Category: Book Review

Review of Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

“Morality only consists in making the relationship between the smallest action and the greatest good…”

Antonio Gramsci
Cocaine
Published in Sotto la Mole, 1916-1920

***

Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia by James J. Brittain provides a comprehensive account of the conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government from the perspective of the now demobilized quasi Marxist-Leninst narco-insurgents. Based on five years of field research and extensive archival analysis of primary and secondary documents – the strength of the work is sapped by numerous inclusions of half-baked opinions and poorly informed analysis. Brittain, for instance, is fundamentally cynical about U.S. military aid to Colombia – as if the profound effects wrought by incredibly violent and ruthless transnational drug trafficking networks on society and governance in the Americas did not even exist!

An external example of such ideological prejudice can be seen in a review of the book was posted shortly after publication on Fight Back News – a Freedom Road Socialist Organization front masquerading as an authentic media organization. On their website, the book is described as such:

“For Colombia solidarity activists, Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia is a tool. In the battle of ideas against all of the U.S. ruling class justifications for continuing to give billions of dollars to the Uribe regime through Plan Colombia, or in opposition to the U.S. escalation in Colombia through its seven newly acquired military bases, this book is a weapon. For anyone doing anti-intervention organizing, whether around Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Philippines or any place where the U.S. is oppressing the people of the world and where the people are resisting by any means necessary, this book provides a valuable case-study.”

While the author’s clear biases mean that some of the arguments and analysis by Brittain is intellectually facile or, at times, absurd, it is in fact because of this that it is an important work for those seeking to understand the concepts and terms of how the FARC and those who sympathize with it think. Because the author uses Marxist philosophy to present the FARC as an innovative and “more democratic” alternative to globalization than neoliberalism rather than a narco-terrorist organization was, in fact, why I wanted to read it.

Neoliberalism and it’s Discontents: FARC’s Rise

Like other books I’ve read covering conflict in Colombia – such as The FARC: The Longest Insurgency by Gary Leech; The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads by Alvo Civico; and Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia by Michael Taussig – this books starts with La Violencia as the founding moment for the FARC.

Birthed in the Tolima region, which is the department immediately to the south of where I now write this (Antioquia) a number of self-defense groups were formed in order to protect land that was seized from large-property owners or areas administered by the Colombian state. They became enclaves for those wishing to escape the violence elsewhere and farm. While not first conceived of as an “alternative” form of socio-economic development defining itself in contrast to globalization – coca production and illegal commodity extraction soon became their economic basis of what was, essentially, a colonial project.

By mid-1964 the PCC/guerrilla leader Manuel Marulanda Vélez (Tiro Fijo) had accumulated such a significant amount of dual-power that Operation Marquetalia was launched to retake occupied areas. 20,000 Colombian troops, as well as U.S. advisors and U.S. Iroquois attack helicopters.

While the operation as a whole was successful this lead to the spreading of the number of fronts of those connected to the FARC. This put the organization into more conflict with Colombia’s large-land owners, who were extorted, had their lands forcibly broken up and were kidnapped or killed for money or to send a message.

The South and West Blocks specifically became areas that were associated with coca production and provided the organization with funds to fight the intensifying violent backlash by the political and economic elites.

Given that the publisher of this book (PM Press) is committed to disseminating Anarchists and Marxist literature it’s not surprising that the author’s singular focus on the origin and activities of the FARC  doesn’t give a broader contextualization of events.

As a result of this myopia that I mentioned in the introduction, there are a number of endorsements of the FARC political/historical line without a broader view of how events transpiring outside of Colombia affected the country.

Recounting the rapid rise of membership in the 1970’s, for instance, the author claims that rising inflation, declining capital for small agricultural operations and the dispossession of subsistence farmers leading are solely the U.S.’s fault. Brittain conflates the national Colombian economic elite with that of the US, as if the former were mere pawns/proxies of U.S. power, and gives no mention to the the global restructuring of supply chains and capital investment portfolios wrought by the rise Europe and Asia as well as other nations intensifying their agricultural export industries – all trends described in Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s.

Movement of Movements and the Composition of the FARC

No organization is ever an island unto itself, and the FARC is no exception. Brittain explicates how there are numerous Colombian organizations, such as the PPC and the MNBC, that assist and amplify the effects of their war of position as well as international organizations – be they transnational criminal enterprises involved in the distribution of cocaine and even Special Committees of the United Nations.

A term emerging from the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, war of position refers to the specific manner in which the FARC conceives of their historical mission. Their relationships to outside organizations are based on the intention to create a dual power system within Colombia they become an instrument of state power. Even though these organizations may not be fully committed guerrillas like the FARC, because they view socialism revolution as “a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria” their actions are conceived of as aligned with their goals.

Quoting several SouthCom and Colombian government reports Brittain states that in the early 1990s it was thought possible – given the FARC’s embeddedness within urban collectives in Bogota – for them to have taken over Bogota. Rather than pursuing this policy and thus, to use a Game of Thrones metaphor, ruling over a “city of ashes” they did not engage in direct confrontation in the urban center in order to reinforce their support-bases in the periphery, the coca-growing regions. It was believed that by the building of class consciousness (really their own particular vision of ideological orthodoxy) a social revolution could be achieved rather than a merely political one. This view, as the recent history of the peace accords shows, was incorrect. Because of Brittain’s sympathies, it’s worth pointing out another consideration less likely to be voiced by the FARC Secretariat – the problems created by actually administering a large and complex economy connected to multi-national corporations rather than merely interacting with coca-producing farmers, and small-scale illegal loggers and miners.

While such an admission would likely never leave the lips of someone whose committed their lives to guerilla combat, surely because of this the urban center, which inevitably complicates the Bolivarian-Marxian vision they’ve been acculturated into, doesn’t allow for simple solutions. Reading Marx, after all, doesn’t prepare one to appropriately understand modern national macro-economic policies.

FARC as Narco-Settler-Colonialism

Given that the campesinos that the FARC acts as a government for those that are involved in the narco-trafficking industry and that they are setting up their operations in a colonial manner – i.e. setting up operations in areas without infrastructure (roads, sewage, medical or educational facilities) – there’s an deep irony in the author’s frequent endorsement of the settlers claims that it is the lack of the farmers ability to obtain credit from banks or services from the government as a justifying cause for their operations.

Juntas de Acción Comunal

Brittain presents the Colombian-government sponsored Juntas de Acción Comunal, for instance, as being started to helping to serve up national sovereignty to American capital rather than helping develop new business relationships for the export of legal agricultural goods and other commodities. This is, after all, what the FARC’s help facilitate – though of illicit materials.

Organized along military lines, the FARC uses military tactics to gain recruits and expands it’s operation not though a greater division of labor but by geographical expansion. More illicit farms mean more money and arms for their operation. Because of this it highly ironic – Orwellian Irony even – that Brittain describes this dual-power organization as the target of “fascist” attacks when the actual government seeks to halt their recruitment efforts on college campuses in Colombia – something that Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia describes.  This Manichean worldview means government-sponsored informer networks are, to Brittain, quadi-totalitarian while the FARC’s are expression of “organic” identification with the organization – even after describing punishments for breaking the FARC’s laws.

FARC, Social Change & Kultural Marxism


The author, giving a first person account of the

 

“Upon visiting areas controlled by the FARC-EP I observed educational facilities in both public spaces and guerrilla camps that loosely resembled small makeshift schoolhouses. The encampment schools were plastered with pictures of Che Guevara and past comandantes of the FARC-EP, and were referred to as “cultural centers.” They were heavily used and resembled a jungle-like revolutionary museum; filled with pamphlets, books, music, and information related to Marxism, Colombia’s political economy, and Latin American society.”

Venezuela, TeleSUR & Kultural Marxism

Well not discussed within the book it’s interesting to note that Hugo Chavez, the former president of TeleSUR, has long cited the FARC-EP as a historical and ideological inspiration.

No surprise then that the entrance to TeleSUR’s offices in Quito, Ecuador is akin to the cultural centers described by the James J. Brittain – filled with the portrait art of Latin America’s many revolutionaries.

The relationship between Sergio Marin, the head of the propaganda office for the FARC, however, would certainly approve of their operations. They, like Nicolas Maduro Moros, use Gramsci as a framework to inform their model of social and political change.

Though describing a Colombian context, the connection to The Resistance in America (as conceived by those connected to the Left Forum) is obviously apparent.

Thus, despite the books many weaknesses, it is an important work for those trying to understand the perspective of the FARC and their allies in Venezuela, Ecuador and elsewhere.

Presentation on Colombia by James J Brittain

Review of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century

One of the suggested texts for my Geopolitics of Innovation class at UPB was Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. I found it to be a very valuable book in simply describing how it is that the world economy has changed over the past 30 years as a result of digital communications hardware and software. These technologies along with a number of changes in legislation that facilitated increased the ability of US companies to invest and develop workforces in foreign have radically altered the way in which globalization has manifested itself. The flatness to which Friedman refers has, of course, nothing to do with the peculiar Flat Earth movement but with the lowering of barriers that previously prevented innovative collaborations occurring across borders. Friedman intersperses his own analysis with that of a number of subject area experts within the business, academic and governmental sphere to support his “brief history”.

The book uses two dates 11/9, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11, the date of the hijacked plane attacks on America that launched the War on Terror as bookends by which to frame the flattening of the world and, in the final chapter, as examples of potential directions that the new global economy can head. Either there will be increased openness, collaboration, innovation and free trade or there will be a closure of borders, ideas and exchange of goods, services and capital such that the pace of the economy slows and growth shrinks.

