Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
US Department of Defense
(Retired August 3, 2011)
As the opening keynote speaker for the recent FOSE Conference and Exposition, General James Cartwright provided a great back-drop against which to judge the rest of the conference.
General Cartwright began his speech by reminding us that the United States has been actively “at war” for close to 10 years, now. This has been a very expensive proposition, of course, but during that period, we have also recognized that in a world of multi-national conglomerates and social media, the “Nation-state construct” takes on new meaning.
In 1969 we landed a man on the moon, and in the same year, we had the first transfer of packet data between two computers. While many of us are awed by the achievement of the former; 40 years later, it is the latter that currently has societies across the globe in the throes of revolution. The world is moving from an industrial society to an information society, and we all need to keep up. This process is causing the blurring between geographical, religious, cultural, and language boundaries.
The key to General Cartwright’s speech was the need for today’s knowledge workers to thrive in an ever-changing environment. Because today we have access to huge amounts of data on any given subject, we have to learn how to filter that data and make decisions. This can lead to making imperfect decisions, but my favorite quote from the general’s speech was, “Perfect information – late – is useless; paralysis will make your decisions irrelevant.” We have to learn to shed our perfectionism in preference to action and correction.
When taken in context with the rest of the conference, the speech offers a nice overview of the major challenges currently facing the US government:
- Big Data: Tons and tons of data, but decision makers struggle to gain concise and useful insight into this data.
- Cyber Security: As these international boundaries blur and change, the United States must protect itself and its citizens against nebulous and anonymous threats from around the world.
- Mobile capabilities: As mobile technology continues to improve, government agencies need to come to grips with this new technology.
- The resulting compromises that US citizens will have to make and negotiate with the government: privacy vs. security vs. convenience.
- Overcoming the stagnation of big bureaucracy: When leaders see the solutions and goals they have on the horizon, it can be nearly impossible to “bring the ship around” and point it in the right direction.
My take: Things move too fast in our ever-changing, new, information-based world to wait for the perfect answers all the time, but at the same time, we need to have a firm grasp on the solution we are seeking. Making those snap decisions in the heat of the moment is much easier when you can refer back to an over-arching mission and guiding principles.
