THIS PAGE IS COPYRIGHT AND CANNOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE AUTHORS PERMISSION. IT MAY BE REMOVED FROM THE WEB AT ANY MOMENT SO READ IT AND IF YOU CAN’T REMEMBER BE PREPARED TO WEEP In the most primitive human societies there are social missions which must be carried out successfully for the tribe to survive i As societies become more globally and technologically sophisticated there are new and more dangerous threats to Societal survival which require new missions and new projects that cannot fail. The newest of these is the suppression of international terrorism. September 11 2001 was the spark that initiated the subjective public consensus that we must organize to suppress international terrorism. It is now perceived that we must organize on an international basis and that mission failure is not an option. In October 2001 the Center for Ocean Law and Strategic Studies of the University of Virginia held seminars at the United States Capitol to identify the corpus of the International Law of Terrorism in the context of other major threats to Societal survival. The results of those seminars were incorporated into a Manifesto That manifesto was published in the Congressional Record:
“Americans we can and we must suppress International Terrorism on an International basis. There is no alternative
We can and we must deter nuclear war on an International basis. There is no alternative
We can and we must establish international organizations and international regimes for global security with which all nations must comply. There is no alternative
We can and we must start the world development process that leads to an environmentally sustainable world habitat for humanity, There is no alternative, there is none”
These are all subjective missions. It would naive to suggest that this list is complete and that there is universal consensus with respect to the imperative attached to any one or all. This paper address the proposition that none of these subjective missions can be implemented unless and until parts of them are assigned by a recognized authority to a competent organization. Objective goals and programs must be established and resources furnished which are adequate to meet these goals. Subjectivity must be replaced by objectivity.
Regretfully few of the objective constituents of these four missions have been reduced from subjectivity to objectivity. The world record for three of them does not inspire confidence. There is, however, one example of success that can be examined in terms of the management process that was employed to achieve that success and to avoid failure. This was the national system of strategic deterrence that defused the potential for nuclear war and limited the conflict between the Soviets and the United States to a cold and silent war.
The United States had lost its nuclear monopoly to the Soviet Union in 1949. Whatever advantage it recovered by exploding a hydrogen bomb in 1952 was lost in 1953 when the Soviets exploded theirs- ushering in the age of the balance of terror. The subjective need for an immediate ICBM capability was recognized by the Secretary of Defense who organized a Committee to specify the hardware components of a “balance of terror” force and to make assignments to the services to develop them into an operational system as an element of the SIOP. After a series of assignments and reassignments the Naval Component of the triad was firmly established in a Special Projects Office in December of 1957ii On that date the Project ‘cleared the deck’ of all its prior strategic missile assignments and opened the age of strategic deterrence. It began a program to develop and deploy a fleet of operational submarines carrying 16 proven ballistic missiles with a CEP of one nautical mile and other specific operational characteristics. This was a deterrent capability that was demonstrated to the Soviet Union and the world on May 6 1952 with the launch of a live ballistic missile from the submarine USS Ethan Allen. It was detonated over the target 1000 miles to the West. It was the last atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon before the implementation of the 1963 test ban Treaty. It was internationally trumpeted with the slogan
In 1956 Admiral William F. Raborn was chosen as the Director of the Special Projects Office because of his reputation as a ‘leader in battle’. In establishing the project he was given the rare privilege of selecting forty Naval officers for immediate reassignment to the office regardless of their existing duty. He was also authorized to hire a number of civilians without formal civil service selection procedures. This authorization and personnel selection preceded the December 1957 establishment of the specific deterrence mission or the designation of the specific hardware .
To identify the role of these selectees in success or failure we must here identify their character. Whether by instinct or plan Admiral Raborn chose Naval Officers who had performed in the heat of battle and who had experienced the horrors of war, These individuals were thereafter uniquely dedicated to deterrence and the prevention of war. We describe these individuals as ‘mission motivated’ or ‘missionaries’. In a second category of participants were those members of the team who served because the position was a challenge to their education and their skill at an appropriate level of remuneration. We shall refer to these people as mercenaries in the non-pejorative use of the term. The remainder of the team - those individuals having no particular motivation and no particular skill of unique relevance to the mission -we shall refer to as “sheep” (once again in the non-pejorative meaning). The slogan of the Office was that the mission would fail if the system were ever used as a weapon of war. It was therefore critical to the success of the project that the vast majority of civilians and naval officers of the project office were missionaries who were dedicated to the proposition that the project must not fail.