Friedman sees this responsibility to adapt to new conditions as being primarily borne by the individual and their family, with the government facilitating to a limited extent the development of new skill sets and abilities. While not blind that a number of people can get left behind in such situations, as a technological determinist and a student of history he states that there is little that can be done other than adapt – personally, culturally, and economically – to the “flattening of the world”.

The ten historic flatteners Friedman cites are as follows:

#1: 11/9/89, When the Walls Came Down and Windows Hit the Tornado
#2: 8/9/95, When Netscape Went Public
#3: Work Flow Software
#4: Open-Sourcing & Self-Organizing Collaborative Communities
#5: Outsourcing & Y2K
#6: Offshoring
#7: Supply-Chaining
#8: Insourcing
#9: In-forming
#10: The Steroids, Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual”

Each of the ten flatteners show how it was that information and communications technologies radically altered the business landscape in ways that goes far beyond railroads and electrification. While embracing technological determinism, Friedman shows through a number of examples that the sort of retail economic reforms needed to exploit these flatteners are insufficient as indicators unless connected to wider changes in social norms. I found the  comparative analysis of different countries business environments and cultural norms to be especially informative. Put simply, societies must rapidly adapt to these new environments or they will rapidly see their GDPs start to slow, stop or decline. Because of this the capacity to learn – be it via market vigilance, improvement of customer relations and business processes, etc.  – is the most important quality to be able to demonstrate in the workplace.

 

With the caveat that the book is not intended to be included within the general rubric of business strategy literature, Friedman also shares a number of the insights he’s gained from analyzing the flatting of competition. I won’t include them all, but Friedman’s analysis on the rules seeks to allay fears that all is lost for the average American worker.

“Rule #6: The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists-not to save money by firing more people.”

These rules and their analysis show how globalization – done ideally – leads to a race to the top rather than a race to the bottom. While citing a number of examples within business history that provides the rationales for these new rules to this effect, the book did leave me wanting for a more detailed analysis of the American economy. While increased economic exchanges between the BRIC countries and the US certainly have a number of positives, I think to better make this case as more comprehensive overview of globalizations impact is necessary. While certainly allowing higher-skilled workers and the companies that employ them to do more for their money – there are a number of social and economic ills connected the transition away from an economy with large portions of the work force in manufacturing to those engaged in the service economy that Friedman doesn’t cover.

One of the sections that I found rather interesting given my academic background and that I participated in several anti-globalization demonstrations – such as the FTAA protests in Miami– is a brief engagement with the writings of of Karl Marx. It’s happens via a professor interlocutor that praised his thought as reflective of the realities of capitalism. I cite these passage below at length in order to close the review with a reflection.


I bring this up as Friedman describes class conflict without calling it such and as it relates to the crux of the book’s unspoken argument – “globalization is good for everyone”. While certainly not as naïve as the political pronouncements made by Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man, there is a growing body of critical voices from the right on shareholder value being the goal of businesses as opposed to stakeholder value. Many contemporary political commentators have mentioned this, with some citing it as one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected. While I think that Friedman’s optimism is for the most part deserved, I also feel that the destabilizing effects of it make the work at certain points hallucinatory in its choices of coverage.

For example, Friedman cites the antiglobalization movement, which emerged in 1999 at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, to highlight this conflict. According to Friedman:

“From its origins, the movement that emerged in Seattle was a primarily Western-driven phenomenon, which was why you saw so few people of color in the crowds. It was driven by five disparate forces.

One was upper-middle-class American liberal guilt at the incredible wealth and power that America had amassed in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dot-com boom. At the peak of the stock market boom, lots of pampered American college kids, wearing their branded clothing, began to get interested in sweatshops as a way of expiating their guilt.

The second force driving it was a rear-guard push by the Old Left-socialists, anarchists, and Trotskyites-in alliance with protectionist trade unions.

The third force was a more amorphous group. It was made up of many people who gave passive support to the antiglobalization movement from many countries, because they saw in it some kind of protest against the speed at which the old world was disappearing and becoming flat.

The fourth force driving the movement, which was particularly strong in Europe and in the Islamic world, was anti-Americanism. The disparity between American economic and political power and everybody else’s had grown so wide after the fall of the Soviet Empire that America began to-or was perceived to-touch people’s lives around the planet, directly or indirectly, more than their own governments did.

Finally, the fifth force in this movement was a coalition of very serious, well-meaning, and constructive groups-from environmentalists to trade activists to NGOs concerned with governance-who became part of the populist antiglobalization movement in the 1990s in the hopes that they could catalyze a global discussion about how we globalize. I had a lot of respect and sympathy for this latter group. But in the end, they got drowned out by the whether-we-globalize crowd, which began to turn the movement more violent…”

While this aligns with my own readings and experience – a growing body of literature connects the business practices described in the book to the opioid epidemic, increased rates of depression, alcoholism and other nasty ills. Management of the economy and the workplace according to the new rules of globalization have certainly allowed corporations to extract more value and thereby be in a better position to compete globally, but with so many struggling to adapt and with the new social intelligence capacities created by information and communication technologies that there is a growing distrust and animosity to existent leadership such that populism is increasing – I think it’s worth examining not just “how we got here” but also “how can we make this work in a way that’s managed even better.”

Notes on Implementing and Managing eGovernment: An International Text

I’ve been reading Richard Heek’s book Implementing and Managing eGovernment: An International Text as part of my doctoral thesis research and the book is, in a few words, foundational, seminal, required reading for anyone in the field of Innovation and Technology Management with a focus on eGovernment. I highly reccommend it.

Below are two organizational spreadsheets, followed by notes from the book.

Data Stakeholder Governance Considerations

Sample Item Costs for eGovernment Planning

Notes

There may be a focus on problem solving and innovation, and a focus on team-working and flexibility (Hafeez and Savani, 2003). The agencies may be characterized by what is known as a ‘task culture’. 

This hybrid management model argues first for an analysis of current public sector realities; and second for an assessment of which management and e-government system designs will best fit this reality. 

The sectors differ in many ways, including:

their espoused objectives (broader in the public sector); 

their view of ‘customers’ (more holistic in the public sector); 

their relation to ‘customers’ (mixed with roles as citizens and compliers in the public sector)

their accountabilities and perceived stakeholders (broader in the public sector)

their human and technological infra- structure (weaker in the public sector); 

the politicization of their processes (greater in the public sector); 

the scale and nature of competition (smaller and political in the public sector) 

Where decentralized information systems, manual or computerized, are already in place, barriers to centralization may be severe. In order to centralize, changes may need to be made to the organization’s whole information systems architecture: new data fields and formats, new hardware and software, new processes by which to handle data, and new processes by which to make decisions and take actions. 

Differences between the objectives and values (that is, the cultures) of particular groups in the public sector also cause a problem. 

Centralized approaches require the commitment of four key resources – money, time, people, and skills – all in short supply in the public sector. For many public organizations, a centralized approach may not be possible because of financial constraints; because staff are too busy on other things; or because no-one has the confidence or capabilities to undertake the necessary planning and coordination tasks. 

decentralized units develop different ways of working, different mindsets that create quite different views of the world between groups; different jargon used in communication; and different issues and people that are valued. 

aspects of system use such as implementation, operation, troubleshooting and maintenance are also likely to occur more quickly under a decentralized regime. 

Training, maintenance and administration costs also contribute. Large, centralized computing systems are estimated to cost something like one-third to one-half of this amount per user per year (CBR, 2001). 

A decentralized approach may be most economic for public organizations, because it saves on overt input costs. A centralized approach may be most efficient, because it avoids waste and duplication. But a successful hybrid approach may be most effective because it can simultaneously provide: 

  • the control necessary to share key resources (including data), to avoid duplication, and to achieve economies of scale; and
  • the freedom necessary to meet user needs, and to overcome blocks to IT usage and system development. 

US State Department, for example, successful progress on e-government has come from retaining computing and data management architecture under control of a central IT office, while decentralizing systems develop- ment responsibilities 

Division is compatible with – indeed, is defined as – simultaneous centralization and decentralization. It can be seen in the possible division of responsibilities described for systems development. It can also be seen in the division of responsibilities between client and server computers. 

That which we can call a managerial or information systems centralization, reflects Nolan’s (1979) well-known ‘stages of growth’. It shows the gradual increase in managerial attempts to control the information systems (which would include e-government systems) within an organization. Nolan’s model has been criticized for a lack of predictive power and a generality that fails to match individual organizational experience. However, its core sense of increasing managerial engagement with IT does appear sound. 

A decentralized approach will also help to spread IT awareness and skills, and even some understanding of the informational aspect of e-government, in a way that other approaches might not. For some public agencies, it is the lack of just such awareness, skills and under- standing that represents a key barrier to effective use of IT in government. 

there are tensions between the somewhat theoretical notions of organizational rationality, and the more real forces of politics in government. Hence, rational logic may play only a minor role in determining which approach is used. 

For example, the approach adopted will be shaped by the organization’s technology (e.g. whether the computing architecture is already centralized or decentralized); staffing and skills (e.g. what skills are avail- able); management systems and structures (e.g. whether the main organization has a centralized or decentralized structure) and other resources (e.g. the availability of finance). 

