OODA

6 years, 10 months ago

Hurricanes and an Architecture for Process

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The idea for this post came from a previous post on this blog regarding enterprise architecture and religious organizations.

Definitions or Definitional Taxonomies

There are three definitions that are needed to understand this post; the definition of Architecture, process using the OODA Loop, and the Hierarchy of Knowledge.  These are somewhat personnel definitions and you may interpolate them into your model universe.

Architecture

Architecture—A functional design of a product, system, or service incorporating all the “must-do” and “must-meet” requirements for that product, system, or service.

OODA Loop

All processes supporting the mission, strategies, or infrastructure of any organization fall into the OODA model of Col. John Boyd.  The OODA, as discussed in several previous posts includes four steps: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.  I will discuss this shortly (below) using the example of the prediction of a hurricane.

A Taxonomy for the Hierarchy of Knowledge

I defined the following taxonomy of knowledge based on much reading and some thinking.  I will demonstrate what I mean for each definition by using it in the appropriate place in my example of the hurricane prediction.
Datum—some observation about the Universe at a particular point in four dimensions

Data—a set consistent datum

Information—patterns abstracted from the data.

Knowledge—identified or abstracted patterns in the information.

Wisdom—is the understanding of the consequences of the application of knowledge

Process Architecture and Forecasting Hurricanes

Since the process for predicting or forecasting hurricanes is most likely to be familiar to anyone watching weather on TV, it is the best example I can think of to illustrate how the OODA Loop process architecture works with the taxonomy of knowledge.

Observe

Initially, data is gathered by observing some aspect of the current state of the Universe.  This includes data about the results of their previous actions.  In point of fact,

Datum—some observation about the Universe at a particular point in four dimensions

Data—a set consistent datum

Obviously observations of current temperature, pressure, humidity, and so on, are basic to making weather forecasts, like the prediction of a hurricane.  And each observation requires latitude, longitude, height above sea level, and the exact time to be useful. So one datum, or data point would include, temperature, latitude, longitude, height, and time.

When the temperature is measured at many latitudes and longitudes concurrently, it produces a set of temperature data.  If other weather measurement, like pressure and humidity, are taken at the same locations at the same time, then you have several data sets with which to make a forecast (or a composite weather data set for a particular time).  Because this is a recurrent measurement process, the weather folk continue to build a successively larger composite weather data set.  But large data sets don’t make a forecast of a hurricane.

Orient

The Orient step in the process is inserting the new data into an individual’s model of how the world (Universe) works (descriptive) or should work (prescriptive).  These models are sometimes called paradigms.  Rules from Governance enable and support the Orient step, by structuring the data within the individual’s or organization’s model.  Sometimes these model or paradigms stick around far after they have demonstrated to be defective, wrong, or in conflict with most data and other information.  An example would be the model of the Universe of the Flat Earth society.

Information—patterns abstracted from the data.  This is the start of orienting the observations, the data and information.  Pattern analysis, based on the current model converts data into information is derived from the organization’s model of its environment or Universe.  For hurricane forecasting this would mean looking for centers of low pressure within the data.  It would also include identifying areas with high water temperatures in the temperature data, areas of high humidity, and so on.  This and other abstractions from the data provide the information on which to base a forecast.  But it is still not the prediction of a hurricane.

Knowledge—identified, combined, or abstracted patterns in the information.  Using the same paradigm, environmental model, or model Universe, people analyze and abstract patterns within the information.  This is their knowledge within the paradigm.  In weather forecasting the weather personnel uses the current paradigms (or information structures) to combine and abstract the knowledge that a hurricane is developing.

When they can’t fit information into their model, they often discard as aberrant, an outlier, or as an anomaly.  When enough information doesn’t conveniently fit into their model the adherents have a crisis.  In science, at least, this is the point of a paradigm shift.  And this is what has happened to weather forecasting models over the past one hundred and fifty years.  The result is that the forecasting has gotten much better, though people still complain when a storm moves off its track by fifty miles and causes unforecast wind, rain, and snow events.

Decide

Once the organization or individual has the knowledge, he or she uses input their knowledge within their models of the Universe to make decisions.

Wisdom—is the understanding of the consequences of the application of knowledge. 

This is the hard part of the OODA Loop because it’s difficult to understand both the consequences and the unintended consequences of a decision.  If your paradigm, environment, or Universe model is good, or relatively complete, then you’re more likely to make a good decision.  More frequently than not people make decisions that are “Short term smart and long term dumb.” 

