Are you excited to organize for complexity but unsure how to do it? Learn new techniques by looking back. In the early 20th century, the U.S. Navy successfully used complexity to harness new technologies, encourage organizational learning, and develop a sustained pace of innovation. Find out how!
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Trent Hone
• Agile Coach with Excella
Consulting, Arlington, VA
• 20+ years of
development experience
• Award-winning historian
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What is Complexity?
What are its Implications?
How can we promote learning
and innovation in complex environments?
Complexity in Action
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Biological systems are complex
Human systems are complex
Your organization is complex
Many of the challenges we face are complex
Complexity is not new…
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Mahan and the “New” Navy
• President of Naval War College (NWC)
• Feared “techno-centric” solutions
• Naval command as “art”
• Knowledge, skill, experience
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NWC “Conference Method”
Collaborative
“Sense Making”
• Evaluate plans
• Develop options
• Agree what to do
Psychological Safety
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“Estimate of the Situation”
• Fractal “command canvas”
• Flexible plans and orders
• Express “Commander’s Intent” &
Tell subordinates what not how
• Today called “Mission Command”
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Sims and ”Doctrine”
• Atlantic Fleet Torpedo Flotilla
• Commander in Europe, 1917
• Promulgated a Doctrine to
guide his subordinates…
What’s a doctrine?
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Doctrine is a set of Heuristics
• Daniel Kahneman:
Thinking Fast and Slow
• A heuristic is “a simple procedure
that helps find adequate, though
often imperfect, answers to
difficult questions.”
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Doctrine as Heuristics
• Doctrine is a pattern of decision-making
• It is “the set of implicit and explicit assumptions that
govern the behavior of an organization.”
• “It is what we fall back on when precise instructions
are unavailable.”
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Example Heuristics (Doctrine)
• Always Pair on the
JavaScript Objects
• Have a Script for
Every Release
• Talk through
challenges on a walk
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The U.S. Navy’s Approach
• Use collaborative sense-
making to explore
opportunities and plan
• Provide goals and objectives
to subordinates, allow them to
determine how to meet them
• Foster safe-to-fail
experimentation and
creativity of teams
• Create heuristics to help
solve challenging problems,
eschew rote solutions
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Use “Mission Command”
• Define what, not how
• Foster creativity within your teams
• Allow them to explore options and
identify new opportunities
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Perform Safe-to-Fail Experiments
• Allow variation between
and among teams
• Explore the problem
space more rapidly
• Respect context and
history
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Develop Doctrine/Heuristics not Processes
• Our work is “art” not ”science”
• Develop contextual patterns
• Exploit unforeseen opportunities
• Evolve more rapidly
