Boyd & IBM "Wild Duck" Discussion
Boyd & IBM "Wild Duck" Discussion
showed up today in facebook 29jan2014 memory:
From (linkedin) IBM "Wild Duck" discussion:
Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces:
German junior officers were regularly asked for their opinions and they would criticize the outcome of a large maneuver with several divisions before the attending general had the floor. The American army culture in contrast has historically had a great problem with dissenters and mavericks and just speaking one's mind to a superior officer, disagreeing with or criticizing him could easily break a career.
from "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World" Ferguson & Morris on failure of Future System:
... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat
... and:
But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.
Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces:
As a young officer, Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote an article favoring mechanization of the cavalry.87 The article displeased the chief of infantry greatly and Ike was commanded not only to cease such heretical activities but also to publicly reverse his opinion. He was threatened with a court-martial.88 His superiors expected a fellow officer to become a sycophant.
One of Boyd's briefings at IBM was "Organic Design for Command and Control" ... which ends with what is really needed is "Appreciation and Leadership". Part of the briefings was observation that US corporate culture was becoming contaminated by former military officers climbing corporate ladder.
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and then 29Jan2019:
More recent
Fingertip Feeling: A Synthesis of Ideas from Maneuver Warfare, 4GW, the OODA Loop, and Ender's Game
Boyd has coup d'oeil and fingerspitszengefuhl with intuition and instinct ... plausibly from Course Of Instruction In Strategy, Fortification, Tactics Of Battles, & C.; Embracing The Duties Of Staff, Infantry (Henry Wager Halleck)
loc5019-20: A rapid coup d'oeil prompt decision, active movements, are as indispensable as sound judgment; for the general must see, and decide, and act, all in the same instant.
Could claim that Boyd takes see/decide/act ... replaces see wth observe ... and then adds internal brain processing ... putting observation in context (orientate, learning, knowledge).
There is an AI book from the 90s, where one of the "fathers" of AI (dating back to 60s) in intro says that all AI up until then had been done wrong because it wasn't placing information in "context".
In briefings, Boyd would also emphasize observing from every possible facet ... countermeasure to biases ... observation, orientation, confirmation. cognitive. etc biases Also for many people "OODA-LOOP" implies step-by-step sequential, rather than all parts running simultaneously and asynchronously.
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Late 70s, there was multuser space war game deployed on the internal network and within a few weeks there were "bot" players beating humans. Game was upgraded for nonlinear increase in power use for move intervals below human threshold ... putting things on (partial) level playing field
This is also pretty much how Boyd would describe fly-by-wire for F16 ... human reflexes aren't fast enough.
AI then was more "expert systems", capture sets of rules (from some domain expert) ... akin to Muth's "school solutions" in "Command Culture"
(contrasted to exercises formulating solutions; with compare&contrast).
... not having words/concepts (including intuition/instinct)
How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."
We've observed that Toyota, its best suppliers, and other companies that have learned well from Toyota can confidently distribute a tremendous amount of responsibility to the people who actually do the work, from the most senior, experienced member of the organization to the most junior. This is accomplished because of the tremendous emphasis on teaching everyone how to be a skillful problem solver.
and "school solutions" versus innovation
The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
pg186/loc2059-62: Experts tried to explain why Toyota plants were able to produce a high-quality product and foster efficient teamwork while GM's were not. Some speculated that GM's problems arose from the growing power of unions. Others, including Drucker, attributed the Japanese success to cultural differences. The Japanese, he said, had "come to accept my position that the end of business is not 'to make money."
pg191/loc2120-25: Toyota occupied the decentralized sweet spot in the automotive industry. Had it centralized its assembly line to mirror GM's, it would have taken power away from employees and reduced vehicle quality. But on the other hand, had Toyota decentralized too far--doing away with structure and controls and, say, letting each circle work on whatever car it felt like--the company would have had a mess on its hands. Decentralization brings out creativity, but it also creates variance. One Toyota circle might very well make a wonderful automobile, while another might produce a junker. The sweet spot that Toyota found has enough decentralization for creativity, but sufficient structure and controls to ensure consistency.
some four decades ago, congress passes import quotas on foreign autos, reducing competition, and enormously increasing profits with expectation that they would use the money to remake themselves ... however they just pocketed the money and continued busy as usual. As a result, early 80s, there was call for 100% unearned profit tax on the US auto industry.
Then 1990, the industry has the C4 taskforce to (finally?) look at completely remaking themselves and because they were planning on heavily leveraging technology, they invited major technology vendors to send representatives (offline I would chide some of the computer "big iron" people how could the contribute since the suffered from similar problems). One of the issues was the US industry was taking 7-8yrs from start to rolling off the line, with two efforts offset 3-4 years (so it looks like something is coming more frequently, with cosmetic changes in between). Toyota had cut that time in half in the 80s and in 1990 was in the process of cutting it in half again (18-24months) ... allowing it to adapt more quickly to new technologies and changing consumer preferences.
from more recent auto bailouts, they weren't successful in make-over ... too many stakeholders and vested interests trying to preserve status quo.
Amazon having trouble with balance of centralized and decentralized (ala toyota)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2018/05/21/httpshbswk-hbs-eduitemamazon-vs-whole-foods-when-cultures-collide/
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2 年more recent: John Boyd and IBM Wild Ducks https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/john-boyd-ibm-wild-ducks-lynn-wheeler/