Part of the reason is that they are working with a poor, incomplete or just plain wrong paradigm (view of the world or universe).  This is where the Risk/Reward balance comes in.  When choosing a path forward, what are the risks and rewards with each path?  [Sidebar:  A risk is an unknown and it is wise to understand that “you don’t know what you don’t know”.]  For weather forecasters it’s whether or not to issue a forecast for a hurricane.  To ameliorate the risk that the are wrong, weather forecasters have invented a two part type of forecast, a hurricane watch and a hurricane warning. [Sidebar: It’s split more by giving a tropical storm watch and warning.]

The reason for this warning hierarchy is that the weather forecasters and services are wise enough to know the public’s reaction to warnings that don’t pan out and lack of warnings that do; they understand the risks.  So when they give a hurricane warning, they are fairly sure that the area they have given the warning for will be the area affected by the hurricane.

Act

Once the decision is made people act on those decisions by planning a mission, strategies, and so on within their paradigm.

For governments and utilities in the U.S. this means putting preplanned hurricane preparations into effect.  For people this generally means boarding up the house, stocking up on food, water, and other essentials or packing and leaving.  And for the drunk beach comber this means grabbing the beers out of the frig, and either heading to the hills or back to the beach to watch the show.

Programmed and Unprogrammed Processes

In the 1980s I wrote a number of articles on process types.  After doing much research and much observation, I came to the obvious conclusion that there are two types of processes, Programmed, and those that I will call Unprogrammed and which includes design, discovery, and creative processes. [Sidebar: These three sub-types differ in that design processes start from a set of implicit or explicit customer requirements, discovery processes start from inconsistencies in data or in thinking and modeling the data, and creative really have no clear foundation and tend to be intuitive, chaotic, and apparently random.] 

Programmed Processes

Programmed processes are a set of repeatable activities leading to a nearly certain outcome.  Almost all processes are of this type.  The classic example is automobile manufacturing and assembly.  Since they are repeatable how does the process architecture model apply?
The short answer is to keep them repeatable and to increase their cost efficiency (that is making them less expensive in terms of time and money to create the same outcome).

Keeping Programmed Processes Rolling

To keep your truck or car operating requires maintenance.  How much and when is an OODA Loop process.  For example, you really should check your tires, both for wear and pressure regularly; otherwise the process of driving can become far too exciting.  So you are in the “observe” step.
As the tires wear out or lose pressure too often, the data set becomes information triggering the “orient” step in the process.  At this point a driver starts to gather data on which tires are wearing fastest and where on the tire they are wearing.  This last point may indicate that tire rotation is all that’s needed.
Based on this data our driver models the information (using the computer between his or her ears) to determine how much longer it’s safe to drive on the tires.  Based on results of that model, the driver will “decide” to buy tires, rotate tires, or wait a little longer.  [Sidebar: Actually, many drivers will go through the buy/wait decision based on additional data, the cost of new tires, and their budget.]  The driver will then “act” on the decision, either get new tires or wait (which is really an action).
The point here is that like everything else in our Universe, over time, everything breaks down; so repeatable processes require an OODA Loop process to maintain them.

More Cost Efficient

However, the OODA Loop process architecture elucidated here is important for programmed processes for another reason.  For repeatable processes the key OODA process is always how to make the faster, cheaper, or making a higher quality product at the same or lower price, and producing it in the same or less time.
This is famously what Adam Smith described in his pin example in the first chapter of “The Wealth of Nations”. By creating an assembly line process that he called “the division of labour”, he demonstrated that the same number of workers produce hundreds of more pins.  He went on to describe that each worker might now invent (or innovate, that is, refine or enhance) tools for that worker’s job. [Sidebar: Henry Ford went on to prove this in spades or should I say Model-T’s.]  [Sidebar: To me the worker’s inventing or innovating tools to help them in their job is quite interesting and often missed.  Tools are process or productivity multipliers.  In the military they are called force multipliers; you always want your enemy to bring a knife to your gunfight, because a rifle multiplies your force.  Likewise, the tooling in manufacturing can increase the quality of the product, the uniformity of what is produced, while reducing the cost and time to produce…fairly obvious.]
Both the “division of labour” and the creation of tooling require the use of the Architectural OODA Loop, which means that increasing the cost efficiency of manufacturing uses the OODA Loop with the knowledge taxonomy.

