Arik Johnson, Aurora WDC. Traction User Group, Oct 13 2010, Newport RI. TUG 2010 Newport slides, agenda and more see www.TractionSoftware.com

1. Arik Johnson
Adventures in 21st Century
Organizational Design
Creating a Global Multidisciplinary
Intelligence Collaborative

4. STOCHASM
The Difference Between
What You Think You Know
And What You
Actually Know

5. Strategy
is a Response to
Intelligence

6. Unsound Strategy, Policy and Decisions are
the Product of an Intelligence Agenda
Dictated from Above

7. THE BLACK SWAN
The Impact of the
Highly Improbable
The human mind suffers from three ailments as it
comes into contact with history, called the triplet
of opacity:
1. the illusion of understanding, or how everyone
thinks they know what is going on in a world
that is more complicated (or random) than
they realize;
2. the retrospective distortion, or how we can
assess matters only after the fact, as if they
were in a rearview mirror (history seems
clearer and more organized in history books
than in empirical reality); and,
3. the overvaluation of factual information and
the handicap of authoritative or learned
people, particularly when they create
categories – or "Platonify."

8. U.S. Intelligence
Community
Failed to Evolve
Unexpected new threats from
non-traditional enemies like
al Qaeda emerged on the
geopolitical stage in the
vacuum of America's return
to international economic,
political and cultural
hegemony after the end of
the Cold War.

9. This was a failure of policy,
management, capability,
and, above all, a failure of
imagination.
Thomas S. Kean
Chairman, 9/11 Commission
The report assumes that there is a
single, readily identifiable enemy. This
is the routine way of political thinking,
that took shape during the Cold War.
Anyone with knowledge of the Arab
countries and the Muslim world in
general would know that this isn‟t the
case.
Amir Teheri

11. INTELLIGENCE 2.0
• The Era of Asymmetric Interpretation
• Intelligence 1.0 was focused on acquisition of
Competitive Advantage through Asymmetries of
Information, usually short-lived and high risk to
the firm's reputation and ethics.
• Transition to an open source world of "info-glut"
where information gaps are increasingly difficult
to obtain and interpretation becomes far more
important.
• Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 makes culture much
more important. Everyone in the organization
must become casually-engaged as virtual
members of the intelligence team.

12. Intelligence 2.0 Continuum Includes Both
Decisive & Incisive Sensing
Decisive Incisive
Frame of Reference is the Scanning for Trends, there is
Decision no “Decision” to be made
Compares Options & Recognize “Pattern Vector”
Outcomes of History
Recommendations & Trust Implications for the Reader
Top-Down Imposition Bottom-Up Exposition
Driven by Issues Driven by Trends
Decision & Action vs. Outcome is Observation
„Nariyuki‟ Itself
Factual & Hypothetical Emergent & Skeptical

13. Competing head-to-head can be cutthroat
especially when markets are flat or
growing slowly.
Managers caught in this kind of competition almost
universally say they dislike it and wish they could find
a better alternative. They often know instinctively
that innovation is the only way they can break free
from the pack. But they simply don‟t know where to
begin.
Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

14. THE STARFISH & THE SPIDER
The Unstoppable Power of
Leaderless Organizations
Although spiders and starfish may look alike, starfish
have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a
spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your
hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider.
But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new
one, and the severed arm can grow an entirely new
body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike
spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is
replicated across each arm.
But starfish don‟t just exist in the animal kingdom.
Starfish organizations are changing the rules of
strategy and competition and are organized on very
different principles than we are used to seeing in
traditional organizations.
Spider organizations are centralized and built around
org charts; on the other hand, Starfish organizations
tend to organize around a shared worldview or
ideology.
And the Internet has helped them flourish.

15. How do we get our Starfish to the Blue Ocean?

16. Is there anything in
our world today that
kind of reminds you of
a Starfish?
Scoble’s Social Media Starfish

17. What would the circus do?

18. Create a “Big Tent” large enough for adjacent
analytical disciplines but small enough to
maintain a cohesive identity

19. Why do some ideas die
while others thrive?
www.MadetoStick.com

20. Quantum Memetic
Diffusion
- via the -
Socio-Semantic
Web

21. CORNERSTONE PRINCIPLE
If the Intelligence Collaborative is not going to be primarily about money,
let’s agree not to accept money; results of this structure are manifold:
1. Curiosity is your only credentialing requirement and enthusiasm is
your ticket inside
2. Ideas are coin of the realm, not actual coin
3. No interference from governments, suitors or interlocutors
4. No need for budgets, governors, employees, incorporations, assets,
sunk costs, monuments to maintain, etc… in other words, no drag
5. Members share and share alike, donating resources when needed, as
true collaborators might

22. What’s Next?
 Meeting Face-to-Face in Metropolitan Centers Worldwide
 Washington 22 October 2009
 Amsterdam 04 November 2009
 Shanghai 13 November 2009
 Your City Pick a date, topic, venue, sponsors (or go Dutch)
 Propagating the Meme
 Facebook
 LinkedIn
 Twitter
 WordPress
 YouTube
 More to come…
 Need help? Feel free to ask:
 Email: Arik.Johnson@AuroraWDC.com
 Phone: +1-920-624-2020
 Twitter: @ArikJohnson
 Skype: ArikJohnson