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Showing posts with label tecnología. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tecnología. Show all posts

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Innovation isn’t about Strategy, it’s about Culture


 “When strategy and culture collide, culture will win.”

Innovation is one of the most important growth engines. It is crucial to understand that when you’re dealing with innovation — be it as a client, adopter, user, or developer – fast dynamics and rapid shifts in direction require a unique management style. You can’t control future innovation, you can only respond to it. Instead of strategy, organizations should focus on developing the right culture — one that enables, embraces, and encourages innovation. Here are a few principles to consider.

Always be ready to switch plans.

Long-term planning is overrated. It is impossible to predict emerging technologies and new social trends more than five years in advance with any accuracy. A few decades ago, who could have foreseen the rise of the internet and the colossal amount of data becoming “the new oil”? When the cloud concept took off, it was difficult to realize its effect on the startup industry — previous barriers to purchasing heavy computer infrastructure vanished into smaller fixed costs, making the “back of garage” concept accessible to more minds.

In this volatile environment, you must believe and doubt your assumptions and strategies at the same time. Most startups fail, but 70 percent of the successful startups are doing something different than originally planned. Be ready to change direction when the time is right; don’t hold onto what you thought two years ago or get used to the new environment. All your targets are moving constantly.

 Master the revolution before it masters you.

Despite the seemingly stormy marketplace described above, there is very good news: revolutions are very slow and they exist only in the eye of the beholder. Revolutions are a long process of incremental changes, with many failures along the way. The nature of change is that everything moves very slowly until it moves very fast. If you miss a trend, and the train has left the station and is gaining speed, it might too late. Recall the cases of Blackberry or Barnes & Noble – they joined the new trend only a little late, but with the benefit of hindsight, it was too late.

Furthermore, revolutions are not always surprising. The smartphone is considered one of the big revolutions in modern history. Let’s revisit a few interesting dates: the first mobile call was made in 1973 (the phone weight was 2.4 pounds); the first smartphone (which had a calculator, clock, calendar, and a contact book) appeared in 1993; the Palm touchscreen phone offered the ability to install third-party apps (an old version of the app store concept) and had a wireless application; and a camera appeared on the 2002 Sanyo mobile phone. Finally, all these pieces were connected around 2007 (iPhone) and the revolution took off.

Leadership is not more important than followership.

Contrary to the common view, when it comes to innovation, the right followers — those who stay in the shadow — are at least as important as the leader. There are numerous leadership courses, but we don’t teach or train how to follow. The success of a team is defined not only by the leader’s quality but also by the followers who combine independent thought with coordinated efforts simultaneously. A good leader is one who has built a team that can function without him/her. To hit the moving target of innovation most effectively, a flat hierarchy is a better fit, as it enables the team to be agile and every member has the option (and skills) to function as the leader but chooses to follow the team.

Don’t overvalue expertise.

In his foreword to Start-up Nation Shimon Peres writes, “All the experts,’ Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said ‘are experts on what was. There is no expert on what will be.’ To become an ‘expert’ on the future, vision must replace experience”.

Experts understand the current situation and technology perfectly. Real experts oppose radical innovation and often serve as gatekeepers. In some cases, they have a lot to lose because radical change renders years of studying irrelevant. When the revolution takes off, you need a blend of novices with the vision to get the experts going and abandon their safe zone. Without novices, revolution identification will be missed, and you can get stuck in the present, soon to be past.

