picture that we perceive as the inevitably
emerging direction of change and opportunity. In this way, the details are less important than
the overall pattern.

We also accept that this paper demands significant effort on the reader’s part. The art of writing
clearly demands providing enough information for understanding and yet not overwhelming a
reader that is not familiar with the material. This is difficult at best, we believe that the territory
covered and the ideas presented will be worth this effort.

The primary premise of this paper is that there is a deep parallel between:

a. The continual evolution of the market system and responsible autonomy

(in order to adapt to a growing complexity in the human environment); and

b. The development of mission command (in order to adapt to a growing complexity

of the operational environment).

These parallels are outlined below in Table 1.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 7
 Table 1: The Last Mile of the Market and Mission Command

Adam Smith’s Market System Mission Command

The Relationships Between The Relationships Between
Freedom to Pursue Interests Distributed control
Individual Autonomy Responsible Autonomy
Impersonal Exchange Non-Hierarchical Exchange
With the People Enabling With the People Enabling
Technologies and Institutions Technologies and Institutions
The Transparency of – The Transparency of –
Trusted Price Mechanism Trusted Situational Awareness
Common Regulatory Framework Common Intent
Results in Results in
Invisible Hand of Market Self-Synchronization
Invisible Hand of Implicit Intent

Key to our central argument is that network technologies, architectures of participation and
insights based on the development of complexity science represent a dramatic disruptive
challenge to industrial institutions as well as organizational structures and processes. The
challenges are both general, as well as to human resource and personnel management in
particular. These technologies provide a new and evolving social architecture of participation
and an infrastructural platform capability inciting the emergence of new concepts of how
organizations are structured, how people can be managed and developed, and how learning and
work can be accomplished. This paradigm shift mirrors the decentralization of control instituted
by the political and social movements away from command economies toward political-
economies embracing more balanced market systems. An evolution is anticipated from industrial
control-hierarchy organizations to network-enabled, complex, and adaptive organizations within
dynamic and evolving environments.

An architecture of participation is defined as the design of system structures to optimize user

participation and contribution, by minimizing any barriers to entry. Thus, as societies and
populations become larger, more diverse and economies became more complex – increasing
the mechanisms enabling greater autonomy lowered the barrier to participation and enabled
these political-social economies to adapt, evolve and thrive.

Disruptive technology is defined as technological innovations that unexpectedly and dramatically

displace established technologies and industries, by their nature they tend to initially lack
refinement, are riddled with performance problems, have no proven practical application and
appeal to a limited audience. They eventually enable a whole new population of consumers
access to products, services or experience historically accessible to small populations of the
rich or the skilled. A classic example of the advent of the car (horseless carriage) which initially

8 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
underperformed the horse but eventually displaced whole industries that depended/supported
horse-based transportation and fostered whole new industries to support and augment the
automobile and faster travel.

We believe that the preeminent shift is from an almost exclusive predominance of centralized
control toward a progressive need to enable decentralized action and self-organization. By
making this comparison we can understand that as a society we have made this shift and are
now comfortable and relatively confident that the market system is both efficient and effective in
allocating resources and coordinating action. Table 1 allows us to see more clearly the parallels
in the responsibility assumed by individuals and required for both systems to obtain the flexibility
and agility to adapt to complex environments.

The ideas of a market system, and democracy (Smith’s Wealth of Nations and America’s
Declaration of Independence were published in the same year) both represent the modern social
embodiment of an long evolving and unfolding narrative of responsible autonomy.

In both, men were understood to be units of independent judgment, capable of making

decisions upon the basis of freely available information, the collective result being
the wisest possible allocation of wealth (in the case of the former) and political power
(in the case of latter).20

The heart of the market system is less about a simple focus on wealth, but instead serves and is
served by democracy. A market system is fundamentally about anyone being able to exchange
anything, with anyone, anywhere. This is embodied in the eBay philosophy. The more that
trusted and impersonal exchange (of goods and information) is enabled, the better the allocation
of resources and power and the easier it is to coordinate activities. Is this not why we hear so
much about the shift in imperative to the need-to-share from the need-to-know? But there is
more. For Smith, the concept of the free market was originally a liberal proposal to free the poor
and the powerless from economic oppression. As such, Smith’s ideas were adopted into the
French Revolution21. Remember – equality, liberty and fraternity? The context of Smith’s
market system was a democracy rooted in empathy, in connecting viscerally with others.

Thus responsible autonomy is inseparable from an ethos of social cohesion and empathy –
of social and individual responsibility. We could have named this paper “The last mile of
Democracy” in order to allude to this narrative. However, the frame of democracy tends to
carry the sense of individual rights, which while fundamentally important is less applicable
to the need to change how we conceive the design of work and the management of people. The
market (system) is fundamentally presupposed on and perpetuates the deep cultural narrative of
the responsible (empathetic and social connected) and autonomous individual. Thus the last mile
of the market is also the pervasive extension of responsible autonomy into the traditional control
hierarchy and the stimulus to new organizational architectures. In this way, we argue that the
deep cultural narrative of responsible autonomy is also inseparable from military concepts of
leadership and mission command. Furthermore, the market frames the freedom of exchange

20
Lakoff, (2008). The Political Mind – quoting Al Gore in his Assault on Reason.
21
Lakoff, (2008).

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 9
which is more germane to the ideas of non-hierarchical exchange of human capital, knowledge,
information through responsible autonomy – ‘the need to share’.

Responsible autonomy from a personnel management point of view can be defined and
implemented as a restructuring of the organization by restructuring its smallest part – the job and
the person time dedicated to the job. What this means is that the time traditionally constituted as
a person’s ‘job obligation’ is now reallocated - divided up: J-% of the time of each of the worker
‘owned’ by their current ‘job/role’, O-% is ‘owned by the larger organization and finally i-% is
owned by individual worker. This person-owned time, in conjunction with enabling technologies
can enable a market-like exchange economy and personnel platform – a group-forming network,
and peer-production22 space – the last mile of the market. It is easy to conceive of a sliding scale
of person-owned time based on experience and professional development. The specific portion is
not important. The point is to visualize a way to create such a space and how it could be used.23

However, many in the military will naturally balk at this comparison. Militaries as organizations
are unique, especially in democracies, for no other organization has:

a. Access to and the means of implementing destructive power;

b. The authority to engage in disciplinary action; and

c. The power to order its member into harm’s way.

As a consequence most democracies require their militaries to abide by civil and military
law. Given this unique power and corresponding responsibilities we are confronted with
some profound questions regarding the power of networks to enable self-organization. How
can responsible autonomy be ensured and enforced? Under what conditions does responsibility
and accountability trump autonomy? How can we build responsibility into our autonomy?

The answer lies in both the human and technological dimensions. The professionalization of a
military increasingly emphasizes and develops the internalization of military ethos. Personnel
are expected to become military professionals through military training as well as through
increasingly rigorous and extensive education.

Furthermore, the shadow side of the vision of a ubiquitous digital environment, where we and
all of our things function in an atmosphere of information is the idea of a surveiled environment.
Each military member becomes a host of multiple sensors feeding a complex informational
matrix and simultaneously a sensed object within the informational matrix.

22
For a discussion of network/Web 2.0 technologies and peer-production see Verdon, et al. 2007.
23
Responsible Autonomy is discussed in greater detail in Section 3.1 and in more detail as a personnel
management concept in section 7.1.

10 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 In the information age of the future, every action by every soldier, sailor, and
airperson at every level will be potentially captured electronically for immediate and
continuous display publicly (i.e., uploaded onto the internet; commanders will not control
information). All operations will be in public view, and commanders at all levels must
be aware of and plan appropriately for this reality. These facts necessitate that
consideration needs to be given to such issues as security, cultural issues including
sensitivities and language(s), and regional situational awareness.24

This paper assumes that the transparency of the digital environment, so necessary for an effective
trusted situational awareness will provide for unparalleled and ubiquitous accountability of
action25. All will know what has and what hasn’t been done and what is being done. It is the
transparency of “good enough” information carried by the price mechanism (theoretically ‘perfect
information’) that allows people to respond to price in a way that enable the ‘invisible hand’ to
emerge26. And it is the transparency of the trusted situational awareness that allow decentralized
action (responsible autonomy), the agility of response and adaptation necessary for complex and
turbulent operational environment.

24
Capability Domain Concept – Command Capability Domain. Draft Version 3.0 (12 Dec 07). Chief of
Force Development.
25
For instance a sort-of personal life black box could plausibly become standard military kit with
implications that all behaviour and action can become available to view by authority, spouse, family,
other members, etc.: Storage will become so cheap and capacity so big that you can record your whole
life in DVD quality. The storage is available on the network rather than your personal device, so
worries about backups and disk crashes have become a thing of the past. The life recorder is embedded
into the frame of your glasses, allowing you to capture an audio-visual record of every second of your
life and recall it through visual, audio and text searches wherever you are. This allows you to recall the
names of acquaintances, find the article you were reading which you can only remember from a rough
date and a position on the page, and pull up the location of your lost keys. The life recorder is your
external memory.
Questions for education
The concept of limitless storage of data raises profound questions about the competencies and skills we
will need to learn in future. Will recall of facts and events become obsolete as a socially valued skill?
Will the ability to synthesise information become the primary goal of education? Will the development
of complex searching and archiving techniques become a ‘new basic’ in education? The ability to
record and retrieve all experiences requires a debate on the purpose and function of education: what is
its goal when all information – from facts, to skills advice – is constantly accessible?
Indicative R&D
The Petascale data storage institute is a US initiative to do research in large-scale data storage
(www.pdsi-scidac.org ). The UKCRC Grand Challenge ‘Memories for Life’ is an EPSRC-sponsored
project that focuses the research in the implications of this development for individuals
(www.memoriesforlife.org ). Microsoft Research builds a prototype of a life recorder in its SenseCam
project (research.microsoft.com/sendev/projects/sensecam). Carnegie Mellon’s Data Storage System
Centre ( www.dssc.ece.cmu.edu ) researches a wide variety of subjects in this area and draws on a
vast knowledge network in the US. Futurelab, 2007. Opening Education: 2020 and beyond: Future
scenarios for education in the age of new technologies.
26
It could be argued that the current 2008-9 financial melt down is the result of the failure of the price
mechanism to carry good enough information for the ‘invisible hand’ to be effective. Thus the credit
crunch is the more result of a collapse of trust and legitimacy of the information contained in the
financial instruments of the day.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 11
Thus the last mile is a metaphor for the need to embed responsible autonomy within the military
organizational structure as a new type of personnel platform and space for non-hierarchical
(impersonal) exchange and collaboration. This is absolutely necessary to enable people to
use network technologies and power organizational learning and operational agility. More
importantly, responsible autonomy will serve as a key stone concept in the development
of a larger integrated 21st Century personnel concept.

Chapter 2 is a brief description of the birth of the market system as the development of a
paradigm of decentralized systems of self-organizing impersonal exchange that have tended to
displace the pre-existing systems of hierarchical command and custom. We seek to illustrate how
radical Smith’s dialectically related ideas of individual freedom and responsible autonomy with
decentralized and self-organizing market systems were to the conventional thinking of his time.
Just as radical as conceiving of an effective ‘invisible hand’ of implicit and explicit intent in
order to allow self-coordination of activities within and between the boundaries of a military
organization. The aim is to illustrate how this paradigm is already here and that our society not
only function this way, but can see no better way to function. In a sense its aim is to make us
more comfortable with the impending potential of technology and responsible autonomy so that
we can focus more on the conditions which would safely and effectively enable the positive
potential to be actualized and potential negative and unintended consequences minimalized.

Colonel Jones had to confront this paradigm shift in many ways. For instance the basic
assumptions of her own society such as presupposing that easy impersonal exchange is universal,
as opposed the highly personalized networks and consequent personalized exchange in Afghan
society. But she also had to come to grips with the identical paradigm which tends to operate
between and within hierarchical organizations.

Chapter 3 discusses the industrial approach to the design of an organization as a machine and
control structure supported by a corresponding personnel management regime/system. The
organization-as-machine concept, that seems to so perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the industrial
economy. This is important to our argument because the organization-as-machine and its natural
control hierarchy are not simply perceived as inevitable but as the only effective organizational
architecture with which to design systems for work and managing people. By illustrating the
‘design’ premise underlying the structure of our organizations we aim to frame the systemic
cultural and structural constraints that do and will prevent us from achieving effective strategic
and operational agility – from becoming a ‘learning’ organization and from attaining the full
capabilities of our human capital.

Key to understanding the new power of network technologies and architectures of participation
as human capital multiplier we discuss the emerging economic model of the long tail, in
order to illustrate the significant gains made possible by the radical decrease in transaction,
coordination and control costs. Thus this chapter also provides an economic argument supporting
the last mile.

In order to achieve her mission and its intentions, Colonel Jones had to integrate and enable non-
hierarchical exchange as part of how she could obtain the operational agility necessary to achieve
effects and intent.

12 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Chapter 4 is an elaboration of the challenge faced by traditional control hierarchies when they are
required to adapt to increasingly turbulent and complex environments. When external complexity
is greater than internal complexity the organization becomes incapable of effective and relevant
adaptation. This chapter contributes to our overall argument by articulating why it is important to
increase the potential internal complexity through a personnel platform of responsible autonomy
and a market-like space of non-hierarchical exchange. Understanding the demands of grappling
with complexity and the need to harness complexity contributes to understanding the need to
change how we structure an organization and the opportunities that network technologies and
responsible autonomy offer to enable new organizational concepts.

By grasping the potential of Web 2.0 technologies, architectures of participation and responsible
autonomy, Colonel Jones increased the internal complexity of her organization resulting is
a capability for entrepreneurial operations, leveraging resources beyond her control and
maintaining effective operational agility.

In Chapter 5, the concept of mission command and the related concepts of intent (command,
common, explicit and implicit) are discussed. In this chapter the concepts of complexity,
organizational architecture and responsible autonomy are brought together to illustrate their
effective inseparability. This is the core of the military justification of the last mile as not
a civilian or business concept but key to effective operational agility in the 21st Century.

Colonel Jones was able to not only achieve Command Intent (facilitating those within the
military network) but also to facilitate a broader Common Intent among a multitude of players
and organizations within the operational arena, but not under her or military control.

A key factor in understanding the concept of the last mile is a discussion on human capital.
Chapter 6 explores human capital and associated concepts of social and cultural capital, the role
of learning in human capital development. Key to understanding the new power of network
technologies and architectures of participation for human capital development and use are the
implications for learning and agility.

Even in post-retirement the CF was able to continue to obtain a return on Colonel Jones’ hard
won and expensive-to-developed human capital making the continual development of new
recruits, and other members faster, cheaper and more effective.

Having outlined the preliminary concepts, Chapter 7 discusses the concept of the last mile with
an emphasis on its application to the human resource management system. We present a concept
of responsible autonomy through the ‘restructuring’ of job-time in order to harness complexity,
network technologies and unleash the human capital and capability. We argue that the benefits
of this concept will increase organizational agility and adaptiveness in order to remain relevant
and effective in rapidly changing and turbulent environment. An equally important benefit of
responsible autonomy as a personnel platform for non-hierarchical exchange is the harnessing
of complexity and human capital to enable the self-organization of knowledge, specialization
and the division of labour beyond the scope of the CF’s occupational structure and even beyond
the formal boundary of the organization. In short, a platform that enables the linking of the right
person to the right situation at the right time.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 13
In the world of accelerating technological and scientific change, we literally do not know what
occupations will be vital in 5 or 10 years, which occupations (currently vital) will be obsolete
and which will still exist but will be radically transformed. Yet we must grow most of our people
over a 10 to 30 year frame, and perhaps longer. Without efforts to integrated real-time learning
within all our operational capabilities, to know, understand, develop and most importantly use to
the fullest extent our human capital, the organization capability for strategic transformation will
be severely limited.

We finish the paper with our conclusions and some recommendations for the CF and DND.

Thus this paper is about the last mile of the market – the introduction of the principles of self-
organization into the traditional hierarchical organization. But the last mile is unintelligible
without the concept of responsible autonomy and the impact of complexity and the need to
harness complexity. Furthermore, these concepts would seem unrelated to a military organization
unless linked to an understanding of Mission Command, and learning as the foundation of
operational agility. Finally, to integrate all of the concepts, requires an understanding of
the need to invest in and optimally capitalize on – the capabilities of people along with the
increasing importance and economics of human capital (within the CF, the defence team, the
security community and more).

In this way, we hope that by outlining the past and future context of human resource management
practices and mapping some of the important the conceptual territory, the reader will be in a
better position to understand the complexity of the change that has brought us to current practice
and more importantly the importance of preparing for the future.

14 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
2 Birth of the Market27

A market system is an exchange system that is unparalleled in allocating resources (with

corresponding coordination of activities). Effectiveness requires both a sound regulatory regime
and a decentralized self-organization: “The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty,
and of perfect equality, is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest
degree of prosperity to all … classes” (Smith, 1776, p.726).

The ideas of a market system, and democracy (Smith’s Wealth of Nations and America’s
Declaration of Independence were published in the same year) both represent the modern social
embodiment of an long evolving and unfolding narrative of responsible autonomy. The metaphor
of the market is intended represent the powerful paradigm of self-organization, one that is most
significant in its embrace of complexity and the challenge of achieving effects without direct
control of all necessary resources. This paradigm also embraces other concepts such as
heterarchy, and responsible autonomy.

The market system as an organizing paradigm, is a powerful illustration that as a society we have
already embraced the ideas of a self-organized distributed control in the very a concrete way and
would not accept a reversion to a centrally controlled economy or society. And yet this paradigm
strikes many as unworkable within the boundaries of our organizations.

The market system is a generative (enabling and inviting continual improvement) platform
demanding and unleashing: responsible autonomy and self-organization; efficient allocation
of resources; coordination of related activities and impartial trusted exchange. At minimum
it presupposes legitimate:

a. Laws and principles of individual and property rights;

b. Social technologies of contract, exchange, credit, transparent aggregation

of information, etc.;

c. Standards – weight, measure, currency/value, etc.;

d. Literacy to comprehend standards, price, information, etc.; and

e. Recourse and enforcement mechanisms.

Imagine it’s 1795, and you’re a shopkeeper somewhere in Spain. You no longer believe,
as the ancient Egyptians did, that your king is literally a god living on earth. But you
still believe that he has a divine right to rule over you. You can’t imagine any country
being governed well without a king who is responsible for the protection and control
of is subjects.

27
Caveat. Due to time and space limitations many issues are not addressed, among these are: The tragedy
of the unmanaged commons; Abundance and it implications for valuation of ‘goods’; Property Rights;
and the Mercantile system.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 15
 You have heard of the strange rebellion in North America in which the British colonists
claimed that they could govern themselves without any king at all. You’ve also
heard about the recent bloodshed in France that ended with a group of so-called
revolutionaries killing their king, replacing the government, and destroying, almost
overnight, so many good things. These events seem to you like profound mistakes,
foolhardy experiments that are bound to fail.

It just doesn’t make sense to say – as the democratic revolutionaries do – that people can
govern themselves. That’s a contradiction in terms, like saying that children could raise
themselves or farm animals could run a farm. People can try it, you think, but it certainly
couldn’t work as well as having a wise and just king.28

For most of humankind’s experience in societies, only two ways have been available to shape
social and economic structures. Societies ensured continuity by organizing around traditions
and customs and/or on the basis of authority and command hierarchies.

For example even in the 1400s, there was no such thing as land in the sense of freely saleable,
rent-producing property. There existed estates, manors and principalities, but these were most
definitely not real estate to be bought and sold at will. These types of properties did form the core
of life in society, providing the foundation for prestige and status as well as for military, judicial
and administrative organization. The same holds for labour. In the pre-capitalistic world, there
was no vast network of job-seeking individuals looking to sell their services for the best price
they could get. And while private wealth existed, there was no widespread norm that it should be
put to new and aggressive uses. Until the abstract elements of production itself were conceived,
the theory of market system could not begin to displace the organization of society by command
and custom.

Just to commercialize the land – to convert the hierarchy of social relationships into many vacant
lots and advantageous sites – required nothing less than the uprooting of an entrenched feudal
way of life. To make ‘workers’ out of the sheltered serfs and apprentices – no matter how
exploitative the cloak of paternalism might have been – required the creation of a frightened
disoriented class called the proletariat. To make capitalists out of guild masters meant that the
laws of the jungle had to be taught to the timid denizens of the barnyard.29 It is interesting to think
of the concept of ‘jobs’ as carrying the same paradigmatic concreteness that land carried before
the advent of the market system.

For example, in 1666 in France, when a guild master of the weaving industry wanted to
implement an innovation in his product, the verdict was: “If a cloth weaver intends to process a
piece according to his own invention, he must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission
from the judges of the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after the
question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of the oldest weavers of the

28
Malone, Thomas (2004). The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your
Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life. Harvard Business School Press, p.3.
29
Ibid.