Stakeholder values will also play a role, such as their perceptions, their awareness of the costs and benefits of particular approaches, and their historical experi- ences. For instance, the recent experiences of staff with e-government systems create either a satisfaction that is inertial, or a dis- satisfaction that demands change. 

buuuut it is organizational politics and its roots in the self-interest of particular stakeholders that will help determine what management approach to e-government is selected 

Four familiar political constituencies (see Figure 2.2) can be identified, whose conflict or compromise within organizations helps to determine which approach is chosen: senior managers, politicians, IT staff, and mainstream staff. 

Broader political, pressures from the outside world – ranging from national political initiatives to dominant ideologies/philosophies – also play their part. Staff in public sector organizations are subject to continuous external pressures, that include (Barrett and Greene, 2001; Abramson and Morin, 2003): 

  • Pressure to conform to the requirements of external bodies, such as central government bodies and funding agencies. An e-government unit run by central government may, for example, be pushing a department to adopt certain centralized ‘best practices’: see, for example, Box 2.6. 
  • Pressure through (mis)perception of what other organizations are doing, which may be transmitted through informal contacts, management texts and training programs, or dealings with consultancy organizations. 
  • Pressure from private sector IT vendors to purchase particular technologies and systems. 

Chapter 3

eGovernment Strategy 

Centralized e-government strategic planning is a six-step process that, overall, asks: ‘Where
are we now?’, ‘Where do we want to get to?’, and ‘How do we get there from here?’

a successful strategy can develop senior management understanding that e-government systems are information systems not just IT, and build consensus and commitment to a strategic vision for e-government. It permits a fundamental review of the organization’s use of informa- tion and technology, leading to a comprehensive understanding of information systems requirements. 

It also provides a detailed plan of action on e-government for the organization. 

Problems of Federal eGovernment Expenditure in the US 

The 2003 US federal budget identified ‘six chronic problems that limit results from Federal IT spending: 

  • Agencies have automated existing outdated processes, instead of fixing underlying management problems or simplifying agency procedures to take advantage of new e-business and e-government capabilities. 
  • Agencies have made unnecessarily duplicative IT investments. 
  • Inadequate program management – many major IT projects have not met cost,
    schedule and performance goals. 
  • Few agencies have had plans demonstrating the linkage between IT capabilities
    and the business needs of the agency. 
  • Agencies have built individual capabilities that are not interoperable with one
    another. Few IT investments significantly improve mission performance. 
  • Poor IT security – major gaps have existed in agency and Government-wide inforsmation and IT-related security.’ 

e 2003 Federal Enterprise Architecture: A ‘business-based framework for Government-wide improvement … constructed through a collection of interrelated ‘reference models’ designed to facilitate cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration within and across federal agencies.’ (FEAPMO, 2003)

The Strategic Context for Federal Public Agency eGovernment Strategy in the US 

The 2002 eGovernment Act

The 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act

The 2001 President’s Management Agenda

The 1998 Government Paperwork Elimination Act

The 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act

The 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act amendment:

The 1993 Government Performance Results Act:

Where are we now?

An answer would include details of the organization’s current structure and functions; key client groups; existing problems that need to be addressed; and important current and forth- coming factors – particularly policies and political priorities 

Where do we want to get to? 

An answer would include details of the organization’s objectives, and some vision of the future organization that will enable it to overcome current and forthcoming problems, and to achieve its objectives. Finally, it asks, ‘How do we get there?’ This would be achieved through a statement of management strategy about major changes to organizational structure and functions in order to reach its future vision. 

two types of organizational function are derived from the organization’s wider business strategy and prioritized for further investigation: 

  1. Existing organizational functions that are to be retained in order to meet organizational objectives 
  2. New organizational functions that need to be introduced in order to meet organizational objectives.

This is the essence of ‘portfolio’ or ‘program’ management: using criteria to align projects with agency strategy. 

Impact priorities, for example, might be: 

highest savings/financial return on investment

highest public visibility/political return on investment

highest learning/demonstrator effect

strongest focus on existing organizational deficiencies

strongest support to key external client  services (as opposed to internal administrative activities). 

Implementation priorities, for example, might be: 

lowest risk/highest feasibility

lowest cost to implement

fastest time for completion

eGovernment Systems Architecture needs three main components:

  1. A data model showing the structure of unified, organization-wide data to which the e-government systems will have access; often illustrated using an entity-relationship diagram (this and the other diagrams mentioned here are described in greater detail in Chapter 8).
  2. A process model showing the key activities of the organization that the e-government systems will either support or under- take; often illustrated using a process diagram.
  3. A data/process model showing the organization-wide connection between business processes and data entities, and the organization-wide movement of data that e-government systems will enable; often illustrated using a data flow diagram. 

Information engineering

This looks across the whole organization and focuses on two components:
business processes: the individual activities of the organization that help meet public sector objectives. 

data classes: data entities of relevance to the organization that are made up from individual data elements (or attributes). 

Data and process are principally connected, and therefore principally investigated, through the mechanism of decision making and action. 

From this investigation, the entire organization is analyzed into two long lists of business processes and data entities. These are cross-checked through a process/data matrix that shows which processes create or use which data. The data entities and processes can then be grouped together into clusters of data and processes that represent required e-government systems within the organization.

Critical success factors
it starts by asking managers to specify the factors they consider to be critical for the successful performance of particular organizational functions

It is the intention that e-government strategy be shaped by organizational objectives and process/information requirements rather than by technology: 

Determining eGovernment organizational architecture:

As part of the ITSPMO analysis, general strategic decisions may include:

  1. making sure that it is the government rather than the company that steers e-government 
  2. stating the approach to management of organizational change, including a determination of the needs for cultural change
  3. clearly allocating responsibilities for e-government systems development and management
  4. identifying major competency gaps and approaches to closing them through human resource strategies
  5. deciding how back-office procedures may be restructured to support e-government
  6. locating the e-government/IT function within the wider organizational structure
  7. demarcating which services (e.g. systems development, training and systems operation) are to be sourced in-house and outsourced
  8. identifying procedures to be used when tendering for and selecting e-government systems products and services
  9. specifying standard systems development methodologies and tools to be used 
  10. identifying financial approaches to be adopted, such as public–private partnerships.

Strategy Implementation 

Disseminate and Plan eGovernment Actions 

A typical business case for an e-government project might include a statement of project objectives; an estimation of benefits, risks and constraints; and an estimation of resource requirements covering finance, human resources (i.e. jobs and skills), technology, and timescales. Details of project deliverables (i.e. things the e-government projects should produce such as feasibility reports, specification documents, and both interim and final versions of the system) and timetables can be approved at this stage. So, too, can mechanisms for reporting back to the eGovernment Steering Group on progress. 

for personnel training and development, for finance, for technology, etc. There may also be an additional dimension to the matrix – time – showing what is to occur and be paid for within particular financial years. 

Many public organizations also find themselves in situations of constant and largely uncontrollable flux from factors such as changeover in ruling political parties; constant circulation of senior politicians and officials; emergence of new political initiatives and legislation that alter organizational activities, priorities and even structures; sudden imposition of cost- cutting measures; sudden external crises that demand a reaction; changes within the client groups the organizations serve; and changes in IT, IT standards and IT suppliers. 

The Outcome of eGovernment Strategy 

There are many ways for strategies to go wrong:

  • Lack of Strategy
  • Underused Strategy – The strategies give the impression of box-ticking – doing just enough to meet the demands of external policies and oversight agencies; and often doing that in a hurry – without true internal ownership of, or commitment to, the strategy. 
  • When strategy has been hijacked
  • When strategy is ‘strategic concrete’

Focus on process, not content

The process of trying to create a strategy may be more valuable than the formal deliverables. Value is sought from the informal process deliverables such as: making sense of the past, learning from experience, encouraging dialogue and communication, and making choices 

A hybrid approach to e-government planning will mean a balance between central and local. So, for instance, it could mean that e-government planning is seen as incremental, as participative, as limited in scope: guiding more than dictating. This approach is sometimes referred to as ‘pick- ing a course and steering it’: being adaptable to new constraints and new circumstances as they arise rather than imagining that the strategy is cast in ‘tablets of stone’. 

Sub-Strategic eGovernment Planning 

Given the many constraints to strategic plan- ning, it may be more feasible to plan at what might be termed the ‘sub-strategic’ level. This pares back what planning hopes to achieve until the intention matches what can be achieved in the organization. 

Tactical-Plus eGovernment Planning 

pushing the objectives of an individual e-government system ‘upstream’ to think how it contributes to the overall work of the organization; 

assessing the opportunity costs of going ahead with this particular e-government system rather than others; and/or 

assessing whether there should be com- patibilities between this and other exist- ing or planned systems. 

Chapter 4 Managing Public Data 

CARTA 

Completeness 

Accuracy
Relevance
Timeliness
Appropriate presentation

Prosumption – Where the consumers of public services themselves become producers of their own data often via web-based electronic forms.

What are the Positions to Consider when Managing?

Situation A: Departmental Location 

Situation B: Low-Level Independence 

Situation C: High-Level Independence 

Situation D: Outsourcing 

Outsourcing 

An equal, if not greater drive to outsourcing is to address human resource constraints by accessing staff, skills and ideas that are not available in-house. Other perceived benefits of outsourcing include the provision of a higher quality of service; greater certainty about costs; greater flexibility, especially of labor since it is easier to hire and fire external staff; access to advanced technology; and greater ability to focus management on the core deliverables of the public sector 

Cons

a clash of work cultures and understanding between the public sector client and the private sector sub-contractor; 

a loss of control over the service being provided, with the sub-contractor starting to dictate to a dependent client; 

a loss of core e-government competencies to the sub-contractor, such as controls over security. 

