The services have talked a lot about transformation but done little to accomplish it. The Navy and Marine Corps can get started by combining their forces into an experimental expeditionary force.
The George W. Bush administration's desire to transform the Department of Defense (DoD) has caused great consternation and resistance within the defense establishment. This should not surprise anyone who understands the difficulty of initiating and managing change in a large, bureaucratic organization. It is surprising, however, that senior leaders have failed to produce a clear vision—or even a compelling and comprehensible rationale—for transformation. They have merely expressed the concern that, because of dramatic increases in the speed and availability of information, the strategic environment has changed, and DoD must change with it or be condemned to fighting in conflicts it does not understand and, for which it is ill suited and ill prepared.
While this line of reasoning hardly can be refuted, it lacks sufficient substance, direction, and clarity to allow the services to provide transformational concepts and ideas. The services' transformation road maps and programs therein provide little in the way of anything militarily transformational. Instead, these consensus-based documents mostly contain the necessary wording (such as "this transformational program") to explain what essentially is a repackaging of existing programs or planning efforts, and incremental improvements in current capabilities.
The Naval Transformation Roadmap adds little to the capabilities of the Navy and Marine Corps that could be considered transformational. In some areas, current organizational functions simply are refocused or provided greater emphasis. In other areas, organizational objectives are worthy goals, but have little chance of being implemented. For the most part, the verbiage acknowledges the need to generate and sustain innovative processes, but does not indicate an implementation of institutional changes that will challenge old practices and encourage, nurture, and reward innovative ideas and actions.
The history of successful organizational transformation provides corroborating evidence that these road maps are not likely to result in substantive change. They do little to instill in the services a culture that values and is receptive to bold, new ideas. Studies of organizational change indicate that transformational or innovative ideas and concepts flow consistently only when imaginative thinking, astute risk taking, and collaborative practices are inherent in the culture. The focus should be on creating a cultural environment that incentivizes and rewards bold and imaginative operational concepts, seeks true experimentation where failure is expected and learned from, builds multiple iterations of many prototypes, and most important, understands that brainpower—not firepower—is the key to sustained competitive advantage.
A Changed Environment
In recent years, there have been two fundamental shifts in the strategic environment. Successful organizations have recognized and adapted to these changes, while the Defense Department has not. First is the recognition that a large-scale institutional transformation from the Industrial Age to the Information Age is under way. The primary business of organizations is the trade of knowledge. The primary means of production has shifted from capital assets to intellectual assets. Successful organizations are reducing layers of hierarchy to speed the flow of information and enable faster decision making. Some hierarchy is retained for setting strategy and vision, but the general operating structure is balanced by a team-based approach to performing the organization's work and outsourcing functions not core to the mission.
In contrast, DoD remains a highly centralized bureaucracy, characterized by hierarchical command-and-control structures that were created to field and operate the Industrial Age model of military force-on-force attrition warfare. This rigid structure stifles creativity, slows decision making, and inhibits the strategic advantage that is possible because of advances in networking of information and social systems.
With a shift to the primacy of information over industrial goods came a realization that information is inherent to an individual. An organization's collective knowledge is important, but individuals are largely responsible for the creation of new knowledge. Strategic advantage is achieved when an organization is able to integrate this new knowledge with the existing stock and then exploit new combinations. Not surprising, then, is the recent finding that the most important characteristic for an organization to sustain competitive advantage is the presence of dynamic, passionate, innately curious, creative, imaginative employees with an enterprising work style. In fact, the ability of an organization to employ such individuals was found to be more important than the organization's type of product or service, location, specific technologies, information networks, or any other characteristic commonly cited as leading to innovation.
Innovating organizations value such individuals above all other resources, recognizing that competitive advantage primarily lies in the effective use of their human resources. Organizations that seek out these enterprising employees also tend to adopt team-based organizing constructs and use strategic alliances, partnerships, and other collaborative practices. These employees are adept at using social and technological networks to gain information and ideas internal and external to the organization.
DoD has yet to realize that its means to sustain competitive advantage are its employees. Members of the military (and many civil servants) still are viewed as easily replaceable assets, routinely untapped for their creativity and misused with respect to their training. For example, it still is common practice for the military to assign a newly technically trained enlisted person to work in an unrelated and generally servile position. Moreover, the dynamic, innately curious, imaginative, creative nature of some members of the military at times has led to the early demise of their otherwise promising careers. Questioning of long-standing regulations or practices that have outlived their relevance still often leads to disapproval or reprimand. There is a need, however, for individuals to question rules, regulations, concepts, and doctrine that appear to be outdated, irrelevant, or ill advised. The solution will be found in a balance that ensures compliance with orders during conflicts, but also creates forums where bold and imaginative ideas are encouraged and then developed.
