A real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when the best is required.

Competiveness: John R Wooden

 More reading about Coach Wooden and his "pyramid of success:"

The Official John R. Wooden site

Biography at Wikipedia

Pyramid of Sucess (PDF printable)

 "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail"  in his own words follow the "Favorite maxims" tab to "never stress winning"

We continue to discuss the idea of "team of leaders."  This video well worth your time. Thanks to John Robb at Global Guerrilllas.  See his site for comments.

But let's take this one step further into the context of  "What kind of war"  determination as impacting how we approach "the war" once we have determined "what kind."  Consider the comments from  the Blog – Challenge COIN; Perspectives on the evolving U.S. Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism doctrine. What works, what does not, and what we think we know: "COIN/CT Lessons from drug induced dancing."

... The main lesson to walk away with is how crucial it was to easily mimic the dance. Were this a difficult dance, the originator would have been nothing more than an observed solo performer. Also the role of the first follower made it acceptable for a few more people to join. Once the first follower's friends join in, the tipping point is then reached at 1:15. From then on, people join in groups and the originator or "leader" is irrelevant as the movement has a life of his own. Only the music ending stops everyone from dancing, not the "leader."

Now take that template and apply it to al Qaeda in Iraq. What sort of impact would killing or capturing the leadership have today? This is precisely why the classic insurgency texts emphasized the need to destroy an insurgency at its onset. Otherwise it becomes an integrated part of a society for at least a generation if not longer. So how do we end the al Qaeda-styled movements? Find the music and turn it off…

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

The military, facing a complex and intractable mixture of "wicked problems" on the battlefield, has responded with a doctrinal revolution in the production and practice of operational theory.  But most police agencies don't incorporate the "operational level of maneuver" into their planning and concept of operations.   We face a constellation of complex "high-intensity policing" problems such as counterterrorism, transnational organized crime and gangs that demand development of a true operational art and doctrine, rather than current focus on tactical response. The police service desperately requires an understanding of operational theory and must develop operational doctrine to successfully address contemporary threats.

We propose a model for urban police operational art that has a five-dimensional view of the operational space, focusing in particular on the doctrinally neglected elements of cyberspace and temporality.

Our intention is to summarize and clarify a wide array of military thought, incorporating it into an operational framework for police operational response. In particular we will examine the military theories of Robert Bunker, Robert Leonhard, and William McRaven

 

• Toward Operational Art for Policing at GroupIntel

• Police Operational Art for a Five-Dimensional Operational Space, at Small Wars Journal

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Why would our societal orientation in complex, dynamic, fast moving situations be good when our educational system trains people only to think through simplified, linear, sequential problems? Strategic thinkers need to be able to see "the big picture" and handle uncertainty, or they cannot be said to be strategic thinkers.

The ship of state has been steered, over the last forty or so years, into an epistemological cul-de-sac and we are headed for the rocks. America needs a grand strategy for a competent citizenry in order to reach the point where it can again have a grand strategy to deal with an unruly world.

By Captain Charlie Meinema

Tacoma Washington Police Department

Disasters may be local, but few are.  Even local disasters are not local, as Yogi Berra might say.   This is often because criminals, explosions, terrorists and fires fail to respect jurisdictional borders, and / or because the crisis – even if inside one geographical or jurisdictional boundary – is too big for any one agency to handle with troops available at the time of the incident.  We staff according to anticipated 'normal' work load.  Any major event immediately stresses the system, because we have to send pretty much all we have and that leaves everything else insecure.   We just can not staff to crisis level unless we are SURE the crisis will occur – and when do we know that?  After it has happened.  

>> This is one problem constantly besetting the Israelis.  In the period 1969 / '73, the Arab nations – especially the short lived United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt – practiced a policy of 'no war / no peace' toward Israel.  There was – like today – constant agitation, raids, small incidents, and every fall large 'war game' exercises in western Egypt and Syria.  Israel routinely activated a significant percentage of reserves when raids reached a certain frequency and / or to offset the potential of the large annual war games, since Israel knew that their neighbors were only waiting for the right moment.  However, the cost of such heightened levels of activation became overwhelming to Israel.  Israel stopped the raised activation level during the fall 'war games,' due largely to the cost of the deployments.  