16 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
guild”30. Around the same time in England, the Privy Council denied a revolutionary patent for
a stocking frame and ordered this danger abolished. In this way we see how custom ruled and
not only inhibited improvement and innovation but also actually prohibited it.

Perhaps this remains all too familiar to a modern cubicle inhabitant such as “Dilbert”. And this is
the point, that although our society and democracy has widely and generally embraced the market
system as a decentralized, dynamic, innovation dependent and self-organization foundation of our
political economy, within our organizations, however, it can feel much closer to the pre-market
highly centralized feudal system – a command economy.

Smith presented a third way – the ‘market system.’ It presupposed that each should do what was
best for their own advantage. As noted before is seems that it is no accident that Smith’s book
and the Declaration of Independence appeared in the same year, for both democracy and the
market require the pre-supposition of some degree of liberty to enable a new level of individual
autonomy. And so, the lure of gain, not tradition or authority became the guide for action
(Heilbroner, 1999), bringing more liberty to personal choices in areas of life. The idea
of the ‘lure of gain’ is not reducible to simple selfishness; we can easily understand it in
a broader context of self-actualization – the freedom to be motivated by intrinsic reward
and to extend personal effort for the advance of higher goals. This is better described as
‘responsible autonomy’.

One other dimension is important in the process of institutional change to a market system.
What was needed was the creation of new conventions that would support ubiquitous impersonal
exchange – that is exchange relationships not based on hierarchy, custom, and/or kinship and
close community ties. In short, liberty (autonomy) and the pursuit of personal interest were
integral to a capability for anyone to engage is a ‘trustable’ (responsible) exchange with anyone
else – secure, impersonal, non-hierarchical exchange. In this way, whatever the mix of motives
driving personal behaviour, both democracy and the market system provide a foundation for
and shape a different sense of individual identity.

It was not obvious that a market system would enable a society to endure – that all work, dirty
and comfortable, difficult and easy would get done. Abandoning the security of custom and
command for the uncertain, perplexing and dubious “invisible hand” required a revolution
sundered the mould of command and custom and one that is ended. Despite a general embrace
of the market system, the thought of an organization being run as market-like systems can strike
people as wild fantasy in the same way that the original argument of trusting the ‘invisible hand’
as the best way to run the broader national economy.

Let’s look at this in another way. Bureaucracies arise to accomplish a planned extraction
of surpluses or gains from productivity (e.g., labour). They can expand in proportion to
their ability to control and process those activities needed for successful extraction. In
contrast, markets arise wherever a regular assembly of independent decision makers gather
(e.g., Churches, borders between regions, towns, tribes), offering an opportunity for individuals
to buy, sell, and barter. Bureaucracies sort out human beings into internally homogeneous

30
Ibid – Guilds and feudal privileges resisted the change. In France they were not abolished until 1790
and in England the Statute of Artificers regulating guild practices was not repealed until 1813.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 17
and hierarchical ranks. Markets bring a heterogeneous collection of humans together where
complementary economic and other needs enmesh31.

Markets and bureaucracies are, however, more than just collective mechanisms for the
allocation of material and energetic resources. When people exchanged in a medieval
market, not only resources changed hands but also rights of ownership, that is, the rights
to use a given resource and to enjoy the benefits that may be derived from it. Hence,
market transactions involved the presence of collective institutional norms (such as codes
of conduct and enforceable contracts). Similarly, medieval bureaucracies were not only
organizations that controlled and redistributed resources via centralized commands, they
themselves were sets of mutually stabilizing institutional norms, a nexus of contracts and
routines constituting an apparatus for collective action. The rules behind bureaucracies
tended to be more formalized than the informal conventions and codes of conduct behind
markets, and more importantly, they tended to become a ‘constitution,’ that is, a set of
contracts defining a homogeneous, common enterprise not easily disaggregated into a set
of heterogeneous bilateral contracts like those involved in market transactions.

De Landa, Manuel, 1997, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Zone Books: New York

Markets existed long before Adam Smith; they have been pervasive since the onset of
civilization. However, the conditions of much of pre-modern and non-monetary society
including the restrictions of low population densities and inherent difficulties of exchange over
any significant distances means that the possibilities for an evolution of complex sharing and
exchange systems were extremely limited.

The importance of Smith’s observations is not limited to his elaboration of market principles for
markets; rather it is the extension of these principles as the basis for the design and governance
of economic society. What can be seen is that the organizing principles for a marginal part
of society have spread to encompass a much greater part of society. The shift is one from
centralized control towards decentralized control, and from personalized exchange networks
to arenas where impersonal exchange is trusted and predominates.

But as De Landa’s quote above points out hierarchies enable the development of many standards
that served necessary pre-requisites for a market system to successfully work. These standards
had to become widely accepted and legitimate, and include:

a. metrics (weight, quantity, length, etc);

b. currencies for exchange and valuation (the information in a price has to be ‘good
enough’ for reasonable decisioning);

c. language – literacy (numeracy) has to be widespread so that the price is meaningful;

d. effective recourse mechanism (good enough justice);

31
De Landa, Manuel (1997). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Zone Books: New York

18 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 e. people have to be free enough to exchange anything with anyone, anywhere (good
enough liberty), and

f. there has to be good enough ‘equality’ to ensure real competition and so much more.

These standards are most important for the establishment of trust. In a sense there are at least
two dimensions to trust - a narrowly personal one for trusted personal exchange and a much
broader one based on social/governance dimension that creates contextual mechanisms of
trusted impersonal and non-simultaneous exchange. What the market depended on and enabled
was ‘impersonal’ exchange in a way that in some instances necessarily displaced the almost
exclusively dependence on personal networks of exchange. In bureaucracies, this would be
seen in efforts to entrenchment merit-based systems.

However, the ‘pre-market’ condition of highly personal networks of exchange is very similar
to the primary mode of exchange that operates implicitly in organizations. The hierarchy, does
sanction (positively and negatively) a type of formal exchange based on the ‘chain-of-command’
control architecture. Networks of highly personal exchange are the ‘informal’ mechanism where
so much of the work ‘really’ gets done. But these ‘informal’ networks tend to be constrained
to horizontal exchange – that is exchange occurring at the same rank/level within the hierarchy
even though they can extend across organizational silos. What is missing in the organization
is the ‘market’ layer where trusted ‘impersonal’ (non-hierarchical, outside of the formal
system of property rights embedded in the hierarchy). For a market-like space of impersonal
(non-hierarchical) exchange to occur it is necessary to provide a platform for at least
two dimensions of trust – one dimension involving the trust necessary for ‘managers’ to cede
control to the individual (enabling responsible autonomy); and another dimension involving the
contextual conditions necessary for trusted ‘impersonal exchange’. The trust for impersonal
exchange involves issues of rank and hierarchy, where for instance, an individual from higher
levels of rank/hierarchy can exchange with an individual from lower rank/hierarchy either within
a ‘stove pipe’ or particular command chain and across multiple stove pipes / command chains
(one boss exchanging with someone else’s minion as equals).

One could say that there has been a shift of figure/ground whereby a centralized hierarchy had
been the container of local instances of decentralized structures (markets) – to a situation where
the decentralized market system and corresponding democratic processes/values has become the
container of hierarchic centralized structures within social organizations. The pre-market regime
of property rights that enable a command economy was displaced from the larger economy
to become embedded within bureaucracies and continue today in the industrial organization
designed as a machine whose processes are governed by a centralized command. In this way,
the essence of personnel management (HR) is a system of property rights whereby the levels
of the hierarchy sanction formal exchange, and the allocation of personnel.

However, the dilemma is not one of either/or – markets or bureaucracies – centralization versus
de-centralization, but rather how best to integrate these seemingly opposite paradigms in a
dynamic balance.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 19
 Markets and bureaucracies, as well as unplanned and planned cities, are concrete
instances of a more general distinction: self-organized meshworks of diverse elements,
versus hierarchies of uniform elements. But again, meshworks and hierarchies not only
coexist and intermingle, they constantly give rise to one another.

De Landa, Manuel, 1997, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Zone Books: New York

As previously noted, central to the argument of this paper is that network technologies are
providing (and continue to evolve) the material infrastructure/platform that is feeding the
emergence of architectures of participation, protocols of collaboration and the development
of new concepts of how work can be accomplished – notably responsible autonomy and
peer-production. The border between, society, market, organization becomes more permeated
as new types of assemblages of meshworks become possible.

Colonel Jones came to understand the new operational environment as a meshworks integrating
hierarchy, heterarchy, responsible autonomy and other market-like heterogeneous agents. Her
success was built of her mastery of continual learning which allowed her the agility to become
increasingly comfortable within the operational context of uncertainty.

The transformation of organizations will not be due to new technologies alone. Transformation
will come about from the desires of people for efficiency, agility, greater operational
effectiveness as well as from the personal interests such as greater personal satisfaction
and fulfillment based on increased actualization of their productive and creative potential.
Allowing professionals within an organization to pursue what they are interested in (passionate
about) assumes that the interests in question are related to efforts to contribute to organizational
goals, military and institutional ethos, continued professional development and organizational
innovations related to better fitness in the operational context. The distributed execution
of Command Intent is aims to increase operational agility. Distributed execution is a metaphor
for responsible autonomy in a context of effective self-organized achievement of desired effects.

Colonel Jones, in order to achieve her mission had to marshal resources outside of her direct
control. A simple and rational request for cooperation was often not enough. She had to
understand how the particular interests of relevant stakeholders could serve in mission success.
She also had to create or facilitate the possibilities of impartial and non-hierarchical exchange.

There is one more key issue concerning the rise of a market system and economy, and that is
related to the capability to manage and harness the power of collective effort and complexity.
The next two chapter will focus on the inevitable limits to command and custom in adapting
to rapid change, innovation and complexity.

20 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
3 Organizations as Machines32

Organizations are platforms for harnessing collective human effort. The architectural principles
of their design are constrained by material, technological, social and institutional frameworks,
as well as by invisible boundaries of our paradigms. At minimum an institutional framework
consists of:

a. Power structure specifying decisioning and governance;

b. Property rights structures that define incentives; and

c. Social structures – norms and conventions defining informal incentives.

The institutional framework is a human made creation whose function is neither automatic nor
‘natural’ and it must adapt to changes in technology, information and human capital to continue
to function optimally.

This chapter examines some of the fundamentals of the design of organizations – hierarchy,
heterarchy and responsible autonomy. The chapter concludes with an elaboration of a new
institution “the Long Tail” that has emerged from the advent of network technologies and
architectures of participation. The Long Tail provides the economic rationale underlying
the organizational embrace of the ‘last mile of the market’ and responsible autonomy.

3.1 Preliminary Concepts – Institution, Paradigm, Hierarchy

All organized activity by humans entails a structure to define the ‘way the game is
played,’ whether it is a sporting activity or the working of an economy. That structure
is made up of institutions – formal rules, informal norms, and their enforcement
characteristics (North 2005, 48).

Institutions can be understood as a scaffolding which shapes human interaction and consists
of material capital and human capital. The material capital includes all humanly accumulated
physical artefacts including the tools, techniques, and instruments (technologies) enabling control
of their environment. Human capital includes the stock of knowledge possessed by a society
especially as embodied in the beliefs and values held and the institutions created to reflect such.
Change in the institutional framework is generally incremental due to constraints that the past
imposes on the present and the future.

Institutions are the rules of the game, organizations are the players; it is the interaction
between the two that shapes institutional change (North 2005, 59).

32
For a powerful and comprehensive view of the role of metaphor and frames in human
thinking/behaviour see Lakoff & Johnson, 1999.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 21
Paradigm, metaphor and frame, these are words that resonate with each other. Their aim is to
illuminate how intellectual constructs (embodying and perpetrating sets of beliefs and values
largely outside of our consciousness) can shape how we view the world.

A paradigm is a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared

by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way
a community organises itself. (Fritjof Capra, quoted in Seel, 2000).

Both command and custom generally embody hierarchical structures – command primarily
representing dominance hierarchies (who gets to do what) and custom representing allocation
hierarchy (who gets what).

Hierarchy have also been used for productive purposes. They are used to coordinate
specialization and division of labour for [complicated] tasks, and are in this sense
a substitute for markets. Many productive human activities – for example, all the
activities that occur in business firms, in governments and in universities – are organized
hierarchies. Indeed, in contemporary society virtually all productive activity is at least in
part hierarchically organized. Such hierarchies seem to be relatively new [within human
evolution] (Rubin, 2000, p.260).

Whereas dominance hierarchies generally do not lead to increases in productivity, however,

they can be very useful in reducing and managing in-group conflict and discord, and with good
leadership bring about in certain circumstances, a unity or harmonization of efforts. Egalitarian
relations on the other hand will increase in situations where there are increases in the value of in-
group cooperation (e.g., for group defence) and/or in the ease at which members can leave the
group (and thus avoid domination) (Rubin, 2000, p.262).

3.1.1 Organization as Machine

Adam’s Smith’s illustration of the pin factory while beautiful as a simple description of the power
of the division of labour (empowered by a productive hierarchy), undermined his larger vision of
the nature and power of the market system. The invisible hand not only guided the allocation of
resources it also guided how people through responsible autonomy and collaboration could enable
the self-organizing development of the division of labour throughout a social-economy.

The pin-factory confuses the centralization of production with the market system he sought to
elaborate. The pin factory is both a control hierarchy and essentially designed as a machine. The
design is top-down, separating the designer (king/CEO) from the tool (machine/organization).
The purpose of the machine determines the inputs and expected outputs. Although labour is
viewed as an input, the worker is transformed into a replaceable ‘cog’ (task-specified job) within
the machine and enabling it to function effectively. Efficient replaceability implies a high degree
of standardization.33 Industrial machines for mass production and economies of scale – as long
as the environment is stable.

33
A more elaborate discussion of the differences and relations between ‘position, job and occupation’ will
be undertaken in a following paper.

22 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
The schematic of an organization as a machine creates dependable output – industrial machines
for mass production and economies of scale, and computer enabled flexible machines for the
mass customized economies of scope. However, within this mechanical and linear causality is
embedded a rigid determinism, dependent on a stable environment with little change in order to
promise consistent output. Indeed, this would be the classic type of military organization. In the
mechanistic design/engineering of organization as machine little attention is paid to mechanisms
enabling components to interact. Typically it is assumed that all that is necessary is a common
standard to ensure that interfaces match.

However, the fundamental message of network technologies and architectures of participation is

that the means that enable interaction among the people and parts of a system has moved from
a supporting role in a systems/organization design/engineering to a primary consideration in
organizational architecture.

So why were organizations designed as machine-like command economies? Three interrelated

reasons (among many) – the constraints of the material institution, the persistence of a socio-
cultural myth of command and custom societies/economies; and paradigmatic assumptions
that control hierarchies are the only and inevitable way to organize large groups.

3.2 The Material Institution

First, is what can be called the material institution of the power-law relationship. We see this
depicted in Figure 1 below.

High
Traditional
Organization
V Transaction
a costs
l
Value/cost per
u
person Traditional Cost – Value Threshold
e
/ Cost of coordination exceeds value extracted
C
o
s
t

Low High
Number of People

Figure 1: The Material Institution

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 23
Here in Figure 1, we illustrate the parameters of material institution that generally constitute
the organizational boundary, which is the point at which organizational viability is challenged
when costs exceed the value extracted. This threshold/boundary can be exceeded by some
organizations, for example a military organization’s boundary is less vulnerable to the simple
cost/value parameter as its mandate of providing national security is an overall cost measure only
by the value of national security. However, even the largest national militaries are eventually
challenged by a cost/value threshold.

The rationale for why the classic command and control hierarchies have persisted despite
the triumph of a market system was explained by Ronald Coase34. He claimed that the basic
economic reason for individuals to operate under command rather than in the market system –
is transaction costs35.

Where the cost of achieving a given outcome in the world through the price system will
be higher than the cost of using a firm to achieve the same result, firms will emerge.
Any given firm will cease to grow when the increased complexity of its organization
makes its internal decisions costs higher than the costs that a smaller firm would incur
to achieve the same marginal result. Firms will not, however, conduct activities if the
cost of organizing these activities within a firm exceeds the cost of achieving that result
through the market (Benkler, 2002).

Simply put, the transaction costs of discovering options and making and enforcing agreements
among all the disparate participants increase with the number of people involved. A successful
organization obtains its gains through the lower transaction/coordination costs of directing
employees. However, when the management overhead and internal coordination cost become
too large a market will outperform a control hierarchy.

Some activities are better coordinated through the market, and others through hierarchy.
Which method is preferable for any given activity depends on transaction costs. The
level of these costs itself depends in part on evolved human preferences for alternative
working environments.

In other words, humans have adapted the dominance hierarchy to new uses related to
division of labour. Among humans, hierarchies are used to perform tasks. Superiors
induce subordinates to undertake coordinated activities whose benefits are shared in
some way throughout the hierarchy. There is division of labour within the hierarchy.

34
Received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his discovery and clarification f the significance of
transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functional of the economy.
Major works include: “The Nature of the Firm” 1937; “The Problem of Social Cost” 1960.
http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1991/
35
Time and space limits of this paper require me to assume that the reader is familiar with
transactions costs.

24 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 Sometimes hierarchies are used to perform tasks related to aggression, as in the use of
armies. Hierarchic armies are [generally] more productive (of violence) than are the
unorganized raids…. Sometimes hierarchies are used to coordinate actual production
of goods and services, such in a pin factory or education and research university. This
use of hierarchy appears to be a little appreciated human innovation, and is probably
relatively recent. During much of evolutionary time hierarchies would have been mainly
consumption hierarchies. With relatively little specialization, there would have been
relatively little gain from productive hierarchies. (Rubin, 2000, p. 269).

Transaction costs would have to include measures of time, effort, and people required to
coordinate action, allocate goods and services, and exchange information and knowledge.

3.3 The Mythos of Command

The second reason relates to the socio-cultural myths of command. Thorstein Veblen36 argued
that the market system, although a new economic order, retained the social-cultural myths
(mythos) of a society shaped by a long history of command and custom. Leaders in organizations
could see themselves and feel seen as a governing elite. Thus the control hierarchy remains
a fundamental frame37 for principles of organizational architecture design. Frames are maps
that allow us to organize information to make sense of the world and are part of our discursive
universe helping us to communicate to others and define cultural norms. Often we can become
prisoner to our frames:

Scientists have done some fascinating and suggestive experiments with ordinary
houseflies. If you capture and keep houseflies in a jar and then remove the lid after
a few days, most of them will not fly away. In fact, they stay right where they are —
inside the jar — even though they could escape if only they could see their way to
freedom. But they seem “committed” to a lid that is no longer there. Psychologists
have identified this phenomenon as “premature cognitive commitment.” It is premature
cognition in the sense that it occurs, more or less automatically, before we are aware
of or fully understand the stimulus. It is “commitment” because we are locked into a
specific set of thoughts. Like the houseflies, we give up the freedom to choose once we
become committed to the nonexistent lid. The first step in challenging a commitment
is recognizing that you have made it in the first place (Lissack, 2004, quoting White).

The shift to a market system did not dissolve the myth of command instead it became
‘democratized’ in that, anyone can become a “Captain of Industry”, and or Leader-Hero. The
CEO as the ultimate ‘decider’ of allocation replaces a king and custom becomes entrenched
hierarchical and occupational structures and cultures. The mechanical, linear and deterministic
organizations imbue their ‘parts’ (people) with a structural model reproducing itself as the primal
perceptual and cognitive frame.

36
For a concise description of Veblen’s work see: Heilbroner, Robert, 1999. The Worldly Philosophers:
The Lives, Times and Ideas of The Great Economic Thinkers, Touchstone.
37
One could argue that the leadership of a control hierarchy is a powerful self-replicating ‘meme’ – more
insidious than a frame.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 25
The complement to this frame of organization-as-machine is the view that changing the
organization is also a mechanical (re-engineering) type of process. The ‘change agent’ must
eventually adopt an external perspective from which to diagnose and understand the mechanics
of the systems in order to determine which tools to take from their tool-kit and fix or redesign
the machine.

To elaborate further, the work of Manuel de Landa38, through his synthesis of a number of
interesting writers including the work of Fernand Braudel39, believes that the large organizations
of the industrial economy continue to be structured as command economies – hierarchically
bureaucratic emphasizing heavily centralized planning process and decisioning. The CEO as
the ultimate determiner of resource allocation, replaces a king and custom is embodied within
entrenched hierarchical and occupational structures with entailing organizational cultures.
Custom is implicit in the design of industrial age organizations that are conceived of as
‘machines’ heavily dependent and determined by broad encompassing standards. The more
widespread a standard is, the more powerful is the consequent path-dependence and the more
it operates as a ‘custom’. These “organizational machines”, are designed for the most efficient
achievement of particular optimal solutions to specific aims or outcomes.