The second fundamental shift in the strategic environment is the increasing dynamism and complexity of our world. Corporate strategists recognize that the world's complexity and interconnectedness have made irrelevant any strategy that attempts to forecast much beyond three years. If we extend this logic to the military's strategic planning-and-acquisition cycle, we quickly can deduce the likely and unfortunate chain of events. The defense acquisition cycle is a detailed, bureaucratic, and political process measured in decades. Because this cycle is so lengthy, planners must make assumptions (generally without much empirical basis) about the future. Most likely, these assumptions will resemble only in small measure the reality that exists in 10 or 15 years. Therefore, platforms and systems will be only partially relevant to the strategic environment that exists at the time of their fielding.
The Defense Department no longer can afford this type of planning-and-procurement cycle, particularly in light of additional resource demands for homeland security. Tradeoffs between program desires and available resources must be addressed. Yet, this untenable process was not addressed in the road maps. In most cases, the reaction time from decision to development to acquisition to fielding must be reduced from decades to three to five years.
The Naval Transformation Roadmap does not go nearly far enough in creating a dynamic, enterprising culture. Missing are specific initiatives that will lead to new capabilities, such as teaching innovation and creative thinking to midshipmen, creating forums and mechanisms where the generation and refinement of bold ideas and operational concepts are continuous, and developing partnerships and alliances with industries outside DoD for experimentation, prototyping, and knowledge sharing.
Getting Started
There is great reluctance for our military organizations to embark on major changes—or even to act at all. Transformation decisions are complicated by the need to maintain both a capability for current security operations and a hedge capability for worst-case scenarios. We can begin by looking at how successful commercial organizations are transforming to excel in the Information Age, and how they develop strategies for calculated risk management.
Entrepreneurs or "rainmakers" often describe their thinking about the future strategic environment in terms of what general trends are discernible on the horizon that can be used now to develop foresight. Drawing inferences through analysis of current events and trends to conceive of new concepts, technologies, and major weapon systems is exactly how transformations within our military have occurred historically. This methodology requires imagination and exploration, and while ambiguous, uncertain, and uncomfortable, it is the way we will succeed.
For example, one discernible trend that can be used now to plan for the future is the shortage of qualified personnel. We know that the relative percentage of individuals entering college is rising, cutting ever deeper into the pool of eligible recruits. Because this trend will become more pronounced over time, we should be planning now to build all platforms and systems smaller and either unmanned or with minimal manning. We also can discern the trend of reduced forward basing rights. A smaller footprint ashore dictates greater reach-back capability. Therefore, we should adjust accordingly our technologies, strategies, and perception of the tooth-to-tail ratio.
The Naval Transformation Roadmap suggests three processes—Sea Warrior, Sea Trial, and Sea Enterprise—to adapt current strategies and tactics and to "ensure continuous innovation." The proposed plan to develop an innovative culture relies on improving existing programs with an applique of new technologies to improve personnel management efficiency and upgrade training. These initiatives undoubtedly will have some positive—although not transformational—effect. They will be ineffective in the long-term, however, because they will be based on what can be agreed to through consensus and exist within the framework of a highly centralized bureaucracy and rigid culture.
The Naval Transformation Roadmap needs a new organizational construct that complements a new breed of enterprising professionals, encouraging them toward an innovative culture. This new organizational construct should serve as the laboratory where these selectively recruited and trained sailors and Marines can develop and test bold and imaginative new ideas.
A Bold, New Alliance
The Naval Transformation Roadmap briefly discusses a desire to develop an expeditionary strike force, a concept that combines Navy strike capability to complement and support Marines embarked on amphibious ships. While the Navy plans to deploy two experimental strike groups in 2003, these groups are little more than coordinated deployments of aircraft carrier and amphibious groups—not a wholly integrated force that would serve as an enterprising laboratory to experiment and prototype. Why not go further and dedicate a portion of the operating forces, such as integrating a carrier battle group and an amphibious ready group into an experimental naval expeditionary force? Creating such an integrated experimental force would provide a true operational laboratory for Commander, Fleet Forces Command, and Navy Warfare Development Command to conduct innovative concept development, experimentation, and prototyping. Here, personnel, organizational, operational, and technological aspects can be addressed in real-world situations, without any accompanying detriment to readiness.