How in the world was this small cadre of some two hundred individuals going to motivate, organize, manage and direct the vast army of individuals that were required to produce a system that acquired a new submarine on line once a month every month for eighteen months to be deployed in a “fail safe” deterrent mode in almost every ocean of the globe? How could they make a running start when the decks were cleared of all prior proposals as of December 1957.
There had to be an overall objective ‘blue print’ that had already been prepared by a recognized ‘think tank’ such as the Rand Corporation. In this instance, it was an unauthorized summer study conducted by the National Academy of Science. Its mission was to identify a possible submarine strategic deterrent system threat that might be posed by the Soviet Union. The result was a blue print of a hypothetical Soviet system that served as the mirror image blue print for the new assignment to the Special Projects Office.
With blueprint in hand and with a now empty headed but highly motivated staff, Raborn assembled his senior officers and his senior civilians. Their first task was to organize the flows of information into and out of the project office .
Critical to the organization of information and information flow is an understanding on the part of the management office of the dimensions and magnitude of information management. At the zenith of human organization of the Polaris program there were 41 operational submarines together with their support systems (tenders, supply bases, research facilities, schools, systems modifications and improvements etc) The magnitude of the expenditures were of the order of $3,000,000.00 (Three billion 1960 dollars) per annum and approximately three million people were involved. Each person must have a perception of the program and its mission but each must have detailed unique knowledge of the tasks and materials for which they have an assigned responsibility. These facts present management with one of the most important philosophical lemmas which must be understood by top level management if mission failure or misdirection is to be avoided.
Simply stated, the information in any human system is a minimum when everyone knows what everyone else knows about the system
It is equally true that the information is a maximum when everyone has a unique and exclusive knowledge about information that is relevant to system performance. (i.e. nobody knows what anyone else knows)
In the first case nothing of significance is accomplished and in the second there is complete chaos.
Top management must therefore limit the volume and distribution of briefing information that attempts to disseminate sophisticated understanding of the system as a whole. At the same time it must develop a technique to extract information from individuals who are making contributions through the generation of unique but significant minutia.
Associated with this overwhelming body of information dissemination is information overload resulting from the retrieval of information flowing from the bottom of the pyramid to top management. There will be information generated with respect to the status of every component with respect to performance , schedule and as we shall see (to a lesser extent) cost. Thus at the outset top management must devise a management reporting system which is imposed on every individual who is involved with a task having relevance to the development and operation of the system. At the same time this system must be such that it is distilled at each level of the hierarchy to match the finite comprehension of the brains of the individuals at each level who have a an authority, responsibility and accountability for the successful completion of each task.
Thus top level management has no time and cannot afford to take the time to hear good news with respect to cost, schedule and performance of elements of the system. Top level management has no time and cannot afford the time to hear about bad news if the bad news is irrelevant to the success of the mission. Top level management must, however be informed of bad news which will be relevant to cost, schedule and performance before it occurs and in time to take corrective action. It was this realization that resulted in the Special Projects Office invention of the PERT program
Failure to separate the bad news information wheat from the good news chaff can bring a program to a standstill. Thus when Harvard School of Business Administration invented a modification of PERT called PERT-COST, Its implementation even in part, cut swaths of misinformation disaster throughout the Special Projects management system.
A greater potential for disaster existed and exists as a result of “bean counting” management systems imposed by the top management in the Department of Defense. These included Contract Definition Phase, Cost Effectiveness Evaluation, Contractor Evaluation and Selection Techniques, Cost plus Incentive Fee, Justification for sole source, Cost plus incentive fee . The defense of the Special Projects Office was to employ its national priority (and every other technique that could be legally mustered) to obtain waiver or to assign the task to staff that were only allowed observer status in acquiring the information to meet the requirements of the demands of the Department of Defense.