Unprogrammed Process

Unprogrammed processes have stochastic (creative and unplanned activities within them).  There are really three sub-types of unprogrammed processes, design, discovery, and creative. The key differences between the design, discovery, and creative processes are the whether the process has customer requirements driven and what the requirements are.

Design

The design process has customer requirements.  [Sidebar: As I’m using it, the design process also includes custom development, implementation, and manufacturing.]  It uses a semi-planned process, that is, program or project planning creates a plan to meet the objectives, but with latitude for alternative activities because there is significant risk.  The actual design activities within the programmed process are stochastic, from a program management perspective.  That is, the creative element of these activities makes less predictable, and therefore with programmatic risk with respect to cost and schedule.  Therefore, program management must use (some form or) the OODA architecture to manage the program or project.
The stochastic activities are themselves OODA Loop processes.  The designers have to identify (observe) detailed data of the functions they are attempting to create (the “must do” requirements), while working to the specifications (the”must meet” requirements) for the product, system, or service.  The designers then have to “orient” these (creating a functional design or architecture for the function), “decide” which of several alternate proposed designs is “the best”. Finally, they “act” on the decision.

Discovery

The requirements for research, risk reduction, and root cause analysis are generally unclear and may be close to non-existent.  One of my favorite research examples, because it’s well known, and because it so clearly proves the point is the Wright Brothers researching and developing the aircraft.  In 1898 the brothers started their research efforts.  Starting with data and information then publicly available they built a series of kites. With each kite, they collected additional data and new types of data.  They then used this to reorient their thinking and their potential design for the next kite.  They found so many problems with the existing data that they created the wind tunnel to create their own data sets on which to base their next set of designs.  By the end of 1902 they had created a glider capable of controllable manned flight and by 1903 they created the powered glider known as the Wright Flyer.  It took them at least two more cycles of the OODA Loop to develop a commercially useful aircraft.
Risk reduction also uses the OODA Loop.  A risk is an unknown.  It requires some type of research to convert the unknown into a known.  There are four alternative.  First, the project/research team must decide whether or not to simply “accept” the risk. Many times the team orients the observed risk in a risk/reward model and accepts the risk.  However, another to orient is to determine if there is knowledge or knowledgeable people to convert the unknown into a known. So “transferring” the risk is one way to reduce the risk.  A second method is to “avoid” the risk.  This means redesigning the product, system, or service, or changing the method for achieving the goal or target.  The final way is to “mitigate” the risk.  This is nothing short of or more than creating a research project (see above) to convert the unknown into a Known.
Likewise, root cause analysis is a research effort.  However, the target of this analysis is to identify why some function or component is not working the way it is supposed to work.  Again, its observing the problem or issue, that is gathering data, orienting it through modeling the functions based on the data, deciding what the cause is or causes are for the problem and how to “fix” the problem, and then acting on the decision.  Sound a whole lot like the OODA Loop.

Creative

Creative processes like theory building (both through extrapolation and interpolation), and those of the “fine arts” that come from emotions also use the Architecture of Process defined in this post.  For some theories and all fine arts, “the requirements” come from emotion, based on an intuitive belief structure [Sidebar: a religious structure, see my post on architecture of religion].  This intuitive structure provides “the data, information, and knowledge” on which the creativity builds.
However, for scientific theories, at least, they are sometimes based on inconsistencies in the results of the current paradigm.  The theorist attempts to define a new structure that will account for these aberrant data.

Why make a Deal about the Obvious?

To many it might seem that I’m making a big deal about what is obvious.  If it is the case, why hasn’t it been inculcated into enterprise architecture and used in the construction and refinement of processes and tooling to support the charter, mission, objective, strategies and tactics of all organizations?  Using formal architectural models like the architecture for process, presented in this post, will enable the enterprise architects to “orient” their data and information more clearly making Enterprise Architecture that much more valuable.
6 years, 10 months ago

Hurricanes and an Architecture for Process

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The idea for this post came from a previous post on this blog regarding enterprise architecture and religious organizations.Definitions or Definitional TaxonomiesThere are three definitions that are needed to understand this post; the definition of Arc…

6 years, 10 months ago

Organizational Economics and the Enterprise Architecture of a Religious Organization

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The Question

A reader of my blog, who is a minister in the Methodist Church, commented on one of my posts, (this is my paraphrase of the question)”How do you measure the benefits of a religious organization, like a local church?”  Or, “How would I apply Enterprise Architecture to religious organization”, since I posit that all organizations can benefit from Enterprise Architecture, as I’ve discussed in several previous posts.
This post is written with a slant toward the Methodist tradition, of which I am a part, but will apply equally well to all religious organizations.