This of course was what the Arabs were awaiting and in 1973 the 'normal war games' were held on the west bank of the Suez Canal.  The Israelis did not make significant additional activations of reserves, because 'they do this every year.'  1973 was different.  On Yom Kippur the Egyptians cut through the berms on the east side of the Suez Canal and the Yom Kippur War was launched.   Israel simply could not afford to keep staffing to a level appropriate to meet the threat unless they KNEW the threat was real on a particular occasion.

 We are all in this situation.  We live our lives day by day and the Devil waits for but a moment – but his moment spans far beyond our lifetimes.  The threat is always there, but we can not afford to staff sufficiently to address it on a daily basis.   

The 'normal' crisis (e.g. Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma, just experienced a homicide / robbery of an armored car guard inside a major department store.) may be local to Pierce County, Washington, but may span 05 police jurisdictions and as many fire districts. 

One result of the 'squad' or 'all crisis is local crisis' mentality is 'chasing the pain.'  Post operative pain medications are meant to be taken on schedule to PREVENT pain from becoming disabling (help me out here, Dr. von Lubitz).  People are told not to wait until they hurt – get ahead of the pain, don't chase the pain – to take the pain meds because the meds take some time to begin to work.   If someone / agency thinks, 'I can handle this,' and he / they find they can not 'handle it,' the unnecessary delays in obtaining, briefing, deploying the help can result in a greatly increased level of 'pain,' as in New Orleans.    

If we experience a disaster in just one jurisdiction, we still likely have to deal with multiple departments within that one jurisdiction to handle it.  The problem still may require seeking outside help in the future of the event.  We would always be ahead if we not only trained to work together but also had an automatic briefing / notification system to alert nearby agencies of each other's big issues as they emerge.   This would allow the groundwork for effective interaction when and if it is needed.  (e.g. On the small scale compared to the nation, the county wherein Tacoma dwells was 'host' to a large gathering of an outlaw motorcycle gang at one of their taverns.  This was an intentional display for turf and for recruiting – the bikers were in full colors and the party was in the parking lot of the tavern next to a major street.  Although the tavern hosting the event was 02 – 03 miles outside the city, the swing shift commander for TPD contacted his opposite number for Pierce County to determine how we would provide assistance if something were to erupt, such as another gang driving past the tavern and shooting – a plausible issue given motorcycle gang turf and dominance issues in the state recently).

Further, the contact gave the TPD commander a direct line from county on where the group was going when it left the tavern.  'tis always good to know if 40 – 60 bikers in full colors are motoring into your town before they get there.  However, had this gone badly, we would have had officers from other cities and the state patrol arriving to help in short order.   We do not have any automatic incident notification system that would tell ALL nearby agencies of the situation and which could be updated to include direction for responders.   Working on it.).  

A problem that probably hits us all is the scope of the disaster and appropriate assessment of crisis.  "How bad is it, really?"   Inevitably, after some major debacle we have reports of people who DID accurately predict the incident, attack,…., but could not get a serious hearing from anyone in position to make a difference.    Sometimes this is because the predictors – like the seers of old – said there would be an attack, but could not say where or when with any degree of certainty.   They only attain prescience in retrospect – and we have all probably met a few of these folks.   By contrast, sometimes disasters happen and the initial reports are accurate, but are not given sufficient weight.  The response is insufficient and the disaster – which might have been contained – grows out of control. 

[In the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, I am sure initial intelligence reports / assessments were confusing.  Responses were not in scope to the level of attack.  Worse, the troops responding were using weapons they had almost never shot and suffered problems in coordination, …    I do not disparage Mumbai Police / military.  Any one facing what Mumbai faced is going to have a very bad time of it.  However, getting a handle on how big / bad the problem is as soon as possible is critical.]

For every legitimate disaster we have multiple Chicken Littles yelling 'The sky is falling. The sky is falling,' in regards to relatively minor issues.   We have to develop the ability to make rapid and accurate determinations of the level of crisis to trigger the appropriate level of response as quickly as possible.  . 

The military analogy to the above is having a plan for incorporating reinforcements / augmentations into the battle without loss of coordination.  Each squad has to fight as a squad (and often each man in the squad only knows what the squaddie to his right or left is doing at best), but it needs to be aware of at least what the squad on either side of it is doing, in case it has to defend a flank if their neighbor is overrun or has to detach a couple of riflemen or machine gun / mortar crew to reinforce a squad getting hit hard next to it.   No officer should go into battle without knowing some idea of what will need to be done, how do we proceed to the forward edge, where do we go, what do we need to prepare, how will we exploit a sudden opening, where is the rally point,.. ,if the enemy fails to react as expected – something the unpleasant enemy has a habit of doing.