However, in practice, decision making about outsourcing in the public sector has only partly been driven by organizational rationality. It has also been driven by behavioral/political factors (Peled, 2000a). Managers are found to outsource e-government work because they: 

  • have been naive in their assumptions about the benefits that will ensue
  • believe association with such an initiative will be good for their careers 
  • wish to ‘clip the wings’ of the in-house IT unit
  • stand to gain financially thanks to the covert generosity of the sub-contractor

5.2 People

Competencies can be understood in relation to three domains:

Skills, Knowledge, Attitude 

Attitude is changes by appeals to the the rational mind, the political mind, and the heart. 

Greater use of case studies of e-government failure and/or best practice will likely be a move in the right direction (Parrado, 2002). Cases can persuade stake- holders, for instance, of the dangers of ignoring basic systems development prac- tice, or of the importance of understanding the organizational and human context of e-government systems. 

A good hybrid manager will recognize that psychological factors play a role: autonomy, challenge, recognition and the opportunity for career advancement. Direct work content factors are also important, such as training opportunities, flexibility of work schedule and clarity of task specification. 

On a shorter-term basis, responsibility for a personal development plan can be shifted to the employees, and used as part of the annual performance review. 

Plans must be far more than just a critical path; they must include deliverables, resource requirements, and reporting arrangements. Over time, the number of elements that must be planned has grown, typically in response to perceived problems with past projects. What was once just a ‘project plan’ has now been broken down; for example into: a scope management plan, a resource plan, a risk management plan, a procurement plan, a quality plan, a communication plan, a security plan, a change management plan, and a cost management plan.

Which standards should be followed? ISO 9001:2000 

Peer review – a hybrid rather than rational project technique – seems to have a better record, and has now been adopted by a number of governments as a best practice. 

Behavioral Approaches to Project Management 

the rational model fails to fully explain or predict what happens in the public sector. It also fails to fully guide real-world best practice, leading e-government practitioners to criticize PMMs for their inflexibility. Indeed, some who study the realities of projects see the rational approach as potentially guiding worst practice: 

“IT projects die by their own hand. The more they are bound by lists, rules, checks, restrictions, regulations, and so on, the more they drive out the human spirit of creativity, of innovation, of dealing with ambiguity, and of fun. People brought up in technical environments may not see the horror of this kind of approach.”

To plug this gap, and ensure that a more behavioral approach and more behavioral expertise are introduced, some governments are mandating the involvement of senior non-IT officials. The Canadian government, for example, defines a formal requirement on e-government projects for two things (OECD, 2001). First, a project sponsor who is responsible for the business function, and who has solely behavioral-side competencies ( judgment, leadership, communication, organizational awareness). Second, a project leader who is a senior departmental official with, again, largely behavioral-side competencies and only cursory IT management skills at best. Similarly, the UK government’s analysis of e-government project failures concluded with the requirement for projects to have a ‘senior responsible officer’ (CITU, 2000). The officer would be drawn from the business not the IT side of the organization. 

Primary Project Stakeholders

decision makers: those who make major project-related decisions, such as whether or not to proceed with the project

gatekeepers: those who control access to higher authorities

influencers: those who advise decision makers or whom decision makers take note of

end users: those who will directly use the output from the e-government system and/or from the business function it supports

champions: those who will support and muster resources for the project

Smart behavioral players work to break through the rationality barrier to get to the real objectives and values underneath. 

  • by understanding that professional relationships have different bases and require different techniques from those adopted with social relationships
  • by establishing rapport with the other person: looking for common ground 
  • developing on their areas of interest; even mirroring their speech and body language in order to ‘tune in’
  • by active listening that involves really concentrating and asking questions to get to the root of issues, beliefs, problems, needs, and so on 
  • by tailoring communication to the needs of the recipient 

Tailoring your Message 

The sociable ones: The idealistic ones:
  • Be clear and explicit, don’t just imply. 
  • Show me how people will benefit. 
  • Demonstrate immediate and
    practical results. 
  • Show me respect.
  • Engage with my personal values. 
  • Paint pictures and draw analogies
    that have meaning. 
  • Be passionate and engage my
    imagination. 
  • Show how it will contribute to
    the greater good of human kind.
The theoretical ones: The down to earth ones:
  • Show how it fits into the bigger picture. 
  • Ensure the theoretical base is sound. 
  • Appeal to my intellect and imagination. 
  • Be a credible source of information.
  • Be organized and structured. 
  • Be practical and realistic. 
  • Work logically and systematically
    through your analysis. 
  • Offer proof and evidence.

1. Preparation: Getting as much information as possible not just in relation to the topic under discussion but also in relation to the objectives and values of other parties; being clear about one’s own ‘bottom line’. 

2. Initial exchange: Drawing out other individuals and probing with questions to develop a better sense of their objectives and values; weighing up relative bargain- ing powers. 

3. Negotiation: being assertive; using and observing body language; identifying issues that can easily be agreed and issues that are low-cost to one side but high benefit to the other; being creative about what can be traded; exploring 

possible compromises. 

4. Agreement: summarizing the discussion; avoiding/dealing with last minute conditions. 

5. Implementation: setting out a clear schedule of tasks and responsibilities.

The acquisition of negotiating skills and the ability to apply the techniques just described is becoming increasingly integral to e-government project management 

Components of Massachusetts model: 

  • business problem and scope of work: the problem being addressed; the rationale for the e-government project; and the major tasks to be undertaken; 
  • workplan and time schedule: a Gantt chart ‘not intended to be a project log of each and every small detail, but rather a comprehensive plan of tasks, team resources and timelines’
  • management approach and personnel: for both the steering committee and project implementation team; 
  • acceptance criteria and deliverables: the key outputs from the project and criteria that will be used to judge whether or not that output is acceptable
  • task order budget
  • signatures: of all the key ‘business partners’.

Such structures as the above will allow 

  1. early identification of failures 
  2. mechanisms to disperse learning about both success and failure. 

Why should there be so much politicking around e-government? In short, because two pre-conditions of politicking are met. 

First, there are interdependent groups that have different objectives and values. This is clearly the case in public sector organizations. The ‘interdependent but different’ perspective applies to the formal functional divisions within public agencies. 

Second, there are important but scarce resources involved. 

e-Government brings together in large amounts both critical tangible resources – people, money and equipment – and critical intangible resources – information, power and kudos. They therefore form a key locus for organizational politics. 

Techniques of Influence 

Reason: ‘Relies on the presentation of data and information as the basis for a logical argument that supports a request.’ Reason is typically a first choice for influencing a boss or subordinate, and it often relates to a base of expert or information power. 

Friendliness: ‘Depends on the influencee thinking well of the influencer.’ It is often used with co-workers, but may also be used with subordinates and supe- riors. It often relates to a base of personal power. 

Coalition: ‘Mobilizing other people in the organization to support you, and thereby strengthening your request.’ It depends 

Bargaining: Negotiation and exchanging benefits based upon the social norms of obligation and reciprocate. The resources that are traded are very varied but can include assistance, support and information. It often relates to a base of reward power. Assertiveness: Uses continuous reminders via an insistent and forceful manner. It is often used with subordinates and relates to a base of legitimate power. 

Higher authority: ‘Uses the chain of command and outside sources of power to influence the target person.’ This can be the threat or promise of involving the influencee’s boss, or invoking that boss’ own priorities. It can also involve an appeal to higher ethical or cultural values within the organization. It may involve recourse to outside ‘experts’, such as consultants, or to the media. A variation, much found in e-government, is to blame the technology or the data, though this may fall under the heading of manipulation. Its strength relies particularly on affiliation power. 

Sanctions: Influence through the promise of reward or threat of punishments. In its negative form, this may encompass all formal disciplinary procedures up to dis- missal. It may encompass informal actions: blame, bad-mouthing, bullying. It may also encompass the removal of rewards (e.g. transfer, demotion). Sanctions often relate to a base of legitimate or coercive power. 

Manipulation: Influence by controlling the framing of discussions, or the claimed rules for discussion, or the information that is allowing into a negotiation. Part of this process will be the manipulation of the public discussions and public relations that set much of the agenda for government. This type of approach may also include undermining others involved. 

Withdrawal: Influence through disengagement or non-compliance. 

Time and again, middle managers in public sector organizations have good ideas for new or redesigned e-government systems. Yet they cannot get those ideas implemented. They blame their bosses, or the IT staff, or politicians, and so on. In many cases, though, they should blame themselves for failing to recognize their own need for better communication, negotiation and, above all, influencing skills. 

Chapter 6

Emerging Management Issues for eGovernment 

Great care must be taken that measures are valid (i.e. that they do measure what they seek to measure), relevant (i.e. that they measure something on which the employee’s actions have an effect) and valuable (i.e. that they measure what is organizationally important about the job). IT staff behavior will be skewed by performance measurement towards the measured components of the job and away from the non-measured. Only careful selection of indicators will ensure that this skewing is beneficial for the organization. 

Performance management in the public sector 

  • offer career development opportunities, or psychic pay: quasi-financial incentives such as paid time off or new equipment. In some surveys, public servants rate these above money as preferred rewards. 
  • Use group incentives since individual rewards can demotivate other team members, whereas group rewards tend to encourage collaboration.  
  • do not punish occasional mistakes, only chronic poor performance. Use progressive discipline but also use training and peer pressure. 