This SP approach to information management required the Project office to classify information in terms of mission relevance. Three types of information were identified:
a) information that is crucial to success b) information that helps optimize system performance but is not crucial to success and c)information requirements which are imposed on the project and on individuals in the project of no particular relevance to the project or the mission. Without recalling the precise technical definition these are described as follows:
A: Action information. These are the specific and detailed directions, plans and activities that must be implemented to develop, build, deploy and operate the system.
B: Staff information. These are the plans, programs and alternatives which are prepared as the alternatives from which the action information is derived or selected.
C: Social Order Information. These are the forms and actions imposed by society to monitor and regulate activities that have no particular relevance to the success of the mission. These are imposed by Society when it is deemed necessary to maintain social order. These include personnel management, salary and contract negotiations, taxes, travel requests, licenses and permits, security procedures, vacation, ceremonies, marriages, divorces, etc; This information is often called ‘red tape’ or ‘bean counting’ or in Hawaiian ‘pilikia’ .
The structuring of an organization to channel and cope with these very different information requirements is a critical point in mission management. Major errors in the management of these three information categories are often introduced which can fatally poison the mission.
First there must be a hard core of individuals from the top to the bottom of the organization who are linked in a precisely defined hierarchy for the management and implementation of action information. In the Special Projects Office this information is uniquely in the province of the ‘Technical Director, Members of his Division must be free of assignments to generate staff information and their obligations with respect to Type C information must be minimized. They must be free to generate action information when it is required. They must be ‘on call’ twenty four hours a day or they must designate a relief every time that they are not on duty.
Second, there must be a Plans and Programs Division to manage alternatives which have not yet and may never be converted to A information. The Plans and Program Division should not be authorized to do the conversion but should be ready as reference to provide alternatives and recommendations to the Director Special Projects and his Technical director when the schedule or mission redirection calls for the program to generate A information. Members of this division should sit in as observers in management meetings but are forbidden involvement (even informal or social communication) with the Technical Director’s team in the preparation of their recommendations. The implementation of such a policy is difficult because people are human but it is crucial to the effective management of the mission .
Third, there must be a Budget and Finance Division that has purview of budget and finance, personnel administration, contract administration, accounting, Security, progress evaluation, public information, management logistics and compliance with all other mandatory “Type C” information requirements.
All of these preliminary policies and organizational structures must be generated at the outset. This is the embryo. At this point in the gestation process the formal structure of management and the management process begins to emerge. The hierarchy is identifiable by the numerical tag applied to each Executive. The Director of SP is designated SP00. He is the leader of the Special Projects Office. The Technical Director is SP10. The Budget and Finance Director is SP20. The Director has a Scientific and Technical Advisor who is responsible for Systems Appraisal. He is called Chief Scientist and he is SP01. The Director of Plans and Programs is SP02. Neither SP01 or SP02 have the authority to make decisions for the project. They are advisors who alert top level management to opportunities and pitfalls before they appear on the radar screen.
As we must know and as we must not forget, the Special Projects Office was a sub system of a Strategic Systems Office in the Pentagon. Once a week or when asked the Director must report to the Pentagon. He is now a subsystem manager reporting to a Systems manager. In this role the Special Projects Office (SP) is required to deliver Initial Operating Capabilities to the Chief of Naval Operations for incorporation into the Strategic Operational Commands of the United States Navy and in turn the Strategic Operational Commands of the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America.
Special Projects has already committed itself to the delivery of these units in accordance with a schedule, performance characteristics and available resources. The Director’s Report is made in these terms. His reporting is simple and straight forward. Three bullets on a chart. One for
The fatal flaw in this process is introduced when the reporting Project Manager tells his boss what he thinks he would like to hear and not what he ought to here. Failure in this regard should not be tolerated and there is no time for punishment or reprimand. As soon as the disease is recognized it should result in immediate transfers of the miscreant reporting authorities to a position in the organization which is not on the critical path (subject in special circumstances to a first offense one time appeal) . At the same time reporters who alert the reportee of impending disaster should be rewarded and in significant circumstances should be rewarded with ceremony, medals and other Distinguished Service Awards.