All this is a lot of coordination even if we are on the attack.  'tis all that much harder when adversaries attack us.  If we fail to assess enemy strength and assume an assault is only a probe or the famous 'reconnaissance in force,' we are courting disaster.  The penny packet reinforcements sent will be gobbled up as they arrive and the crisis will only get worse.  If we make the right assessment and an effective deployment of reinforcements in strength coupled with combined arms support, we can – hopefully – stop the attack or at least minimize the damage.

In the civilian world, we are almost always on the defensive.   We can not eradicate a threat before it strikes.  We can not plan to attack a specific problem – we can and must develop the best possible plans for general responses.  In the modern world, such plans would not be old fashioned plans as we know them, but effective preparation for and use of the 'teams of leaders' concept and related ideas. 

In our world we have done a better job of determining generally what is available and how to request it in the past few years.  Alas, we still tend to await the actual crisis to have any serious work on what is needed at that moment in that situation, and how to integrate it effectively into our reaction without unnecessary loss of time and effectiveness.  We are still.'chasing the pain,' and the patients often suffer..

The goal of emergency and crisis response is to reduce output variability in a context in which inputs are highly variable; to that end, crisis response is, in part, about creating an orderly arena within a chaotic environment. ... research on High Reliability Organizations (HROs) has suggested that some complex, hazard-managing organizations, for which failure is not an option, can do precisely this through a process of relentless preoccupation with failure and ongoing training for the unexpected … Observations of HROs provide an important bridge between traditional organizational leadership and decision-making under complex conditions and the extraordinary complexity of the transboundary event such as a pandemic or a natural or anthropogenic disaster.

>> What follows is a portion of the introduction to Transboundary Crisis, Transboundary Thinking, and the Team of Leaders (ToL) Approach: The H1N1 Case, by PWH advisor Dr. Dag von Lubitz of MEDSMART, and Dr. M. Jude Egan, Stephensen Disaster Management Institute, Lousisiana State University. (PWH Note: Opening quote from concluding remarks)

The typical transboundary event distributes impacts over multiple jurisdictions at once such that simply drawing a wider command ring around the impacted areas cannot "contain" its location. Transboundary events are, thus, by definition, multijurisdictional and nonlocal; they often involve "whole of government" response..

 In turn, as demand outstrips the county units' capacity, the incident commander sends out a request for assistance to neighboring counties, each of which faces its own similar wind and fuel conditions. They respond and serve under the Santa Barbara County incident commander. As the fire and conditions intensify, the county calls for state help and it establishes unified command composed of local, county and state fire, law enforcement and government officials. The Governor declares a disaster and reaches out, if the situation overwhelms state resources, to the President. Ultimately, the President brings federal resources to bear under the unified command structure, until they extinguish the fire. This same command structure may also be applied to similar localized events that may turn into disaster – such as earthquakes, weak hurricanes, and floods – layers of responders serve under the local incident command, command remaining local because local officials know residents, capacities and terrain best.  (PWH emphasis added)

But disasters are growing increasingly large and urban areas are at once growing increasingly dense and dispersed, meaning that the impacts of a single event are likely to be felt in multiple jurisdictions at once. These events have been called "transboundary" (PWH -see original footnote as inset below) crises (Boin and Egan, in press) because they trigger parallel responses from parallel jurisdictions that may call upon the same layers of outsiders for support, including state, federal, private and NVOAD entities.

We use the term "transboundary" in three ways: 1) impacting more than one political, geographic or legal jurisdictions; 2) impacting or requiring response from more than one agency, governmental or national sphere or silo of influence; 3) implicating two or more potentially conflicting legal rules or procedures, whether statutory, common law or procedural. Thus, a transboundary crisis is one that impacts multiple political or legal communities such as a hurricane that makes landfall at the Texas-Louisiana border, while transboundary response may implicate several traditional action "silos" such as FEMA, HUD, ICE, the US military and local law enforcement 

... Increasing social vulnerability to natural and human-made hazards expands the nature and character of response operations presenting a massive coordination problem: it can pit governmental response efforts against one another as they compete for zero-sum outside support resources – Texas and Louisiana, for example, competed for available private sector resources during the Hurricane Gustav and Ike response efforts (Egan, in press). In response, there is increasing need for a new readiness model that emphasizes both an increased flexibility and deployment readiness in local and particular environments while understanding and working toward realizing the overall mission (von Lubitz, this volume; Bradford and Brown, 2008). Because federal laws often conflict with state and local laws, and the goals of one agency may differ from others; these conflicts are areas where lawyers traditionally litigate, and the threat litigation is the ultimate in paralysis for response operations. Law may thus, in fact, increase social vulnerability by reducing public and private sector response capacity. Therefore, the presence of lawyers, from multiple jurisdictions, in a facilitative manner, is a key to avoiding the litigation mentality and its attendant paralysis.