Three main focal points for performance indicators can be applied to the IS/IT function: 

Input- IT Measures

Output- Information Services

Outcome- Business Process

Measurement of Performance 

In most cases the measurement procedure will be clear within the indicator definition. Three main assessment indicators:

  • Internal subjective: The measures are based on the judgment of internal clients, such as customer satisfaction rating scales. 
  • Internal objective: The measures are based on objective quantification within the organization, such as the jobseeker placement measure. 
  • External: The measures are based on quantification from outside the organization. 
  • Price testing: Comparing the internal costs of a service with the estimated cost/price of external providers and benchmarking (which includes a broader set of performance measures) 

Control of Performance 

Provider management control: Managers within the IS/IT service provider are responsible for managerial rewards and remedial measures. 

Client management control: Managers within the IS/IT service client are responsible for managerial rewards and remedial measures. 

Client financial control: Managers within the IS/IT service client are responsible for financial rewards and remedial measures. 

Arbitrary basis: The sum paid does not relate to service use but to some relatively arbitrary measure such as the size of the user department. The lack of linkage creates limited financial control on performance; arguably less than that available via a managed service level agreement. 

Cost basis

Market basis 

The central thrust is that agencies must be good at writing documents and at managing projects. It would thus be possible to score a ‘green’ without producing anything that had actually made life better for citizens and other agency clients. 

The more the government charges for its data, the greater the barriers to access become. Yet the wider it allows access, the less it can earn from data sales. 

Access Policies for Freedom of Information

The enactment of FOI legislation has required the development of in-house policies by public agencies within its purview. Typical issues to be dealt with include (DOI, 2002): 

Terminology: Explicitly defining what is meant by terms such as records and requests; and classification of different types of data held by the agency.

Procedures: Clarifying how citizens/ businesses can obtain data direct without requests; how information requests are to be made; and the means by which those requests will be responded to.

Data management: Ensuring that the type of back-office, records and data manage- ment procedures described elsewhere in this chapter are followed so that data and records can be located in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

Performance measures: Setting out performance indicators (typically time taken) for the FOI response service.

Charges: Determining a reasonable level of charges to be levied for searches and copying; determining policy on any fee waivers; putting a billing and payment system in place.

Handling variations: Determining procedures in the case of various types of data/records such as those not held by the agency; those held by other public agencies; those deemed sensitive or covered by privacy legislation; those held by other non-public agencies.

Appeals: Setting in place an appeals procedure to appeal against problems with performance, charges or denial of access.

Responsibilities: Designating specific officers as responsible for FOI implementation, and for appeals. 

Update: Putting in place a mechanism for review and update of FOI procedures (e.g. in response to new technology, case law, organizational changes, new orders, or FOI response performance and feedback). 

Digital Divide

Because of those costs, there is an uneven profile of those who own and use IT: the rich not the poor; the graduate not the school leaver; the ethnic majority not the ethnic minority; the urban not the rural citizen; the young not the old; men not women. 

Pouring resources into e-government can therefore benefit the haves rather than have nots, and increase polarization within society. There are already some signs of this, with evidence that local government electronic service delivery is of poorer quality in areas with lower levels of Internet access 

Governments may set up initiatives focused on increasing access to IT that is government-or-community-owned IT. Such IT may be placed in a variety of locations: 

  • public spaces, such as common areas within shopping malls; 
  • semi-public spaces, such as libraries or sport facilities; 
  • dedicated spaces, such as community telecentres housing a room-full of Internet- linked PCs. 

The watch- word for government must therefore be ‘supplement’ not ‘supplant’. Provision of public sector data and other services electronically should be seen as an additional weapon in the armory that sits alongside traditional face-to-face and phone-based methods. It should not be seen as a way of replacing those more traditional methods. 

Reviewing Sensitive Public Information

The following questions will assist security professionals in reviewing sensitive infor- mation that has been, or could be, made publicly accessible. 

Has the information been cleared and authorized for public release?

What impact could the information have if it was inadvertently transferred to an
unintended audience?

Does the information provide details concerning enterprise security?

Does the information contain personnel information such as biographical data,
addresses, etc.?

How could someone intent on causing harm misuse the information?

What instructions should be given to legitimate custodians of sensitive information
with regard to disseminating the information to other parties such as contractors?

Could this information be dangerous if it were used in conjunction with other
publicly available information?

Could someone use the information to target personnel, facilities or operations? 

Could the same or similar information be found elsewhere?

Does the information increase the attractiveness of a target? (OCIPEP, 2002)

Policies on Disability

the law sets a clear threshold that must be achieved. However, in practice, e-government managers often seem to be ‘satisficing’ the issue: doing just enough to cover their backs but still leaving a gap between policy and practice.

Difficulties

public managers face a difficult balancing act between the requirements of central legislation and the localized needs of the public agency. These may conflict where, for example, the agency has to make the best of an outdated physical environ- ment, or where lack of money means what is ergonomically-best cannot be afforded. This balancing act can appear in the gap between policy on paper and policy in prac- tice. eGovernment managers may develop an internal policy document that fully meets all legislative requirements, but may then not fully implement the document. 

Chapter 7

Success in e-government comes from intelligent selection of individual techniques, from
‘hybrid thinking’, and from action on design–reality gaps rather than from slavish adherence to one particular methodology.

Background understanding of a proposed e-government project comes from asking five
questions: Who is involved? What is the problem? Why is the project happening? What
constraints exist? What will change in the near future?

eGovernment projects can be assessed in relation to their feasibility, priority, opportunity costs, and impact.

Four Core Stages:

1. analysis of what is currently happening, and of whether and why a new e-government system is needed
2. design of the new e-government system’s components
3. construction of the new e-government system

4. implementation of the new e-government system 

Successfully planned e-government systems will therefore be those that require a manageable degree of change. 

In order to assess this ‘degree of change’, the core of the systems development method described here will therefore consist of three activities: 

  1. mapping out the realities of the current situation
  2. designing a proposal for the new situation
  3. assessing the difference between the two, and reacting to that difference 

Systems Development Life Cycle

1. Project assessment: Identifying possible e-government projects; outlining basic project parameters; and assessing whether or not to proceed with the project. 

2. Analysis of current reality: Description and analysis of the seven ITPOSMO dimensions as they exist within the current situation of the organization. 

3. Design of the proposed new situation: Setting objectives for the proposed new e-government system, and then describing in general terms how the seven ITPOSMO dimensions should be different for the new system to meet these objectives. Different options for the new system may be evaluated at this point. 

4. System construction: Acquiring any new technology; undertaking detailed design of the new system; then building it, testing it and documenting it. 

5. Implementation and beyond: Training users to use the new system; converting data to new formats; introducing the new system; monitoring and evaluating its performance and context; then undertaking any necessary system maintenance. 

SSADM: Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology, 

No method is perfect but there are dangers for the public sector in adopting some of the harder methods. The public sector has had a tendency to choose such methods which then prove too old, inflexible, top-down, detailed, jargonized and time-consuming (Korac-Boisvert and Kouzmin, 1995). While these might have been appropriate to the routine clerical automations of the 1960s, they work poorly in politicized situations of change and uncertainty. 

 

Review of A World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology

“Under Crushing Opposition, Love Requires Revolutionary Action”
Father Camilo Torres

Having recently read Padre Guatalupe’s autobiography, my interest was piqued in learning more about the particulars of liberation theology. This curiosity was amplified as I am now attending a Catholic University with a Bolivarian mission in Medellin – the location of conference of bishops in 1968 that would result in the drafting of a number of significant statements that would justify numerous Catholic initiative of a liberationist theme throughout Latin America. As such, I was happy to learn of the recent publication of A World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology by Lillian Calles Barger. This book, along with conversations with my fellow students and a group of seminarians that I’ve befriended, have greatly helped me to comprehend the Catholic culture in which I now live.

Barger divides her book into four sections: Origins elaborates the social, political and economic factors which lead to the conditions within ecumenical circles that caused people to elaborate novel interpretations of Christian religious doctrines. Reconstructions provides an intellectual history of the philosophical currents that fed into the new method of Biblical exegesis. Elaborations provides deeper analysis of the particularities of the various liberation theology strands and provides a historical accounting of the interactions between those propounding such doctrines and the communities from which they emerged. Reverberations illustrates that while Liberation Theology as an intellectual current within the Christianity may have seen its adherents decline in numbers, nevertheless a variety of the novel perspectives that it sought to disseminate about how to interpret the world have been adopted within various religious and social justice movements. Liberation Theology, it can be rightly said, still speaks to a social, political and environmental concerns that have emerged as a result of various changed that have profoundly impacted the human world.

For those writing within this strain, the true theological task is “orthopraxis” which is “an encounter with the world, rather than tradition or revelation…” Instead of engaging just with a text disconnected from the concerns of the here and now, promising only salvation in the afterlife, Liberation Theology is concerned with bringing the divine order to earth. In Barges’ words: “Fundamentally, the idea of liberation was of a communal process rather than based on the individual, for only in solidarity with others was freedom possible. Awakening the political potential of solidarity among oppressed people called for the advocacy of the committed placing themselves at the nexus of prophetic denunciation and revolutionary change.” Biblical and sociological analysis identified the oppressed with the campesinos of Latin America – fighting the inheritors of colonial titles; with the African-American’s in the United States – fighting the descendants of slave-holders; with women across the world – still under the yoke of a sexist, misogynistic patriarchy.