Prior to his reporting to higher authority the Director of Special Projects has had his own management meeting. This should take place in a management center with all the technology required for efficient presentation of audio visuals regardless of the medium (Screwing around with power point on obsolete equipment is an expense waste of high powered executive time.) There should be an amphitheatre for observers that have a need to observe and for observers who are ‘wannabees’ that have political clout.
Presentations should come from Budget and Finance and from Plans and Programs. Bui it should be clear that the Technical Director is at the helm for the reports of relevance and that the reports of the individuals who are charged with action responsibilities is the order of the day.
At the outset it is the technical director who comes face to face with reality. The cards he has been dealt call for him to organize men and machines into a coordinated community that on a certain date will be able to carry out the mission.
He must first construct a “straw man” using known technology to see if the mission is within the state of the art. If it is not he knows that he must innovate and that he must innovate on schedule and that he must meet the schedule and the performance goals.
It goes without saying that the information load is such that It is clear that the project must divided into subsystems which are built and assembled on series - parallel basis, but it is still a management debate whether it is possible to divide the project into subsystems that are absolutely independent of each other or even if such divisions would be desirable.
Regrettably the characteristics of the human brain require that the first mock up of a truly innovative system be composed of completely independent subsystems.
Knowledgeable psychologists may tell you that the human brain is divided into a primitive brain whose memory is mostly stored in the hippocampus. This brain learns through repeated stimuli and selective reinforcement. It takes many repetitions before this brain will have the stimulus response pattern required for unambiguous retrieval. Our ability to innovate comes from the unique characteristics of the frontal lobes. These elements of the brain have the capability of ‘single trial’ learning. Unfortunately there must be a single trial. If subsystem A ( a system that has been built, in some form or other many times) is to be integrated with an equally tested subsystem B the first integration trial must begin with two independent systems that we know will produce the correct functions independently. After the first successful mating takes place, then the merger of two systems into one integrated system may be within the scoping capability of the human brain. If the first merger is unsuccessful then the reason for this lack of success must be uncovered and the “antigen” must be implemented. Thus in a first time innovative system one cannot take a chance. The initial subsystems must be independent.
Ideally all of the subsystems required to make the mission successful should be under the command of the Technical Director. In spite of the apparently all inclusive mandate of the Special Projects Office many of the important subsystems will be out of his control (the Rickover effect) . At this point the Technical Director should identify each subsystem that is not under his control. He should monitor that subsystem and predict the performance and the product. If the result is a deficiency of significance to the mission then the Technical Director must rectify the deficiency through the enlargement of the mission of those subsystems under his control.
One of the subsystems that is clearly out of his control is the environment. Nature or God speaking through nature is the subsystem manager. The prediction of environmental behavior has difficulty in accounting for “Acts of God” but it must. As the Navy hymn advises project managers must implement their responsibility
The specific identification of the Sub-systems and Sub-system managers must now be made. The personnel groupings will be made on the basis
prior history, experience and training of individuals and the functional units to which they have been attached. SP00 had been the Admiral of a aircraft carrier task force. SP10 was the fleet weapons system officer for task forces in WWII and was weapons system officer on the USS Indianapolis for the transport and handling the world’s first nuclear weapons. SP20 was a graduate of the Harvard School of Business Administration SP01 was an Applied Physics graduate from Cal Tech and a former helmsman on a WWII battleship. SP02 was a squadron Commander of a nuclear submarine squadron. Navigators qualified for the Navigation Subsystem Submarine Weapons Officers for the Launching and Handling Sub System etc.