Source: The Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center, Columbia Business School

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TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
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    .·. Dr. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, MHSA .·.
    Especialista Multicultural Global en Management Estratégico, Conducta Organizacional, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones, graduado en University of California at Berkeley y The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
    Consultor en Dirección General de Cultura y Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
    Miembro del Comité EEUU del Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales
    Representante de The George Washington University para LatAm (2017-1996)
    Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en 
    The George Washington University (Washington DC)
    CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
    Skype: medinacasabella


    MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
    es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
    soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

    Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
    Management Estratégico,
    Gestión del Cambio,
    Marketing Estratégico,
    Proyectos de Inversión,
    Gestión Educativa,
    Capacitación

    de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

    a) Industria y Servicios,
    b) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
    c) ONGs y Gobiernos.
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    Thursday, April 26, 2018

    AI: separating Artificial from Intelligent
    by Mark Campbell


    It’s been a typical day for you as chief executive. Too many meetings, an impending budget crisis, and an analysis of last week’s production outage. And then a board member walks in; “Hey, I’ve been hearing about this Artificial Intelligence thing. We should buy one and jump over our competition. Let’s get on it”. Say what?

    Today, we suffer a never-ending stream of pseudo-tech predictions depicting AI as a cure-all or, conversely, as the first domino falling towards a Siliconocracy. Still other ‘industry experts’ dismiss AI as just the latest clever parlor trick. Yet despite these sensationalists, AI continues to make steady advancements into a widening spectrum of industries. So how can we sift through the rubble to find the real AI gems?

    Firstly, you can feel very safe in categorically disregarding the Utopians, Dystopians, and Agnostics. History shows, they unerringly overestimate the short-term impacts of emerging technologies while underestimating the long-term effects of progressive innovation.

    Out next logical step is to set aside the seemingly natural urge to immediately demo an AI solution. Instead our efforts will be better spent if we can identify, scope, and analyze the one problem which will best leverage AI and return the highest return on our technological investment. This, of course, is much easier said than done.

    We can now turn to finding a solution to the target problem, which inevitably begins with the obligatory question of buy versus build. In only the rarest cases, where you possess AI gurus complete with beanbag chairs and hipster beards, should you attempt to develop your first AI solution in-house. Instead, look at vetting one of the many AI-based solutions already on the market tailored to your target use case. The good news is there are hundreds of them – the bad news is there are hundreds of them.

    Artificial Intelligence is cracking the code on a whole family of non-procedural problems, such as image recognition, autonomous systems, and anomaly detection. Our research team recently completed detailed studies on how AI-based user behavior analytics is changing cyber security and smart operational analytics is accurately predicting impending system failures. These are but two examples of legitimate AI game changers.

    These advancements, however, are often drowned out by a deluge of disingenuous marketing. An all too common tactic used by AI hucksters is to position old-school savvy as new-wave smart. Savvy systems can only apply pre-programmed rules, logic, and inferences to existing knowledge. Nonetheless, savvy systems can solve an amazing array of complex problems like controlling a nuclear power plant, landing an airliner, or publishing the zillionth cat video.

    Yet, the best of today’s savvy systems are being eclipsed by smart systems. Smart systems ingest copious amounts of information, discover patterns in the data, adapt to these new patterns, and apply this evolving knowledge to their dynamic environment. While savvy systems are adept, smart systems adapt. So, how can you spot savvy dressed up as smart without completing a degree in Computational Learning Theory?

    There are two cold truths in AI. AI requires learning and learning requires data … and lots of it. If we probe these two axioms, we can quickly determine whether the product was designed in a vendor’s Engineering or Marketing department. Let’s hone Occum’s Razor a bit.

    A smart system’s learning is not programmed into the software by smart coders. Instead, it emerges naturally from training in which it adapts to new data patterns. There are several tried and true open-source platforms on which most AI applications are built, so, when we ask a legit product vendor about how their product was developed and trained, we are not asking for them to divulge trade secrets. Instead, we should see a gleam in their eyes like asking a grandmother for pictures of her grandkids:

    Smart Question
    Savvy Answer
    Smart Answer
    Learning
    What makes your solution smart?
    The expertise of our engineers, coders, programmers and developers.
    We trained a convulsion neural network to identify predictive failure indicators.
    How does your product learn?
    It uses a deep knowledge base and rules engine.
    We initially trained it on reference data in our labs but the product will adapt to actual behavior it sees in your data center.
    What platforms were used to develop your AI?
    Our own proprietary
    AI platform. Can’t share much – secret sauce.
    We used SKIL and DL4J to develop our model and Oryx for the large-scale production stream processing.

