In this edition of PWH...

• Director's Article
  DaVinci's Horse Part 5
  -Dr. Dag von Lubitz, Ed Beakley
  
  
• Edition Lead Article
  My Next Mission: America Needs a Culture of Preparedness
  -General Russel Honore
  
  
• From the Field...
  EUCOM Team of Leaders Coaching Guide
  
  
• Featured Articles
  Crisis Management: Operating Inside Their OODA Loops
  - Dr. Chet Richards
  
  Postcard from Mumbai: Modern Urban Siege
  - John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus
  
  Critical Decision Making Under Pressure
  - Fred Leland
  
  
  
  
  

		Featured Books

For additional recommended reading, please click here.

DaVinci’s Horse: Perspectives on Decision Making in Crisis
Part 5 – Utility of Effort
By Dr. Dag von Lubitz, Introduction by Ed Beakley

DaVinci’s Horse is the title I use for discussions on gaining perspective in regard to crisis conducive aspects of the evolving 21st Century – IT – Globalization - Mother Nature –Non-state/4GW/”war amongst the people.” The idea borrows heavily from the book The Medici Effect and the idea of creative solutions via ‘intersections’ – “where different cultures, domains, and disciplines stream together toward a single point, connecting, allowing for established concepts to clash and combine, and ultimately forming a multitude of new ground breaking ideas.”

DaVinci’s Horse to date:

In the coming years, no learning paradigm shift will be more needed and forcefully felt than the enrichment of thought through cross-pollination. – Part1

Saper vedere, Sapio audacter - sapere aude
(To see is to know – dare to know … dare to be wise - think boldly) – Part 2

Yesle nye ya, to kto? If not me, then who? – Part 3

…to place a new nation at the dawn of victory – not for a year or a decade or a century but for as long as the people of the nation could reproduce the resiliency - spirit, blood, and treasure - of 1776. Thou mayest. – Part 4

Part 5 provides another perspective in the same vein and is indeed, most highly representative of the Medici Effect. Note that Directional ideas - good and necessary as they may be - are concepts within a specific field. Their generation is gained through education and experience. Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields or areas of specialization. They are dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a “non relationship” or at best limited context between or among fields.

In Part 5, the DaVinci’s Horse story continues, but this time it is provided by Dr. Dag von Lubitz, PWH advisor and major contributing author. Dag’s professional experience truly represents success in intersectional idea generation. In his words “The present lecture is based on experience – over 30 years of it, in fields as distant from each other as molecular neuropathology and theory of leadership, with everything in between - experience from the lab, field operations, decks of ships, and the chairman’s office. Hence, what follows is not a lecture but rather a reflection on the cumulative impact of everything I have done, on personal conclusions derived from those experiences, and on the personal vision of the future.

Please read Utility of Effort, a presentation given on March 13, this year at Louisiana State University.

>>Please read Utility of Effort, a presentation given on March 13, this year at Lousisiana State University.

My Next Mission: America Needs a Culture of Preparedness
By General Russel Honore

America needs a culture of preparedness.

After more than 37 years of uniform service to the U.S. army and our nation, I will spend the second half of my life committed to a new mission: Creating a “Culture of Preparedness’’ in America. Every effort I take will be committed to this cause - whether it is my new web site (http://www.generalhonore.com/), public speaking/lectures, fund-raisers, or the books I have written or will write.

The urgent need for this movement is one of the lessons I learned through personal experiences during my last few years in the Army. The U.S. had a Culture of Preparedness during the 1960s, when every home, government agency and institution did something to prepare in the event of a nuclear attack from the former Soviet bloc. Once that threat was all but gone, we abandoned our readiness.

We are seeing that more state governments are struggling in response to recent disasters. Recent Red Cross data shows that for every dollar spent on preparedness, it saves 6 to 9 dollars during disaster response and recovery. As many have seen, disasters cause drama, drama for state governments especially when plans don’t execute or the storm trumps the states capability to deal with the disaster response. “Blame the Federal government and FEMA”, that is the get-out-of-jail- free card that the state governments have. We can do better.