Recently the machine has become a programmable robot designed to embody flexibility in the
possibilities of its structure and programs. Control is shifted to its software and software design.
Innovation however, remains something that must be instituted from outside the machine in a
top-down way. The future as foreseen from this paradigm is the age of autonomous, collaborative
(self-organizing) robots shifting more control to the literal machine. Strange to think of robots
as autonomous and humans remaining constrained in the mechanical, linear determinism of an
organization as machine. What this means is that the explicit assumption of the control hierarchy
paradigm, is that not only innovation is instituted from the top-down, but that the design of the
organization is based on the separation of thinking and doing, with the serious determinative
thinking done at the top. Thus all policy and change is directed from the top (thinking)
to be implemented (doing) by the rest – far from the ideas of autonomous, collaborative
self-organization. There have been many attempts to overcome some of the limitations to of this
structure, for example – Total Quality Management (TQM) attempts to harness the creative and
thinking capabilities of all personnel and has demonstrated significant successes in this regard.
However, TQM and similar approaches eventually confront the inherent contradictions between
the principles of self-organized action applied as ‘fix’ without a deeper re-conceptualization
of the design of a machine-like control hierarchy. These themes of innovation, autonomy,
self-organization will be further elaborated in the section concerned with complexity.

38
de Landa, Manuel (2001). Open-Source: A Movement in Search of a Philosophy.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/ and 1996 Markets and Antimarkets and Network Economics.
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/
39
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel Fernand Braudel’s most famous work is a three volume opus
“Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800”

26 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Another consequence of a paradigm of inherent mechanical linear determinism is the implicit
shaping of a perception of the future as a continuation of the past and present. From this
perspective change and innovation (especially in public not-for-profit oriented organizations)
is perceived as a very costly risk or threat (and yet not being able to embrace innovation may
be an even more costly threat and so the CF/DND as many other organizations are undergoing
extensive transformation). Furthermore, the organization as a mechanical, linear and
deterministic container imbues its ‘parts’ (people) with its own structural model and
therefore perpetuates/reproduces it as the primal perceptual and cognitive frame.

Colonel Jones understood that mission in the new operational environment could not be
successfully achieved by viewing the situation only externally as a machine. In many ways,
she had to give up the illusion of control and that she could comprehend the complexity and
uncertainty of the situation. She had to work within the multiple systems at play with more
modest aims.

3.4 Organizational Architectures

… the difficulties that kept self-assembled groups from working together are shrinking,
meaning that the number and kinds of things groups can get done without financial
motivation and managerial oversight are growing. …in one sentence … most of the
barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to
explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done (Shirky, 2008, 22).

Third, is the fundamental or paradigmatic assumption that control hierarchies are the only choice
available to organize large groups of people to a common or collective purpose. There are other
ways to get things done and this section explores two alternatives.

The ubiquity of the frame of hierarchy makes it seem as ‘The’ natural and only way to organize
against anarchy. There are alternatives: Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy. Table 2 below
outlines these ‘three ways things get done’ (Fairtlough, 2005).

Table 2: Continuum of Organizational Architectures

Culture is Structured by the Conventions of Coordination

Centralized Decentralized
Control Hierarchies Heterarchies Responsible Autonomy
Traditional Military Consulting Firms Free Markets

Government and Corporate Bureaucracy Research Universities e-Society and the Internet

Political Democracies Special Operations Forces

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 27
Alternate organizations architecture allow us to move beyond the hegemony of control
hierarchy and organization-as-machine. We present two simple definitions of heterarchy
and responsible autonomy:

a. Heterarchy – multiple rule, a balance of powers instead of single rule, this idea
of shared rule is very old, for example partnerships; and

b. Responsible Autonomy – individual or group autonomy to decide what to do.

Responsibility as accountability is not anarchy. The very word responsible implies
connectedness one could just as easily understand the term in the sense of connected
autonomy or accountable autonomy.

As Table 2 indicates responsible autonomy requires a corresponding organizational architecture

such as a market system or a network structure with a participatory architecture. These
concepts of Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy are consistent with the concepts
of leadership outlined in “Leadership in the Canadian Forces: Conceptual Foundations”40.
More specifically, the document’s discussion of the need to balance control with creativity
is incorporated through the use of Robert Quinn’s41 Competing Values model organizational
effectiveness. This model provided a substantial base for the development of the CF
effectiveness framework which conceives mission success as the primary outcome with
external adaptability, internal integration42 and military ethos, member well-being and
commitment serving as enabling outcomes that are as critical as mission success in order to
ensure sustainable and recurrent effectiveness. These essential outcomes are further conceived
as being in a continuous state of tension and conflict requiring leaders at all levels to vigilantly
balance these tensions in order to attain a meaningful effective balance.

In addition, the CF Leadership Framework also incorporates ideas of transformational leadership

and professional socialization emphasizing that the CF already engages in developing leader’s
(at all levels) capacity to exercise independent judgement through a socialization that allows them
to internalize key values essential to responsible autonomy (although not referred to as such).
Thus the ideas in this paper are merely extending what has already been accepted in CF doctrine.

The market required an institutional democracy in order to enable and empower the responsible
autonomy of an individual’s pursuit of interests and engagement in impartial legal exchange
(anyone, anything, anywhere). The development of network technologies and architectures
of participation have enabled the emergence of a new institution (new capability/rules enabling
exchange) that has been called “The Long Tail43“. The next section will discuss this institution.

40
http://www.cda-acd.forces.gc.ca/cfli-ilfc/doc/dndcon-eng.pdf
41
Quinn (1988).
42
The concepts of external adaptability and internal integration are also consistent with the discussion
regarding internal and external complexity developed in the next chapter.
43
See Anderson 2008 and Shirky 2008.

28 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
3.5 The Institution of The Long Tail
How Network Technologies and Architectures of Participation can Unleash Organizational
and Human Capital – The Economics of the Long Tail

The challenge for all large organizations today and in the future will be how to incorporate
change that is both quantitative as well as qualitatively different. In essence, managing
incremental type changes involved with the current way things are done while at the same time
enabling a type of transformation that represents new conceptual and paradigmatic frameworks.
While it is challenging enough to imagine one way of doing things being displaced by new
ways of doing the same things, the greater challenge will be how to maintain old organizational
structures and platforms while integrating radically new types of structures and platforms – this
will be necessary as transitions to new tools, structures, platforms can never be immediate. Not
only to do the same things differently, but doing new things with old tools and new tools as well
in such a way that both will be effective.

Network technologies and architectures of participation offer a new mode of production and
that, we will argue, suggest not the transformation of an existing institution, but the emergence
of a new institution – The Long Tail. The new institution of the long tail enables a significant
increase in practical, concretely attainable capacity to coordinate exchange and therefore to both
use and increase available human capital.

Institutions are at the center of any understanding of economies (North, 2005, vii) 44. Institutions
are both features and interpretive frameworks of the human environment. They create the
incentive structures that explain how economies can also be shaped by persistent incentives
that ultimately lead to stagnation and decline. Institutions shape both the character of how
the societal and individual reflectively comprehend and act upon change.

The evolution of human societies is a dialectical one, guided by the players’ perceptions and
reflections on the consequence of their actions, with the intent of reducing the uncertainty of
experience through human organization(s) – political, economic and social. Where North asks:
But just how do humans come to understand their environment? He replies:

The cumulative learning of a society embodied in language, human memory, and symbol
storage systems includes beliefs, myths, ways of doing things that make up the culture
of a society. Culture not only determines societal performance at a moment of time but,
through the way in which its scaffolding constrains the players, contributes to the process
of change through time. The focus of our attention, therefore, must be on human learning
– on what is learned and how it is shared among the members of a society and on the
incremental process by which the beliefs and preferences change, and on the way in
which they shape the performance of economies through time (North, 2005, viii).

44
Douglass North is a Nobel Laureate economist (received in 1993) who focused on the role of
institutions in economic success and change.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 29
In the first decade of the 21st century we are witness to an acceleration of technological
innovations that appear to be creating a new medium of social engagement and a new mode of
production. Network technologies and architectures of participation are creating an unprecedented
ease for the emergence of self-organized groups, accelerating the number and kinds of things
that groups can achieve either with and/or without financial motivation and managerial oversight.
Many significant practical barriers to group action have disintegrated and a new frontier is
opening for the exploration of collective formation and getting things done – individually
and socially, locally and globally (Shirky 2008). The unprecedented novelty in the ease
of organizing collective action, that these technologies45 have unleashed are not contained
by previous organizational forms and are laying a foundation for institutional transformation
(Shirky, 2008, 22).

As Terranove (2004, 3) states:

I believe that if there is an acceleration of history and an annihilation of distances within

an informational milieu, it is a creative destruction, that is a productive movement that
releases (rather than simply inhibits) social potentials for transformation. In this sense,
a network culture is inseparable both from a kind of network physics (that is physical
processes of differentiation and convergence, emergence and capture, openness and
closure, and coding and over-coding) and a network politics (implying the existence
of and active engagement with the dynamics of information flows) (Terranova, 2004).

North (2005, 59) states that the first requirement of the study of institutions and their change
is the separations of institutions from organizations. He defines institutions as the rules of the
game, while organizations are the players in the game. The interaction between the rules and
the players is what shapes institutional change. For North, it is institutions that impose the human
constraints on human interaction. He defines the opportunity set of societies as composed of the
institutional frameworks conjoined with the other standard constraints of economics and the
physical environment.

45
There is a very rapidly growing literature concerning network technologies and architectures
of participation, both academic and popular, many which document the accelerating emergence
of new uses. For comprehensive academic treatment – Yochi Benkler’s “The Wealth of Networks”
is foundational - http://www.benkler.org/; also see Taziana Terranova’s “Network Culture”
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=114847 . Popular books include: Wikinomic
(Don Tapscott), We are Smarter than Me (Libert, Spector, Tapscott), Groundswell (Li, Berhoff),
The Long Tail (Chris Anderson), Tagging: People-Powered Metadata (Smith) and Here Comes
Everybody (Shirky). For a great view of the next 15 years of the web see Kevin Kelly’s TED
presentation at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html
For a very interesting view of an economic model of the long tail see Clay Shirky’s TED
presentation “Institutions versus Collaboration” at
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
however, in Shirky’s presentation he does not clearly define the difference between the institution
and organization. Despite this, the presentation is well worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch.

30 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Organizations on the other hand bring individuals with some common interest together into
groups, whether economic organizations such as firms, unions, cooperatives, or political ones
such as parties, agencies, governing bodies, or social ones such as religious bodies, clubs and
associations. It is the institutional matrix which determines what varieties and number of
organizations that can arise, but it is individual innovators that seek to induce institutional
change through efforts to change the rules – directly through political means or indirectly by
technological, economic or social means or by a deliberate (and accidental) efforts to change
the effectiveness of enforcement.

Historically, as organizations in the course of interaction evolve new informal means of

exchange, social norms, conventions, and codes of conduct may wither away (North, 2005, 60).

Of course the context of competition (including the pressure of environmental/contextual

complexity discussed in chapter 4), is a continual source of pressure inducing organizations
change themselves as well as to attempt to induce institutional change. We have already
discussed the control hierarchy as a fundamental frame within which the design principles
of organizational architecture, and their corresponding cultural norm have been determined.
This is important, for if we accept that institutions are the ‘rules of the game’, then we can
examine some of the unquestioned ‘common sense’ that has framed some of these rules.

This section will briefly outline the concepts of power law relationships underlying concrete
‘natural’ organizational rules of the pre-digital and material world (rules often supporting the
hegemony of hierarchy) and the emergence of the Long Tail. The Long Tail represents a new
set of rules enabled by the dramatic reduction of transactions costs as a consequence of network
technologies and architectures of participation. Transactions costs include:

a. The quantity of people, time, effort and money involved in getting things done;

b. The types coordination required shaping how things are done;

c. The controlling of what is done – the quality involved, the enforcement of agreements,
standards and codes; and

d. Opportunity costs of not using the organizational and human capital available.

We presented the depiction of the material institution in Figure 1. Essentially both the material
institution and the long tail are illustrations of a power-law relation. Power-law relations, also
known as the 80-20 rule, characterize a staggering number of naturally occurring phenomena.
The ‘rule’ states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This
is a rule of thumb, rather than a ‘law’ and in fact many classes of phenomena can be found to
fit more as 90/10, 70/30, and 95/5 “rules”. The important point is that a sort of clumping –
few large versus many small, relationship between elements or factors is what does occur in
most phenomena.

Below in Figure 2, is an illustration of a power law graph demonstrating the ranking of the sale
of books. To the right is the long tail, to the left are the few that dominate (the Head).

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 31
 High

Head
80% of sales
S 20% of books
A
L
E
S

Tail
20% of sales
80% of books

Low Number of Books Published High

Figure 2: The Long Tail of Book Sales

This graph presents the classic sales profile of many types of goods. The graph therefore
provides the ‘natural’ incentive structure (institution) guiding business to aim for ‘mass
producible’ ‘blockbuster’ type products in order to leverage the industrial capabilities of mass
production, or to also develop a niche specialty that could attract enough customers to create a
niche market for some of the long tail type products. This of course posses a dilemma for any
retailer with limited shelf space – can they afford to stock too many books from the long tail area?

The dilemma can be presented below, where we can see the increasing costs of coordinating
sellers in the long tail with interested buyers in the long tail. As the organization tries to link
(coordinate) more sellers with buyers the costs of negotiating, transacting, holding inventory
and coordination increase in a power-law curve (Figure 3, red curve).

High

Head Transaction
80% of sales costs
S 20% of books
A
L Traditional Cost – Value Threshold
E Additional value not worth cost of coordination
S

Tail
20% of sales
80% of books

Low Number of Books Published High

Figure 3: The Long Tail of Book Sales and Transaction Costs

32 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
The intersection between decreasing sales and increasing costs represents an organizational
threshold, beyond which the traditional organization can no longer be viable and thus represents
the institution shaping traditional hierarchic organizations.

The interesting experience of Amazon.com in developing an online (networked) book business

was that once the network was built, transaction/coordination costs collapsed. Amazon
discovered that they were able to make as much or more money in the long tail (in aggregate)
as they were making in the head of the curve46. The ease of linking sellers of unique products
(a book only one person would be interested in buying) with customers interested in those
products was essentially an unanticipated costless additional capability falling out of establishing
their online store (see Figure 4). It is true that sellers cannot generally make a living selling from
the long tail (unless the product/prices permits). However, the long tail creates or enables a
larger, richer, more diverse market to arise where none had existed before. This new market
provides a very low barrier to entry and a competitive/collaborative arena offering the possibility
to move up toward the head of the curve to the possibility of achieving mass market. The model
offers a completely new incentive structure for specialized divisions of labour that are not tied
by geographical or the traditional transaction cost constraints.

High

Head
80% of sales
S 20% of books
A
L
E
S

Tail – Sales now available to

Amazon without additional costs
In aggregate larger than the Head

Low Number of Books Published High

Figure 4: The Long Tail of Book Sales without Additional Costs

Now let’s look at a more complex illustration of the power of network technologies and
architectures of participation to unleash human capital in productive ways. Two examples can
illustrate this very well – Linux versus Microsoft Windows (MW) and Encyclopaedia Britannica
(EB) versus Wikipedia. In these illustrations, depicted in Figure 4, the axes are productivity and
number of producers. The tan box represents the head and the green box the tail. If we assume
that productivity follows the same type of 20-80 rule than we can imagine people interested in
developing an encyclopaedia or an operating system will follow the same rule. In this case the

46
As Anderson (2008) say in the title of his updated book – The Future of Business is Selling More
of Less.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 33
tan box represents the traditional organization such as EB or MW, they will hire the most
productive people within the constraints of the cost-value threshold (perhaps in this case more
like 1 to 5% of the most talented people available). However, what Linux and Wikipedia
illustrate is by leveraging network technologies and architectures of participation they can utilize
the whole curve of potential productivity. So even if they were to hire the most productive people
they could, they are also open to reaping the aggregated value of the many people who only make
one contribution (Figure 5).

P
r Head
o 80% of productivity
d 20% of people
u
c
t Traditional Cost – Value Threshold
i Additional value not worth cost of coordination
v Only 1 unit of
i Tail – Productivity unavailable to hierarchy productivity
t 20% of productivity
y 80% of people

Low High
Number of Producers
Average
productivity Median

Figure 5: The Long Tail of Coordination and Transaction Costs

Furthermore, despite the same power-law relation whereby a smaller portion of people are
responsible for larger portion of the work in all these organization, it is only the long tail
organizations that are able to harvest the immense productive capacity or more importantly
to harvest the intrinsic motivation of the many.

To further illustrate this point, Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, stated that Microsoft
had examined the efforts behind the development of Linux and scoffed that the overwhelming
majority of contributors had only made one contribution. The response was – well maybe that
one contribution was fixing a serious security bug, how much is that worth? Could Microsoft
afford to hire someone to work in their organization and do nothing for three years until she/he
fixed one bug? Even if this was priceless and worth three times the money they paid the person,
would their business model allow this? Would they tolerate this type of worker? The
consequence is that perhaps Microsoft should be very scarred of an operating system that can
harness the potential contribution of millions available to it without additional transaction and
coordination costs.

34 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
In the case of Wikipedia, the capacity to fix errors and keep articles up to date far exceeds
the capacity of EB to do the same. For instance, EB’s most recent edition (the 15th) was
published in 1985 – Wikipedia didn’t even exist until 2001 and is now the world’s largest
encyclopaedia, with over 11 million articles in 250 languages and all accomplished because
of the self-organization enabled through relatively costless coordination and the transparency of
the wiki medium. In fact, Wikimedia has enabled a large number of related projects including:
Wiktionary (wiki-dictionary), Wikibooks (making public domain and creative commons books
available online), and Wikinews (the collaborative reporting and summarizing of news from
a neutral point of view).

But more importantly for personnel management figure 6 presents another way to view this
situation. We can think of the tan box as a single job in an organization – where we could
formulate the rule that 20% of jobs would generally use 80% of human capital (the ‘head).
Whereas the long tail would represent 80 % of jobs using only 20% of available human capital
(or less). I think it is a safe assumption to assume that most people would feel very fortunate to
have a job that actually was able to utilize 50% of their skills, knowledge, dexterity or judgment.
However, that job (as most jobs) would naturally be designed to use 100% (or more) of our time,
but not necessarily be able to engage our full interests, passions, knowledge, or capabilities, etc.

High

P
r Head – Jobs utilize
o 20% of jobs use
d 80% of available human capital
u
c Available but unused human
t capital
i
v
i Tail – Productivity unavailable to hierarchy
t 80% of jobs use
y 20% of available human capital

Low Number of Producers High

Figure 6: The Long Tail – Collapse of Coordination Cost.

Linking the Right Person with the Right Situation at the Right Time

However, due to coordination costs implicit in the control hierarchy approach to organizational
architecture people are fit as best as possible into jobs (cogs-in-the-machine). As a consequence
the organization looses or wastes a considerable amount of human capital because trying to use
it would exceed the traditional cost-value threshold.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 35
Thus far we have made a case that network technologies, architectures of participation and the
institution of The Long Tail presents humanity with a fundamentally new mode of production –
with new rules based on the radical decrease of traditional constraints (e.g., geographical,
transactions costs, coordination, etc.). The evolution of other social and political institutional
frameworks and structures will also inevitably change, including the integration of responsible
autonomy within a more complex organizational architecture. This new mode of production
includes the transparency that is inherent in the digital environment, sets conditions for broader
and more equal market for many more people to exchange anything, with anyone, anytime –
allowing a ubiquitous expectation that the right individual can connect to the right situation
at the right time.

However radical the promise of the long tail is (in its potential at least), cultural change can
be difficult due to the constraints of path dependence – what the past imposes on the present
and future and so engenders a resistance to radical attempts to transform. Institutions spawn
organizations which depend for their continued survival on the perpetuation of the originating
institutions and will therefore expend considerable effort and resources preventing change
which the organizations perceive as threatening. The rapidly increasing ‘Wiki-based’
organizations represent the emergence of a new institution – the long tail. In examples such
as CompanyCommand.Com we catch a glimpse of potential new organizational forms that
the new institution of the long tail can engender.

But by providing a mode for new organizational forms and an incentive structure for their
proliferation, individuals and even organizations have available to them a richer variety
of associations to reduce their isolation and increase the possibilities of self-actualization driven
by intrinsic motivation. The richer the variety of association and organization (complexity)
available the richer are the types of expertise and divisions of labour that can develop, the richer
the exchange that can ensue and thus the richer and deeper the sense of common intent that must
be developed. The institution of the long tail provides a richer experience where working for
others becomes a known and thoughtful ethical mode of life – creating the organization that
creates the member and thus also embodies the ground of and for responsible autonomy.