An Organization’s Enterprise Architecture

Within Organizational Economics, any organization’s Enterprise Architecture has three sub-components, Mission, Governance, and infrastructure.
·         Mission: What the organization is supposed to do; it’s goal, target, or objective.
·         Governance: Within what parameters or rules it can perform its mission.
·         Infrastructure: What personnel, intellectual, physical, and financial support it has for achieving its mission.
To support the Missionof an organization, its leadership chooses Strategies(approaches or plans) for going from where it is to where it wants to be.  It implements these strategies using tactics, plans that account for the organization’s Governance and Infrastructure (its rules and talents/abilities/support).  Management then executes the tactics in operations(the actions of the organization).  The operations have two components, processes and tooling.
Additionally, the leadership and management of the organization is responsible for legislating, enforcing, and adjudicating some or all of the laws, rules, and/or regulations the make up the organization’s Governance.  [Sidebar: For an individual Methodist churches this would be called Administration.]
Finally, the organization must provide for its Infrastructure, “the tools and talents” it needs to perform the operations.  These tools include financial, physical, and intellectual.  For a religious organization this would be the money, time, talents of the adherents and the buildings, property and assets of the organization.

Processes and the OODA Loop

All processessupporting the mission or infrastructure of any organization fall into the OODA model of Col. John Boyd.  The OODA, as discussed in several previous posts includes four step: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.

Observe

Initially, data is gathered by observing some aspect of the current state of the Universe.  This includes data about the results of their previous actions.  In point of fact,
Datum—some observation about the Universe at a particular point in four dimensions
Data—a set consistent datum

Orient

The Orient step in the process is an individual’s model of how the world (Universe) works (descriptive) or should work (prescriptive).  These models are sometimes called paradigms. 
Rules from Governance enable and support the Orient step, by structuring the data within the individual’s or organization’s model.
Information—patterns abstracted from the data.  This is the start of orienting the observations, the data and information.  The pattern analysis to convert data into information is derived from the organization’s model of its environment or Universe.  For religious organizations this is found in its “bible” and its organizationally related texts like the “Book of Discipline” of the Methodist Church.
Knowledge—identified or abstracted patterns in the information.  Using the same paradigm, environmental model, or model Universe, people analyze and abstract patterns within the information.  This is their knowledge within the paradigm.  When they can’t fit information into their model, they often discard as aberrant, an outlier, or as an anomaly.  When enough information doesn’t conveniently fit into their model the adherents have a crisis.  In science, at least, this is the point of a paradigm shift.  In religion this is a reformation (the reforming of the “bible” and/or the “book of discipline”, that is the rules of governance.  While in science some conservative adherents to the old model lose their reputations after a time, in religion people on both sides of the model’s discontinuity lose their lives.

Decide

Once the organization or individual has the knowledge, he or she uses input their knowledge within their models of the Universe to make decisions.
Wisdom—is the understanding of the consequences of the application of knowledge.  
This is the hard part of the OODA Loop because it’s difficult to understand both the consequences and the unintended consequences of a decision.  If your paradigm, environment, or Universe model is good, or relatively complete, then you’re more likely to make a good decision.  More frequently than not people, even religious people, make decisions that are “Short term smart and long term dumb.”  Part of the reason is that they are working with a poor, incomplete or just plain wrong paradigm (view of the world or universe).  This is where the Risk/Reward balance comes in.  When choosing a path forward, what are the risks and rewards with each path?  [Sidebar:  A risk is an unknown and it is wise to understand that “you don’t know what you don’t know”.]

Act

Once the decision is made people act on those decisions by planning a mission, strategies, and so on within their paradigm.

Religious Organization’s Orienting Model

Joseph Campbell’s four categories of functions of religions: include: the metaphysical, the cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical.  While there may be much quibbling with some of what Mr. Campbell writes, the four functions of religion (and perhaps culture) ring true.

