How Recent Space Force Efforts And A Pandemic Can Help Us Learn To Be a Distributed Workforce For Good

Every company and everyone fortunate enough to still be working is quickly gaining familiarity with their business continuity plans. While I lean on my experience in the military to help small businesses like mine and others be better positioned to work though uncertainty and adversity, I usually don't provide a lengthy history of military strategy and doctrine to those companies quickly looking for possible solutions. And I won't here either, but I do believe though, it's worthwhile to look at a contemporary military challenge that I feel is somewhat analogous to the new world the workforce has been thrown into almost overnight.

On January 11, 2001, just eight months prior to a similar upending seismic event, 9/11, The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, led by Donald Rumsfeld, released a report highlighting that the "relative dependence of the U.S. on space makes its space systems potentially attractive targets" and stated more famously for those even outside our industry that "An attack on elements of U.S. space systems during a crisis or conflict should not be considered an improbable act. If the U.S. is to avoid a “Space Pearl Harbor” it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on U.S. space systems. The nation’s leaders must assure that the vulnerability of the United States is reduced and that the consequences of a surprise attack on U.S. space assets are limited in their effects." Many point back to this Commission's report as an impetus to recently form the newest branch of the military, the Space Force.

Compare that to RAND's 2012 paper, "Threats without Threateners: Exploring Intersections of Threats to the Global Commons and National Security" where the authors highlight "In determining its five priority issues—nuclear proliferation, conflict in the greater Middle East, water scarcity, pandemics, and climate change—the Skoll Global Threats Fund gave special weight to two criteria. The first is importance of the threat. In current circumstances, only pandemics seem to be an existential threat, capable of destroying America’s way of life." Later in the 2012 paper when describing the SARS outbreak the authors state, "In April, however, accusations emerged that China had undercounted cases in Beijing military hospitals, and, under intense pressure, China allowed international officials to investigate the situation there, which revealed the problems of an outdated healthcare system, including increasing decentralization, red tape, and weak communication."

Sounds somewhat familiar in repeating what we learned in the SARS case some 8 years ago. However, increasing decentralization being problematic is an interesting lesson learned from that near-pandemic.

Accordingly, in these specific examples from 2001 and 2012, we can see predictions and probabilities can help us create national strategies and policies as well as business strategies and policies, should we actually take this information into account. We can also see you can interchange either space systems or pandemic and come up with the same concern that these are probable events, we need to take the possibility seriously, reduce our vulnerability to these events and limit the consequences should the risk become realized - because our actual way of life is at stake.

It took 18 years to recognize that, because of all the national investment and resulting dependencies on space-based capabilities, there should be increased efforts to try to protect an American way of life that saw boosted productivity and prosperity because of those space-based systems. It took 8 years to realize the risks raised by RAND about possible pandemics and the resulting potential impacts on maintaining America's way of life as well. How long will it take countries, businesses and households to implement new policies and procedures that account for what is being learned with actual data from one adverse condition while other challenges simultaneously exist in the form of other probabilistic events. 

The Space Force is concerned about monolithic leviathan type targets in space and has considered plans to reduce their vulnerabilities in various ways including creating distributed, mesh network architectures that spread the capabilities beyond a singular, centralized location. The idea has been around for a while at least with the operations centers that run these systems since there has been continuity of operations plans in place, similar to continuity of government plans that allow the federal government to operate through significant events. We are now learning that regular, private businesses, large and small alike, are figuring out continuity plans of their own as well.

Military theorists know the history of command and control structures spanning centralized control and centralized execution, to centralized control and decentralized execution to now considering distributed architectures. The idea of centralized control comes from scarcity of resources and the belief these resources can be better utilized and optimized if there is a central element dictating how and when they are used. We see this today with the federal government stepping in and deciding and coordinating where limited numbers of PPE and ventilators go, including making decisions as to who gets access to the federal stockpile, based on a scarcity of resources. However, we're also seeing a distributed network, enabled by platforms and the internet, step in with whatever resources can be mustered to also support where centralized control falls short in dealing with access to those limited resources.

Businesses are already seeing that a centralized approach and belief that they can best manage a scarcity of resources, including their people, may not only be challenged by this seismic event, but by other events as well. Those businesses holding strongly onto the theorem that a physical workspace is required for productivity find themselves no longer in that physical workspace and have had to figure out new models that allow them to continue operating through this significant event. Hard to hold onto old beliefs when they are challenged by something never seen before. For decades we thought no one could contest our abilities in space and we could just do business as usual. Then, in 2007, we had a similar "shot in the arm" when the Chinese conducted an anti-satellite test and dispelled the belief that we could maintain a pristine military and economic advantage from space.

The time is now to be innovative in thought and take risk in action for new ideas supporting distributing work and the workforce. Challenges of returning to employing a centralized element of control include increased operational risk, increased capital expenditures to protect that central element and its limited resources, and inability to continue operating through adversity. Businesses that encourage policies and procedures that include a distributed workforce and operations are going to be more resilient and better able to survive other probabilities that are out there waiting to be the next significant event. Those that learn about the difficulties of operating through a distributed architecture, such as addressing effective communication, collaboration and execution and figure out best practices to tackle these challenges are better positioned to return to work and will help us all get back to a better American way of life.