Most of the institutions we had last year we will have next year. In the past the hold
of those institutions on public life was irreplaceable, in part because there was no
alternative to managing large-scale effort. Now that there is competition to traditional
institutional forms for getting things done, those institutions will continue to exist, but
their purchase on modern life will weaken as novel alternatives for group action arise
(Shirky, 2008, 22).

The next chapter will discuss the relationship between organizations, architecture and complexity.
We will make the case that harnessing complexity and enabling the adaptive behaviour outlined
in the CF’s “Integrated Capstone Concept” requires unleashing responsible autonomy and
enabling the ‘last mile of the market’ within an organization.

36 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
4 Organizational Architecture and Complexity47

There is a profound distinction to be made between the complex and complicated.

Where complicated systems can have many variables, complex systems tend to have many
unknowns. Control systems such as hierarchies, and standard operating procedures are useful in
dealing with many variables but are much less capable of dealing with multiple unknowns.
Complex systems are non-reducible, non-linear, producing ‘emergent’ capabilities (greater-than-
the-sum-of-their-parts). All modern militaries have recognized that the operational environments
are complex and becoming increasingly so. Complex or ‘Wicked’48 problems describe problems
that are difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing
requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Furthermore the complex interdependencies
involved in these sorts of problem have the consequence that efforts to solve one aspect of a
wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. Thus they require customized solutions and
complex environments require organizational agility in the development of customized resources
configured to the complexity of the environment. The capacity of an individual (or organization)
to adapt to a particular environment depends on the ability of the individual to outmatch the
environmental demands – thus internal complexity must match or exceed external complexity for
the individual to successfully overcome environmental demands.

Complexity theory can make important contributions in understanding organizational systems and
the personnel management system in particular. The complex-ness of social and other human
systems cannot be overstated, for example there are non-linear, and non-reducible relationships
between career-path structures, compensation regimes, and conventions of coordination that serve
not only as incentives frameworks but also are powerful shapers of organizational culture.

This chapter examines the relationship between environmental complexity and the adaptability
inherent in the organizational architectures we have already discussed. The discussion begins
with an examination of the relation between a particular organizational architecture and the type
of contextual problems they are best suited to handle. We make a case that in complex
environments and to handle complex problems, responsible autonomy is the platform best suited.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the inherent limitations of traditional control
hierarchies to deal with complexity.

47
This section is largely derived from the work of Yaneer Bar-Yam. See Bar-Yam, Yaneer. Complexity
Rising: From Human Beings to Human Civilization, A Complexity Profile. New England Complex
Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA. Presented at a Complexity Workshop, November 2006,
DRDC Valcartier.
48
For a more complete elaboration of “wicked problems’ see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 37
In many ways, civilization itself can be equated with the rise of the control hierarchy as a social
and organizational structure. The archetypal control hierarchy demands that all coordination
communications are conducted via the structure of the hierarchy. If someone wants to do
something with his neighbour, this must be communicated to the boss who tells the other person
what to do. If the two individuals do not share a boss, the request must go up the hierarchy to the
shared common boss and communicated back down before the joint activity can be started49.

Earlier we discussed the pin factory as an exemplar of a centralized division of labour (assembly
line) and the hierarchical structure. We can expand the scale of this example to the level of
modern automobile corporation where the dimensionality of the organization becomes more
complicated – the division of labour correspondingly expands to embrace not only individual
activity, but occupational structures (related to the technological framework of the organization
and its function), as well as career and development structures (related to the functioning division
of labour and its reproduction for sustaining the organization). As the scale of the organization
increases (size, technologies and number of products/services), the more complicated and
demanding an organization’s task is in coordinating each individual’s activities to those of others.
In addition to increased complication, complexity emerges as coordinated behaviours begin to
include many different but related activities. Activities engaged in by individuals and groups
that can be independent and/or coherent at different scale of resolution.

Understanding how certain types of organizational structures can more effectively generate
solutions to different classes of problems points to the larger issue of how different organizational
architectures have different inherent capacities to match internal complexity to the complexity
of the contextual challenges they face. Different contextual/environmental conditions place
different demands on an organization’s requirements for response, adaptation and even evolution.
Bar-Yam explains it in this way:

In order to survive, the organism behavior must reflect in some way the nature of
the environment. Some behavior patterns will result in obtaining the needed resources
while others will not. The environment is not a static system, and over time, the organism
responds to the environment in a manner that is dictated by the organism’s internal
structure. The response of an organism at a particular scale is implicit in its behavior
patterns at that scale. The complexity of an organism’s response is given by the
complexity of its behaviors. More directly, the number of independent behaviors is
related to the number of independent environmental factors/conditions that the organism
can effectively respond to.50

Table 3 below presents three general types of problems and the corresponding type of
organizational structure best suited to effectively providing their solutions.

49
Ibid.
50
Bar-Yam, Yaneer. Complexity Rising: From Human Beings to Human Civilization, A Complexity
Profile. New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA. Presented at a Complexity
Workshop, November 2006, DRDC Valcartier.

38 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 Table 3: Response Type Organizational Architectures51

Organizational Generalization of Relative Advantages

Architectures of Different Architectures
Individualization Autonomy,
and Ability to Use Ability to Motivation,
Traditional Culture and Many Minds Resolve and
Control Hierarchy Trust Leadership Simultaneously Conflicts Creativity
Centralized
Placed in decision making
process of emphasizing Low High Low
execution standardization and
task accountability
Modular or
Heteroarchical
Shifting leadership
Placed in depending on
roles and domain; decision Medium Medium Medium
occupants rights embedded
in roles
Customized/Market
Responsible
Autonomy
Collaborative
within and across
Placed in
organization lines,
other’s High Low High
norms –
expertise
generalized
reciprocity

In order to look at the response type of organizational architectures in another way, we can match
them to different environments. This allows an assessment of ‘fitness’ of an organizational
architecture for adaptive ‘survival’ in a particular environment or context.

The Known environment is stable; problems are familiar with known responses. Cause-effect
relations are repeatable, perceivable & predictable. Centralization, standardization and task
accountability makes the control hierarchy the most efficient and effective.

In the complicated context, cause-effect relations span across time and space. Problems are
solvable through analytical, reductionist and systems thinking approaches. Solutions require
constellations of expertise and decision rights are embedded in roles. The most suitable
architecture is modular or Heterarchical.

51
This is modified from the table from: Cross, Liedtka and Weiss, 2005.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 39
In a complex environment, cause-effect relations are non-repetitive, non-linear and only coherent
in retrospect. Problems need innovative solutions and agile collaboration across boundaries and
norms to configure customized ‘solutions’. Efforts are aimed at identifying patterns to stabilize
and enhance positive patterns and dampen and reduce negative patterns.

In chaos, cause-effect relations are not perceivable. Interventions are stability-focused and crisis
management is the rule. Agility is needed to shift from imposing the order of a control hierarchy
to accepting modular adaptation to bringing customized capabilities.

In Figure 7, we depict the four environments52 developed by Dave Snowden of the Cynefin
Center. In these ‘knowledge management’ environments we place the ‘problem solving’
architectures that seems to best correspond.

Adaptability Complicated
Complex Focused

Customized Modular or
Architecture Heterarchical
Person-Centric Architecture

Orchestrated
Action
Improvised
Action

Need Agility with all Traditional Decision

Architectures and Making Architecture
Judgement to apply Control Hierarchy
them usefully Job/Place Centric

Stability
Focused
Chaos Known

Figure 7: Organizational Architecture and Environment Relationship

Thus a context or operational environment can be understood as one that will generally generate
certain types of problems – stable environments will generate routine problems and complex
environments will more likely generate a stream of unique problems.

52
These four environments and the figure are modified from the framework created by Kurtz and
Snowden 2003. See also the Cynefin Framework http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin. The framework
is a model used to describe problems, situations and systems. It provides a taxonomy guiding what sort
of explanations and/or solutions may apply. It draws on research into complex adaptive systems
theory, cognitive science, Anthropology and narrative patterns, as well as evolutionary psychology.
It “explores the relationship between man, experience and context” and proposes new approaches
to communication, decision-making, policy-making and knowledge management in complex
social environments.

40 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Colonel Jones recognized the complexity of the mission and the operational environment. She
understood that finding solutions, achieved intended effects would require unique combinations
of people and organizational resources. She would have to create a platform for ever changing
networks to connect the right people to the right situation at the right time.

4.1 The Complex Environment

As we will see in more detail below, Bar-Yam’s discussion of the relation between environmental
complexity and internal organizational complexity also contributes to understanding
Adam Smith’s ideas of a market system, whereby the ‘economic environment’ exceeds the
internal complexity of a command and custom approach to coordinating socio-politico activities.
Even more so it explains the simultaneous development of corresponding democratic political
systems and the necessity and inevitability of responsible autonomy.

In a review of history, the development of hierarchies can be seen to enable progressively

more complex behaviours. There are two complementary aspects to this development,
complexity at the scale of the individual and complexity at the scale of the collective.
As the complexity/ diversity of individual behaviours increase, hierarchical organizations
must use progressively smaller branching ratios (fewer individuals supervised by a single
individual). The complexity/diversity of individual behaviours does not, by itself, cause
the breakdown of the hierarchies. It is the complexity of collective behaviours that is
important since controlling these behaviours, i.e., coordinating the behaviours of the
individuals, is the role of central control.53

When hierarchies cannot generate the needed increase in internal complexity despite structures
that integrate increased lateral interactions, a transition point is reached. Traditional control
is no longer possible (in part due to transaction and coordination costs). Management becomes
divorced from the functional aspects of the system, and lateral interactions are used to correlate
activities previously created by many levels of management. During the transition, traditional
approaches control fewer aspects of the organization’s behaviour.

It could be argued that this picture describes much of the dynamics of modern
corporations. Upper levels of management have turned to controlling fiscal rather
than production aspects of the corporation. In recent decades, corporate downsizing
has often been primarily at the expense of the middle management, resulting in a
reduction of payroll and little change in production. Hierarchical control has been
replaced by decision teams introduced by corporate restructuring; and the reengineering
of corporations has focused on the development of task related processes that do not
depend on hierarchical control.54

53
Ibid.
54
Ibid

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 41
Returning to Adam Smith and the market system, we can characterize markets as distinct types
of systems producing emergent collective behaviour founded on the independent (responsible
autonomy) actions of many agents (e.g., individuals, firms and governments). The market-system
arose as the most effective way to allocate resources and coordinate activities because of the
increasing complexity of the socio-political and economic environments. Agents tend to act
locally (according to their scale) and the emergent collective capability is the coordination of
activities underlying efficient allocation of resources in a dynamic adaptation to environmental
changes. Markets are distinct from networks in the mechanism that allows ‘perfect information’
exchange. For markets the ‘price mechanism’ provides the summarized single time-dependent
variable by which independent agents can self-coordinate/organize. Networks require other
means to provide the mechanism that can aggregate the information that will allow self-
organization/coordination to occur.

Collective endeavours will likely not happen when the coordination costs of human interest are
higher than the potential value derivable by traditional markets or hierarchies. Network
technologies and architectures of participation have dramatically decreased coordination costs
and are enabling an unprecedented increase in the gains available for collaborating.

The next section explores in more depth, the nature of the control hierarchy and the concept
of complexity and organization.

4.2 Hierarchy and Complexity

As the scale of the organization increases (size, technologies and number of products or services),
the more complicated is the task of coordinating individual activities. The distinction between
complicatedness and complexity is an important one. Complicatedness has been commonly
understood as the ‘cost of complexity’. More precisely it refers to the sheer cost and burden
of organizational bureaucracy – “organizational non-simplicity” (Price, 2004). Included in this
are the administrative and managerial transaction costs (people, effort, time) of controlling and
coordinating people, tasks and processes. It is also the inevitable organizational inertia involved
with change, whether it is the introduction of new technologies, processes, capabilities or the
corresponding need of culture change. A complicated system is expected to behave predictably
and linearly and generally can be understood through a reductive analysis of its parts. The
metaphor and design principle of an organization being a machine generally assumes that
it is a complicated machine.

The term complex is often used as a synonym for complicated. However, the behaviour
of a complex system is often associated with non-linearity, emergence and self-organization
(being more than the sum of their parts). Thus it is the difference between connecting
“stovepipes” versus a capability that can generate effective “integrated” solutions.

Many scientific fields have dealt with complex systems and phenomena – understanding such as
producing variation without being random. While many fields have produced specific definitions
of complexity, currently there is a movement to regroup research to study complexity in
itself, regardless of research area (e.g., anthills, human brains, stock markets or organizations).
Complexity has now become a natural domain of interest for many real world socio-cognitive
systems and emerging systemics research.

42 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Thus, complex systems are composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one
or more – properties, behaviours, capabilities that are not obvious from the properties of the
individual parts. They also tend to be high-dimensional, non-linear and hard to model. The
components of complex systems have non-random, or correlated, relationships which in turn
create the conditions for the emergence of differentiated properties, behaviours, capabilities,
which can also in turn, interact with other systems. They begin to “emerge,” and “self-organize”
without any “guiding hand.” Complex systems cannot be understood through a reductive method
of disaggregating/dissembling the parts, they can only be understood as wholes.

Another definition for this commonplace and yet mysterious property of ‘emergence’ is provided
by Mihata (1997, 31, quoted by Seel, 2000).

…the process by which patterns or global-level structures arise from interactive

local-level processes. This “structure” or “pattern” cannot be understood or
predicted from the behaviour or properties of the component units alone.

Mitchell (2009) lists three common attributes of complex systems:

a. Complex collective behaviour: systems consist of large networks of individual

components, each tending to follow simple rules with no central control or leader.
It’s the collective actions of the many components that give rise to the complex,
hard-to-predict, and changing patterns of behaviour;

b. Signalling and information processing: These systems produce/use

information/signals from both internal and external environments; and

c. Adaption: These systems adapt their behaviour to improve chances of survival

or success. This means they learn or evolve.

She defines complex systems as systems in which large networks of components with no central
control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behaviour, sophisticated
information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution – thus exhibiting nontrivial
emergent and self-organizing behaviours.

As a practical example of emergence one could define organizational culture as the emergent
product of ongoing conversation, negotiation, and interaction concerning values, meanings,
activities, incentives between those in the organization and the organization in its environment.

For Bar-Yam (2006) a complex system is constituted by parts whose behaviours are partially
correlated and partially independent … with many specialized and correlated behaviours/parts.
He distinguishes the difference between – systems/entities constituted by independent randomly
related parts (e.g., a crowd); ‘machines’ constituted by coherently related parts (e.g., a marching
army); and complex systems/behaviours constituted by independent but correlated parts
(e.g., a market).

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 43
Both complexity and complicatedness arise as coordinated behaviours come to include many
different but related activities that can be independent and/or coherent at different scales
of resolution. The traditional control approach to increased diversity (and related increase
of potential of connectivity and information flow) requires the hierarchy to add layers
of management for local control.

Each layer simplified the behaviour to the point where an individual could control it.
The hierarchy acts as a mechanism for communication of information to and from
management. The role is a filtering one, where the amount of information is reduced
on the way up. Conversely, commands from the top are elaborated… on the way down
the hierarchy (Bar-Yam, 2006).

As the collective range and variety of behaviours increases (at the individual level) the span
of control becomes ever narrower. Fewer individuals are directed by any one manager,
and management layers increase. The purpose is to ultimately enable a single individual
(the controller) to control the collective behaviour, but not directly the behaviour of each
individual(Bar-Yam, 2006). However, increases in size and/or variety both increases
coordination costs and limits internal complexity. This implies that the collective actions of the
system in which the parts of the system affect other parts of the system must be no more complex
than the controller. In human hierarchies the collective behaviour must be simple enough to
be represented by a single human being (Bar-Yam, 2006, see also Figure 7). Hierarchies can
amplify the scale of behaviour but do not increase their complexity. That is to say, that attempts
to increase the internal diversity, connection and information flows within the control hierarchy
inevitably engenders an exponential increase in the costs of control, coordination (people, time
and effort) to the point where costs threaten organizational viability or at minimum determine the
size limit after which productive viability (that is productive of a gain in efficiency/effectiveness)
is not possible (see Figure 1).

Colonel Jones knew that in order to achieve her mission, she could not rely on her ‘span of
control’ nor limit her resources to those under her direct control. She had to create a platform
that allowed a greater diversity of skills and knowledge to get connected to the right situations
in order to adapt to the ever shifting situation.

The external environment of an organization can also vary from relatively stable to dynamic
and complex (Table 3 and Figure 6). If environmental complexity begins to exceed the internal
complexity of the organization, chances of failure will loom higher unless the organization can
increase its internal complexity sufficiently to generate successful responses to environmental
demands. Figure 8, below presents the relationship between survival and the matching (or not)
of internal and external complexity.

44 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 HIGH SURVIVE

Complexity Ceiling = Individual Capability

Internal
Complexity

FAIL

LOW External HIGH

Complexity

Figure 8: Organism and Environment Relationship

When hierarchies reach a limit on the internal complexity they can generate, traditional control is
also no longer possible (in part also due to excessive transaction and coordination costs). As a
consequence management tends to become divorced from the functional aspects of the system,
and other types of interactions must begin to coordinate activities previously handled by levels
of management. Other organizational architectures are more effective with different classes
of problems and different environmental conditions.

Charles [Simonyi] is the guy who came up with Microsoft’s development process --
an outgrowth of his research at Xerox PARC. … Charles came to advocate a strong
program manager as the central controller of any development group. One person made
all the decisions and as long as that one person was correct 85 percent of the time, it was
better to have a dictatorship than a democracy or even a meritocracy. This was an
effective way to extend Bill’s will to Microsoft programmers Bill would never even meet.
And to Charles’ credit the system worked well enough if the dictator was really, really
smart and the task at hand wasn’t too complex. It was perfect for the 1980s. But it is far
from perfect today and represents one of the fundamental reasons why Windows Vista
was so late to market and such a mess when it finally shipped. Vista had plenty of
management, but not very much leadership (Cringerly 2008).

In Figure 8 we can see that it is the capability of one individual that defines the pinnacle of
the control hierarchy and thus is the ceiling that limits the complexity of possible collective
behaviours of the system. Increasing the size of the organization and/or variety within it both
increases coordination costs and limits internal complexity. At each level of the hierarchy, local
control/coordination must be passed upward through the local controller until to highest level
is reached. This limits the span of control to that which an individual can effectively manage.
Trying to mitigate this limit with more managers and correspondingly reduced spans of control
is useful to the point where collective behaviour required by the organization increases in
complexity that is beyond the capacity of the highest level of the control hierarchy. As noted

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 45
above, the hierarchy can amplify the scale of the behaviours that the organization controls,
but it does not increase the complexity of behaviours the organization can generate or handle.

Historically, a military’s chain of command has been the principal ways both
for providing and for constraining command opportunity. For example, during an
operation, the position of commander is a military’s primary mechanism for harnessing
command potential, for giving it stability and fiduciary power, for formalizing its
structure by situating it within a chain of command, and for maximizing the probability
of its expression when it is operationally necessary to do so. The commander position
is the traditional way that militaries provide and constrain opportunity for command
expression. Although all individuals in a military can, in principle, exhibit command
behaviour, the position of commander is where such behaviour, by decree, is encouraged
and ultimately expected (Pigeau and McCann, 2002).

Within the chain-of-command, prescribed individuals are given authority and opportunity to
creatively express their will within the constraints of the organizational structure. This reflects
the point made in the previous chapter – that bureaucracies sort out human beings into internally
homogeneous and hierarchical ranks – creating standard competencies, frames of reference, etc.
and therefore shaping the human to fulfill a role within a constrained set of capabilities. The
situation is similar when one considers the relationship between the occupational structure
(related to an organization’s technological framework), career structure and organizational
architecture. The emphasis of an occupational structure too is the development of standardized
parts that are geared to the particular organization-as-machine.

Markets on the other hand bring a heterogeneous collection of humans together for impersonal
and potentially productive exchange in a way that fosters the emergence and self-organization
associated with complexity. Three important factors are key to harnessing complexity —
connectivity, diversity of agents, and rate of information flow (Seel, 2000).

Connectivity is fundamental to the formal and informal way that things get done. Organizational
change requires change in the patterns of internal and external relationships together with the
development of new patterns. In hand with greater internal complexity is the need for more
diversity (of all kinds — cultural, intellectual and emotional) in order to increase the ‘possibility
space’ within which an organization can extend capacity to explore. With connectivity and
diversity must also come a flow of information. Stable control hierarchies in stable environments
can be sustained with a sluggish flow of information. However, in complex operational
environments organisations require a much more vigorous and richer information flow.