The Metaphysical Function

Awakening a sense of awe before the mystery of being
“According to Campbell, the absolute mystery of life, what he called transcendent reality, cannot be captured directly in words or images. Symbols and mythic metaphors on the other hand point outside themselves and into that reality. They are what Campbell called “being statements” and their enactment through ritual can give to the participant a sense of that ultimate mystery as an experience. ‘Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion…. The first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is.’”
This is truly the “religious function of the four; the other three tending to be more cultural than religious.

The Cosmological Function

Explaining the shape of the universe
“For pre-modern societies, myth also functioned as a proto-science, offering explanations for the physical phenomena that surrounded and affected their lives, such as the change of seasons and the life cycles of animals and plants.”
While there still is much proto-science, science is serving the cosmological function in today’s culture and has identified many patterns in information and knowledge, and clarified many previously fuzzy concepts and theories.  Still, at this time, religion plays a significant role in many “ultimate” questions.  These include: What was there before the Big Bang (if there was one), what architected “the laws” of the Universe (e.g., the speed of light), why am I here, and what happens to me after I lose consciousness in the process of dying?

The Sociological Function

Validate and support the existing social order
“Ancient societies had to conform to an existing social order if they were to survive at all. This is because they evolved under “pressure” from necessities much more intense than the ones encountered in our modern world. Mythology confirmed that order, and enforced it by reflecting it into the stories themselves, often describing how the order arrived from divine intervention. Campbell often referred to these “conformity” myths as the “Right Hand Path” to reflect the brain’s left hemisphere’s abilities for logic, order and linearity. Together with these myths however, he observed the existence of the “Left Hand Path”, mythic patterns like the “Hero’s Journey” which are revolutionary in character in that they demand from the individual a surpassing of social norms and sometimes even of morality.”
More than any other the sociological function of religions leads to culture, to cultural conflict, and religious wars.  This is the key reason for the incessant wars among the three great monotheistic religions—especially when “the authorities” in each want to hold the political power that comes with the cosmological function (the function of how the Universe and God work).

The Pedagogical Function

Guide the individual through the stages of life
“As a person goes through life, many psychological challenges will be encountered. Myth may serve as a guide for successful passage through the stages of one’s life.”
Within the context of a given combined metaphysical, cosmological, and sociological model or paradigm, teaching the paradigm becomes important so that members of the organization can navigate in an orderly manner through the model.  Order reduces risk and increases cost efficiency, while creativity increases risk but may increase effectiveness.  All religious/cultural models work to decrease risk for its adherents and teaching the adherents the cultural behaviors is seminally important for the religious organization to last.

The Methodist Denomination; an Example

All religions create prescriptive paradigm or orienting model that include all four functions (or dimensions) as discussed by Campbell.
All religious orienting models are based on religious authority; either priests, shaman, etc., “Holy” texts, or both.

The Catholic Church before 1500

The Catholic Church before Luther and the Reformation and before Guttenberg and printing used both written text and Clerical Authority, with the latter being far more important.  Clerical Authority caused the burning and killing of the faculty or the library and museum (university) at Alexandria, the extermination of the Templers, the near extermination of the Huguenots, and Inquisitions killed hundreds of people and attempted to rewrite science (see the biographies of Galileo, Copernicus and others).  A big part of this was that the Catholic Church’s hierarchy believed their paradigm that they were the final authority on knowledge and wisdom.  They’re model included an Earth centered Universe with the Pope or Jerusalem at the very center.  This meant that they were always right and competing models damned the heretics to Hell.  To this was added a major dose of politics; e.g., “The ends justifies the means” inferred to the Jesuits.    

Strategies (Based on the Christian Protestant Paradigm)

Enter, initially, Luther and Guttenberg.  In 1455 Guttenberg has perfected the printing press and began to print the Bible so that by 1500 there were a comparatively large number floating around, as well as many other books with both ancient and “modern” ideas.  In 1507, Professor Dr. Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy, saying that the scriptures, not the Pope and his minions held the core to the Christian paradigm or prescriptive model of how the Universe should work and that all people should be allowed to read these and interpret them for themselves.  This change or shift in strategy was greatly facilitated by the increasing number of printed scriptures.
This meant that people had to learn to read, which meant they learned to write.  The ability to write meant that many more people had the ability to express concepts, ideas, and theories across space and time.  Learning was not just for the clerics and clergy.
One consequence for the Catholic Church was that science took on the cosmological functions, reducing the church hierarchy’s political authority.  Another was the increased risk of “Christians” against “Christians”.  And finally there was the blossoming of intellectual and economic wealth; since knowledge is the root of all wealth.