For better or for worse a policy decision was made to divide the project into independent subsystems. When possible, officers attached to the Special Projects Office were made Project Managers of a Subsystem. Each had authorities, responsibilities and accountabilities for their subsystem which were identical to the authority, responsibility and accountability of the technical Director of the Special Projects Office. The scope and complexity of some of these subsystems was such that sub-sub systems had to be organized. The chain of any systems configuration ends at the component level where the product to be developed manufactured and delivered does not require coordination by more than a ‘small group’ (e.g. ten people). Ideally the management team of a system, sub system or sub-sub system would not exceed the psychologists definition of a small management unit (e.g. 40 people) Such a unit must learn to cope with one or two misanthropes. Large systems (more than40) can generally cope with a misanthrope by continuous reassignment.
Ab initio each subsystem manager would indicate the function that his subsystem would perform and the performance criteria that would be met. The schedule for delivery for test and evaluation and for final production would be specified and the resources required would be identified. These would be modified or approved by the technical director within the scope of his own responsibilities authorities and accountabilities. This approval would provide the basis for reporting at weekly or special staff meetings .
The concept of independent subsystems now requires another concept that is of vital importance in systems management namely that of interface management. This is a demanding and difficult labor intensive activity of systems management that is often short changed. In the short change version there is presumed to be a single interface between two systems A and B. The interface manager from A proposes an interface to B and vice versa. They then negotiate an interface and place it the project management archive. It is immutable unless and until A and B renegotiate. Unless A and B are the only two subsystems this approach will be an unmitigated disaster.
In reality there will be other systems that must rely on the interface between A and B and interfaces with C and D etc. Therefore the Interface manager of A and B must propose interfaces with an Interface manager for the entire system. There is at the least a trilateral negotiation but other interface managers may participate at the invitation of the systems manage. The systems manager’s solution is thus binding on all of the sub systems in the system.
Alas alas. II the subsystem managers system requires innovation he will be hard pressed to to identify the interfaces. Indeed he will be hard pressed to identify the hardware that must be acquired to meet system performance.
Regrettably the requirements of schedule and the mandate that the project cannot fail requires the identification of interfaces that can accommodate this uncertainty. Several examples will be added to this web as time and interest on the part of the readers persist.
The innovation process itself requires special forms of management. Typically the Systems Manager will seek proposals from Industry and/or government Laboratories. Frequently the proposal is submitted to the Chief Scientist for initial screening. SP01 has access to other professionals in the technology of the proposal and they will be invited to the initial presentation. The first questions that are asked relate to the correctness of the applied physics. If the proposer is incorrect or uncertain with respect to these fundamentals he is politely shown the door. This must happen no matter how intriguing, brilliant or promising the idea seems to be. The project can not afford to waste time and money just because it may be good science. If it passes the physics test, the next question is : What is the major engineering obstacle to be overcome? Absent a credible response they are shown the door. If the response is credible they are asked how they propose to solve the problems within the time allotted. Based on realistic responses SP01 will report to SP10 and the Sub System manager with a subjective probability estimate of the chance of success. On the basis of such reports on all of alternatives SP10 will decide to support as many as he believes is necessary to assure that system performance will be achieved. If it is clear that the schedule will not be met, the contract will be terminated. When the system cost of failure is high it is rare that only one project will be singled out for supplying the solution. It is equally clear that once a satisfactory solution is implemented then contractors pursuing a successful course may also be terminated. It is vital to successful mission management that action personnel do not waste their valuable time on developments that cannot or will not be employed in the operational system.
All too frequently the contractor fails to meet or beat the schedule because of a phenomenon that we refer to as “solution avoidance” If the problem is complex and requires the assembly of individuals and their family at a development site and a complicated set of jigs and fixtures must also be acquired and assembled there will be a very strong tendency to avoid a simple solution if one suddenly appears. There is a subconscious awareness that the newly established team will be out of business. There is a surprisingly simple solution which is usually rejected by cost conscious management. It consists of assigning the identical development task simultaneously to two different contractors. Both will receive a percentage of the production but in proportion to the timeliness and effectiveness of the solution.