    As stated, learning requires data. But not just any data. AI training requires vast amounts of relevant preprocessed data – what data wizards call ‘wrangled’ data. If learning is like an engine, then big wrangled data is its high-octane fuel. We can discern wannabes from the real players by probing their training data:

    Smart Question
    Savvy Answer
    Smart Answer
    Data
    Can we train the product with our own data?
    No need. Our deep learning has been pre-programmed with all the rules you’ll need.
    Indeed. We recommend a two-week training period after installation before going live.
    What data sources did you train with?
    Sorry, that’s proprietary. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
    Glad you asked. We dumped all call detail records since 1994 plus all seismic data and …
    How much data did you train with?
    Seriously, I am
    going to kill you.
    We ingested three weeks of telemetry from 50,000 pipeline temperature and pressure sensors – over 43 TB in total.

    AI is very real and very powerful. But so is marketing. Therefore, we must separate hyperbole from reality, discerning savvy from smart. A quick salvo of well-crafted questions can provide an effective litmus test. From here the actual implementation, testing, and deployment of the system is no slam dunk, but most AI solutions splice nicely into today’s most common software development lifecycles.

     By ignoring the sensationalists, developing a high value use case, identifying a suite of candidate AI solutions, and filtering out the pretenders, you are well on your way to moving your enterprise from savvy to smart.

    Fuente: Chief Executive

    Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
    TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
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      Consultas al email: mamc.latam@gmail.com


      .·. Dr. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, MHSA .·.
      Especialista Multicultural Global en Management Estratégico, Conducta Organizacional, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones, graduado en University of California at Berkeley y The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
      Consultor en Dirección General de Cultura y Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
      Miembro del Comité EEUU del Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales
      Representante de The George Washington University para LatAm (2017-1996)
      Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en 
      The George Washington University (Washington DC)
      CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
      Skype: medinacasabella


      MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
      es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
      soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

      Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
      Management Estratégico,
      Gestión del Cambio,
      Marketing Estratégico,
      Proyectos de Inversión,
      Gestión Educativa,
      Capacitación

      de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

      a) Industria y Servicios,
      b) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
      c) ONGs y Gobiernos.
      Posted by at 2 comments:
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      Thursday, February 22, 2018

      What the VUCA Environment means to a CEO
      by Brigadier General George Forsythe, Karen Kuhla and Daniel Rice


      This article illustrates what VUCA looks like from the CEO’s perspective across a variety of industries, highlighting specific disruptors —technology, competitors and market forces— that are impacting their companies. We found these environmental forces to be similar to what the Army experienced after the Cold War. Emerging global threats from new competitor nations, as well as non-state actors (terrorist groups) and dynamic market forces (e.g., changing geopolitical alliances and shifting national budget priorities), led the Army leadership to think differently about national security. Advances in digital technology played an important role in allowing the Army to respond to these new threats.

      Remember the days of stopping by the local 7-Eleven on the way to work for a cup of coffee, a donut and a tank of gas? That is still the primary focus of the largest franchise business in the world with 63,000 convenience stores, but the business is changing dramatically, according to 7-Eleven CEO, Joe DePinto. Joe was named the Convenience Store Petroleum (CSP) Retailer of the Year among consumer and petroleum retailers and has led 7-Eleven for 12 years. “Disruption is as great as we have ever seen it. We are seeing all aspects of VUCA.” He described the disruption brought on by e-commerce competitors and the desire to transform the company before competitors change the industry:

      “We are an immediate consumption business,” he says. “We sell products that are immediately consumable, and the e-commerce businesses are starting to encroach on our space. They are in fact beginning to redefine convenience as we have traditionally known it. The company that epitomizes this is Amazon. Once an e-commerce book company, they now disrupt businesses across many channels. For instance, Amazon’s Prime business will deliver anything you want within 2 hours. In time, it will be much faster. That’s why we have been so aggressive in ramping up our digital initiatives at 7-Eleven. We’re working to move our company toward being more of a technology company that works in coordination with our traditional convenience stores. Customers can now order products from 7-Eleven that are picked up by Post Mates or some of our other partners, and then delivered to the customer within 30 minutes.