John Wesley, Adam Smith, and the United States

In 1783, John Wesley had his epiphany; he called it his “heart-warming” experience.  He continued his work among the poor and ostracized, attempting to bring them into the church.  These people had been tenet farmers and owners and workers in “cottage industry” manufacturing that supported the farmers and the estates on which they worked.  These people were being displaced by the new and very controversial mass production using powered tools; that is, the nascent industrial revolution of the early and middle 1700s. 
These people migrated to towns and cities in search of work.  Many that migrated had no skills that were needed in the new industrial economy.  With the debtor laws then in place, they ended up in prison or worse.  By 1811, the displaced workers formed radical groups, called Luddites, who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs; which the machines were.  These were the people that Wesley sought out and these were the people he reached.
As his “cult”, the Methodists, continued to grow, he a) had to have help; additional “clergy” to preach, teach, and comfort the cultists, b) these people needed to read but many couldn’t, and c) most of the rest of the very early Methodists couldn’t either.  Wesley set about educating his clergy and many of the cult members by teaching them to read.  In turn, reading and other skills taught in Sunday school were used by these “Methodists” to compete for jobs and to become entrepreneurs in their own right; that is, the Church of disciplined learning, demonstrated that there was a “Method” to John Wesley’s heretical madness. The Methodist Sunday School (A real school teaching reading, riting, and rithmtic) enabled Methodists to compete for better paying jobs and join the “Middle Class”.  This follows Wesley’s admonition, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can”.  This is really the credo for the knowledge-based Enlightened Capitalism as espoused by Adam Smith.
As espoused by Smith, Enlightened Capitalism is really about ensuring that there is an even economic and regulatory platform for all individuals to start from; no one individual being favored in an economic or political sense or even perceived as such.  This means that all individuals feel they have a chance to succeed to the full measure of their God (or nature) given talents.
In 1789, the framers of the United States Constitution used many of the concepts from the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.  These include:
·         Defense of the country
·         Support of the country’s infrastructure through creation and maintenance of standards that cross state boundaries and support of intra-country communications.
Everything else was left to the states and the people.  The Methodist church and other religious organizations noticed there was a need for, what is now called, “a social safety net”.  This was initially for its members.  So they constructed and supported hospitals, orphanages, old folks’ homes, and so on.  Many of the most prestigious hospitals still include the name of a domination or religious organization.  Many modest sized towns ended up with a Catholic and a Protestant hospital, while cities might have two or three of each plus a Jewish hospital.
In the 1880s and 90s, most Christian churches recognized the need for kids to have physical activity, since fewer of them were “working the farm”.  So, along with Sunday School to teach them to read, the churches built gyms for them to play in.

The Changed Mission

Politically correct, social liberal cultists in the Methodist denomination have turned the strategies of this denomination from a focus on religious activities to forcing societal change through political action (tactics).  They no longer give any weight to the other religious functions discussed by Campbell.
In my opinion, in doing so, they have lost focus.  The consequence is that young adults (gen X and Y) see no difference between the Methodist Church and the Democratic or socialist parties, other than possibly this is the organization to belong to, if you want to earn your way into heaven, (but more about Heaven and Hell in my other blog).  So they see no reason to join the Methodist Church.  Those that are looking for a religious organization head to fundamentalist churches, even religious cults, like James Jones’ Jonestown.  But defining social injustice is even harder and religious organizations have three other functions.  “Wicked Clowns lives matter” is an organization for “social justice”, but does that serve all four functions of a religion?
Remember while “Social Justice” is easy to proclaim, it’s hard to remember the individual as embodied in the song “Easy To Be Hard”
Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needy friend
I need a friend

Choosing a Mission, the Governance, and Infrastructure to Support a Religious Institution

