Zen and the Art of Organizational Analysis

I'm just a city kid from Iowa, but even I know how to watch the corn. Find the space at which the tassels blur into amber waves of terrain, that middle distance where you can see the cornfield for the stalks, the forest for the trees, the ocean for the swells. It is a magic moment, and difficult to maintain. The land is not flat or static ...

It is sculpted ... It is inhabited ...

See the contours ... See the connections ...

See the structures ... See the spaces in between ...

I have sought out this figurative sweet spot on the landscape, again and again.

On my high school speech and debate team, I specialized in an competitive category variously called "student legislature" or "student congress." I learned how to maneuver parliamentary process, how to whip and count votes, and how to listen to the floor debate while also eavesdropping on caucuses and conversations. Find the sweet spot, and you can sense the mood of the room, predict how the vote is going to go, figure out where and when you need to be.

As a journalist, I pursued an expertise in architecture and design. I realized later that I was actually writing about people, rather than bricks and mortar. One of my favorite philosophical cornerstones comes from Winston Churchill, who, after World War II, observed at the dedication of a reconstructed parliament building: "We shape our buildings, thereafter our buildings shape us." Find the sweet spot, and you can see how organizations think of themselves: Flat organizations build flat buildings. Hierarchical organizations build skyscrapers. Those physical forms serve to reinforce the power structures and communications within.

Take a step back from the building-scale, and consider a larger area. You can see how organizations connect to their communities, and how those connections can be manipulated to create change. For example: A lima bean silo connects to a community's agricultural, transportation, and business networks in certain ways. Maybe the lima bean business goes south. Re-purpose that structure into a hotel, and it now connects its surroundings in different ways: retail, travel, and tourism.

As an U.S. Army communications soldier working in a Tactical Operations Center ("TOC"), I learned to keep one ear on the radio and to listen for my callsign, to manage radio traffic according to proper procedure, and to keep track of the battle. It was like listening to a baseball game on the radio, mentally moving the players around the bases.

Later, working on the battle desk, I learned to watch how messages flowed in and out of the TOC. A radio message or phone call would arrive on one side of the U-shaped work area, and you could watch it ripple across the room. A sergeant major once posted this sign in the the Red Bull TOC: "Who else needs to know what I know?" Keep an eye on the battle-drill, and an ear on the TOC-talk. Find the sweet spot, and you can see the data flow, where the organization is headed, and where your boss needs to be involved to achieve his objectives.

I'm not trying to sound goofy or mystical, or like some science-fiction guru from "The Matrix" (1999). Sometimes, however, we don't know what we think until we write it down. Even as I'm writing this, I am beginning to recognize the threads and themes that run throughout my disparate experiences: I focus on process and procedure. I surf through conversations. I identify interconnections. I seek out the modes and nodes of influence toward specific outcomes.

I may be onto something. Then again, I may also be full of crap.

Maybe every practitioner—it doesn't matter of what—has a similar moment of transcendence. You do something long enough, and, suddenly, you know what you're doing. Even if you don't think about it. One day, you wake up and realize: You know Kung Fu.

I'm good at finding the sweet spots in some types of organizations. That doesn't make me a hero, but it occassionally makes me useful.

Similarly, there are infantry soldiers who can parachute onto a random piece of ground, and instantly describe what needs to happen to achieve tactical advantage: The high ground is here, start digging in here, put the machine gun here for optimal effectiveness.

There are military intelligence analysts who can look at a map and a chronology, and spit out a prediction about who is doing what to whom, and the most likely times and places they'll strike next.

There are combat engineers who can look at a road and tell you what's out of place, where the bad guys would be, how the bombs buried in the dirt would be triggered.

It's all about finding the sweet spot. Of doing something without thinking. Of becoming simultaneously aware of the details, while also seeing components in context. Of being an actor both within and upon a process.

There are seeds of genius available in such moments.

The trick is to know when to harvest the corn.

Letters from the Gulf, Part II

Blog-editor's note: This is the second part of a 1990 essay, which summarized the pre-war correspondence of my father, who had deployed to Operation Desert Shield as a U.S. Air Force Reserve navigator on a C-130 aircrew.

For the first part of this essay, as well as additional historical background, click here.

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'SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS' continued ...

Dad also took great delight in telling the family about the "hooch," as well as other places he had to call "home."

"Quarters are real spartan! We slept in a tent last night," he wrote. "The cots plus being tired made our evening's rest very adequate. In the UAE, we have a 'wood' box with a door for 12. I believe the term male bonding comes to mind" (Sept. 15)

Dad later wrote more about his hooch, which on the bad days and nights quartered two aircrews, about 12 personnel.