      “Additionally, to offer increased convenience, we’re getting into the ‘click-and-pick’ business where customers will be able to order online or through our app, come to our stores, and the product will be available for them immediately to pick up, having already been paid for. We are also focused on utilizing our stores as distribution points for other businesses. Customers can have their boxes shipped to a local 7-Eleven, and can pick them up at their convenience. Finally, we are working on digital payment options that are multiple and varied. Today’s customer wants different payment options. We need to provide them solutions to pay the way they want. So, we have all of this going on. It’s really being driven by the customer and new e-commerce entrants. It’s forcing businesses like 7-Eleven to change the way we have done things in the past.”

      Bob Weidner, President and CEO of the Metals Services Center Institute (MSCI), the trade group representing the industrial metals supply chain in North America, shared a story of how adaptive manufacturing and 3-D printing might disrupt the traditional industrial metals manufacturing process in the industry. This disruption illustrates dramatic changes in the way industrial metals manufacturing firms think about business going forward.

      A relatively new CEO to this particular service center was attending one of his first MSCI conferences. And on that program, we actually had a speaker talking about additive manufacturing and 3-D printing. Again, that would not necessarily be the content at a typical trade association’s programming, but you know, I believe we have delegates in a ballroom for a finite period of time. Bringing new ideas is part of our value add – because we can see the world, by definition, through a very broad lens. We are looking at the world through a producer’s lens. Through a service center’s lens. We are looking at it through a lens of carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminum. And, again, our value is to identify on the horizon things that are going to be fundamentally changing their businesses.

      The CEO went back to his company, pulled together his senior leaders and asked the question, “What do you guys know about 3-D printing and additive manufacturing?…I just came from an MSCI conference where I heard enough in the hour-long presentation that basically told me I don’t know what I don’t know, so I want you all to put together a little team and come back in 6 to 9 months (whatever the time frame was.) Come back with a plan for what our company should be doing in this space.” Flash forward – that company recently bought a 3-D printing company.

      Bob Leduc, President of Pratt & Whitney, with 2016 sales of $15 billion and 38,000 employees, described how the rapid pace of technological advances in the jet engine industry is requiring his company to become nimble in the face of a historic growth rate in commercial aviation, advancements in technology, and increasingly stiff competition.

      “There is no question that we are in a VUCA environment right now,” he says. “When you think about our business, we’ve got a very complicated landscape. We have established competitors, but also emerging competitors, particularly in China and Russia. We have technology that is constantly advancing, and we have commercial and military customers redefining what their business models are and [what] they value now vs. what they previously did. So basically, the whole landscape is moving on us in many different directions and, because of that, we needed to foster a culture that would allow the organization to move quickly.

      Mike Fucci, Chairman of Deloitte, with 84,000 employees and $18 billion in revenue, spoke about how the changing nature of work and advanced technology is altering customer expectations in the professional services market.

      “I’d say the same things that are affecting our clients are affecting us, which is artificial intelligence, robotics and cognitive technology. Our clients are struggling with the question of how they incorporate these innovative technologies into their day-to-day operation. Therefore, if we’re going to consult with them, we need to be ahead of the curve and help them decide how they use this technology. The days when you got by using just the experience you had are gone. We have to anticipate things that aren’t even fully baked yet, but it’s mostly around technology. I call it the—‘everything is a what-if scenario.’