Thus we see that real world control hierarchies also depend on lateral55 and other relationships
such as lateral networks and modular structures. Informal lateral communications across
organizational units/silos are a common feature of real human control hierarchies and in
fact enable a significant capability for coordination of activity. For the military, the control

55
Lateral communications is a very real feature of the CF and is often considered the primary way that
many things get done.

46 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
inherent in the rigid organizational hierarchy is augmented and/or complemented by other
factors including military traditions, professional ethics, self-discipline, the traditions
of the mess and the military justice system. These can enable a more widespread sharing
of command opportunity by ensuring the other mechanisms to control command expression.

In establishing a network Colonel Jones was able to harness the responsible autonomy of many
other stakeholders who although pursuing their own objectives could allow their efforts to create
an emergent and self-organized integrations of efforts.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 47
5 Mission Command – Intent

Mission Command is a platform for harnessing the power of decentralized execution of command
intent through the delegation of command authority. The concept of decentralized execution
is a partial concept that is more precisely or completely captured with the concept of responsible
autonomy. This chapter discusses the roles that common intent and responsible autonomy play in
mission command, especially as they relate to complexity – the growing operational complexity,
the complexity of the comprehensive, effects-based and network enabled approaches as well as
that of accelerating change. We conclude with drawing out the parallels between mission
command and a market system enabled by responsible autonomy.

Mission command is a command approach that is based upon the exercise of local
initiative within the framework of command intent. This is enabled by an appropriate
delegation of authority and responsibility that allows subordinate commanders the
latitude to plan and conduct operations based upon their understanding of the local
situation. … At the heart … is the key issue of the extent to which command authority
is held tightly at the organisational core or is delegated to subordinates as in mission
command. The former class of command approach is commonly referred to as
‘centralised’ and the latter ‘decentralised’. Forces that have the capability to adopt
decentralised approaches, such as mission command, retain the advantage in the
contemporary operating environment owing to their ability to adapt their tactical
activities rapidly as situations evolve (Stewart, 2006).

To understand enablers of innovation we are examining well-known innovative

environments such as the market-oriented economic system, scientific research, and
the world-wide web. We are finding a number of fundamental structural similarities
across these innovative environments. In particular, they all support forms of bottom-up
creation and evaluation. They all exist within a well-structured (but not rigid) communal
framework. (For example, the framework for the market-oriented economic system is
the monetary and justice system.) They have all resolved the tensions among individual
autonomy, community resources, and hierarchical structures. Autonomy (“power to
the edge”) is necessary to enable a system to take advantage of multiple perceptions
and imaginations. Common resources provide a framework within which autonomous
elements can interact. Hierarchy is important to allow large-scale resources to be
focused on achieving a specific end (Abbott and Ewart, 2007, Advanced Space
Command and Control).

The advent of network technology and the increasing pace and complexity of the operational
environment highlight a growing conflict based on the tension between the hierarchy of the
chain of command and the increasing need for autonomy emerging from decentralized control
and execution. The delegation of authority down the chain to enable simultaneous command
and control at all levels has helped to allay this conflict. However, the increasing use and
power of network technologies and architectures of participation is forcing military organizations
beyond this interim solution and to think more deeply about how hierarchy, authority, autonomy,
communication, information, transparency, sense-making, decisioning, planning, coordination,
control, accountability and responsibility are interrelated and balanced (Abbott and Ewart,

48 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
2007). Just as important, military organizations must also reconceive the platforms that support
and enable the full potential of their people.

We have discussed, the emergence and principles of a market system as inseparable from
the principles of a democratic political economy and how both are necessary to unleash the
productive power of responsible autonomy. We have also shown how complexity theory sheds
light on why the market system was an inevitable development to overcome upper limit of the
complexity that could be managed by traditional command and custom hierarchies as well as the
role that responsible autonomy filled as a generative source of internal diversity and complexity.
In this chapter we explore the further developments of these concepts within a military
organization as they apply to the concept of mission command.

Pigeau & McCann (2002) examine the concept of control as enacted through organizational
structure and process as fundamental organizational design principles and that are synonymous
with the military organization. This type of military control includes: personnel, facilities and
procedures for planning, directing and co-ordinating resources as well as standard operating
procedures (SOPs), rules of engagement (ROEs), regulations, military law, organizational
structures, policies, equipment — in short, all those structures and processes (including
cybernetic processes) put in place by the military to facilitate the accomplishment of its mission
in a safe and efficient manner (Pigeau, McCann, 2002).

More than control however, the organizational structure and processes contains the problem-
space to a more manageable size and thus reduces uncertainty and increases order. However by
doing so, it also offers a more restricted solution-set, and significantly less flexibility and agility
(e.g., see Figure 6). An overemphasis on explicit control may also induce a type of fatigue
wherein control-oriented leaders must work harder and harder for less and less response as people
become numb, feeling robbed of their drive and initiative (as in Figure 7). The created order, as
sets of regulated processes and procedures, becomes the rational basis for optimizing choices and
action for the achievement of work. Military control constructs a host of structures for bounding
the mission space — e.g., order of battle, data bases for describing terrain, sensor and weapon
systems, etc., (Pigeau, McCann, 2002) with corresponding formal process in order to regulate
the use of power.

Bounding an organization through any particular set of structures and processes, no matter how
robust inevitably excludes an infinite set of alternative structures and processes that may better
address new or emerging problems.

Overcoming control restrictions on flexibility is one of the critical functions of command.

...After all, if control includes organizational structures, SOPs, ROEs, military rules and
regulations, sensor and weapon systems, equipment, doctrine, training programs, etc.,
then what is left that could possibly qualify as command? This question is particularly
pertinent if we are implying that even the military chain-of-command is actually a control
structure (which we are). The answer lies in two fundamentally important and uniquely
human characteristics: creativity and will (Pigeau, McCann. 2002).

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 49
Pigeau and McCann define control and command in the following way (Pigeau, McCann, 2002):

a. control: those structures and processes devised by command to enable it and to manage
risk; and

b. command: the creative expression of human will necessary to accomplish the mission.

Thus, commanding is the creative act of will aimed to accomplish the mission, whereas acts
of control enable command and risk management through the use of existing structures and
processes. While creativity is essential – to generate new solutions to novel as well as old
problems, it is not sufficient.

The function of control is to enable the creative expression of will and to manage the
mission problem in order to minimize the risk of not achieving a satisfactory solution.
The function of command is to invent novel solutions to mission problems, to provide
conditions for starting, changing and terminating control, and to be the source of diligent
purposefulness. If command is incapable of fulfilling these functions — if it cannot, for
example, identify new patterns of behaviour in the adversary or take advantage of
changes in the environment — then the mission may fail (Pigeau, McCann, 2002).

The act of commanding is not simply an expression of authority like an act of ordering.

Commanding occurs only if a person in the chain of command interprets an order and
alters it to suit the vagaries of the situation before transmitting it further down. ....Any
human, therefore, from the most junior military member to the most senior general
officer, is capable of command because, we assert, all humans are inherently capable
of creatively expressing their will (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on talent) in
the service of the mission (Pigeau, McCann, 2002).

The dilemma seems to be in how to achieve a dynamic balance between encouraging optimal
command expression and simultaneously ensuring safe, effective coordination of effort and use
of resources.

The future of command and control is not Command and Control56, it must be more than the
traditional command issue of lawful orders and delegated authority for distributed execution.
Rather it must expand to include structures, platforms and processes enabling complex and
unplanned interactions among a military’s components and between organizations mandated
to achieve mission effects.

56
Abbott and Ewart, 2007 – quoting Dave Alberts CCRP director, in an article in International Journal
of C2).

50 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
5.1 Common Intent
Correctly interpreting an aim, purpose or objective – that is, correctly inferring intent –
is a fundamental concept in military thought (Pigeau, McCann, 2006).

The achievement of coordinated action seems almost impossible within the context of the
continually evolving complexity of the operational environments, multiple physical/geographic
domains, the number and variety of belligerent, civil, NGO, private and military organizations
and individuals with whom they must interact, the logistical requirements to sustain military
operations, the pressures for timely and rapid action and responses as well as the serious
consequences of intended and non-intended action.

Pigeau & McCann (2006) define coordinated action “as the proper arrangement of resources
and effort, both in time and in space, to harmonize intended mission effects”. Coordinated
action consistent with mission objectives can be achieved either through explicit structures,
communication protocols, and detailed instructions or by allowing spontaneous, self-organizing
behaviour to emerge. Achieving coordinating action in the first way is the classic example of the
efficient explicit allocation of resources of traditional military control-as-system with appropriate
check and balances with an aim to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. While this approach
may be reliable in known situations it can be very inflexible in unforeseen or unique situations
(as in Figure 6 or Table 3). The limitations of this approach include:

a. the temptation to elaborate control structures and processes to the point of ‘over-
control’ and consequently inhibiting initiative, creativity and intelligent risk-taking;

b. the tendency to brittleness inherent in control mechanisms (e.g., weapon systems,

rule of engagements, SOPs, etc) since they often generalize poorly in unpredictable
situations; and

c. the logistical price (including transaction and coordination costs), as control

systems grow they sustain a diminishing return until their costs exceed their
benefits (e.g., increasingly less “tooth” to increasingly more tail).

The second approach that enables self-organization seeks to enable coordinated action to emerge
spontaneously, as independent actors self-organize, with little or no explicit direction. While this
enables easier adaptability to the unforeseen, it may also be less reliable and more inefficient.

Solving unique, unforeseen, complex problems, paradoxes and dilemmas requires both
creativity and will. The traditional approach is to attempt to instantiate successful solutions
(lessons learned) into structures and processes (e.g., SOPs, doctrine, defence and weapons
systems, etc) so that they are available in the repertoire of tools to be used when needed. There is
a danger of creating an overly large repertoire of set solutions with the corresponding temptation
to apply them even to problems for which they may be unsuitable. The traditional lessons learned
approach can lead to the attempt to incorporate an increasingly unwieldy set of solutions that
instead translates into organisational rigidity and inflexibility. To achieve coordinated action,
militaries must balance the requirement to externally control large numbers of resources against
the need to allow some of those resources (i.e., humans) the freedom to control and to coordinate
themselves (Pigeau, McCann, 2006).

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 51
The concept of intent conveys both the idea of an aim or purpose and the sense of having to
interpret the purpose the context of unforeseen and/or uncertain circumstances. A commander
must also exert effort to ensure that the interpretability of the purpose will also encompass the
desired objectives in order to delegate control and enable subordinate freedom of action. In this
way intent incorporates an explicit elaboration of purpose as well as implicit assumptions of
understanding that actions can and will be guided in alignment to the aim.

To enable the implicit assumptions to effectively guide aligned action, the military must socialize,
enable dialogue, ensure comparable levels of cognitive reasoning ability amongst it members and
comparable levels of motivation and commitment. The development of military professionalism
is essential in the development of all of these key factors.57 To be effective, the basic principles
of the profession of arms have to be internally consistent and congruently inculcated in the
development of a military professional. This requires considerable effort throughout the military
career. In this way a hierarchy of guiding principles provide the boundaries within which
self-control/organization is facilitated.

Stewart (2006) depicts the relationship between implicit, explicit and common intent below in
Figure 958. The y axis represents increasing shared intent and the x axis represents the spectrum
of centralized-decentralized control. It is important to note that the range of command
approaches all maintain a level of common intent above a ‘risk threshold’.

Common
Intent
High Risk
Threshold
Implicit
Intent

Shared
Intent

Explicit
Intent

Low
Centralized Decentralized
Command Approach

Figure 9: Continuum of Command Approaches

57
For example see Canada (2003). Duty with honour: The profession of arms in Canada. Ottawa,
Canadian Defence Academy – Canadian Forces Leadership Institute.
58
Figure is slightly modified from Stewart.

52 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
When the organization is more heterogeneous in knowledge, cognitive capability and
commitment more effort is required to explain intent. To avoid this effort, emphasis tends to
rely on more carefully choosing and intensively training members with more embedded control
structures and processes. However, the comprehensive approach with network-enabled capability
assumes a larger number of people linked together in a greater variety of ways. Making available
a trusted mechanism for situational awareness can facilitate self-organizing behaviour to
emerge more easily despite existing heterogeneity of the membership. The network-enabled
organization, embracing architectures of participation underlying peer-production and responsible
autonomy, can yield more timely and agile response with knowledge superiority. The human
key to effective network-enabled capability will be internalized professionalism and a view that
understands the network as “a moral relationship of trust…[among] a group of individual agents
who share informal norms and values,”59 that is understanding that human collaboration is the
aim of organizational and network technologies.

Thus far, we have examined Bar-Yam’s concept of the complexity profile (Figure 7) and the
continuum of command approaches (Figure 8). By combining these two concepts we can
visualize the relation between organizational and environmental complexity and command
approach. We do this below in Figure 10.

Survival
Threshold
Common
Implicit Intent
High High Risk
Intent
Threshold
Survive
Organizational Complexity

Individual
Commande

Shared
Intent

Explicit
Intent
Low Low
Centralized Command Approach Decentralize
Low Complexity of Environmental Demands High

Figure 10: Integrated Complexity Profile and Continuum of Command Approaches

59
Pigeau, McCann (2006) quoting Fukuyama, Frank (1999). The Great Disruption: Human Nature
and the Reconstitution of Social Order. New York: Free Press, page 199.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 53
To confidently trust the expression of intent, Commanders ultimately need assurance that military
professionals have in fact internalized the common guiding principles that frame the territory
of legitimate military behaviour and acceptable military solutions. Without this confidence,
commanders must fall back on increasing explicit and hierarchical control. While it may seem
that the CF may not be fully prepared implement the ideas inherent in concept of responsible
autonomy other than that the concept does in fact describe Special Operations and the Special
Operations Force. Because of this the question remains why not the others?

Network technologies and architectures of participation can enable the military team to share
knowledge, mental models and situational awareness. However, only by selecting capable people
and developing their human capital can the CF assure that team members share comparable levels
of sophisticated cognitive and reasoning capability that enable coherent and congruent inferences
and conclusions that will successfully lead to self-organized coordinated action. This will involve
the ability to recognize individuals with demonstrated cognitive competencies to think through
complex problems, to match or link individual ability to the situation, and to ensure this
recognition and matching occurs at all levels.

Will, which is a primary foundation of the motivation and commitment necessary for mission
success also plays a significant role in determining the effort command must make to
make intent explicit. Defined as diligent purposefulness (Pigeau, McCann, 2006), will is
as important as shared knowledge and comparable cognitive capability in actualizing common
intent. Therefore command involves the harnessing of creative will at all levels through the
effective communication of common intent by incorporating both the concept of operation
and the energizing of individual and collaborative will. Coordinated action is almost always
achieved through a combination of explicit control and spontaneous emergent behaviour.

By understanding the concept of mission command, Colonel Jones was better prepared to focus
her efforts on establishing a wide sense of common intent that underlay and integrated the many
networked stakeholders within an architecture of participation.

Military art has always required the appropriate balancing of explicit and tacit knowledge,
yet complex environments will require greater cognitive capabilities, will and commitment –
and ultimately an even deeper reliance on professionalism inherent to responsible autonomy.
Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production can help the CF
materialize a doctrine of common intent as well as achieve, sustain and effectively leveraging
military professionalism60. Common intent also implies that leaders must be able to achieve
effects by marshalling the efforts and resources beyond those they directly control.

60
For example, CompanyCommand.Com is a brilliant demonstration of a powerful ‘lessons learned’
capability (one that can also perform in ‘real time’, as well as a powerful peer-production capability
of military professionalism and knowledge generation.

54 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 Table 4: The Last Mile of the Market and Mission Command61

Adam Smith’s Market System Mission Command

Pursuit of interest Distributed control
Responsible Autonomy

Impersonal Exchange Non-Hierarchical Exchange

Trusted Price Mechanism Trusted Situational Awareness
Common Intent

Invisible Hand of Market Self-Synchronization

Invisible Hand of Implicit Intent

Social Consequences Organizational Consequences

Decentralized Political Economy Decentralized Organizational Management
Labour, Entrepreneur, Government People, Mission, Leadership
Productive use of capital generates more capital Productive use of human capital generates
complex human capability

Mechanistic division of labour based on Emergent dynamic division of effort enabling

organization as a machine organization as complex evolving system

As Table 4 illustrates this is not new, we have seen change in history and fully accept this
paradigm in our societies now. There is no ‘one’ leader, coordinating our economy nor our
society. Network technologies and architectures of participation will continue to advance
exponentially. The organizational paradigm represented by the market inevitably pressure
the traditional hierarchy to become less rigid and more complex (rather than complicated).

61
Cross, R., Liedtka, J., Weiss, L., (2005). A Practical Guide to Social Networks. Harvard Business
Review, March, 2005. This is modified from the table they present.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 55
6 Human Capital

For Adam Smith, the annual labour of a nation is its source and measure of wealth. He defined
the productive capacity of people as human capital. Since Smith, the concepts of human, social,
cultural, intellectual capital continue to be more extensively elaborated. However, classic
economic theory posits three factors – land, labour and capital. We argue that this theoretical
framework is insufficient for the 21st Century knowledge-based economy, nor for a military
organization so dependent on leadership for harnessing human will. The paper offers an
alternative framework in which human agency provides the encompassing factor consistent
with the key role of human will and enables the concept of capital to more easily include
the more intangible human, social, cultural dimensions of capital. The exercise of will and
responsible autonomy are synonymous ideas.

Like physical and other forms of capital, human capital also requires sacrifice in time, effort and
other resources to be acquired. Acquiring human capital depends on training, education, learning
and experience. The chapter concludes, with an elaboration of learning implications that can
arise as a consequence of implementing the platforms of responsible autonomy and the last mile
of the market (including the long tail, network technologies and architectures of participation).

You’ll never see a bumper sticker saying: “Send in the Marine Equipment”.

The stock of knowledge and the stock of technology set the upper bound to human
well being, but do not themselves determine how successful human beings are within
those bounds.

It is the structure of political and economic organization which determines the

performance of an economy as well as the incremental rate of growth in knowledge
and technology. The forms of cooperation and competition that human beings develop
and the system of enforcement of these rules of organizing human activity are at the
very heart of economic history (North, 2005, 17).

Every military leader will affirm that military capability is about people. Yet deeply embedded in
the industrial model of the organization, is a fundamental paradox founded the modern economic
concept of labour. Labour is basically understood as a mobile, standardized (or standardizable)
commodity which organizations rent (hire, they cannot ‘own’ people) in order to perform the
work that the organization-as-machine is designed to do. On the other hand, all leaders, managers
and workers know that people are quirky; idiosyncratic; temperamental; have multiple talents,
and interests; and a range emotional, psychological, physical and intellectual aptitudes and
motivations – in short, each person is unique and not reducible to a standardized commodity.
People look to other people and expect to be treated and to perform as people and yet the
organization-as-machine is designed to calculate resource needs and expenditures in terms
of standardizable commodities. It is the paradox of people as ‘human resources’.

56 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
In the world of accelerating technological and scientific progress, recruitment will always remain
a challenge, not simply in getting the right number but more importantly in relation to meeting the
requirements of the military occupational structure (part of the organizational division of labour).
However, the key knowledge challenge is and will continue to be – how to capture the uniqueness
of each person in the context of a complex, evolving organization? How can we select the
right people when as an organization we do not know what we will need people to do in the fast
approaching future. For example, occupations that may be vital to an organization in 10 years
may not even exist or be imaginable currently, some occupations will become extinct and many
other occupations will need additional knowledge and skill, fewer or different ones.

This section will briefly explore the human dimension of capital (human, social, cultural, etc.)
with the aim providing a more integrated concept for understanding the issues of managing
people in a post-industrial society and economy – that is for an organization designed as
a complex, evolving, system.

We are familiar with the concept of capital – a surplus ‘good or value’ attained through sacrifice
(effort or saving) that can be used to increase capability. More importantly, that organizations
and individuals all need capital in order to get things done in the real world. Adam Smith
recognized human capital as the fourth type of fixed capital – skill, dexterity and judgement, to
which we can add knowledge (both explicit and tacit). We argue that without a concept of human
capital, it is impossible to consider how ‘labour’ can accomplish any task. Without a minimal
body of knowledge, skill, dexterity and judgement, even the simplest tool cannot be used. This
is fundamental to becoming human, and we see it in the need to educate and socialize our young.
Without a language we are reduced to basic mimicry and have no means of sophisticated
understanding and manipulation of concepts and tools as well as achieving competitive and
cooperative work. Most importantly, like all other types of capital, human capital can only
be accumulated through effort and sacrifice.

For Smith, the annual labour of a nation, is its source and measure of wealth, and wealth is
regulated by 1) skill, dexterity, judgement of applied labour, and 2) the proportion of labour
employed62. As noted, Smith defined four types of fixed capital: 1) Useful machines, as
instruments of the trade; 2) Buildings as the means of procuring revenue; 3) Improvements
of land; and 4).