>>Please read Culture of Preparedness

EUCOM Team of Leaders Coaching Guide

The Team of Leaders (TOL) concept has become a major aspect of Project White Horse focus on decision making in severe crisis and creating and nurturing resilient communities. It is considered to represent a critical cornerstone for creating a culture of preparedness. Indeed, Edition #7 was a purposeful combination of leaving the “resilient community” articles of Edition #6 on the main page while using the Forum to provide the flexibility to discuss leadership requirements and in particular TOL as it could make significant positive impact on response to the hyper complex, unconventional, worst case - Cat 5 type – disaster. TOL was introduced in 2008 by retired Army Generals Rick Brown and Zeb Bradford in America’s Army; A Model for Interagency Effectiveness. Since that time, TOL has been in an evolving introduction process in the Joint Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) environment of United States European Command. Project White Horse 084640 is most pleased to have been given permission to provide for our readers the EUCOM Team of Leaders Coaching Guide released 3 March, 2009. While the efforts of Generals Brown and Bradford as the PWH TOL source are most appreciated, special recognition must be noted for the men and women of both EUCOM and Battle Command Knowledge Systems, Ft Leavenworth who developed this guide. This effort must be recognized as a major breakthrough in creating the kinds of high performing leader teams America must have in this century to survive on the country’s own terms. Those directly involved with TOL development and those who created this user guide are most desirous of feedback. Initially PWH contact e-mail can be used. Read an Overview: Read the Coaching Guide:

>>Read the Overview...

>>Read the Coaching Guide...

Crisis Management: Operating Inside Their OODA Loops
By Dr. Chet Richards

From the earliest days of Project White Horse 084640, the effort and concepts of John Boyd have provided a major underpinning for discussion on decision making in severe crisis. According to Boyd, a fighter pilot didn’t win by faster reflexes; he won because his reflexes were connected to a brain that thought faster than the opponent. But he also believed that appreciation and leadership were crucial elements defining the essence of winning and losing. Appreciation and leadership permit one to discern, direct and shape what is to be done as well as permit one to modify the direction and shaping by assessing what is being done or about to be done (by friendlies as well as adversaries). In effect appreciation and leadership permit people to: 1) Operate inside opponents’ OODA loops; 2) Create organizations that can operate inside opponents’ OODA loops; and 3) Evolve organizations that become continually better at operating inside opponents’ OODA loops.

So In severe crisis, what type of organizations can operate at high OODA Loop tempos?

>>Please continue to the Power Point presentation

Postcard from Mumbai: Modern Urban Siege
By John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

The attacks in Mumbai herald a new chapter in the bloody story of war in cities—the siege of the city from within. The polis is fast becoming a war zone where criminals, terrorists, and heavily armed paramilitary forces battle—and all can be targeted. Defending against the urban siege requires bridging the gap between police and military, building a layered defense, and fighting to preserve the right to the city. Despite the terrifying nature of the threat, the ultimate advantage lies with the vibrant modern city and the police, soldiers, and civilians tasked to defend it. The key to success lies in the construction of resilient physical and moral infrastructure.

This will require integration within the broad structure of a developed resilient community. Emergency response integration with high civilian participation functioning at a local level also allows civilian to function in smooth integration with police and military forces. This allows the city to mobilize itself as an adaptive whole to construct a layered defense. These urban operations demand a new type of policing—the full spectrum police officer. Full spectrum policing requires building specialized hybrid forces capable of operating in a range of environments and missions. They must be able to transition between community policing and investigations to public order and riot control missions to high-intensity operations ranging from gang control to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.

First introduced in Small Wars Journal, Postcard from Mumbai, provides break through thinking on survival in urban “war amongst the people.” Many thanks to SWJ (www.small warsjournal.com)for permission to use.

>>Please read further...

Critical Decision Making Under Pressure
By Fred Leland

Law Enforcement and Security Consulting Inc (LESC) is an organization dedicated to teaching strategy and tactics essential to detecting, preventing, avoiding, defusing and resolving conflict. Directed by Fred Leland, LESC provides training for law enforcement & security professionals, serving communities, institutions and private enterprise. Its training is built on the strategies and tactics established by John Boyd as articulated in his concept briefings in regard to the Boyd Cycle. Major contributor in both concept and execution of training is retired Army Major Don Vandergriff. Note that Vandergriff’s book, Raising the Bar; Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War is a current PWH featured book. It introduces the Adaptive Leader Methodology (ALM) and provides much of the basis for both Leland’s and Vandergriff’s teaching. A view graph overview of ALM can be found in the INTERSECTION articles under “Training Decision makers to the ‘Ace’ Level Part 3”.

Here Leland introduces significant aspects of the ALM program in three parts: 1) Critical Decision Making Under Pressure; 2) Explicit versus Implicit Information; It’s roll in the Process; and 3) Creating and nurturing the Decision Making Process. Please read further

>>Please read further...

 

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