      “[I]t’s almost a 180-degree difference [from when I joined the firm] as to what people need to be learning and how they learn. We don’t work in offices anymore. We have people in London, on the phone with people in New York…people in South Carolina. The way we work is so different that training and learning (are different). It’s more like an extension of college, as opposed to a way to actually help you build skills that help clients solve problems. When people enter different levels of their career, like we do a lot of work with new senior managers and new partners, it’s helping them learn how to operate differently in those roles, and it’s not just that what got you to where you were doesn’t work at the next level. It used to be that that technical experience was kind of all you needed—you had a deep knowledge in something and you brought that knowledge to clients. We have to stay in front of disruption with our clients, and as the chairman, one of the things that actually concerns me a lot is how do we govern over disruption. It’s hard enough to manage over disruption. How do we govern over disruption? So, how do I build really nimble leaders to be able to address a little bit of the unknown? That’s why the VUCA analogy resonates with me, because it’s really more about building leadership than it is about building technical skills.

      These examples illustrate how executives understand their dynamic business environments. They all talk about the accelerating rate of change caused by advances in technology, which have brought new competitors into their market and forced a rethinking about the nature of work in their companies. In the next three articles, we will share the ways these leaders are transforming their organizations to respond to these disruptions.

      Fuente: Chief Executive

      Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, Contenidos de nuestros 
      TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY, "A MEDIDA" 
      de las necesidades de su Organización:








        Consultas al email: mamc.latam@gmail.com


        .·. Dr. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, MHSA .·.
        Especialista Multicultural Global en Management Estratégico, Conducta Organizacional, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones, graduado en University of California at Berkeley y The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
        Consultor en Dirección General de Cultura y Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
        Miembro del Comité EEUU del Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales
        Representante de The George Washington University para LatAm desde 1996
        Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en 
        The George Washington University (Washington DC)
        CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
        Skype: medinacasabella


        MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
        es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
        soluciones integrales, eficientes y operativas en todas las áreas vinculadas a:

        Estrategias Multiculturales y Transculturales, Organizacionales y Competitivas,
        Management Estratégico,
        Gestión del Cambio,
        Marketing Estratégico,
        Proyectos de Inversión,
        Gestión Educativa,
        Capacitación

        de Latino América (LatAm), para los Sectores:

        a) Industria y Servicios,
        b) Universidades y Centros de Capacitación,
        c) ONGs y Gobiernos.
        Posted by at No comments:
        Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

        Friday, February 9, 2018

        Can you do VUCA? 5 Key Strategies for Success
        by Brigadier General George Forsythe, Karen Kuhla and Daniel Rice


        “Disruption is as great as we have ever seen it,” says Joe DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven. “We are seeing all aspects of VUCA.”

        The U.S. Army coined the acronym VUCA in the 1990s to describe the post-Cold War operational environment: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. Facing a VUCA environment, the Army developed doctrines and procedures that allowed leaders at all levels to respond effectively.

        The idea of VUCA has since been embraced by leaders in all sectors of society, in particular the current business world, to describe the nature of the world in which they operate:

        • The accelerating rate of change (volatility)
        • The lack of predictability (uncertainty)
        • The interconnectedness of cause-and-effect forces (complexity)
        • And the strong potential for misreads (ambiguity).

        Certainly, 7-Eleven is not alone. Thomas Friedman, in his recent book, “Thank You for Being Late,” argues that most organizations face significant environmental complexity in “the age of accelerations” and identifies three main drivers of our contemporary VUCA environment: the exponential growth of technology, globalization and the environment (climate change, population growth and migration), which all are accelerating simultaneously. This “Supernova”—as Friedman calls the convergence of these drivers—has created a VUCA environment for nearly every business and every industry.

