GLOBAL TEAMS AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES
The
intent to provide a meaningful, working approach to the global
economic, political, social and health problems is a challenge often
spoken about, but rarely addressed in a truly effective manner.
ToL
addresses this challenge by offering a structured, proven method of
developing not only the spirit, but also the practice of cooperation
and collaboration among disparate, often conflicting governmental and
corporate organizations involved in some of the most daunting national
and international challenges. ToL was developed by the US Army to
face the new set of global missions centered on close cooperation with
military and civilian authorities involved in nation building,
humanitarian aid, and disaster relief, and development of national
stability in conflict or disaster-ravaged regions of the world.
ToL has been operationally tested by the US European Command (EUCOM)
and Army Europe, and is now being adapted for civilian operations by
the Center for Collaborative Command and Leadership.
Apart
from the destruction they cause, events such as the earthquakes in
Haiti or China, floods or heat waves in Europe, or hurricane Katrina,
have another common element: stress, often massive, applied to not only
healthcare systems, but to all other elements constituting the complex
of response and recovery, e.g., transportation, food/water supply and
delivery, housing, etc. Many organizations outside
the classical emergency response system are unprepared for operations
in which “steady state” activities are either disrupted or cease
entirely. While effective cooperation and collaboration among
agencies/organizations participating in development of both
preparedness and resilience, and in disaster response and recovery,
have been shown repetitively to be the essential elements of success,
many efforts continue to fail despite extensive development of
elaborate preparedness plans.
In the end, it is not the plan to work together that is essential, but the practical collaborative ability to do so that assures success.
The Center for Collaborative Command and
Leadership aims to assist through research, education, and training in
ToL the practical ability to work together, build effective high
performing teams, and achieve consistent success despite often extreme
austerity and hardship characteristic of post-disaster
environments.
THE GLOBALIZED WORLD: A SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS IN UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM
The
modern world operates as a tightly coupled environment. The
near-complete functional interdependence of individual components of
such a “system of systems” is not only the source of global efficiency,
but also the principal source of catastrophic global failures. The
structural and functional complexity inherent to the entities operating
as a “system of systems” results in the state of highly unstable
equilibrium that perpetually permeates such entities: failure of one of
the constituents induces destructive reverberations within the entire
environment. Unless promptly addressed and eliminated, the
reverberations rapidly overcome the ability of the system to resist and
adapt. The progressively increasing loss of equilibrium induces
further, exceedingly destructive and potentially irreversible
consequences that will affect not one but many, maybe even all, of the
system’s components. The event is a transboundary event; its
consequences equally so.
Maintaining
equilibrium of a tightly-coupled system, and prevention of
destabilizing events can be attained only through the closest possible
cooperation and collaboration of all involved actors, executed across
the entire spectrum of professional and political domains, and based on
unity of purpose to consolidate and guide all efforts.
The
goal of responding to complex challenges is to reduce output
variability in an environment of high input variability - to strive to
impose order upon chaos. However, operations conducted in complex,
transboundary environments such as presented by major cities or
large-scale crises are associated with unavoidable unpredictability and
uncertainty. Inherent to all such situations is their constantly
changing dynamic nature that imposes the demand for accurate and timely
knowledge which can be acquired only through horizontal and vertical
interactions among all participants, and where internal and external
knowledge resources of the responding organizations are pooled through
the appropriate information (IM) and knowledge management (KM)
processes.
In transboundary
environments, the processes of knowledge extraction and expertise
identification, conversion, analysis, and employment - the foundation
of the successful execution of all activities - are complicated by the
participation of a large number of governmental, corporate, and often
political entities with different hierarchies, cultures, and modes of
operation.
THE SOLUTION: TEAMS OF LEADERS
The
concept of Teams of Leaders (ToL) emerged as the result of
collaborative challenges faced by the US Army and the many US
government agencies forced to work effectively in order to solve a wide
range of complex and highly dissimilar problems. The development
of ToL , enabled by the explosive growth of information management
systems (IM) and knowledge management (KM) processes and their
increasingly rapid penetration throughout modern society, provided the
“glue” that intimately bound technology, effective processes for
virtual collaboration, and people. It also multiplied the power
of either through the relatively simple expedient of deliberately
creating teams among which ToL becomes a mindset rather than a
procedure. The cumulative outcome was helping teams of leaders
from disparate organizations find their common purpose, build trust and
team competencies, and generate the confidence to tackle bigger and
tougher challenges.
Today
ToL represents a revolutionary approach to collaboration and
cooperation among people and bureaucratic entities in both military and
civilian organizations. Shared trust and confidence are the natural
consequence of the process of team building. The principal social
outcome of this process is transformation of loosely interconnected
experts into a closely knit High Performing Leader Team (HPLT). Through
a network of rapidly growing vertical and horizontal connections,
individual HPLTs can interact with each other and collaborate across
boundaries of organizations, functions, levels, and culture. In the
end, as the cross-pollination among HPLTs intensifies, the most
fundamental aspect of any collaborative effort emerges – the condition
and state of actionable understanding™.
WHAT ToL DOES: DISASTER PREPAREDNESS, RESPONSE, AND RECOVERY
Implementation
of the ToL concept increases transboundary mission understanding,
enhances mission focus, and reduces inter-organizational friction and
bureaucratic parochialism – all of which are well known elements that
reduce utility of efforts centered on prevention, preparation for, and
response to any large scale crisis or disaster. Implementation of
ToL-based processes reduces output variability, maximizes utility of
effort, and focuses operational efforts on strategic rather than minor,
often largely inconsequential, goals.
ToL offers cardinal advantages in crisis and disaster operations:
- It fosters transboundary HPLT collaboration
- It creates the environment of cooperating Teams of Leaders unified by shared, mission-oriented, actionable understanding.
- It provides the critical foundation for the development of effective crisis and disaster preparedness at all levels.
- Operationally,
ToL-based practices allow near-immediate generation of task-oriented
“action swarms” and task-focused implementation of “just-in-time”
solutions.
- ToL serves
both as a “soft” and “hard” force multiplier in the development of
organizational, multi-organizational, and community resilience.
- In
collaborative environments involving a wide range of independent
actors, ToL introduces two overriding elements of successful
joint operations: actionable understanding™ and unity of purpose.
These
attributes help ToL-centered entities collaborate and communicate more
effectively. They anticipate potential crises, rapidly detect their
initial blind spots, develop effective countermeasures, rapidly make
sense of the chaotic environment, and form simple and effective team
operating agreements. HPLTs address problems regardless of
organizational boundaries and cultures. ToL does not impose order
upon chaos but reduces its impact by developing coherence of effort and
the means of rapid containment of adversity. |