James Cone’s influence is still profound within the African-American church.

The variances in how the church is viewed; what the goal of liberation is; and how to get there; how this changes given different world-historical shifts and more by different social groups – blacks, whites, Latins, men and women – is masterfully handled by Barger. By delving into the biographical details about the authors of those in this new cannon, historicizing and then unpacking the arguments in their writing one can almost feel as if a part of the intellectual debates that were motivating their religious/academic work. Barger provides a veritable lexicon for concepts that evolve due to new technological and social changes and how despite the fact that Protestants in North America and the Catholics in South America came from very distinct intellectual and historical backgrounds, they still came to similar conclusions about what it means to be a True Christian in a sinful world.

This is especially well done in the chapter entitled Vitalism of Religion. Here Barger depicts how a number of Enlightenment related arguments were related to religion, and later how the prophetic writings of Marx were adapted to a modern understanding of the bible.Towards this end a virtual pantheon of social theorists are described – from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ludwig Fuererbach, G.W.F. Hegel, Jose Mariategui, Georges Sorel, W.E.B. Du Bois, William James, and more – and their evidence within various key Liberation Theology texts are describe. Starting with their respective views related to religion, she shows how they are pieced together to form a unique Christian Socialist identity. More than just this, Barges shows their impact in the brief blossoming of a number of schools and political movements. From this and analysis in subsequent sections we see how “Marxist thought provided Latin American liberationists with a significant framework for analyzing inequality and responding to the charges against religion. The goal of social justice based on a structural understanding of society, rather than individual choice, appeared congruent with the prophetic tradition and served as an opening for Marxist-Christian dialogue throughout the twentieth century” (108).

Barges intellectual history also tells the often tragic stories of those that sought to operationalize this conception of Christian solidarity. In the section entitled A Salvic Social Order, chapter we learn the story of Richard Shaull – a missionary like Padre Guadalupe that came to help and then became so disillusioned with the church that he started advocating revolution. Him, like Padre Guadalupe and others such as the now sainted Oscar Romero, often met tragic ends due to the incredibly politically polarized atmosphere of the Cold War. During this time addressing the sins of empire and the sufferings of people was seen as subversive, giving shelter to the enemy of Soviet Power. With the Social Gospel viewed as an ideology aligned with the interests of a predatory foreign power, it’s little wonder that those with a more personalistic view of salvation – the traditional religious establishment – were wary of those that sought to “recover Eden” through a scientific socio-economic practice wedded with a theology of collective, social liberation. The point of division for those who sought to create Utopia versus those that were conservative and sought to maintain relations as is was their understanding of what the implications and duties connected to humanity Original Sin.

Sergio Torres’ writing presented a dialogue between Christianity and Marxism.

As Barger brings the book to a close she shows how that while there were clergy-members in the field involved with pastoral work with a Liberation Theologist orientation, a main failing of the movement was its inability to produce and thus enact specific policy applications. The 1970 conference in Detroit that included black, Latin American and women leaders is depicted in almost tragic proportion. After highlighting how this became a moment for qualitatively altering the level of collaboration and cooperation that this transnational group of religious community organizers, activists and intellectuals – they are shown instead engage in what was, essentially, and intellectual pissing contest. Rather than building a collective platform by which their struggles could synergize their efforts for liberation, they instead devolved to arguing over who faced institutional repression worse and broke.

For all of its political aspirations, the Liberation Theology movement never formed the same sort of sustainable political institutions that those within the Christian Democratic tradition were able to. This is so because of the numerous inherent limits within Liberation Theology as an eclectic philosophy.

Pope John Paul II scolding Nicaraguan liberation theologist Ernesto Cardenal.

The thinkers associated with it may have been able to inspire debate, but nothing much stuck beyond that – proposing no singular national or international program for change that could be acted up with effectiveness, founding no institution and establishing no school. Thus while Liberation Theologians never attained the key features of a recognized movement, the sensibility related to the core tenants it put forward as necessary to positively change the world continues to inspire multiple social movements and political initiatives throughout the world.

 

Review of Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Business and Politics

“The distinctions between leadership and management constitute a major shift in our thinking about how the private sector should be organized. A mere [six] decades ago, leadership was a conception business and industry generally chose to ignore. But now the best and brightest afree that leadership belongs in the private sector as much as it does in the public one. The only question is how exactly leadership and management should be defined” (147)

Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Business and Politics by Barbara Kellerman was published by the State University of New York press in 1999 and is volume in the SUNY series in Leadership Studies. At the time of the book’s publication, she was the Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

While an academic work, the book’s message is also directed to leaders and managers in both the upper reaches of the private sector as well as the public sector – something that is reflected in its style. The first premise of the book is that a number of significant failures of government has shown that earlier models of political leadership are inadequate. The second is that changes in social norms and conceptions of leadership wrought by political events have made traditional notions of management that came into prominence in the period of the 1950s to the early 1970s no longer relevant. The third and final premise is about the advantages of the convergence and synthesis of leadership values that embraces traditional government and business positions. Given the increased necessity of business and government leaders to communicate and collaborate this helps to develop a common language so as to better understand each other and the interests they represent – the public and private capital interests.

Kellerman defines management as the efforts of those who hold a position of authority at some level to ensure that the activities of a firm continue as needed and that leaders are those that engage followers in the mutual pursuit of agreed-on goal representing, usually, significant and not merely incremental change. These two conceptual inputs for the synthesis she believes is now needed were defined by various authors writing for either the professional or government leader/manager. By showing the typical continuing education paths for both the professional and the government official and analyzing professional literature – such as Harvard Business Review publications as well as an impressively large list of books on management and leadership in corporate America – Kellerman shows how divergently the ideals character traits and habits of thought for each social actor was first conceived – and how large political scandals and failures drew the two together in a way that more contemporary theorists would categorize as a mix of neoliberal or technocratic with a human face.

Whereas previously managers did not view their role as to influence – simply to command, control and if necessary to coerce – the changes in cultural and legal norms mean that this no longer was valid. In some workplaces where there hasn’t been much change wrought by America’s changing labor laws, such as extraction and agricultural industries, these were few alteration in norms. In worksites dealing with more intangible goods and services, like those of the many value-added business-to-business industries, the impact was significant and well commented on in the journalism and editorials of the professional and government press.

A number of seminal business leaders from the 1960s to the 1980s are presented as case studies to show the varying trends in how leadership was approached as a theory and practice and a number of common threads highlighted. One such theme found in the private industry, but not in that of the public, was of the need for management to “know themselves” in a way that included rigorous self-assessment so as to become more aware of the interpersonal dynamics at the workplace and within the market in general. If this all sounds curiously “new-agey,” or vaguely psychotherapeutic in nature” Kellerman says in one of her many amusing asides, “that’s because it is” (76).

Another of Kellerman’s observations is that while egalitarian ideas increasing permeated literature on leadership in business that in practice a noticeable change in work relations towards something that might be defined as “workplace democracy” never materialized. In its stead there became an infatuation with “collaboration” and “teams”. While anachronistic to this book, a good modern example of this is found in Agile, Scrum, and DevOps, coding and testing team practices associated with software development firms that shown in their literature and practice to be highly consultative and communicative in nature. The scandals of presidents and CEOs as well as changed in legal regulation – especially the opening of borders for trade – all feed into the changing workplace dynamics. Because certain types of labor could be more easily moved in the face of organized discontent by workers, which increased the reserve army of labor able to replace those in other, less at risk sectors, there was an additional shift in those work cites as well. Not a point which is gone into in detail – it seems that the effects of this would be another large influence for the imperative to blur the lines between public and private leaders and managers. And on this topic, Kellerman cites three specific imperatives wrought by the new, post-NAFTA globalized:

  • Politicians will have no choice but to take cues for their corporate counterparts
  • Business executives will have no alternative but to learn lessons from leaders in government
  • Leaders in both domains will have to reinvent themselves to create something altogether new.

In the closing section of the book Kellerman extensively quotes a number of business leaders to make the point that “although real-world problems are interdisciplinary, and solutions are interdepartmental, interprofessional, interdependent , and international, our institutions – particularly our institutions of higher education – start with a heavy bias against breadth.” (219)

The book closes with a description of the image of the new ideal for a political leader and business leader. The traits that they should have, the challenged they face, the strategies that they deploy and the values they embody to strive are listed as they could go on the back of a baseball card. All in all, it’s a fascinating read on how Leadership and Management as a concept and practice have evolved in America and how it is that one should act if one desires to be a Leader or Manager in the modern political-economic environment.

This is from another of Kellerman’s books.

Review of Culture and Management

Culture and Management by Zygmunt Bauman was published in Parallax in 2004 and speaks to the managers concerns with the managed, and how this relationship have evolved in the United Stated over the past 40 years.

Despite it’s having existed in practice for thousands of years, the sociological idea of culture was first spoken of as a term for the management of human thought and behavior. Industrial production processes that were increasingly complex and in need of absolute repeatability and precision, unlike the previous artisan approach to production, mean that there was an increased need for normative regulation within work spaces. Being part of a purposeful activity, certain human traits were seen to be like fertilizers to a productive process and thus human beings are made. Selective cultural improvement in the work site transpired by training and education in the “right” way of being. After connecting this term to another relatively new word – management – Bauman links the concept to ‘husbandry’ in the human sphere, ‘breeding’ in behavior and ‘cultivation’ of character. After this he makes a point to point out the dialectical characteristics, the interpenetration of opposites, which exists within the relationship:

“Just like ‘agriculture’ is the vision of the field as seen from the perspective of the farmer, ‘culture’ metaphorically applied to humans was the vision of the social world as viewed through the eyes of the ‘farmers of the human-growing fields’ – the managers. The postulate or presumption of management was not a later addition and external intrusion: it has been from the beginning and throughout its history endemic to the concept. Deep in the heart of the ‘culture’ concept lies the premonition or tacit acceptance of an unequal, asymmetrical social relation – the split between acting and bearing the impact of action, between the managers and the managed, the knowing and the ignorant, the refined and the crude.”