        How do CEOs and their companies understand the challenges of a VUCA environment? How do they adapt and innovate quickly to respond appropriately? To answer these questions, we interviewed 6 CEOs/Chairman/Presidents from a variety of industries:
        1. Joe DePinto – CEO, 7-Eleven
        2. Mike Fucci – Chairman, Deloitte
        3. Tony Guzzi – CEO, EMCOR
        4. Margaret Keane – President and CEO, Synchrony Financial
        5. Bob Leduc – President, Pratt & Whitney, and
        6. Bob Weidner – President and CEO, MSCI
        We asked each to describe their business environment and discuss how they are leading their companies to thrive in the face of massive disruptions.

         This is the first of a series of six articles focusing on what the CEOs did to adjust to their VUCA environment, how it worked and what they learned from their efforts that might be helpful to other CEOs. We hope our readers will find this series, drawn from personal stories, to be of benefit as they lead their companies and teams in today’s VUCA environment.

         We begin with a case study drawn from the U.S. Army’s creation of and experience with VUCA to introduce several key concepts that will provide a framework for subsequent articles. In addition to the CEO interviews, we also interviewed General (retired) Dennis Reimer, a former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. General Reimer led the Army of over 1 million soldiers in the latter half of the 1990s and presided over the service’s transformation following the end of the Cold War. Under General Reimer’s command, the concept of “VUCA” was created and the Army’s doctrine and procedures to deal with a VUCA environment were formulated.

        General Reimer said the Army’s VUCA environment began in December 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent end of the Cold War. The Army had spent decades building what he called “a threat-based force,” with a single focus on deterring and, if necessary, defeating, a military threat from the Soviet Union. The demise of the Soviet Union ushered in a New World Order, which President George H. W. Bush at the time said was “long on New and short on Order.” Uncertainty about potential threats meant the Army had to be ready for a full spectrum of conflict, from low-intensity conflicts to nuclear war. To respond to this new VUCA environment, the Army moved from a threat-based force to a capability-based force, prepared to “go anywhere in the world, with the right force.” And so, the Army had to be able to mix and match forces to adapt to a more complex and uncertain operational environment. “When you go from something like a threat-based force to a capabilities-based force and all that entails, you end up really doing a transformation,” said General Reimer.

        How did the Army transform? According to Reimer, the answer is by using 5 key strategies to position the Army for future success. These strategies have much in common with what business leaders are doing to make their organizations more adaptive.

        1. Shaping the Culture around Mission and Values.

        Executive leaders shape the organizational culture. Particularly during times of rapid change, it is critical for the chief executive to pay attention to culture. General Reimer noted one cannot change everything at once—the CEO must keep the organization focused. As the Army’s chief of staff, he chose to focus on mission and values and encouraged leaders at all levels to live by, and reinforce, the organization’s values. He cautioned that without a strong emphasis on mission and values, periods of rapid change might create negative leadership conditions within the organization. The Army experienced such challenges in the 1990s when the Army was simultaneously downsizing its end-strength and reorganizing the force, which led General Reimer to redouble his efforts to promote the Army’s core values.

        2. Leveraging Technology.

        For General Reimer, technology was a key driver in both the acceleration of change and the success of the Army’s adaptation. “We decided we wanted to change the way we operate. If we didn’t change, we were going to lose the advantage we had over the other armies. And so, we set about digitizing the Army.” The Army planned to use digital technology to create a complete picture of the battlefield and, thus, gain an advantage over potential adversaries. “We figured if we could answer three questions: Where am I? Where are my buddies? And where is the enemy? Then we could really change the way the army fights.”

        3. Aligning Organizational Structures.

        The need for flexibility and rapid response led to an examination of how the Army was structured to be able to respond to a wide range of possible threats. The Army has six major levels of command from largest to smallest:

        Army > Corps > Division > Brigade > Battalion > Company

        The Army division (10,000-18,000 soldiers) had been the force that was deployed to face known Soviet threats, but after the Cold War ended, smaller brigade-sized forces (3,000-5,000 soldiers) afforded greater flexibility, and they could be mixed and matched to meet specific threats. This was no small change. This transformation required changes in training, leader development, supply chain management, and, inevitably, how we fight and win our wars. There is no doubt that a brigade-based structure is more agile than the “Cold War” paradigm of the division-based force. But to make that move would require time and effort and possibly distract from current missions. The problem was the personnel and leader-development systems were all geared to support a division-based structure. So, General Reimer asked his senior commanders to read about, and reflect on, the idea of change. In the end, they decided on a hybrid approach that aligned structure to current mission requirements.