The Three Great Principles

For a Christian church community any mission should be founded on the three great principles of Christianity. 
·         Love and respect God no matter what
·         Treat all others as you would want to be treated
·         Try to be your ownself at your very best all the time.
The first, in the Christian Bible is that, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”  If a religious institution forgets this principle, it is no longer a religious organization, but possibly a civic or political one.  Additionally, from any serious reading of history, it is the principle all people find most difficult to inculcate into their being and also the one that has caused more wars and more massacres than any other.  The reason is that many religions believe they have a lock on God will and how to please him/her/it.  Their mighty God has given them the right to enslave or kill anyone that espouses any variation from their orthodoxy.  This is true of all closed religions.
However, any Christian denomination must have this as their chief goal and guiding principle.
“The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  This is the chief principle of all civic and political organizations, as well as a secondary principle of religious organizations (at least this is what most religious organizations espouse).  This principle is the basis for all laws internal to a culture.  Most people, even those espousing religion, follow the law rather than inculcating the principle into their lives.  My mother said most followers of a particular Christian domination followed the principle of “sowing their wild oats six days a week and praying for a drought on Sunday.”  Hundreds of laws are needed to ensure that not too many “wild oats” are sown.
There is a significant problem with “loving your neighbor as yourself” and that is, many (most) people hate themselves in one way or another.  This may be caused by poor brain wiring, by bad experiences, or both.  This is the reason that I include the third principle.  People, especially young people, try to distance themselves by drink and drugs, and destruction of anything that might be beautiful. Why; because they can’t stand or understand themselves and act out on those feelings.  That is, “I’m entitled and if I can’t…then I’m being disrespected.”
So any local church mission statement must include teaching “my own self at my very best all the time.” (Which is impossible for any human but should be the goal of all humans).

Organizational Architecture and the Protestant Church

A Mission Statement and the Strategies

There are four dimensions of “my own self”: mental, physical, social, and religious (notice these fit well with Campbell’s functions).  As discussed earlier, John Wesley intuitively understood that the Methodists had to address all of these within the organization that he created.  First and foremost, it addresses the religious needs of its adherents.  Second, from the history of Methodism, it is plain his “methods” and governance created a secure internal environment for his adherents and that their openness combined with discipline continued to attract more.  Third, his Sunday school addressed their mental dimension, while including gyms, etc., addressed the physical.  And like his mentor, Jesus of Nazareth, the people of early Methodism “…grew stature (the physical), wisdom (the mental), and in favor with God (the religious), and man (the social).”
Any mission statementor goal and the strategies for achieving the goal should include a balance of all four religious functions, rather than a great emphasis on just one.   Having said, there need to be a set of strategies for meeting the goal.  These should encompass all four dimensions.  Once these are decided on, the church organization must decide on processes (ordered sets of activities or “methods”) that move the organization toward the goal. 

Processes and Governance

However, the strategies and processes must be limited to those that can function within governance of the organization.  If the mission simply cannot be met within the rules and regulations of organization then either: 1) the governance should change, 2) the strategies should change, or 3) the processes.  The simplest to change are the processes; the most difficult is the governance.  One other thing, the mission or goal should not be changed.

Infrastructure

These follow the practices of organizational architecture.  Finally, the religious organization has to work within the limits of its infrastructure and support systems (even though with the right blessing these may greatly multiple to feed the “my own self” of all members).
6 years, 11 months ago

Agility, SOA, Virtual Extended Enterprise, Swarming Tactics, and Architecture

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Agility and the Virtual Extended EnterpriseIn the 1990s, The Agility Forum of Lehigh University defined Agility as “The ability to successfully respond to unexpected challenges and opportunities.” The forum chartered a technical committe…

6 years, 11 months ago

Agility, SOA, Virtual Extended Enterprise, Swarming Tactics, and Architecture

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Agility and the Virtual Extended EnterpriseIn the 1990s, The Agility Forum of Lehigh University defined Agility as “The ability to successfully respond to unexpected challenges and opportunities.” The forum chartered a technical committe…

8 years, 3 months ago

Seven sins, sensemaking and OODA

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Following from that recent series on sensemaking and ‘Seven sins of dubious discipline‘, it seems worthwhile to look at that whole context-space from a different direction, another example of a proven metaframework for much the same kind of metadiscipline – namely…

9 years, 6 months ago

National Decision Model

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@antlerboy asks does anyone know theoretical underpinning of the (rather good) police decision-making model?

The National Decision Model (NDM) is a risk assessment framework, or decision making process, that is used by police forces across the UK. It replaces the former Conflict Management Model. Some sources refer to it as the National Decision-Making Model.

Looking around the Internet, I have found two kinds of description of the model – top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down (abstract) description was published by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) sometime in 2012, and has been replicated in various items of police training material including a page on the College of Policing website. It is fairly abstract, and provides five different stages that officers can follow when making any type of decision – not just conflict management.