"Out house is a plywood 12 x 25 box with a door, two small windows, and two air conditioners," he wrote. "The Furniture is limited to 14 beds, 3 folding chairs, and 1 concrete block with board table. Finding a place to put the 'stuff' is tuff. The B-4 bags and A-3's [different types of Air Force-issue luggage] are pushed under the beds just to give a bit of walking space." (Sept. 18)

Still, one gets the feeling Dad wasn't complaining. At least, not too much.

"A Marine sgt. [on Bahrain] that he was ready and already tired of waiting," Dad wrote. "I should that add that even with our spartan conditions we living at the Holiday Inn compared to the Marines. They had basic tents with no sun shades. War is hell!" (Sept. 19).

I've seen pictures of the "Chi-town Sheik Shack" (Each hooch had its own name, apparently, if not its own Frisbee golf course.) The crews apparently got into constructing lampshades, shelves, even a working 'refrigerator' out of cardboard, red duct tape, and one of the air conditioners. If Necessity is the mother of invention, Boredom must be the father.

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Dad usually opened his letters with some discussion of setting, the weather and what he was doing besides writing letters.

"The weather here on an island in the land of O is hot and clear during the day," he started in a typical letter. "The breeze starts coolking things off at sunset which makes sleeping great. The big part of the day is make passable by living in our air conditioned tent. Isn't that a dichotomy in terms?"

He started another, "It is 8 p.m. here and I am in front of our hooch enjoying the evening. There is a breeze and a bit of noise from a C-130 engine run about 50 yards away. I hope the place moves soon or my just move inside and forget the evening breeze." (Sept. 22)

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One of Dad's more significant themes seems to have been the "all this stuff that's out here nowhere" motif. Rather than set it up myself, here it is in all its basic continuity:

I would tell you where I'm located, but it isn't on the maps. The same is true of the airports we're operating into. I wonder how some of these complexes got built in these locations—they are in the middle of nowhere and without roads, etc. (Sept. 19)

I am still amazed at the places we are operating into. They are large complexes with major runways and accessories. The fact they don't appear in the airfield directory and on our charts is also interesting. It would appear that our "hosts" are well prepared in some ways to defend themselves. (Sept. 26)

We flew into Jeddah, SA yesterday and I found it hard to believe. According to some ground personnel, the airport is built to handle up to 1 million people a day during the "Holy" days. From the size and numbers of facilities, I would think that handling that number is possible. What makes it hard to believe is that all this construction is at the middle of the desert and nowhere. (Sept. 29)

I'm still both impressed and depressed by this land. We fly for hours and view nothing but sand and rocks—miles + miles of wasteland. then in the middle of nowhere we'll find a four-lane divided highway that goes nowhere but runs for miles. The depressing part is the money that is spent on facilities that have no real purpose. (Sept. 30)

That's about as political as Dad got.

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So what have I learned from reading my mother's mail? A little about the war, if one chooses to call it such, a little about Dad, and a little about the way I write. There's something in the phrasing, "ready and already," "impressed and depressed," that smacks familiar, not to mention the continual discovery of dichotomy and oxymoron. That's not where I want to end this, however. I've been saving that part until the end.

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Dad's always had a particular sign-off, which I once regarded as dangerously close to affected, which I now find myself using in the appropriate settings. (We are doomed to become our fathers.) Through the years, he's said it enough that it seems natural enough, and it seems right that chose to close his many letters with "see you in my dreams."

"I'm sure glad I'm getting paid to do this because I would hate to pay for this tour. Got to go—see you in my dreams." (Sept. 30)

If his letters brought the war home, that phrase brought Dad home. Even before he got back.

Letters from the Gulf, Part I

Blog-editor's note: The following essay was written in November 1990, when I was my last semester of journalism school. The assignment wasn't for journalism class, however. The class was an experimental one, an interdisciplinary exploration of American identity and family history. It was taught by Bob Woodward—the other Bob Woodward, the one who had worked at the Washington Star, rather than the Post.

Sorry, some inside jokes never get old.

I must've kept the paper as much for Woodward's red-ink marks as I did to in order to preserve my sentiments. I'm glad I did on both fronts. Who could've predicted that, more than 20 years later, I'd find myself writing about similar themes: citizen-soldiers, overseas deployments, family histories.

I've decided to share the essay with Red Bull Readers, inspired by the examples provided earlier this week by Kurt Greenbaum's "Well, Happy, and Safe" blog-project, as well as Daniel Gade's "In the Event of My Death" project. Here's the lesson-learned: Everyday letters or words can help family members understand not only where we've been as citizen-soldiers, but who we were when we went.

In November 1990, my father had just returned from a 30-day deployment to Operation Desert Shield as a member of the 928th Tactical Airlift Wing, a U.S. Air Force Reserve unit that flew out of O'Hare Air Reserve Station, near Chicago. I was approximately 30 days away from graduation, and about to receive a commission in the U.S. Army. My father would administer my oath of enlistment. Because Uncle Sam had paid for two years of my schooling, and because of ongoing preparations in the Persian Gulf, I anticipated I would be ordered to 4 years of active-duty service.