The Special Projects office, as with many Navy Projects, is the in house manager for the entire system but many, if not most of the systems were managed under contract and of course most of the tasks in the system were carried out under contract. This resulted in a pyramid of management for which major contractors find themselves at the bottom of the pyramid in one or more subsystems. Thus these contracts did not get the top level corporate executive attention warranted by the national importance of the mission. This was resolved by the creation of a Steering Task Group as advisory to the technical Director.The members of the Task Group were Senior Executives of the Corporations that had a piece of the Special Projects action. The meetings of the task group were chaired by the Technical Director. The Proceedings of the meeting consisted of progress reports and plans by the Subsystem Project Managers and other executive committees such as the Systems Appraisal Committee who report to the Technical Director. The role of the Steering Task Group was that of a “murder board” exposing the weakness in the programs and progress of the technical staff. This exposure provided much of the advice to the technical director which was needed from Executives whose Companies reputation was on the line as the press and the public monitored the development of the strategic deterrent system.
Recalling that the Project began with a clean management slate in December of 1957 the management system which included the Steering Task Group was fully functional in December of 1958. Missiles were being built, submarines were cut in half and inserting a missile compartment. Training schools were established, tenders were refitted etc .
Recognizing that this description of the Special Projects Office structure and modus operandi appears to cover the bases one might be tempted by the thought that the total system was and is “Fail Safe” iii This may be true as far as ‘independent subsystems’ are concerned but there are vulnerabilities to the system as a whole that do not appear until collective assembly and operation.
We were all bitten by electromagnetic pulse, most of us have been bitten by failure to include nil ductility and local transitions to nil ductility in our calculations of materials under stress. Some subsystem manager will import toxic materials or equipments which dieselize under pressure or flammables like aluminum that destroyed the British fleet in the Falklands .Our latest trap is what I call delusionary simulation. Even our most unsophisticated youth can produce screens of virtual reality which can only be distinguished from photographs of reality by the improbability of the applied physics. Can one distinguish a hologram from reality by punching it in the nose. Not if the hologram has been programmed to punch back. What does one do when a brilliant presentation is made as proof of system performance or as a basis for acquisition of new equipment when it is in fact delusionary virtual reality?
Then we must face the reality that the opponent will alter his strategy to defeat ours. If our system has been designed with flexibility we should be able to alter ours to defeat his. If we do not know what strategy he will elect then we are stuck with game theory and Monte Carlo variations in strategy in order to optimize the probability of success.
The Special Projects defense against these unanticipated catastrophe was in the form of hidden reserves for contingency. The technique was to estimate the magnitude of such a reserve should there be a catastrophic failure and to then order but not buy, spare parts and redundant systems
Until the development program was successfully complete. Admiral Smith
Programmed $300 million as a contingency against the failure of the A3 missile. Then fate intervened with the loss of the Submarine Thresher. The sub safe program cost $300 million and the Navy careried it out without going to the Congress for more funds.
What more can be said. Eternal vigilance and operational test and evaluation employing skilled humans having integrity under all sorts of conditions seems to be the only strategy that will probably succeed when a system is called upon to perform and not fail.
Out of the Deep to Target, Perfect. Not a moment too soon for the National deterrent system of which this was a major component was unambiguously tested in October of 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis.
The organization and management of that project is thus chosen as the case study of the management techniques that resulted in success and avoided the pitfalls of failure. It is recognized that today’s technology and management problems are dramatically different from a political, anthropological and informational transfer standpoint.
Resources; one for Schedule; and one for Performance. If the bullet is green it means that the status is as promised. It also means that the report is the result of his personal assessment in the context of his official responsibilities and fully mindful of his personal accountability. If the bullet is orange it means that there are difficult problems in real time in the offing but that he is confident that they can be solved without any action on the part of the superior command. If the bullet is red it means that he believes action must be taken at the higher command level or beyond with respect resources, schedule or performance. There is thus an opportunity to focus on the problem at the orange level. If the higher level authority believes that the risk is too great he can now take actions to avoid or alleviate the risk or if he thinks that alleviating the risk is beyond his control he can report this to higher authority and so on all the way to the the Joint Chiefs, the Secretaries and the Commander in Chief (and beyond to the Legislature if necessary)from storm and peril, fire and foe, protect them where-so e’er they go.
This is best accomplished by identifying the environment as an independent subsystem.