Fourthly, of the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants or members of the
society. The acquisition of such talents, by the maintenance of the acquirer during his
education, study or apprenticeship, always costs a real expense which is a capital fixed
and realized, as it were, in his person. Those of the society to which he belongs. The
improved dexterity of a workman my be considered in the same light as a machine or
instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labour, and which, though it costs
a certain expense, repays that expense with a profit63.

62
This idea as well will be important in understanding the power of peer-production in augmenting both
the division of labour and applying human capital to greater productive use.
63
Smith, A., The Wealth of Nations. 2000 Modern Library Paperback Edition.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 57
But even more important, was the use of capital: “A man must be perfectly crazy who, where
there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands....”64. This also
means that an organization that is not capable of using as much of its human capital as it has
available must be equally ‘crazy’.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) systematically discussed the economic behaviour of individuals in the
production process: capitalists invest in land, raw materials, and production facilities and
equipment. They do this to earn profit which is surplus return over costs. Labourers sell their
labour and receive wages to restore their labour. Some economists from the school of neo-capital
theories (e.g., Becker, 1964/1993; Johnson, 1960; Schultz, 1961) argued that Marx’s statement on
the labourers’ economic behaviour reflects only a part of the truth. According to the neo-capital
theories, certain labourers, who own skills and knowledge (so called human capital), social
resources (so called social capital), and values (so called cultural capital) that directly enhance
productivity, can demand payment from the capitalists beyond the exchange value for their
labour. This means that the labourers should not be considered as machines functioning for
maximum output. Rather they are also entitled to some proportions of the surplus (profits)
because of their investment of their own human, social and cultural capital. Both the classic
capital theories and the neo-capital theories illustrate the operation of individual autonomy
in the economic sphere: individuals pursue economic returns by investing capitals (Lin, 2001).

Knowledge65 is an intellectual capital consisting (among other things) of conceptual tools from
which a person and a society can create theories (other conceptual tools) for the creation of
new theories and improvement of old theories in order to effectively act upon the world. Even
material capital is such only because humans have created the concepts for its existence and use.
Without the embodied knowledge, skills, dexterity and judgement – a human is simply an energy
source, a container of energy that must be harnessed in order for the energy to be applied (except
if we are to develop a “Matrix” where humans are used as a battery-like energy source).

The change from the traditional economy to the knowledge-based economy, where knowledge
is the primary production resource instead of traditional capital and labour, sheds helpful light on
the importance of individual autonomy in the production process. By investing human and social
capital, certain individuals obtain and own knowledge that not only brings in prestige in the job
market, but also generates profits for the organizations they belong to. Knowledge related
to economy growth includes: know-what (knowledge about “facts”), know-why (scientific
knowledge of the principles and laws of nature), know-how (skills, dexterity and other the
capabilities to do something) and know-who (involves information about who knows what
and who knows how to do what). Individuals gain knowledge of know-what, know-why, and
know-how as the result of investing human capital, and accumulate knowledge of know-who
through developing social capital.

64
Ibid.
65
Beinhocker (2006) makes a compelling argument that knowledge is the source of wealth.

58 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
In the traditional economy, the labourers’ knowledge of know-who is not as important as
their knowledge of know-what, know-why, and know-how. However, individuals’ know-who
knowledge becomes increasingly important in the knowledge-based economy. As the result
of a highly developed division of labour, knowledge and skills are widely dispersed among
experts, firms, laboratories, and academic institutions. Thus, the opportunity and capability of
gathering and utilizing information, knowledge and skills from others will determine individuals’
competitive advantage in the job market and decide their contributions to the organizations.
Since knowledge resides in peoples’ minds and hearts, knowledge management (unlike
information management) is about managing and harnessing people.

Developing social capital helps individuals to gain the opportunity and capability of knowing
“who knows what and who knows how to do what”. Social capital can be defined as social
resources embedded in one’s social ties or social networks (Lin, 2001). With their social capital,
people obtain information and absorb new knowledge and experiences from their social ties.
This may help them solve their work problems more easily than only by themselves. One’s
social capital also facilitates knowledge integration and creation. Unlike most resources that
deplete when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow in value, utility
and in quantity through the interactions. During the interactions, varied and multiple perspectives
on one issue provided by one’s social ties may lead the individual to form new insights and widen
the possibility of collaborations with others in knowledge creation.

People’s social capital brings them other advantages. For example, certain individuals can
affect decision-making in the production process through their social ties with others who play a
critical role in organizations. By owning their social relationships, people gain social credentials
reassuring that they can provide “added” resources to the organizations.

The development of one’s social capital needs people to put significant efforts over many years
rather than on a just-in-tine basis. To maintain and strengthen their social relationships, people
need to invest their time and energy to build trust with their social ties. When trust is built,
one’s social ties last longer and require less maintenance, but may reduce the variety of
perspectives that could be possibly generated by one’s social ties. Thus, people need to build a
diverse social network to maximize the variety of the information, knowledge and skills that they
can access and use – people need to develop and maintain both a set of close ties and a larger set
of loose ties.

According to the neo-capital theories, any investment of human capital including social capital
should be able to serve the interest of both the organizations and the employees. Organizations
may create a set of social resources through developing inter-organizational relationships, and
make them available to their employees. Researchers call these social resources organizational
social capital, comparing individual social capital which refers to the social resources embedded
in one’s social ties. The complementarity of social resources provided by these two types
of social capital help the employees to solve different types of problems of individual and
collective action.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 59
As we have discussed, the industrial model tends to reduce the human to only those abilities
required to fulfill the function of a particular ‘cog’ (job) that the organization/machine’ requires.
Consistent with this approach the terms – labour, personnel and resource, all reduce people to a
sort of homogeneous quantity (within a generic occupation/career structure). Thus, a quantity
of labour put to work, a labour force, a resource base, etc., – all composed of standard
components. While capital also has this same sense of homogeneous mass it carries general
understanding that it must and should be invested maximally in order to obtain the most
productive return. If we understand human capabilities (skills, dexterity, judgement, knowledge,
talent, etc.) and people-based organizational capabilities (culture, ethos, reputation, etc.) as
capital, then it follows that we are responsible to explicitly determine the extent of our capital,
how well it is used, and what investments we need to make to grow more and improve the return
on the capital we have. In this way, people and their development are integrated not as a cost,
but as fundamental assets which require investments to protect these assets.

If we accept that each person always posses much more capability (human capital) than required
by their incumbent job, then we must also accept that the organization/machine will not use the
optimum capability of its people. However, if the major rule of economics is the requirement
to use capital as productively as it can be used (or be ‘perfectly crazy’ as Smith indicated), then
the industrial organization is inherently incapable of putting to optimum productive use a large
portion (perhaps the even the greatest portion) of its human capital – as figure 11 suggests.

High
P
r Head – Jobs utilize
o 20% of jobs use
d 80% of incumbent human capital
u
c Available but unused human
t capital
i
v
i Tail – Productivity unavailable to hierarchy
t 80% of jobs use
y 20% of incumbent human capital

High
Low Number of Producers

Figure 11: The Long Tail – Collapse of Coordination Costs

60 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Linking the Right Person with the Right Situation at the Right Time

Human capital and the productive power of human effort are both dependent on the division
of labour. However, there is a complex66 relationship between the division of labour and
human capital. While essentially all people are more equal than unequal, small differences
in conjunction with choice to pursue their interest within a context created through a particular
instantiation of systems of exchange allows small differences to become accomplishments
through the action of comparative advantage. Included in the exchange are the communication
of ideas, concepts and intangible qualities that are the superlative goods of the network society
and economy. Such exchange is work and contributes to the production of wealth (abundance
of choice and availability of goods and services) and enables the increase, refinement and
enhancement of human capabilities. As noted in the chapter on mission command the control
hierarchy of the organizational structure and processes contains the problem-space to a more
manageable size and thus reduces uncertainty and increases order. However by reducing the
problem space to the hierarchical structure it also restricts the solution-set (limiting the use of
human capital to the structural architecture of the division of labour – jobs ). Thus we have an
architecture of a system of exchange inseparable from and synonymous with the development
of the architecture of the systems for the division of labour.

Back to our paradox – all good leaders understand ‘people values’, those values that must attend
the care, development and sustainment of people so that they are ready, willing and able to
succeed in their missions. All good leaders also recognize the reality that is measured and
represented in the term the ‘bottom-line’. The inherent paradox of the industrial approach to
people management is that the leaders must contend with two apparently conflicting value
frameworks – the values of people versus those values contained in the bottom-line. Some of this
conflict can be appreciated in the evolving terms we use for people – labour, personnel, human
resources, human capital, etc. The development of a more comprehensive economic theory to
support all the factors that make a society and an organization successful must strive to integrate
those two conflicting value frameworks. Only then would leaders be enabled to make congruent
decisions that include the human dimension within a single frame of values.

And this leads us to ponder the neo-classical three factors economic framework. These are
the well known factors of – Land, Labour and Capital. There are at least two problematics of
interest, in the three factors framework: one is the inadequacy of the definition of the individual
and the second is the absence of culture and society within the factors.

First, in the concept of Labour, there is the sense of a person, but without explicit human capital
the ‘person’ is merely an energy source, and if we posit human capital tacitly then we do not
warrant to labour, the same concerns that are involved with the productive use of all capital
(and conversely recognize the degradation of capital when it is not used productively). This also
leads us to the second concern as we are left with no sense of the intangible tools that reside in the
social-cultural body.

66
Complex in the sense that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that in combination a novel and
emergent capability is produced.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 61
To conceive of the ability to store and transmit knowledge (to increase the stock of knowledge),
and to develop and improve methods of directed and spontaneous cooperation (with constructed
and useful conceptual and ‘intangible tools) but yet, not to consider such as a type of social or
cultural capital seems to be an error in reasoning. Conceptual tools include:

a. Mechanical concepts (the wheel, tools, machines) etc.;

b. Social concepts such as family, nation, institution, etc.;

c. Financial concepts exchange instruments, money, credit, etc.;

d. Forms of organization, governance, competition, and collaboration/cooperation,

including the division of labour (both in general and in specific instantiations); and

e. Forms of knowledge, and even language itself.

All are capabilities and concepts that are hard won types of social, cultural and human capital.
When put to productive use they generate more tools, wealth, and even matter (nano, biological
technologies in material and biological form).

When we consider the story thus far, including the importance of creative will in the development
of leaders and the capability of mission command, it is clear that personnel management requires
a better conceptualization of the factors of production – see Figure 11.

The Political Economy:

Permeable and Expandable Human Agency/Will
-Individual
-Collective
-Social
Matter Capital
-Cultural
-Physical -Physical
-Biological Energy -Monetary
(including -Human -Human
DNA) -Renewable -Social
-Non- -Cultural
renewable

Figure 12: Factors of Production for the 21st Century

In Figure 12 the Political Economy (green oval) is conceived as permeable and expandable. The
political economy contains Four Factors – Matter, Energy, Capital and Human Agency. The
three factors in permeable boxes are meant to capture the essence of the traditional factors of
land, labour and capital. The fourth unbounded (except within the political economy) factor
captures the human factor – human agency is meant to capture the primal capability to initiate –
in a sense to creatively express will. By separating out human agency as a primal and contextual
factor, we are better able to see the human components of the other factors without confusing

62 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
human matter (DNA), human energy, human capital with an actual person – the landowner,
labourer (human energy resource) or capitalist/leader.

By making human agency distinct, we can better see the importance of human capital as a
dynamic foundation of social and individual progress and are therefore closer to a more accurate
economic understanding. Actioned knowledge67 – the integration of the four factors could be
seen as the source of capability and wealth. Of course, this concept of a political economy would
require much more analysis to work out remaining details and is presented here only to highlight
in a useful way the distinctions within the ‘human dimension’ in a way that separates the concept
of labour (as a standardizable commodity) from Human agency (Will) and Human Capital (as
the skill, knowledge, dexterity and judgement) that an individual acquires and ‘owns’. If we
can accept this, it also becomes clearer why a new theory or philosophy for managing people
is necessary.

Group action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes
the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole. This change will not be
limited to any particular set of institutions or functions. For any given organization,
the important questions are “When will the change happen?” and “What will change?”
the only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing. The ways in which any
given institution will find its situation transformed will vary, but the various local
changes are manifestations of a single deep source: newly capable groups are
assembling, and they are working without the managerial imperatives and outside the
previous strictures that bounded their effectiveness. These changes will transform the
world everywhere groups of people come together to accomplish something, which is
to say everywhere (Shirky, 2008, 23-24).

A learning organization is more than an organization that focuses on the need to provide training
and development to its people. The military machine must train and develop. However, as note
previously the emphasis of the training and development can often be primarily on the production
of ‘standardized’ parts of the machine, despite having to incorporate a career path succession – so
that an individual is always learning new roles and further developing competencies (e.g., the CF
Leadership Framework). A learning organization must itself be able to learn, and thus change –
organizational agility is more than rapid response it must also be a capacity for timely adaptation
and strategic transformation. In this way we see that learning is the key to developing human
capital (social, cultural, and other intangible individual and organizational capital) and
inseparable from the concept of knowledge management.

Snowden (2008)68 cites seven principles for knowledge management:

a. Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. People can’t be forced

to share and we can never measure if they have shared all they know;

b. We only know what we know when we need to know it. Unlike computers, human
knowing is profoundly contextual and recall needs stimulus;
67
See Beinhocker (2006)
68
See Rendering Knowledge at:
http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/2008/10/rendering_knowledge.php

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 63
 c. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. Unless there is
a previous history of distrust or systemic/structural injunctions, most people will answer
a genuine request for help. However, few people will offer or be able to codify what
they know. Connecting people is more important than storing information;

d. Everything is fragmented. Human by evolution are more able to handle

fragmented patterns;

e. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. All cultures have mechanisms
that allow the sharing of stories of failure without attributing blame. While hindsight
does not lead to foresight – there must be a shift from an overriding emphasis on
fail-safe to the development of conditions where safe-fail experimentation is more
encouraged. The concept of safe-fail experimentation, can enable significant mitigation
of the traditional bureaucratic management of risk-averse culture;

f. The way we know things is not the way we report we know things. Research
increasingly indicates that in practice people use heuristics, past pattern matching,
metaphors, prototypes and other ways of extrapolation for decision-making that
often takes place in nanoseconds. Post-decision explanations tend to be
structured rationalization; and

g. We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write
down. This is likely the most important point in developing knowledge management
structures and cultures and highlights the need to link the right person to the right
situation at the right time and a non-hierarchical, volunteer-friendly exchange space
or platform.

It is impossible to formalize the informal, especially while preserving the trusted nature of
informal knowledge transfer. In the organization, knowledge exchange can be usefully conceived
as co-evolving process of the formal and informal (including learning). The evolution of the
informal communities cannot be designed. What can be designed is the initial starting conditions
and influences to that evolution.

Trust is a key dimension that supports the knowledge exchange and co-generation. To this end
an organization must recognize the importance of trust-tagging – a long standing natural human
phenomenon. It is critical to knowledge transfer and to validation of authoritative expertise as
well as general problem solving. The idea of trust tagging is captured in the common frame
where “any friend of x is a friend of mine”. If we then assume that based on a similar trusted
relationship “everyone in an organization is within no more that three degrees of separation
of everyone else”, then this will be a context where knowledge can flow freely. This is the
well lived and comfortable experience of the personal networks of military personnel as well
as the networked individual, the Facebook generation. An organization enabling a platform
of responsible autonomy in a way familiar to our youth can create a digital learning ecology
within the organization but equally important an ecology that crosses the boundaries into
the organization’s own larger ecology.

64 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
These trusted links do arise because of corporate direction, but emerge as a consequence of
collaborative work and sharing common interests. Bonds of trust emerge over time and are
voluntary in nature, they cannot be manufactured but they can be nurtured. The facebook
Web 2.0 generation are extremely familiar and have become very competent in this domain.
Trust, knowledge exchange and knowledge generation are fundamental to learning.

6.1 Learning and Agility: Doing is Learning –

Learning is Doing
If the military is to be effective in the complex operational environment of today and tomorrow it
must be capable of operational agility and this in turn can only be powered by an organizational
capability for real-time learning. This type of learning is dependent on both the development and
sustainment of military professionalism and the capability to instantiate appropriate
organizational architectures.

The traditional paradigm of education/training generally implies that it is a solitary pursuit (rather
than a social one). For example, we are generally taught to “do our own work” in school which
involves consulting the text book (written by an expert) or asking the teacher/instructor. These
assumptions constitute how valid knowledge is transferred and continue to be the norm in today’s
organizations, particularly strong hierarchical organizations such as the CF. In this sort of context
knowledge is handled like a ‘thing’ given by those who know to those who don’t know, managing
knowledge as if it were a material subject to scarcity – in essence such a “knowledge poor
society” (Weinberger, 2007) produces consequent assumptions that are the basis for the saying
“knowledge is power”.

Unlike most other organizations, a military places considerable emphasis on collective training
in addition to individual training. What is important in this section is the impact of network
technologies and architectures of participation for enhancing the military culture of lifelong
learning necessary to a more effective and timely development of military professionalism,
organizational learning and operational agility.

Today students are not only online researching instead of reading a book in a library, they are
also simultaneously instant messaging and facebooking with peers the entire time. The
movement is from solitary studying to a collective, hive-mindish mode of learning, where
learners are continually shifting from questioning to answering, from learning to teaching.
This movement has either been invisible, been ignored, or worse has been sanctioned against,
because it doesn’t match the testing discipline – where individuals are tested on linear, focused,
and solitary understanding, in order to produce the standardized individual cogs to function in
an organizational and economic ‘machine’. Meanwhile, students are transforming themselves
into self-organized networks where new types of collective productivity and intelligence are
the central aim. From knowledge handed down by legitimate authority to a pragmatic continual
process of co-creating knowledge.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 65
With the advent of the network society and the acceleration of science and technology progress,
we see unprecedented change for example “Did You Know?”69 that:

a. China will soon have the most English speakers in the world;

b. 25% of India’s population with the highest IQs is greater than the total US population –
that means that India has more ‘honours’ children than the US has children;

c. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004 – thus we are preparing
students for jobs that don’t yet exist, that will use technologies that have not
been invented, in order to solve problems that we don’t know are problems yet;

d. The US Department of Labour estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs
by the time they are 38;

e. 25% of workers have been with their current employer less than a year, and 50% less
than five years;

f. 13% of couples married in the US last year met online;

g. There are 31 billion Google search every month (in 2006 this was only 2.7 billion) –
to whom where these questions asked before Google?;

h. The first commercial text message was sent in 1992 – today the number of text
messages sent every day exceeds the planet’s population;

i. To reach of market audience of 50 million it took 38 years for radio, 13 years for TV,
4 years for the Web (as Internet), 3 years for the iPod, 2 years for Facebook;

j. There were 1,000 Internet devices in 1984, 1,000,000 in 1992, 1,000,000,000 in 2008;

k. There are 5 times more English words today than in Shakespeare’s time;

l. Today one week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the
normal person in the 18th Century would have come across in their lifetime;

m. Approximately 4 exabytes (4 x 1019) of unique information will be generated this

year – this is more than the previous 5,000 years – new technical information doubles
every year; and

n. For students starting a 4 year technical degree – half of what they learn in the first year
may be outdated by their third year.

69
See this very interesting presentation researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

66 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
Given, the acceleration we are witnessing, several assumptions about the relationship between
organizational structure and education and training are being challenged including:

6.1.1 Place-Centric to Person-Centric World

It took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The 2nd billion sold in
4 years, and the 3rd billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within
range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. The cell phone is not just a phone.
It is now a camera, music player, bankcard, internet access – for chat, games, text, tv. It is a
both a personal and global platform for peer-production. We have shifted from a society
where individuals operated from a single front door, mail address and house phone number
to multiple email addresses and mobile phones. The technology of place-to-place enabled
dispersal/fragmentation of organizations and community. Technology of person-to-person
enables the shift to a personalized, world of networked individualism. People connected
as individuals, individually using networks for information, collaboration, orders, support,
sociability, and sense of belonging. Employees in networked organizations have multiple and
shifting work partners, and partial involvements within dispersed work relations that can often
extend globally. For the Google generation and later, their lived experience will increasingly
embed an expectation of being ubiquitously connected to the right situation at the right time.

6.1.2 From Training to Learning-How-To-Learn

It’s not what you know – it’s the capacity to learn-thus-know, which will be the source of power.
This may be the single most important type of education and training the CF can deliver
to people. This reflects the sense that it’s no longer knowledge that is power, but the ability
to create knowledge and learn that is power. Here the important shift is toward learning how
to learn and power will accrue to those with that ability. Strengths for the future will lie in
one’s ability to search, sort, validate and synthesize knowledge. Inherent in the networks will
be the need to share and an emphasis on deep collaboration.