Some early responses from the police force regarded the NDM as an ideal model, only weakly connected to the practical reality of decision-making on the ground. See for example The NDM and decision making – what’s the reality? (Inspector Juliet Bravo, April 2012).

In contrast, the bottom-up (context-specific) description emerges when serving police officers discuss using the NDM. According to Mr Google, this discussion tends to focus on one decision in particular – to Taser or not to Taser.

“For me the Taser is a very important link in the National Decision Making Model . It bridges that gap between the baton and the normal firearm that has an almost certain risk of death when used.” (The Peel Blog, July 2012). See also Use of Force – Decision Making (Police Geek, July 2012).

ACPO itself adopts this context-specific perspective in its Questions and Answers on Taser (February 2012, updated July 2013), where it is stated that Taser may be deployed and used as one of a number of tactical options only after application of the National Decision Model (NDM).

Of course, the fact that Taser-related decisions have a high Google ranking doesn’t imply that these decisions represent the most active use of the National Decision Model. The most we can infer from this is that these are the decisions that police and others are most interested in discussing.

(Argyris and Schön introduced the distinction between Espoused Theory and Theory-In-Use. Perhaps we need a third category to refer to what people imagine to be the central or canonical examples of the theory. We might call it Theory-in-View or Theory-in-Gaze.)

In a conflict situation, a police officer often has to decide how much force to use. The officer needs to have a range of tools at his disposal and the ability to select the appropriate tool – in policing, this is known as a use-of-force continuum. More generally, it is an application of the principle of Requisite Variety.

In a particular conflict situation, the police can only use the tools they have at their disposal. The decision to use a Taser can only be taken if the police have the Taser and the training to use it properly. In which case the operational decision must follow the NDM.

More strategic decisions operate on a longer timescale – whether to equip police with certain equipment and training, what rules of engagement to apply, and so on. A truly abstract decision-making model would provide guidance for these strategic decisions as well as the operational decisions.

And that’s exactly what the top-down description of NDM asserts. “It can be applied to spontaneous incidents or planned operations by an individual or team of people, and to both operational and non-operational situations.”

Senior police officers have described the use of the NDM for non-conflict situations. For example, Adrian Lee (Chief Constable of Northants) gave a presentation on the Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

The NDM has also been adapted for use in other organizations. For example, Paul Macfarlane (ex Strathclyde Police) has used the NDM to produced a model aimed at Business Continuity and Risk Management. which he calls Defensive Decision-Making.

How does the NDM relate to other decision-making models? According to Adrian Lee’s presentation, the NDM is based on three earlier models:

  • The Conflict Management Model (CMM). For a discussion from 2011, see Police Oracle.
  • The SARA model (Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess) – which appears to be similar to the OODA loop.
  • Something called the PLANE model. (I tried Googling this, and I just got lots of Lego kits. If anyone has a link, please send.)

There is considerable discussion in the USA about the relevance of the OODA loop to policing, and this again focuses on conflict management situations (the “Active Shooter”). There are two important differences between combat (the canonical use of OODA) and conflict management. Firstly, the preferred outcome is not to kill the offender but to disarm him (either physically or psychologically). This means that you sometimes need to give the offender time to calm down, orienting himself into making the right decision. So it’s not just about having a faster OODA loop than the other guy (although clearly some American cops think this is important). And secondly, there is a lot of talk about situation awareness and anticipation. For example, Dr. Mike Asken, who is a State Police psychologist, has developed a model called AAADA (Anticipating, Alerting, Assessing, Deciding and Acting). There is also a Cognitive OODA model I need to look into.

However, I interpret @antlerboy’s request for theoretical underpinning as not just a historical question (what theories of decision-making were the creators of NDM consciously following) but a methodological question (what theories of decision-making would be relevant to NDM and any other decision models). But this post is already long enough, and the sun is shining outside, so I shall return to this topic another day.

Sources

Michael J. Asken, From OODA to AAADA ― A cycle for surviving violent police encounters (Dec 2010)

Adrian Lee, Implications of NDM for Roads Policing (January 2012).

Erik P. Blasch et al, User Information Fusion Decision-Making Analysis with the C-OODA Model (Jan 2011)

National Decision Model (ACPO, 2012?)

National Decision Model (College of Policing, 2013)

SARA model (Center for Problem-Oriented Policing)

Updated 19 May 2014