Bauman then quotes Theodore Adorno to point out how “the “managers-managed” relationship is intrinsically agonistic; how the two sides pursue two opposite purposes and are able to cohabit solely in a conflict-ridden, battle-ready mode. Put another way, from the Wobbly Constitution, the worker and the owner have nothing in common. As Baum himself puts it – “the management’s plot against the endemic freedom of is a perpetual casus belli.”

The ideas which structure workplace interactions – management – are codified into formal knowledge via educational institutions – like the Catholic University that I am now in – and the different approaches to workplace administration are taught. Culture creators are those that help apply changes to those norms, whereas managers are those that help maintain the norm. There is always a tension here too, as one seeks to change the status quo that the other previously enforced.

Bauman then quotes Hannah Arendt at length regarding the increasing liquidity of the world and its effect on human exchange in the workplace.

The second managerial revolution is the switch from normative, explicit regulation to a more implicit one.

First Managerial Qualities                  Neoliberal Model
Normative Regulation                                   Seduction
Day to Day Policing                                       PR
Routine                                                            Constant Change
Highly-Regulated                                          Precarity

Understanding culture as operationally meaning something like ‘pattern maintenance’ of a “kind of totality inside which any deviant behavior of human units is promptly spotted, isolated before irreparable harm is done and swiftly defused or eliminated.” Another words whereas the logic of “solid” modernity was following instruction; the “liquid” modernity is doing it yourself. Bauman is very critical of this, quoting other historians and ethnographers as this helping to contribute to a culture of “disengagement, discontinuity and forgetting.” Bauman does not go on into any extended description of how thus to unravel this negative aspect of modern workplace culture, but does state that management needs to be aware of this unless the quest for abstraction, branding and profit – the reification of thought, objects and human relations – lead to workplace problems that suffocate their relationship. Cultural events, a fancy phrasing for company events, can thus be space to reinforce the norms required for a good workplace culture.

Review of Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory: Evolutionary Paths and Future Advances

Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory: Evolutionary Paths and Future Advances was published in the Organizational Studies journal and was written by Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg von Krogh and Sven Voelpel and explains the process of “making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connection it o an organization’s knowledge system.” As knowledge is something that is embodied within the body, knowledge creation is something more than just the transmission of information. Information itself is never interpreted outside of a specific embodied context – a basic presupposition within the education process for becoming a teacher – and therefore more than just the expectation of immediate assimilation following consumption needs to be presumed when developing organizational knowledge within a firm.

SECI Model of Knowledge Conversation

Knowledge expands through a four-stage conversion process:

Socialization aims at sharing tacit knowledge among individuals.
Externalization aims at articulating tacit knowledge among individuals.
Combination aims at combining different entities of explicit knowledge.
Internalization aims at embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge.

The authors then use a Japanese concept, ba, to explain the different qualities of the spaces of encounter (originator -> context -> communication -> receiver) within which information and knowledge is transmitted.

There are for the authors three types of Ba – or Spaces of Meeting: Cyber, Interacting, and Originating.

Organizational epistemology is an important concept, and ought to be understood as a continuous process wherein the individual limits and constraints created through prior information and past learning is able to become newly actionable to the present job to be done. It views knowledge as something that “is oriented towards defining a situation so as to act on it rather than solving the depicted and manipulated pre-given problem.”

Knowledge, however, is fragile, and there are many ways that obstacles to coherence, creativity, sharing and innovation can emerge. Thus it is that an scientific method ought to be applied that relates to the needs of the business. Conversion, in which individuals externalize the experiences of knowledge, need not occur with every new bit information garnered by every individual, but an organizational design and knowledge creation and transfer processes should be in place to ensure that knowledge pertinent to Marketing is shared by Engineering should it have a potential use value. Because of this, the authors then look at standard business models to determine to an extent who needs what.

Hierarchy, Heterachy, and Hyper-Text

Hierarchy is what is most common in organizations where there is little variation in the work to be done – such as factories, fast-food restaurants, and construction. There is little variation that needs to be done, so there is little need from management for input from workers.

Heterarchy is categorized by its form. Assets and leadership are dispersed; communication is horizontal, and coordination informal and network based. reorganization results from “new demands for specialization and coordination as revealed by knowledge creation.”

Hyper-text – In a bureaucratic and hierarchical business system, this is a parallel project system layer that consists of a project teams that engaging in knowledge creating activities.

The authors’ connection between organizational knowledge, daily operations and the duties of company directors is clear: “providing accurate, timely and complete information for decision making is one of the most critical tasks of leadership.”
When understanding that the ba spaces are those where Middle managers are disseminating information, attitudes, etc. their role as knowledge producers, means for transmitting and ensuring that information was properly better comes into play. While reading this, I couldn’t help but think of my own training, both in the classroom as a teacher and in the classroom as a student discussing a different model of pedagogy and assessment.

The organization is in a state of becoming, moving between cycles of sense-giving from the top and sense-making in the middle, to sense-giving in the middle and sense-making at the top. There is no one “best model” for businesses, but rather they see that a business system, a project system and a knowledge system working in parallel that properly and efficiently coordinated and enables knowledge is the optimum for companies. This is and much further explanation on the topic gives rise to the “knowledge-based firm” concept that has recently come to dominate models used in Business education.

Outsider Knowledge Activists

Professional consultation is a common business practice as the focus of the business is sometimes so fixated on the task at hand they firms are unable internally to devote the attention required to weighing the benefits and liabilities of new practices and products. These people typically cause friction between themselves and the Performance Engine, but this is a “creative abrasion” that leads to new opportunities for knowledge creation. These people communicate future prospects and help provide overarching goals for the knowledge creation being developed in the different teams of an organization. They were the people with a “bird’s eye perspective” that helps firms achieve a new potentiality for being within the marketplace.

Leadership

One of the main directives for someone in a leadership position is to promote the SECI process. The primary functions of a leader is to:
1. Articulate knowledge visions and communicate them in and out of the organization.
2. Break down the values and visions into applicable concepts, images, and activities that direct the process of knowledge creation
3. Ensure that the knowledge system is being used, and considering how to help it evolve.
4. Define the organizational units, coordinate knowledge system layers.
5. Foster and nurture middle managers to act as knowledge producers
6. Provide space for ba and bring the right people together for it.
7. Search for supports, create internal groups and activities
8. Keep the bas energized and directed.

If it seems that if this were the case that all organizations and firms would be the same, however, they are not. The authors provide a telling explanation as to why that I quote here at length: “Organizations are dialectic phenomena that cannot be analyzed through a simple set of premises about behavior, be it profit or utility maximization, bounded rationality, altruism, human values, and social norms. The power of explanation lies in prudently combining insights from theories and research that draw upon different premises. In so doing we come closer to understanding the multifaceted nature of the organization.”

Review of Single-Loop and Double-Loop Models in Research on Decision Making

Double Loop Learning – How to Lead Knowing Everyone has Your Back.

This article, Single-Loop and Double-Loop Models in Research on Decision Making, was written  by Chris Argyris and was published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol 21

Single-loop decision making is the norm within most organizations, and people are encouraged to learn so long as they do not come to question the fundamental design, goals, and activities of their organizations. This is effective for general organizational issues, however limits the ability to explore other options of business activity. In Double Loop learning, one is able to postulate about changing the fundamental aspects of the organization itself. Being able to ask questions and posit counter- examples allows for the creation of a more “innovation-friendly” environment.

As stated earlier, single loop is a behavior strategy in organizations to control the environment, protect the group and ensure that work is done according to the established protocols. While the authors don’t use the term, they state that in business conditions that are similar to those of the 4th Industrial Revolution that this is a quick way to start to lose. The negative effects of single-loop decision making means proper indicators can get ignored, new market factors can be missed, and business opportunities passed by. Unfortunately as the collective effect of these missteps start to come to light, they could be doubled down on and becomes hard to put back in the proverbial bottle: Under these conditions, top administrators tend to start engaging in a number of non-optional, emotionally driven attitudes: such as becoming “frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the decision-making process and react by striving to increase control, by increasing secrecy about their own strategies, and by demanding loyalty of subordinated that borders on complete agreement with their views.”

In Single-Loop decision making personal ideologies, cognitive rigidities and the concept of loyalty inhibits the generation and communication of valid and meaningful information to upper levels more so than double-loop. Additionally, key officials will repeatedly and privately attribute motives to others, which then influences the information that the officials give and the estimation of its importance and direction with how they receive it. This, obviously, is a problem.

Since the double loops strategy for decision making involved sharing power with anyone who has competence, and with anyone who is relevant in decision or implementing the action, or in the definition of the task , or the control of the environment that this need not happen. Rather than decision being about asserting power, it is about building viable decision-making networks in which “the major function of the group would be to maximize the contributions of each member so that when a synthesis was developed, the widest possible exploration of views would have taken place.”