6.1.3 From Authority-Down to Bi-Directionality

Traditional education is top-down, from authorities who know to those who don’t. However the
pace of change and the accelerating growth of knowledge will require an openness to a more bi-
directional exchange of knowledge, for example the grandchild teaching the grandparent about
the internet and the grandparent teaching the grandchild about the critical review of information.
With the pace of progress, new knowledge and information can be brought to the learning
situation from everyone involved.

6.1.4 Transfer of Knowledge versus Knowledge Creation

Thinking that education is the handing of a pre-formed package of knowledge to someone else
who accepts it as they would a tool (to be used as indicated) will be less useful in an environment
stressing the need to also learn how to learn. If we take the idea of multi-directionality of
the educational situation, then the application of multiple perspectives facilitates a more rapid
generation of new knowledge, engenders the experience of co-creation of knowledge that is

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 67
validated by peers and pragmatic experience and allows the knowledge being engaged to be
integrated more easily.

6.1.5 Emergent Capabilities

The education and development of our people should prepare and empower them to grasp,
understand and use emergent capabilities. The concept of emergence can be defined as:

…the process by which patterns or global-level structures arise from interactive

local-level processes. This “structure” or “pattern” cannot be understood or
predicted from the behaviour or properties of the component units alone.

Such global-level structures can in turn dialectically interact, influence and reflectively shape
the constituent parts. Thus new ‘emergent’ capabilities may tend to not be discernable, nor
anticipatable through an analysis of the parts. Two emergent capabilities arising out of network
technologies and architectures of participation are:

6.1.5.1 The Power of Real-Time Collective Learning

The capacity to connect the right people to the right situation at the right time in conjunction with
universal access to information enables a new emergent capability – the learning organization.
An embedded integrated capacity for real time continuous learning powers operational agility,
that in fact learning and operational agility become (almost) synonymous. Network technologies
and architectures of participation enable people (as knowers and learners) to be the force
multipliers and enhance the CF’s capacity to provide ‘Just-in-time-instruction’.

6.1.5.2 Individual Intelligence versus Intelligence Amplification

As we combine the above assumptions, embedded in connecting the right people to the
right situation at the right time, another capability emerges. The augmentation of individual
intelligence through collective capability where any individual can ‘reach-back’ to required
expertise (connecting the right person to the right situation at the right time). Also important
is the connection of any person with an individual mentor, personal coach and/or tutor.

6.1.6 From Job to Work

It’s not that ‘jobs’ will disappear, but in order to fully leverage the power of networks and fully
use the human capital we invest so much people, time, effort and money to develop, we will
have to enable a person-centric dimension to designing work tailored to each individual. A
type of personnel platform where each individual’s passions, interests, talents, expertise is made
available to the whole organization and where the individual can choose to contribute his abilities
in a way that enables much longer continuity of effort than is now possible within the framework
of ‘filling jobs’.

68 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
6.1.7 From Contract to Commitment

The ‘contract’ is built on the concept of ‘specifiable exchange’, we give you this, you give us
that. If it can’t be specified, we don’t know what we are giving or getting. Essentially the job
description is a contract, and as a ‘cog’ in the organization-as-machine this approach allows us
to reduce uncertainty and ensure a consistent and reliable output. Training is all about the job and
the contract and as such can be summarized as ensuring compliance and obedience (to standards
and expectations). Learning however, is more ‘transgressive’ in that the outcome of learning is
uncertain and is generally expected to bring some novel understanding and new knowledge. As
such it can’t be specified in advance. Thus a barrier to embodying a true ‘learning organization’
is the concept of contract (as specifiable exchange) embedded in every ‘job-as-cog’. The
emphasis on job (as contract) engenders a corresponding emphasis on job-security and
psychologically reinforces identity development linked to securing the ongoing existence to
the job. Although there are many other factors involved, the human concern with job security
and the associated investment of self in occupational ‘identity’ contributes very significantly
to the barriers of cultural change.

Commitment on the other hand, is a more general securing of a relationship based on upholding
certain values and rights. Commitment is completely consistent with military professionalism
and provides a more general foundation for investment of individual identity that can be more
amenable to cultural change. Commitment is important for the next two points.

6.1.7.1 Re-Training and Re-re-training

Despite the fact that some work will remain unchanged, we don’t know what we will need many
of our people to do in 5, 10 years – we don’t know what currently non-existent occupations will
be vital, which ones will be obsolete, which will need to be re-skilled, skilled up or skilled down.
The need to ‘grow’ our people makes the time span of managing and developing people the most
significant strategic frame (and perhaps most strategic ongoing investment) of our organization.
Additionally, the pace of science and technology progress will inevitably make the CF’s
technological frame much more fluid and with the technological framework goes the occupational
structure upon which the educational and training structure is developed. Thus, the education and
training capacity will have to be able to incorporate re-training to do the same work, as well as
simultaneously re-training to do new work above and beyond the current model of developing
people through a traditional linear career.

6.1.7.2 From Job Security to Employability Security

Given that we don’t know what jobs, work, occupations will have to be invented, or will
disappear, or be transformed, there will be a greater need to foster a flexible culture and
nurture people to have more flexibility. In turn this requires an over-riding commitment
between individuals and the organization. A commitment to employability security provides
(among many other things) a framework of incentives for individual and organizational learning
as well as enabling a better capacity for more agile cultural change.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 69
6.1.8 Additional General Competencies

The skills and abilities military people need to accomplish missions successfully fall into
four general classes: physical, intellectual, emotional and interpersonal. While the first two
are well appreciated the last two are generally under-appreciated.

The intense and demanding conditions in which members must be willing and able to perform
requires significant emotional competency (emotional toughness) that is strongly associated with
resilience, hardiness and the ability to cope under stress (keeping an overall emotional balance
and perspective) as well as the ability to maintain a sense of humour.

Interpersonal competency is equally essential, not only for effective interaction with subordinates,
peers and superiors (networked or not), but also for a wide range of important actors outside of
the military organization (the comprehensive approach, three block war and three D contexts, and
the network-enabled and effects-based approaches to operations). Social skills include:
communication skills (verbal, non-verbal and written), attributes of trust, respect, perceptiveness
and empathy that promote effective teamwork.

An informal review of a recent RAND publication70 on the future workforce reveals a list of
worker characteristics that indicate the nature of human capital that will be valuable. These
characteristics include:

a. Flexibility, Creativity, Problem-solving, Abstract reasoning;

b. Complex communications, Reading;

c. Authority;

d. Teamwork, Work at home [self-organizing? responsible?], Networked

entrepreneurship (e-lancing), Collaborative teamwork [forming, dissolving, reforming];

e. Balancing work and family commitments;

f. Non-standard work arrangements;

g. Autonomy, Responsible for generating demand for [own] skills, Lifelong learning;

h. No well-defined career ladder;

i. Mathematics, Sciences, Engineering, IT capability.

As we can see, many of these characteristics will require and be leveraged by network
technologies, architectures of participations and peer-production. In addition, when we
consider tomorrow’s demographics (e.g., today China has more honours students than
our total population), the CF/DND will have to be able to maximize its human capital.

70
Karoly, L.A. (2007). Forces Shaping the Future U.S. Workforce and Workplace: Implications for
21st Century Work. Rand Testimony, CT-237, Testimony presented before the House Education
and Labor Committee on February 7, 2007.

70 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
As we have discussed, the institution of the Long Tail collapse communication and coordination
costs. In this chapter we have outline the inextricable relationship between will as human
agency, human capital and learning. Not only do network technologies enable more efficient
means to provide training and development but most importantly it enables rapid exchange of
knowledge (a near costless connecting of the right person to the right situation at the right time).
To comprehensively generate and fully use the human capital available to the organization
requires the implementation of architectures of participation and responsible autonomy.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 71
7 The Last Mile – Platform for Responsible Autonomy

Thus far we have traversed the path of the market system, organizational architectures,
complexity, mission command and human capital. Before we address the last mile and the
platform of responsible autonomy we examine some of the remaining anomalies of a control
hierarchy. These anomalies include (in no particular order of importance):

a. Misaligned perspectives including: leadership-management; operational-systemic;

and cohort-based;

b. The pace of change and the resulting context as eternal transformation;

c. Unintended consequences of the implicit incentives of the traditional career structure;

and

d. Peer-Production as an emerging capability enabled by network and other technologies.

We then propose a concept of restructuring the organization by a restructuring of its smallest

part – the job and person time. This allows an organization to integrate all three organizational
architectures – Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Responsible Autonomy. The benefits of our
proposed concept include: increased engagement; continuity of effort; extended specialization
and enhanced generalization; increased productivity; a culture of collaboration, better support
for a comprehensive approach and the achieving of effects without direct control of resources;
and decision-action dominance and improved operational agility.

First, we foresee a redefinition of employer-employee relationships and work

arrangements, toward greater specialization and more worker-entrepreneurs. The
combination of technological change and globalization are propelling firms toward
a model of greater specialization than in the past. The adoption of new technologies
have shifted the ways firms are organized and conduct their businesses—both in “old
economy” goods-producing sectors such as steel and machine tools industries, as well
as services-producing sectors such as retailing, trucking and banking. This includes
a trend toward the “vertical disintegration of the firm”: in other words, companies
shedding non-core functions through outsourcing in order to focus on specialized
products and services that define their core competencies.

Decentralized business forms also go hand-in-hand with decentralized decision-making

within organizations, and attaching a premium on knowledge-generation as a way of
achieving competitive advantage. Shifts toward more participatory “high performance”
work systems that give workers more authority, flexibility, and opportunities to work in
teams as well as performance-based pay are also attributable to the power of information
technologies and their associated networks to coordinate and control across and within
organizations in a more decentralized manner. Increasingly, we can expect corporations
to serve less of a “command and control” function and instead provide the rules,

72 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 standard and culture that define the environment within which more autonomous
workers operate.71

Throughout history economic activity has occurred by means of an immense variety

of organizational forms (North, 1981, p33).

The proliferation of the Internet is facilitating – and perhaps accelerating – social

change that have been developing for decades in the ways that people contact, interact,
and obtain resources with each other. It is a shift from tightly-bounded, densely-knit,
solidary and often-local groups to more loosely-bounded, sparsely-knit, multiple and
often far-flung social networks (Wellman, 2004).

The essence of understanding the role of institutions in a society is to recognize that they
embody the intentionality of our conscious mind. The structure, whether of individual
markets or an entire political / economic system, is a human-made creation whose
functioning is neither automatic nor ‘natural’. Moreover the structure must be
continually altered with changes in the basic parameters of technology, information,
and human capital if it is to function well (however defined) (North, 2005, 162).

We have examined the birth of the market and complexity science and in both we see the rise
of richer forms of exchange as a foundation for new types of emergent self-organized capabilities.
Self-organization can also enable the development of internal complexity that enables an
entity to match and adapt to contextual and external complexity. In relation to organizational
architectures we have examined heterarchy and responsible autonomy. In the examination of
mission command and intent (common, explicit and implicit) we have shown a militarily relevant
concept that is commensurate with our elaborations of the market, responsible autonomy and
complexity and most importantly with the power and potential of network technologies and
architectures of participation.

One might find that the depiction of human resource management as the preparation of humans
to become metaphorical parts (cogs) of a machine unduly harsh or simplistic. It is of course an
extremely simplified depiction. However, the core theory of organization as machine and the
human as a cog within it remains untouched and continues to be the underlying model shaping
how the organization harnesses human capability. As Kung (1969), has noted, paradigm change
is often the result of an increasing emergence of ‘anomalies’ between current ‘theory/practice’
and the challenges presented by the evidence of reality. This gap is readily observable
between the organizational constructs underlying human resource management and the increasing
challenges of change. As a result, human resource management continually develops and refines

71
Karoly, L.A. (2007). Forces Shaping the Future U.S. Workforce and Workplace: Implications for
21st Century Work. Rand Testimony, CT-237, Testimony presented before the House Education and
Labor Committee on February 7, 2007. http://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT273/. In relation to
the CF, this would apply to a greater operational focus, which paradoxically may also involve a greater
scope of specialized capabilities.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 73
practices and policies72 to accommodate the increasing number of anomalies arising between the
industrial models of the organization and the context of a market economy.

These anomalies include (in no particular order of importance):

a. Misaligned perspectives including: leadership-management; operational-systemic;

and cohort-based;

b. The pace of change and the resulting context as eternal transformation;

c. Unintended consequences of the implicit incentives of the traditional career structure;

and

d. Peer-Production as an emerging capability enabled by network and other technologies.

7.1 Misaligned Perspectives

It is important to elaborate briefly the notion of misaligned perspectives in creating HR system
anomalies. While most organizations suffer from this ‘fog’ a military organization may be more
prone. Two perspectives are key: The military leader trained to and promoted for the capability
to achieve mission objective versus the administrator trained to and promoted for the capability
to create, sustain and improve systems. Perhaps this is the same argument reflected in the
contrast of leadership with management. However, we believe it remains a significant source
of internal ‘fog and friction’ of transformation.

The perspective focused on operational effectiveness can easily become constrained to the need
to define goals and successfully achieve them. Success in achieving this becomes the primary
measure that assess costs and benefits – and ultimately sacrifices, that are affordable to the extent
that the value of the goal exceeds them sufficiently.

The perspective focused on creating, improving and administering systems can easily be
constrained to the efficiency, effectiveness and rationality of the systems functioning. Success
becomes primarily measured in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, rationality and sustainability
of the system. Sacrifices are affordable to the extent that they do not unduly perturb (cause
excessive cascades of unintended consequences) the rationally effective and efficient functioning
of the system.

To bring these two perspective into alignment, leaders must have a fuller appreciation of the
complexity (and complicatedness) of the system and administrators must create systems more
readily adaptable and evolveable.

72
It could be argued that much of this policy work is the result ‘band-aid’ approaches to fixing
the HR system – or as types of corrective epicycles applied to a faulty theory in order to make
the theory fit to reality.

74 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
7.2 Eternal Transformation
A further complication is the plague of eternal transformation – a shift from a constant state
followed by periodic change, to constant change punctuated by periodic extreme change (Waker,
2006). Work to understand, plan and implement change within current and near-term initiatives
and budgets is regularly derailed by ‘emergent requirements’ and tends to create a predominant
crisis or ‘fire-fighting’ culture (see the SOM Syndrome below).

The standard model of transformation has been the freeze-thaw-refreeze approach to change
management. Key to inciting change is an orientation to motivating people to accept change by
engendering a tangible (and visceral) sense of crisis. However, in a dynamic complex fitness
landscape, we must learn how to run the organization while changing the organization. Eternal
transformation makes viscerally real the organization-as-a-space-of-flows. The pragmatics of
change and strategic transformation will always involve phases of maintaining old capabilities in
parallel to the introduction of new capabilities (including doing the same things in old ways while
introducing the new ways to do them).

Unintended Incentives

Modern corporations suffer from systemic-level issues that emerge in top-down

hierarchies. Managers are there to control staff and budgets, not to lead. Although you
can make valiant and often successful attempts to control things and processes, you will
never again be able to control people. We’ve evolved, basically, and the information
age has had a lot to do with it. So we still “manage” companies the same way as when
we actually operated assembly lines in America--the good old days! Now, people need
leaders, not managers…(Cringerly, 2008)

7.3 Systemic Incentives

A further challenge compounds the issues of transformation – the nature of the systemic
incentives embedded in organizational architectures. For example the career path itself, has
deep structural incentives that can shape individual behaviour (despite the intentions of people).
The structure of the career path in a hierarchical organization seems innocuous and inevitable.
The systemic consequences of the career path as an incentive structure for generating excellence
seem incontestable in any organization founded on the principles of merit. However, under
certain conditions even the principles of merit can produces dysfunctional behaviour within an
organization. This is especially salient in times of rising external complexity and rapid change.
We have named the potentially unintended negative consequences inherent in a career path as
a systemic incentive structure within a hierarchical organization, the SOM Syndrome:

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 75
7.3.1 SOM Syndrome – Systemic Organizational Munchausen’s
Syndrome by Proxy

This syndrome exacerbates the pressures people feel to have measurable positive impact on an
organization whether focus is operational or administrative. Briefly Munchausen’s Syndrome is
when a person gets sick in order to get attention. Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy is when a
parent makes the child sick in order to gain attention. Systemic Organizational Munchausen’s
Syndrome by proxy refers to the emergence of dysfunctional systemic incentives within structure
of an organization’s career path that become evident in times of high external complexity and
rapid change.

The career path demands that an individual navigate a career (or have their career managed)
through many different organizational positions, each for a limited period of time. The career
‘ladder’ is generally not easy nor straight, forward or upward.

In the framework of a career path, significant actions (involving significant resources) aimed
at the prevention of problems that may potentially arise in the long term, is not well suited
to measurement. As a result it is very difficult to reward adequately especially in a person’s
performance review (demonstrating that initiative prevented costly misfortune as opposed to
demonstrating costly initiatives with no actual ‘product’ as a result – this is different from cost
saving initiatives). In the same vein, long-term strategy is very difficult to implement because
rewards are usually given for harvesting fruit rather than planting seeds or nurturing someone
else’s seedlings. Thus in a sense, the incentives within an organizational career can create an
‘allergy’ to prevention and long-term strategic initiative.

On the other hand, solving problems and handling crises is much more visible and measurable
(even if today’s band-aid is tomorrow’s infection) and thus much easier to reward and recognize
on a performance review. This in turn can encourage a type of organizational ‘addiction’ to
problems and crises, in that it both feeds an action oriented culture and produces easily visible
and rewardable results.

The SOM Syndrome amplifies a type of careerist and leadership mythos that requires leaders
to be visible in leading change as the basis of reward and promotion.

In essence SOM Syndrome entrenches an organizational allergy to prevention and long-term

strategy and feeds an addiction to problem-solving and crisis management.

7.4 Peer-Production and Responsible Autonomy

A core component of the personnel/HR functions is the design of the ‘division of labour’ and the
foundation of the occupational structure. The division of labour is fundamental to the increase
in productivity and capability that fuelled civilization and the Industrial Revolution and has
remained the foundation of the organization-as-machine paradigm of organizational design.
The key to understanding the power of the last mile is not to consider the two paradigms
“organization-as-machine” and organization-as-complex-evolving-system” to be necessarily

76 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
mutually exclusive73. We will continue to build and need “machines” but not only machines. In
this section we present an integrated concept of the use of Web 2.0 technologies, peer-production
and responsible autonomy, which can power an organizational ‘personnel platform for a new
type of agile and fluid division of labour. Using the untapped human capabilities within the
organization, the CF can create a new platform of non-hierarchical (impersonal) exchange, where
people can ‘pursue their interests’ and be selected or self-select to contribute to projects that feed
their interests, abilities, passions or curiosity in a digital division of labour, while continuing to
fulfill the obligations of the traditional layer of occupational/operational jobs and work. In this
way the last mile of the market is consistent with the ongoing challenge of transformation –
running the organization and changing the organization.

The power of new and emerging technologies can only be leverage

with new concepts of group, organization and decisioning.

What does this all mean? Can we really create a post-industrial organization based solely on
market principles?

Lets think back to complexity for a moment. We can define two dimensions74:

a. Institutional complexity, a consequence of the number of nodes and interactions both

within an organization and between it and its environment. This complexity arises
as a result of strategic choices; external context (such as the regulatory climate) and
implemented organizational and operating systems. Complexity increases with
increases in the number and/or diversity of the interacting features or factors. For
example, a road system is complex: many directions for vehicles to travel, many
vehicles, many intersections. However, no one person has to deal with all this
complexity; because control is distributed among all road users (including traffic
regulation which is local). Therefore the degree of individual complicatedness for
any one agent is relatively low; and

b. Individual complicatedness: the way components of the system (e.g., employees and
managers) experience and deal with complexity — “how hard it is to get things done.”
For example, an airport is much simpler at an institutional level than a road system,
with few runways and even fewer ways to use them. But the degree of complicatedness
that air traffic controllers experience is much higher (than a road system user) because

73
This paper, has not included reference to a considerable body of literature regarding competency based
organizations and competency based work analysis. This too will be address in a following paper.
74
These dimensions are adapted/derived from Heywood, S., Spungin, J., and Turnbull, D. (2007).
Cracking the Complexity Code, McKinsey Quarterly, 19 June 2007.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=2001&L2=18&L3=30&srid=17&gp=0
Their research indicated that institutional complexity did not necessarily generate corresponding
individual complicatedness – that companies with many business units, a presence in many locations
and countries, with many products, and/or customers did not report degrees of individual
complicatedness greater than the rest However, managing individual complicatedness remained
an important goal.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 77
 all of the dynamic decisioning is concentrated in a small number of highly expert
people and roles.