To enhance the possibilities for this type of force, it must have the direct and enthusiastic support of the Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant of the Marine Corps. It must be given dedicated and abundant resources, personnel with creative thinking skills and passion for their work, and a culture that encourages and incentivizes freedom to draft, create, experiment, and prototype new ideas and technologies with partners inside and outside the defense establishment. There are significant advantages to such an approach.
In the near term, the highly select group of recruits (the product of Sea Warrior) will be assigned to an organization that fosters a culture of innovation and recognizes the primacy of an individual's cognitive skills as the key to transformation. Following their tours in the expeditionary strike force, these sailors and Marines would cycle to other parts of the fleet, helping to spread and institutionalize this innovative mind-set and culture. Forces assigned would not be lost to operational commanders; they would serve as a vehicle for transformation while meeting real-world missions. Finally, a real operational force conducting real-world missions, and partnering with dynamic commercial industries, is the optimal environment for rapid prototyping—a prerequisite for compressing the acquisition cycle.
In the long term, combining Navy and Marine Corps forces will capitalize on the inherent synergy of a single team, producing a far more capable fighting force. It also will create the potential for tremendous efficiency gains by reducing and eliminating the redundant infrastructure necessary to support two separate organizations. This reduction in infrastructure—an implicit goal of Sea Enterprise—will offer a source of much-needed resources to fund our transformation efforts. Further economies can be realized to the extent forces incorporated into an expeditionary strike force can implement Sea Swap—maintaining ships forward and rotating people—or other more efficient force employment and deployment models of the "Horizon" concept, for example, career-long assignment and training within one fleet readiness center, community grouping and detailing, optimal crew rotation schemes, and increased education opportunities.
A totally integrated naval force could lead to tremendous improvements in combat efficiency stemming from consolidated hardware and software acquisition, combined doctrine production, common operational training, and the trust and teamwork that would result from training and deploying as one force. There would be a more combat capable combined arms force to provide tailored force packages for regional combatant commanders engaged in various warfighting and peacekeeping missions. This could be done without sacrificing the capability to surge additional forces on short notice. Also, totally integrated Navy and Marine Corps forces could form the core component of larger joint expeditionary forces.
Over time, this force could provide significant insights as to the efficiencies that can be realized through combining Navy and Marine Corps forces to form one force. Tremendous resource efficiencies and operational capability could be achieved if all Navy and Marine Corps forces were combined into one naval service. The efficiencies and savings in manpower, infrastructure, logistics, and acquisition costs could be achieved if there were no longer a requirement to sustain two separate maritime expeditionary forces within the Department of the Navy.
Combining Navy and Marine Corps forces is only one way of forming alliances and partnerships to achieve strategic advantage. Greater opportunities for successful idea and product development exist outside the institutional boundaries of DoD. For instance, the military could learn a great deal from the film and entertainment industry's imaginative computer graphics and simulations experts, the financial and telecommunication industry's attempts to ensure identity and computer security, and the recent successes of toy companies in engineering microrobotics. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, many entrepreneurs voiced their willingness to help military forces in their pursuit of ideas and technologies to be used for defensive or nation-building purposes. The defense establishment should aggressively seek out partnerships with such creative entities as a way to achieve not only strategic advantage, but also to help build understanding and support between the civilian and military communities.
Conclusion
Organizations that succeed over the long term have learned to overcome the inertia of success by continually searching for opportunities, repositioning themselves in the changing strategic environment, and looking for partners and alliances to extend their strategic reach. The Navy can follow this path by providing the ability to question prevailing rules, concepts, and doctrine, to operate decentralized and collaboratively in teams, partnerships, and alliances, and to fail without stigma. These efforts will have a better chance at achieving something truly transformational than the stated attempts in the Navy Roadmap.
Combining the Navy and Marine Corps should be among the larger debates, with service parochialism and paradigms set aside to achieve the tremendous synergy enabled by the Information Age. Creation of an experimental naval expeditionary force should be but the first step in combining, partnering, and allying with organizations that might enhance our military's competitive advantage. An integrated experimental naval expeditionary force could be the jumpstart to our transformed naval service.
Dr. Graham is Director, Innovation Studies, and Mr. Willis is Vice President, Strategic Planning at ISI Anteon.