        There was some merit to going to a brigade-based force. The problem we had—and the problem I particularly had, was I couldn’t quite figure out how to make the leader development work for that size or that type of an Army. We had certain leader development programs we wanted our leaders to go through. And when you remove a level of command, then you ask yourself, “How do you go from the brigade-level to the Corps-level,” for example. And it didn’t work. So, we backed off of that. But what we did was to leave the division structure in place and to mix and match a lot more. And that’s the way most of the wars, or most of stability operations in Afghanistan, Iraq—well, the second war and then also, the stability force, have been fought. You use that mix and match methodology and it seems to be working out all right.

        4. Establishing a Learning Organization.

        In the 1990s, the Army experimented with these new ideas—creating the digital battlefield and operating with nimble tactical formations. The Army established a test bed at Fort Hood, Texas to try out these concepts which involved lots of people trying new ideas, gathering data, and reporting back to the Army the results of the tests. Despite some naysayers, the results of the tests were positive enough for the Army to move forward. As General Reimer said, “we just made the decision that we’re close enough. We’re at the 90% solution. Let’s just take it forward. And I’m glad we did.”

        Next, the Army ran a series of war game simulations to test the concepts against a variety of current and future threat scenarios. After every exercise, large or small, all leaders used after-action reviews to learn and implement lessons learned in future operations. The objective was to learn how the new ideas stacked up against alternative threats, to ensure the transformed Army would embody the characteristics that would meet the challenges of this VUCA world. Additionally, Army units incorporated the new concepts into tactical training in force-on-force simulated combat at the combat maneuver training centers to prepare leaders and units for the new operational environment. Throughout the transformation process, General Reimer clearly communicated the need for change and encouraged experimentation and information sharing within the Army.

        5. Leader Development.

        General Reimer reflected on the importance of leader development within the Army, emphasizing the necessity for a continuous and progressive system of professional education, training and job experiences to prepare leaders throughout the chain of command for the management of change. As the CEO, he also emphasized the importance of succession planning for the most senior executive positions. He told the story of how four successive Army chiefs of staff progressed through critical assignments—deputy chief of staff for operations, vice chief of staff, and chief of staff—and that continuity in top leadership allowed the Army to maintain the transformation’s momentum and continuity from the end of the Cold War well into the post 9-11 era.

         The 5 strategies presented above provide a framework for examining what works today in the business world. In subsequent articles, we will look at how corporate CEOs understand their VUCA environments and are positioning their companies to respond effectively. What does VUCA look like today, and how are business leaders adapting to ensure success? Do the strategies used by the Army after the Cold War make sense in today’s business world?

        Fuente: Chief Executive

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          .·. Dr. Miguel Ángel MEDINA CASABELLA, MSM, MBA, MHSA .·.
          Especialista Multicultural Global en Management Estratégico, Conducta Organizacional, Gestión del Cambio e Inversiones, graduado en University of California at Berkeley y The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
          Consultor en Dirección General de Cultura y Educación de la Provincia de Buenos Aires
          Miembro del Comité EEUU del Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales
          Representante de The George Washington University para LatAm desde 1996
          Ex Director Académico y Profesor de Gestión del Cambio del HSML Program para LatAm en 
          The George Washington University (Washington DC)
          CEO, MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm
          Skype: medinacasabella


          MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS GROUP LatAm ©
          es una Consultora Interdisciplinaria cuya Misión es proveer
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