The implication for businesses is clear: they can manage higher degrees of institutional
complexity if they reduce the degree of individual [complicatedness] —either by
distributing institutional complexity across larger numbers of employees (as in the
road example) or by focusing it in a few pivotal roles and mitigating it with strong
capabilities in those positions (as in the airport example). Institutional complexity
can then be exploited to pursue more challenging (and value-creating) strategies
and to increase the organization’s resilience.75

An organization must determine where its complexity and complicatedness lie; use its structure
and mechanisms to minimize interaction costs, and build the capabilities of the individuals
who will assume the roles that may be pivotal to managing that complexity (especially on the
capabilities which enable individuals to operate effectively outside of narrowly defined roles).

In a sense creating a platform for responsible autonomy enables the harnessing of institutional
complexity which in turn can reduce management/control cost while unleashing the potential
of its human capital. The metaphor of the road system that empowers drivers to navigate and
determine their own paths to a common destination (where their contributions have highest value
in the organization), is one way of understanding a platform of responsible autonomy. The other
approach is to attempt to reduce member or worker roles and their context of interaction to
a scale that managers (like air traffic controllers) can handle. This approach necessarily involves
reducing the individual human capital (the skills, knowledge, dexterity and judgement of the
people occupying the reduced roles within contained contexts) that is available to the organization
as a whole.

As noted above, the solution is not one of either institutional complexity or individual
complicatedness but of finding an integrated model. In the terms we have discussed in this paper
it is one of integrating the market and the machine. This requires the organization to create and
foster a culture that encourages collaboration and initiative taking.

Complexity is increasingly unavoidable in companies, but the answer is not to pare back
and simplify at all costs. Executives should instead try to understand where complexity
matters and how to build the right processes, skills, and culture to manage it. Embracing
complexity on an institutional and individual level—not just a strategic one—can bring
competitive advantage. Companies that understand this concept will create more value
than their rivals, become more resilient, and make it harder for others to replicate what
they are doing.76

75
Heywood, Spungin, Turnbull (2007). I have adapted their concept of two levels of complexity
institutional and individual complexity. Instead I presented two dimensions institutional complexity
and individual complicatedness. The dimension of individual complicatedness seemed to me a better
depiction of “How hard it is to get things done” consistent with the degree of centralization of
decision-making.
76
Ibid.

78 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
The redesign of work process to optimize network technologies and architectures of participation
can bring significant benefits including:

a. Reduced transaction (coordination & control) and opportunity costs (time, effort,
people, capability);

b. Integrated continuous learning, enhancing operational agility and reduce training costs;
and

c. Increasing the pool of available skills, knowledge and judgment that can be brought
to bear – more human capital available for productive and operational ends.

7.4.1 Personnel Platform for Peer-Production and Responsible

Autonomy

Let’s try a thought experiment. Assume the integration of network technologies and peer-
production77 in the re-design of work, activities and processes. For the purpose of this thought
experiment we will set aside the question of how an organization can get there (the transition
path), and we will limit our conceptualizing to CF activities within garrison, including those
which can support families and deployed members – but not activities that are directly
operational. Also, this thought experiment assumes the integration of network technologies,
architectures of participation and peer-production in the re-design of how many types of work are
accomplished and therefore achieving a significant (order of magnitude) reduction in coordination
and transaction costs thus freeing up human time and energy.

We then restructure the organization by restructuring its smallest part – the job and person time.
Table 5 below lays this out.

Table 5: Restructuring the Organization for the Last Mile

Percent
of Time Ownership and Purpose Architecture
Owned by job:
J = 70% Hierarchy
Running the organization – being the cog in the machine
Owned by organization:
O = 15% Heterarchy
Transforming the organization – refitting, longer term strategy
Owned by individual:
Responsible
i = 15% Pursuit of personal interest as it contributes to the
Autonomy
organization and one’s self

The time traditionally constituted as a person’s ‘job obligation’ is divided up: 70% of the time
of each of the worker ‘owned’ by their current ‘job/role’, 15% is ‘owned by the organization and
finally 15% is owned by individual worker.

77
Of course members in operations would have significantly different aims and as the scenario
of Corporal Jones depicted in Verdon et al, the use of Web 2.0 – peer-production would be
integrated with operational priorities and requirements

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 79
In this way the ‘job-cog’ is dedicated to running the organization with 70% of the person’s time
under hierarchical control. Transformation and strategic requirements efforts would have 15% of
the HR time creating a heterarchical structure. Finally, each individual would own 15% of their
‘job-cog’ time to contribute to peer-production initiatives chosen on the basis of their interests.
This person-owned time, in conjunction with enabling technologies would create a market-like
non-hierarchical exchange economy and personnel platform for responsible autonomy enabling
a group-forming network, and peer-production78 space – the last mile of the market. It is easy
to conceive of a sliding scale of person-owned time based on experience and professional
development – for instance based on the professional development framework developed by
the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute. The specific portion is not important. The point is
to visualize a way to create such a space and how it could be used.

If we take a lesson from the Linux and Wikipedia (Figures 5 and 5a above) about the leveraging
of network technologies and architectures of participation to optimize the use of our human
capital, the individual in a job could be linked almost costlessly to any situation where they
could make a contribution. Thus the O% & i% of that person’s time could be used to harness
the human capital not previously available because of the institutional constraints of coordination
cost. Responsible autonomy as a platform (constituting i% of an individual’s job time) can
become costlessly self-organized (coordinated) to pursue purposes that integrate individual
interests/passions/capability with organizational needs.

Historically, as organizations in the course of interaction evolve new informal means

of exchange, social norms, conventions, and codes of conduct may wither away
(North, 2005, 60).

The organization could achieve at minimum five major and interconnected benefits:

7.4.2 Engagement

The capability to pursue work-related interests that individuals enjoy or are passionate about
enables interests to become expertise. In addition, responsible autonomy as a platform creates a
space for ‘amateurs’ (in the sense of a pursuit of that which is loved). As a consequence the halo
affect of this space can engender a deeper engagement with the organization as a whole. Thus,
this space can become a non-hierarchical exchange market for knowledge, skill and judgment
as it is just as likely that an individual can be asked for the contribution of their expertise
(another form of engagement also contributing to the halo). This exchange space allows the
whole organization to reach out and ‘exploit’ the knowledge that is embedded in each person
when it is required. With the group-forming capability of network technologies and peer-
production one can visualize the rich and complex set of connections that foster engagement
with others, with the organization enabling mentorship, rapid solution generation and getting
knowledge, experience, skill and judgment – the right people connected to the right situation
at the right time.

78
For a discussion of network/Web 2.0 technologies and peer-production see Verdon, et al. 2007.

80 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
One could argue that permitting this sort of engagement could lead to a greater disengagement
from ‘assigned duties’. The weakness of this argument is its evocation of the traditional views of
human nature, that when presented with ‘temptation’ the person will inevitably be seduce away
from what duty call them to do. The increasing emphasis in modern militaries to instilling a
deeper and broader professionalism in all its personnel is essentially built upon a philosophy that
people can willingly accept and internalize a code of conduct. The more such professionalism is
indeed inculcated the more likely that the professional will want and need areas of deep
engagement that a current posting cannot always offer. Thus, professionalism integrates
both a work ethic and a passion for excellence that must be quenched from the wellsprings
of engagement.

7.4.3 Continuity

The inevitable flow of people through the organization engenders a significant internal ‘fog and
friction’ above and constant transformation. Enabling an easier way to remain engaged in the
initiatives people are comfortable with, passionate about or expert in, the organization can obtain
greater continuity of effort and corporate knowledge. This type of continuity of effort is most
important to initiatives not encapsulated in a particular ‘job’ including transformation efforts.
Also important is the potential for this type of continuity to provide an antidote to the SOM
Syndrome because measures of performance can be obtain for contributions based on long-term
involvement as well as performance limited to job-incumbency. Equally important is the
enhanced capability for personnel to sustain continuity of care and contact with families,
friends, community and those they are and have been responsible for – maintaining a better
sense of cohesion despite the turbulence of posting, deployments and other separations.

7.4.4 Extended Specialization and Enhanced Generalization

When individuals are able to pursue their deeper interests and passions they inevitably develop a
specialization of talent. In the exchange space of peer-production and responsible autonomy both
the division of labour and the organization’s range specialization can be extended beyond what
the occupational structure contains. Extended expertise is equally applicable to the current expert
allowing the development of knowledge/skills applicable to wider or more specific domains. A
corollary to the above is that a person can also use the whole of their experiences more generally
across the organization and for the organization to more fully exploit the knowledge it has
invested so much to develop.

7.4.5 Increasing Productivity

Like all human activity, effort and quality output is not evenly distributed. Some times of day,
week, month are less productive then others. The allocation of when individuals use their
‘owned time’ could easily be seen as using the less productive moments of the work day, in
which case overall productivity could be increased. The halo effect of greater engagement can
also contribute to increasing the motivation than individuals bring to the remaining 85% of their
time. In a sense, responsible autonomy as a platform allows the organization to expand the range
of intrinsic rewards that it can offer to individuals through the modest increase in the range
of interests/activities/projects individuals can self-select to pursue. Even a modest increase

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 81
of intrinsic reward individuals attain by working in the organization can have significant
consequences for improving work satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment to the organization.

Another way to see responsible autonomy as individually owned time, is to see it as the creation
of a self-organizing, non-hierarchical exchange space in the organization that allows rapid
response as needed without bureaucratic encumbrances of authority to provide permissions,
saving significant control and coordination costs. Accountability in these and all other
peer-production interactions are derived from the transparency of the digital environment. The
network technologies allow all involved to see what has (or has not) been done and by who.

Validation of claims of increased productivity is of course difficult, largely because a great deal
of qualitative productive increase in capability and quality may be impossible to directly measure.
However, proxies for measure could be derived through modeling and measurements of personnel
morale and engagement.

7.4.6 Culture of Collaboration, the Comprehensive Approach and

Achieving Effects Without Direct Control

Understanding human collective behaviour requires concepts that more generally describe the
relationships of individual behaviour to collective behaviour. For instance, coordination within
human social groups and organizations is possible as a result of interrelationships that allow
individuals to influence each other’s behaviour. We call this influence control, whether or
not coercion is involved. When this influence is informal we often subsume it under the label
of ‘culture’.

It is a truism that the military is less a single culture than it is an assemblage of tribes and clans –
Environments (Land, Air, Sea); Occupations; Regiments; Ranks; Etho-Linguistic groups and
many more dimensions compose the military personnel and cultural fabric. The need for a
CF cultural identity has been widely acknowledged. The development of a peer-production
knowledge exchange market-like space in the formal organizational structure would enhance,
deepen and strengthen the current culture in the informal networks of the CF. The possibility of
non-hierarchical exchange space could enable a type of informal culture and bonding that would
help to nourish the soil in which the roots of a CF identity must grow, while integrating diversity
and the responsible autonomy essential to mission command. The functions of a peer-production
space founded with the member-owned 15% can easily embody and enhance many of the most
positive functions of the military mess.

The informal organization is the interlocking set of relationships that connect people
who share a common organizational affiliation. It is the aggregate of behaviours,
interactions, norms, personal and professional connections through which work gets
(or doesn’t get) done. Like a market, the informal organization evolves organically
in response to complex forces, like changes in the internal and external environment,
the flux of people through it porous boundaries and the complex social dynamics
of its members.

Tended effectively, the informal organization complements the planned execution

of processes that the formal organization naturally does best. It has the power to
accelerate and enhance response to unanticipated events, foster innovation, and

82 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
 support collaborative problem-solving. In the best-performing organizations, the
informal side nearly always stands out as more unique from peers than do elements
of their formal organization.79

7.4.7 Decision-Action Dominance – Operational Agility

By incorporating responsible autonomy as a platform the military can achieve greater agility
and option acceleration as a result of a more rapid search through a larger solution space. The
CF would be able to improve its capacity to increase internal complexity whereby customized
solutions to unique problems can be more effectively and efficiently generated. Essentially to
have greater analysis provided to a situation and ultimately to better exploit openings, accelerate
strategies and/or recover from a mishap.

79
The Informal Organizations, a report by Katzenbach Partners LLC. 2007.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 83
8 Conclusion

We have argued that the revolutionary nature of Smith’s ideas of the market system as a
decentralized self-organizing approach to allocating resources and coordinating activities is also
fundamental to unleashing the emerging capabilities of network technologies and architectures
of participation. Understanding the co-creating, interdependence of a self-organizing system
and responsible autonomy is vital to harnessing complexity and more fully multiplying human
capabilities as well as to fully enable the culture and concepts of mission command.

We have come to the end of our journey over the conceptual territory embodied in the concept
of the last mile of the market. What is evident is that the last mile of the market and responsible
autonomy is really a complex constellation of interdependent and co-creating concepts that
include: the market system; the material institution and the emerging institution of the long
tail; organizational architectures (hierarchy, heterarchy and responsible autonomy); complexity;
mission command; human capital and more. Figure 12 below presents these more graphically.

Learning Training

Human Ubiquitous
Trusted Capital
Situational Digital
Awareness Environment

Operational Peer-Production
Agility
Sense-Making Platforms
Complex Systems
Military Last Mile of Market
Professionalism Responsible Autonomy

Mission Organizational
Command Architecture
The Long Tail
Network
Comprehensive, Technologies
Effects & Network-Enable d Architectures of
Approaches Participation

Figure 13: Constellation of Concepts: The Last Mile of the Market and Responsible Autonomy

84 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
As organizations learn how to operationally integrate the demands, opportunities, challenges and
capabilities of network technologies and architectures of participation the traditional cultures,
concepts and paradigms will transform. These emerging architectures will of course not
completely displace the traditional hierarchies – rather they offer a fundamentally new platform
for the coordination of human capability. The concepts of peer-production and responsible
autonomy that we have briefly outlined will play a key role in this new mode of production –
as platform of near costless coordination to ultimately organizational multiply capability.

The personnel management system, although conceived as a machine-like system within

a machine-like organization is at heart, a recalcitrantly complex system simply because it
is about harnessing people and developing their capabilities. Understanding the CF personnel
management / HR system as a complex system has significant implications, including how we
will conceive and transform: occupational and career structures; training, development and
learning (as the development of human, social and cultural capital); recruitment; and the
incentives inherent to retention, compensation, recognition and reward.

A few years ago, there was considerable debate on whether there was a revolution or evolution in
militaries affairs. The concept of the last mile of the market is both. Network technologies have
given birth to a revolutionary new institution of the long tail. However, the long tail represents
a platform for the ongoing evolution of responsible autonomy that was practically born with
the advent of democracy and the market system. We see this evolution in the accelerating
development of the internet itself. We have argued that the last mile of the market is an inevitable
development of the unfolding power of and need to harness increasing individual human capital
through responsible autonomy.

The most import reason is to enable the CF/DND to better reap the maximum benefit and return
from the tremendous investment we continue to make to develop its people and human capital.
Just as the industrial age created new ways of managing people and designing the work process,
network technologies are creating a literal digital environment enabling new ways to harness
human effort and requiring an economic philosophy of the virtual and digitally intangible.
As CompanyCommand.Com (and our Colonel Jones scenario) demonstrates, peer-production
can act as a ‘force multiplier’.

It is entirely plausible that by 2015 in North America, Europe and Japan, there will be more
higher-skilled jobs than people to fill them (compounding recruitment challenges for the CF).80
But more important is the unknown ratio of new occupations to obsolete occupations or the
necessary ongoing up-skilling, de-skilling and re-skilling of surviving occupations. Today’s
recruits will be filling occupational work not yet known, with technology not yet discovered
or invented. HR management must facilitate the development of a system that enables the CF
to more completely marshal the human capabilities available – connecting the right person to the
right situation at the right time.

80
Canton, J. (2006). The Extreme Future: Top Trends That Will Reshape the World for the
Next 5, 10, and 20 Years. Dutton, Penguin Books Ltd. London.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 85
In our previous papers a definition of network-enabled operations was offered. This definition
remains consistent with the concept of the last mile as a platform of coordination and responsible
autonomy and is an appropriate last word:

Network Enabled Operations leverages Human Capability, collaboration and

virtuosity to enable intelligent adaptive improvsation and emergent innovation
to achieve successful performance within a range of situations – from
unpredictable complex conditions to stable predictable situations.

86 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
9 Recommendations

The last mile and responsible autonomy remain advanced concepts that require considerably
more development, experimentation and evaluation. However, the real world provides us with
abundant and incontrovertible evidence of the power of network technologies and architectures
of participation to harness the collaborative and collective efforts of people. The concept of
responsible autonomy in the world of the internet is a given fact. The challenge of the last mile
concerns how organizations will harness the power of these technologies to in turn harness the
full productive capabilities (the human capital) of their personnel and enable
organizational/operational agility.

A few recommendations are listed below.

a. Enable the full use of these technologies within our organization81 - give the tools
to people and they will use them;

b. Continue to develop these concepts and others – including:

(1) The elaboration of a new research paradigm with corresponding new

methodologies, approaches and uses of new and emerging technological
and computational capabilities;

(2) Network individualism – the implication of a network society on the formation

of individual and social human identity;

(3) Social, cultural and human capital;

(4) The types of work amenable to peer-production, etc.;

(5) Transparency – where the ‘need-to-know’ orientation is displaced by a

‘need-to-share’ orientation, in order to make information and knowledge
accessible for timely knowledge generation and agility;

(6) Privacy – where anonymity is not the default position used to protect individual
rights (and the right to not be unduly interfered with). Rather other mechanisms
in keeping with transparency must be developed;

(7) Trust – how to develop and sustain a trusted situational awareness that
enables trust between people, information and organizations within a digital
network environment; and

(8) Risk – what is an appropriate framework to evaluate responsible autonomy

and the use and development of human capital.

81
For a list of these technologies see Verdon et al 2007. There are also numerous other recent books
and publications enumerating and elaborating on their use.

DGMPRA TM 2009-022 87
 c. Conduct social network analysis of the network people are actually using to get work
done, to elicit contribution to ongoing work and projects and to exert influence. Include
the issues of boundary as the understanding of how people can come to be included
or excluded; and

d. Develop an agent-based modeling platform to further develop and refine these and
other related concepts. Responsible autonomy is not anarchy and is intended to
augment and permeate existing structures to enable agility. Agent-based modeling
research will enable significant efficiencies in exploring the rule sets for optimum
operational effectiveness.

88 DGMPRA TM 2009-022
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 DOCUMENT CONTROL DATA
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3. TITLE (The complete document title as indicated on the title page. Its classification should be indicated by the appropriate abbreviation (S, C or U)
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The Last Mile of the Market: How Networks, Participation and Responsible Autonomy Support
Mission Command and Transform Personnel Management
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Verdon, J.; Forrester, B.C.; Wang, Z.

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of the information in the paragraph (unless the document itself is unclassified) represented as (S), (C), (R), or (U). It is not necessary to include
here abstracts in both official languages unless the text is bilingual.)

The paradigm of the last mile is intended to convey how the concept and narrative of
responsible autonomy allows societies founded on market-system economics to harness
emergent complexity, self-organization and achieve many ends most efficiently without direct
central control of resources or processes. Network technologies, architectures of participation
and peer-production enable the extension of responsible autonomy in a way that both challenges
and can augment traditional hierarchical approaches to control.

The paper is one of a series of papers that explore the human and HR implications of an
organization that embraces network enabled capability. The ultimate goal of this series of
papers is to lay the groundwork for a larger project – of developing a comprehensive theory and
philosophy for personnel management in the 21st century – a comprehensive HR Concept that
integrates personnel management with the Capability Domain Concepts. It is for this reason,
that we cover so much conceptual territory. Such a concept is necessary to the CF to fully and
effectively enable mission command. We argue that the future is already here, a future that is
built on the past (including an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift) and yet remains open to be
determined and created by all of us.

To tell this story we cover a large conceptual territory. We start with the birth of the market,
move to concepts of organizational architecture, complexity, mission command, and human
capital. Finally we weave these together with the concepts of peer-production and responsible
autonomy as a new network-enabled mode of production, and a personnel platform that
provides for non-hierarchical exchanges enabling the right people to be connected to the right
situation at the right time. The development of a personnel platform (personnel concepts,
structures and processes) for responsible autonomy will enable the CF to more fully harness
new and emergent personnel capabilities including:

Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about;

Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job;

Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure;

Increasing productivity;

A deep culture of collaboration and achieving ends without direct control of resources;

Increasing Decision-Action dominance and greater operational agility.

In essence, responsible autonomy and peer-production within an appropriate organizational
paradigm is a human capability multiplier – one that would allow the CF to ease its management
burden, more fully leverage the professionalism of its people, enhance its capacity to educate
and train effectively and efficiently, and increase its operational agility while mitigating the
friction of the posting cycle and the turbulence of continual transformation and training.
Furthermore, network-enabled capabilities shift the organizational focus from an emphasis on
control via the chain-of-command to a command centric web of distributed control. This also
means less tail, more teeth, more types of teeth, and better prepared teeth.
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