That this article was written in 1976 and is advocating for an inquiry-based model of decision making is to me impressive. While stating that the ability to quantitatively test transitions from one model to another are difficult – he stated that it would also be a longer process as it involved exploration of an organizations basic values and feelings that requires a shift in the behaviors of individuals, intergroup dynamics and organizational processes. Making the time to do this, however, can lead to large organizational learning gains. Management, for instance, come come to see that their sense of a need for unilateral control is part of a self-fulfilling prophecy as they do not do a good enough job providing themselves or encouraging the transmission or pertinent information.

Group discussions are, however, expensive and given that theories-in-use of individuals and groups within an organization require significant effort – what then to do? The authors suggest multiple advocacy. Admitting that it is a difficult balancing act to follow – it means that “advocates” form for specific positions to take regarding a firm’s strategy and tactics. The decision making strategy is similar to the British magisterate system, and is a great example of how staging and theatrics can highlight the concept of embodied knowledge. The Multiple Advocacy process presumes three conditions: (1) No major maldistribution of power, information, analytical resources, competence (2) persuasive skills amongst member and participation fo the Chief executives (3) time for adequate exchange of ideas. People then debate it out and a winner is chosen. I, unsurprisingly for a debate teacher, prefer this. I have a high tolerance for competition and am typically averse to getting into the “in-group” mindsets but instead seek to chart a clear intellectual path based on available evidence.

Review of The Oslo Manual

The Oslo Manual was published by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development and concerns itself with The Measurement of Scientific and Technological Activities. They are a set of proposed guidelines for collecting and interpreting technological innovation data written for and by experts. The scope of the manual is having a set of terms that can be used to understand innovation indicators within market analysis as well as a number of guidelines that can be enacted in order to obtain meaningful indicators of technologically improved process or product (TPP) innovation. TPP innovations are defined as those which require an objective improvement in the performance of a product or service. The manual continues on to address issues related to data collection and survey methods and also puts into context this particular manual with other families of manuals; other methods used for obtaining data or defining it and other means of surveying that can be used. I’m going to provide below a brief overview of some of the elements of the manual, but given it’s technically it really ought to be read from front to back in order to understand the full OECD approach to collecting, classifying and analyzing innovation data and other indicators of TPP innovation. In a vast oversimplification of what the manual covers – it could be said to be mainly concerned with:

• What is to be measured?
• How should it be measured?
• Where should it be measured?
• What do the measurements mean?

Science, Technology and Innovation policies emerged in part from the context of the Second World War. Ironically enough, American businesses starting to apply some of the sectoral economic policies of the Soviets after witnessing how quickly they were able to industrialize their economy. As one of the primary means that States saw a means for obtaining economic prosperity in the new post-war liberal international order was innovation, the social sciences started to analyze what would soon become a new field of research. The manual isn’t concerned with situating itself with this historical framework – other readings that I’ve been doing have done that – but I think it’s important to understand that it’s a collective product demonstrating the growing recognition of the imperative for businesses to innovate and the concern as to how to stay innovative in a global marketplace wherein there are many more options to reach the strategic goal of satisfying an identified market demand.

Because of this dynamic TPP transfer factors are a major concern of the manual. Transfer factors include linkages between firms, the presence of expert technological gatekeepers within a firm; international links; the degree of mobility and authority of expert technologists; the easy of industry access to public research and development programs; spin-off company formation; ethics, community value systems, trust and openness within a network; as well as codified knowledge in the form of patents, the specialized press and scientific journals. This complex system of interlocking factors that helps determine innovation at the firm level is called the “innovation dynamo”. Obstacles – such as skill shortages, problems of competence, financial issues, or appropriation – can have huge impacts not only on firms, but on policy as well. For instance, a policy might be created in order to assist a specific economic sector, say software as as service (SaaS). If the predicate on which it is built (i.e. there are a sufficient number of workers with a specific skill set) is not sound – it could lead to policies that harm rather than hurt that sector.

TPP innovation activities have three possible endings. They are either implemented successfully in order to create a new or technologically improves process or product, aborted for some reason, or are ongoing in their implementation. They are either endogenous (internal) to the firm or they are exogenous (external) to the firm.

How to collect, i.e. via a subject or object approach, is examined; as is how to distinguish between something that is versus is not a TPP innovation; how to prototype experiments; the relationship between OECD’s unites and that of the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic Activities (ISIC) and the European Community (NACE) in relationship to understanding international surveys; how to properly structure and distribute surveys; how to map the diffusion of innovation; breakdowns on types of innovation; how to distinguish between general expenditure for process improvement and those that classify as TPP; and procedures.


In short, it’s very technical reading about a specific topic. Does this have a relationship to the research you’re doing? Well then, read the bloody manual.

Review of The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge

The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge by Vijay Govindarajan and Christ Trimble was published by the Harvard Business Review Press and contains a wealth of research based insights on how to successfully execute innovation projects in a company. Because they study such a large variety of innovation endeavors in a variety of contexts, because of support for the Center for Global Leadership and the Tuck School of Business, they are able to generalize from the case studies and proscribe general laws in situations based on the elements of the dynamics at play. The authors’ case studies include an extended explanation of lessons garnered from Thompson Corporation and News Corporation’s (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) addition of computer software-based services to their organization which is exactly the sort of innovation initiatives I’m researching in detail for my PhD thesis at UPB in Medellin! Needless to say that plus the wealth of psychological considerations for successful project management and development makes this an ideal book for leaders.

The two sides of innovation are ideation and execution, and in this instance, the other side of innovation in the title means execution. Brainstorming ideas can be real fun, they say, but ideas are only the beginning. Without implementation, action, follow-through, execution, whatever you want to call it – then this means nothing. The true innovation challenge lies in the idea’s transition from imagination to impact in the workplace.

If the book could be said to have a single main takeaway, it’s that each innovation initiative requires a team with a custom organizational model and a plan this is revised only through a rigorous learning process. Because of this there must be much conscientious social engineering on the part of the innovation leader – which I will explain more about further in this book review.

Within companies their primary activities can be generally categorized under the concept of “The Performance Engine”. This is the dedicated team of full time workers that is in charge of ongoing operations. While they are able to engage in small scale continuous process improvements and initiatives in product development that are similar to previous activities – there is little scope for innovation to be achieved within the organization. Too much is needed so a new team must be developed to help implements it. This dynamic can be easily put in the following logic:

Project team = dedicated team + shared staff

As the names suggest given the groups thus defined, the shared staff is are those that work primarily on the Performance Engine but also have Innovation Team Duties. The Dedicated Team are those that are full time workers on the initiative.

The partnership, not just either team, executes the project plan. Because the focus of each group is very different – one is in repeating established work rhythms and the other determining the optimum means of establishing an innovation initiative – there are several principles that must be considered when deciding how to assemble a dedicated team. Not only do you need to identify the skills needed and hire the best people that can be found – even if their pay scale is above normal operations – and then you match the organizational model to the dedicated teams job. In the manner that the authors describe it, it almost reminds me of lesson plans for the first day of school – bring all of the individuals that will work on the innovation project together then start to transform them into a team by defining new roles and responsibilities; decorating and starting to fill in the new, separate space wherein the work activity will transpire; and even doing some role playing as a team in order to make charts of who will do what. After this a guided conversation needs to be headed by the innovation leader on how the usual performance based metrics for work are not going to be applicable in this work situation. This is important because the dedicated team and the performance engines need to know that even though they will share some existing processes and personnel, that they have different objectives and should have a different culture.

Defaulting to “insider knowledge” can be a trap the needs to be escaped from, and cautionary advice is provided on hiring within the organization. Not only can organizational memory eclipse the work at hand, but successful past performance aren’t reliable indicators in an innovation initiative setting as the processes are so different.

Because the key difference between typical planning processes for the performance engine and the best practices for innovation are so different, the human skills required for such an undertaking are significant. Hence the book is as much instructions for proper processes and principles as it is a guide to dealing with persons. Conflict between teams, within teams, and between executives, management and innovation leader all can have a degenerative effect on successfully execution. Dissipating a number of the myths associated with innovation – such as it being necessarily disruptive or distracting from the Performance Engine – is one of the key factors for maintaining successful control of the project.

The authors recurrent emphasis on the importance of documenting and sharing this information and be aware of the learning process reminds me of the frequent imbrecations that I heard as a teacher to ensure that my testing of students was part and parcel of a larger educational journey that I was leading them on. By ensuring that, excuse the pun, no child was left behind I ensured that I wouldn’t find myself in a situation where some students not making the appropriate learning gains. Since learning cannot be left to intuition – it’s important to have a rigorous learning process in place that is based on the scientific method. As such it becomes easier to refine speculative predictions into reliable predictions. With everyone involved being on the same page as to historical, current, and projected status of the initiative – from former operational hypothesis to what custom metrics metrics are being used to cost categories – it makes it easier to discuss assumptions and determine the means for best keeping the program on the correct trajectory.

Each chapter of the book ends with a series of proscriptive lessons garnered from analysis of the business cases presented– such as “Never assume that the metrics and standards used to evaluate the existing business have relevance to the innovation initiative” as the depth, power balance and operating rhythm of the two organizations are so different. This was an appreciated way of consolidating the lessons in and fast matter that I appreciated. This and the general style and concise definitions throughout made me appreciate the authors greatly. I look forward to reading Vijay Govindarajan and Christ Trimble’s other book 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators.

Those interested in seeing a SlideShare summary of the book can look here.