25 January 2020

Old to New: Accelerating the Velocity of Decision Advantage...

Trust Decisions in the innovation environment requires entrepreneurs, who are willing to risk their reputation and to build new cognitive bridges.

The vulnerability of solving new found problem-sets outside of your organizational safe zone, with a new set of people, is just the beginning.

As your new TEAM works side-by-side, through hours, weeks and months of tame dialogue, heated arguments and little sleep, the level of cultural trust quickly rises.

It does not matter if this occurs in a new business unit within the private sector, or out on the frontier in an austere world at the Forward Operating Base (FOB).

This place on the edge was created to be a strategic unit with tactical objectives.  Call it a "Skunkworks", an "Outpost" or some other clever xxWERX name.  It really does not matter.  Yet everyone knows that the core mission is still relatively unknown.

The reward becomes, that someone of significant rank, or a vital customer, who recognizes that the new idea, new prototype or new invention is truely a game changer.  An outlier.  A true "Decision Advantage".

Walking across that virtual bridge from the "Old" to the "New," from the normal to the abnormal or from the design of a market copy cat to a disruption market leader, is what this initiative is really all about.

So how do you do it?  In order to set the stage, you might start here:
Col. John Cogbill, chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Command, discusses how to leverage Silicon Valley's "secret sauce" to encourage the MacGyvers in your ranks.
The methods and the process are constantly evolving.  Yet the core thinking and the integration of the various cultures that synchronize together, in a proven innovation journey is the real mission.

A few months before Col. Cogbill's podcast, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published the 120+ page Independent Task Force Report #77, "Innovation and National Security - Keeping Our Edge.

What happens when you put a Task Force together with a combination of Special Operations Commanders, Venture Capitalists, Private Sector Leaders and Management Consultants?

"A new U.S. innovation strategy should be based on four pillars: funding, talent, technology adoption, and technology alliances and ecosystems. Action is required over the next five years." (TFR Innovation Strategy P. 17).

You will have to read the report in it's entirety to form your own thoughts and conclusions on what needs to happen in your own local ecosystem of innovation.

Yet, suffice it to say, the people on the "Task Force" understand the real challenges.  They know first hand the National Security threats.  They realize we all have to accelerate and simultaneously collaborate.

So how might you build some bridges this month from the "Old" to the "New"?

Why will your mission create a foundation to increase the velocity of your TrustDecisions to gain Decision Advantage...

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