The United States was then ramping up toward Operation Desert Storm. The Air War launched on Jan. 17, 1991. The Ground War launched on Feb. 23, 1991. Despite the uncertainty of post-graduate life, I joked that I was in the safest place in the Army—I was an untrained officer, unlikely to be placed into a position of harming himself or others. I still had an basic specialty course to complete, which, depending on my assignment, could range from three to six months of additional military schooling. Army school would start sometime within 12 months of my civilian graduation.

I figured the war would be there when I got back. I was wrong.

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'SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS'

Dad went off to war again in October.

It wasn't a "war" then, even if it later became one. It wasn't a "police action," or even a "conflict." If anything, it was a "deployment."

Dad's first war was Vietnam. That didn't start out as a "war," either, but during my own lifetime I've seen it grow into one.

Dad's second war was deployment to the Persian Gulf. It could have just as easily been a war, what with the press pandering to the public's worst fears of inevitable bloodshed in the Middle East. The perception was the reality, at least at that point.

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Mom said she never expected to go through it again, which I took at the time to mean she never expected to have Dad to again go off for weeks or months. Later on, I suspected she was talking more about war, about the chance of losing Dad.

She also said something about how friends and family might somehow be more concerned about Dad than she was, the military experience being a bit foreign to most. Mom probably wasn't less concerned about Dad than the rest of the world, but she was used to it, as much as one can be.

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As a young Air Force officer and navigator, Dad flew tactical airlift in Vietnam—a C-130 "Hercules", big four-prop camouflaged trash-haulers capable of flying in and out of just about anything, carrying just about anything. Dad's Vietnam experience was stereotypical Air Force—when he got close enough to the ground war, he didn't have to stay for long.

Almost 20 years later, Dad wore silver clusters instead of silver bars. He was back to flying C-130s, though, and he was back to flying in and around it.

His Air Force reserve unit supplied volunteers to Operation Desert Shield for 30-day rotations. Long enough to get the idea.

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This fall, Ken Burns' 11-hour public television series brought home the human drama of the Civil War not only through the words of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, but through the letters and diaries of the more common soldier and spouse.

The series so possessed the public mind that Newsweek magazine put the Civil War on its cover.

More recently, Newsweek magazine devoted a cover article to "Letters in the Sand." Like the Civil War series, that article brought the military experience home to America in real, personal terms.

For 30 days, Dad's letters brought the war home to Mom, in real, personal terms.

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Dad wrote about 10 letters to Mom during his 30 days, plus a couple to me at school and few to his folks. They were usually short, two pages at most, and on USO "Home Away From Home" stationery. He consistently stuck to four themes: the military mind, the "hooch," the weather, and how many things one could find in the middle of nowhere.

Throughout his writing, he managed to keep his sense of humor in play. He had to.

"The arrival was generally a mess," he wrote Sept. 15, having just gotten off a Tower Airlines jumbo jet. "Four hundred people with a pile of baggage can create a real disaster. Add to that—400 people leaving with a similar pile of baggage and I believe you've got the idea. [...]"

Dad continue to note examples of the ever-present, ever-oxymoronic "military intelligence." He wrote, "I might add the similarity between this 'Op' and 'Nam is the mentality of keeping 'military.' The edict yesterday was no sweatbands are to be worn with the uniform—unless working. Give me a break." (Sept. 21)

And on Sept. 22:

All is find as long as we keep finding things to do—fly and shop, etc. We are finding some of the precautions that are being observed are really "crowd control." I read that the Arabs are pleased to have our support but worry that we will influence their way of life. To reduce this "contact" our commanders are restricting our movements out side of our operational area. (compounds). What is amusing is that the UAE is currently 80% foreign nationals—I guess "they" don't influence the Arabs?

In a similar story, Dad grew fond of telling the about the safety briefing his crew received staying overnight in Cairo, which achieved record levels of contradiction. It went something like:

• Don't go anywhere alone.

• Don't go anywhere in groups.

• Don't leave the hotel.

• Don't be predictable in movement or routine. (The hotel bus to the airport left at the same time every day, however. Probably travelled by the same route, too.)

And one other favorite of mine, about one day's mission: "Just two stops but long legs with a rather interesting load—bomb parts made by Texas Instruments. Seems to be a dichotomy there somewhere."

[Editor's note: More than 20 years later, this last joke falls a little flat. Dad went to work for an avionics manufacturer for a few years after leaving the active-duty Air Force in 1979, so this might've been a jab against a former competitor. Operation Desert Storm also saw the first large-scale employment of smart-bomb technology by U.S. forces. He might have been making a wary reference to technologies the public was about to be seen on the nightly news for the first time. After all, since when did bombs drop where people actually wanted them?]

To be continued in the next Red Bull Rising blog-post ...