Think Big

A weird tango rhythm is going through my mind this morning, since that is what I was listening to at the Argentine Embassy last night, a fundraiser on a sweltering night just off Dupont Circle . The featured dancer was a woman of intense dark aspect. She wore a black dress with straps rimmed in gold, and a plunging neckline. It had no back, none whatsoever. It was cut so low that something that hinted of her thong was visible. He had long hair, and a languorous look of great sadness. Perhaps she only danced with him, I thought.

It would fit with the neighborhood. Dupont is Washington ‘s most eclectic neighborhood anyway, the heart of the alternate lifestyle and the collision of the lesser embassies. The big ones- France and Britain and the like- are on compounds off Wisconsin Avenue in the northwest.

The other hundred or so are scattered in an archipelago of former mansions that ends in Kalorama, north of the Circle.

In this embassy, the representatives of the various juntas looking down from their official portraits on the wall in the ballroom at the women in their black dresses and the men looking awkward, well….it was another of those Washington interludes. It was enough to make on want to think big, step forward and offer a hand to the lady…

Juntas and homosexuals, fashion and passion. That is what this neighborhood is about. And in the heat that has gripped us in July, it is about sweat.

I had been at the Ritz-Carlton earlier in the day, before the long discussion with my cab-driver on the way downtown. he was Pakistani, of course, and we talked about Mohammed Jinnah and the Muslim League and the bad deal he took with the British on Partition. The Green Line of demarcation was not complete. Jinnah should have waited, he said. He should have thought the Big Thought, and insisted on a better deal. But the new Army was already impatient, and Jinnah wanted to be known as the father of his country.

My cabbie shook his head. He had just returned from a visit home, he said, and he was not yet able to clear his mind of life there. He got a little turned around trying to find New Hampshire Avenue northeast of the Circle, but in the end, we found the graceful disintegrating mansion that, within the iron fence, is Argentine soil.

The Ritz-Carlton is the furthest thing from disintegration. It is the closest nice place to Fort Pentagon , and that is as close as an un-cleared person can park. So it was a logical place for the industry luncheon.

Everyone important was doing something else, so I was the corporate representative. The speaker was MG Dale Meyerrose, USAF, and I can use his name because this luncheon was “on the record,” and open to the media. The General is about to be someone very important to us, and will influence the spending many tax dollars.

I want to help him do that.

Dale is currently filling two jobs at the Command in Colorado responsible for military support to dual-hatted as Director of C2 Systems and as Director of Architectures and Integration at the United States Northern Command in Colorado Springs . He is a trim and self-deprecating officer. he looks good in the sky-blue uniform, and he wears the old-style one, not the unfortunate airline-pilots tunic that was forced on the service after the first Gulf War.

He has sandy hair and clear, open eyes. He is very good at what he does, and thus he rose to a position of eminence in a service dominated by fighter pilots. He is a visionary.

He had reported to Colorado Springs in June of 2000, expected to direct Communications and Information Technology for the Space Command. After 9/11, he found himself confronted with an abrupt change in mission. The Command shed space and information warfare as mission areas and assumed the new Unified Command Plan mission of Homeland Security.

There was an enormous challenge in opening up networks and information sharing capabilities with hundreds of state and local officials charged with First Response missions, and extensive liaison responsibilities with the newly-established Department of Homeland Security.

His energy and intellect enabled him to have great success in a most challenging mission. Expecting to retire at the end of his tour at NORTHCOM, the General found himself being considered for a follow-on active tour as the Chief Information Officer for newly established Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

I expressed the Company’s best wishes on that account when I was able to buttonhole him near the door, waiting for the concerned citizens in the expensive suits to gather at their round tables.

We commiserated on the difficulty of the background checks and confirmation process, which his family is finding intrusive. The Executive Office of the President has not formally announced his promotion, and the General was consequently circumspect in his remarks about what he might do as the officer charged with unifying the fifteen fractious members of the Intelligence Community from an IT and information sharing perspective.

He told me he would tailor his remarks in a way that would be applicable to the new job without attribution.

We chatted with the attractive blonde woman who heads Government Affairs for defense behemoth Lockheed-Martin Information Technology. She has an extraordinarily broad portfolio in their Government Affairs Officer at Crystal City 2- as she said, she has everything that is “not a platform.” That forces her to take the long view, and think big.

I took her words to mean that she was responsible for everything that was not the F-22 Raptor or the Joint Strike Fighter, and I was impressed.

In the idle chit-chat over crab-cakes and before the speech, I discovered that she has a husband and a house in Fairfax Station, a 10 golf handicap, and a membership at the Fairfax Country Club. The Women’s Championship is this weekend and she looks to place well, but wants to win.

The initiation fee at the club is $57,000. She had no comment on dues, which I doubt I could afford. Lock-Mart has over a hundred-fifty in their government affairs shop.

General Meyerrose is a visionary, and a paradigm-breaker. If he has detractors, they are among those who think that in his paradigm-breaking approach to information, he does not appreciate the power of the planning process. He says that his critics are wrong. He believes that the planning process is the highest form of the preparatory art. Without drill and consideration of the “what-ifs” no organization can be considered to be prepared.

But he is also equally blunt about the fact that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” and that only the agile and aware will survive.

His one-liners and quips served to underline and profound appreciation of the challenge to information technology professionals. His basic three thoughts to frame the speech were:

    1.    Culture and disruption will be the agents of transformation. The ability of an organization to adapt to disruptive technology will determine its chances of survival.
    2.    Every current technology is transitional and will be replaced. Every one. Every manager should think of every decision they make as having a shelf-life. There are no eternal truths. We should always consider “How long is this decision good for?” as part of the equation.
    3.    Any technology that provides a capability poses a risk. To deny a capability because it might have risk is to accept defeat.

The General said the disruptive technology that will transform the world is already here. We simply do no have the ability to visualize the implications of what already exists. He specifically referenced nanotechnology as one of the candidates for the instrument of changing the world we know into the world of tomorrow. 

He described the challenges of dealing with culture as being the most problematic. “Technology is no problem,” he said. “We can deal with that. What we have a problem dealing with is Policy and institutional culture.” He listed the key factors that prevent effective sharing of information across organizations as: Culture, Control, Ownership, Risk and Liability.

He smiled at the audience and said he was not surprised that technical capabilities didn’t even make the tops five issues. Policy and culture are the keys to change.

Dale Meyerrose may be the most experienced IT professional on active duty, and he is unquestionably the man to take on the fragmented intelligence community. He believes that the all successful organizations share the following virtues: they nurture people, have solid values, produce something of worth, have a plan, and can adapt.

He will be taking on one of the most entrenched multiple bureaucracies in the world, moated and walled behind cultures that go back to 1947, and the drafting of the national security policy of containment. But he has taken on considerable cultural challenges before. As he observed, “Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast” was how he succeeded at NORTHCOM, and that is the working title of his book on the experience.

It will remain to be seen if Gen. Meyerrose can successfully impose his will on the likes of NSA, DIA, NRO and CIA. They will be implacable foes. But if he cannot bend them to his will, it will not be from a failure to plan, or from his inability to adapt at the point of attack.

After the speech, I mentioned to the General that we would be happy to support him any way that we can. He thanked me for our interest and concern in National Security, and I bade him farewell.

Outside, it was so hot that my shirt was drenched long before I made it to the car. Someone had bombed something in London , again. It was too soon to know what it meant, but it appeared that the war was continuing.

I tend to drive everywhere these days. After all, someone out there is thinking big.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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