Where a wildfire is the classic local disaster, a pandemic is the ultimate transboundary event. The pandemic originates in a single point of origin and becomes a global concern, outstripping local, state and federal resources, from the infection of "patient zero." Traditional ICS immediately becomes overwhelmed and may actually hinder efforts to limit the spread of the illness by requiring local responders to understand that their capacities are overwhelmed before they have identified the nature of the disease.

The need for expertise in a novel virus outbreak is immediate, but by the time local officials understand that an outbreak is the beginning of a pandemic, the disease will have crossed through many jurisdictions, as the H1N1 virus did in the first several weeks of its publicity, and all efforts to contain it locally are rendered moot.

The transboundary nature of the pandemic, thus, requires transboundary thinking from the outset; that is, it is not enough to develop a response plan based purely on containment through quarantine or treatment based on injection-delivered vaccines that suggest that officials could stay in front of a fast-moving virus, the planning must include the assumption that such a virus will already have spread throughout much of the world by the time patient zero has been identified.

Response strategies must engage the whole of government from the inception; this include thinking through legal ramifications, conflicts of laws, and developing approaches that are both flexible and adaptive and honor the rule of law.

________________________________________________________

Full article- white paper –  is one of 35 published in Collaboration in the National Security Arena: Myths and Reality- What Science and Experience Can Contribute to it's Success.

It is a product of the Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) effort. For those not familiar with SMA, it provides planning support to Commands with complex operational imperatives requiring multi-agency, multi-disciplinary solutions that are NOT within core Service/Agency competency. Solutions and participants are sought across USG. SMA is accepted and synchronized by Joint Staff and executed by STRATCOM/GISC and OSD/DDRE/RRTO.

Culture:  The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.

This post is intended to set the stage for a new group of FORUM articles/discussions expanding on the recently introduced Culture of Preparedness thread.

Since first publication in Fall 2006, Project White Horse 084640 has focused on providing multiple and varied perspectives on severe crisis environments and the decision making processes required.  With the introduction of the "resilient community" concept as a major theme, we began usage of this FORUM to bring multiple discussions and articles between editions with intent to move beyond "perspective" to exploration of workable approaches for "survival on our own terms." (Boyd)

The latest edition offers that a culture of preparedness is the necessary link between the threat generated environment (whether by accident, acts of nature, or purfoseful acts of man) and the threatened community. We have offered multiple perspectives to assist in understanding the problem, but one must ask, what actually defines a resilient community, what are the quantifiable ingredients, what is the make up of this culture, we state that we need?

Consider the following, borrowed from Department of Defense definitions:

Essential Elements of Information:  The critical items of information regarding the enemy and the environment needed by the commander by a particular time to relate with other available information and intelligence in order to assist in reaching a logical decision – required to plan and execute an operation.

These next FORUM offerings will expand the original PWH theme-defining triangle of worst case events, time criticality , and leader team response by offering multiple "elements of essential information" that seem inherent yet not necessarily obvious – in the makeup of a Culture of Preparedness.

As always your thoughts and inputs on the elements and future inclusions will be most welcome at projectwhitehorseatroadrunnerdotcom.

I'm very pleased to announce that Project White Horse 084640 Edition #8 – A Culture of Preparedness and Intersectional Ideas  – is now on line.

The last two editions have provided perspective on "resilient communities" and leadership required. In Edition #8 we shift from providing "perspective" to creating actionable understanding and answers. The first part of the Edition #8 focus (and) title borrows from General Russ Honore's stated goal – developing a culture of preparedness. As Russ's words have been featured on the site, having "a culture…" seems to highlight the very essence of developing and nurturing a resilient community. As such, "culture of preparedness" can be seen to complete a "strong triangle" with the additional sides of "resilient communities," and Team of leaders. Faced with severe crisis, that model demands creative approaches. We must look beyond the norm to multiple fields and experience bases and find ideas and answers at the intersections.

Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields – areas of specialization gained through education and experience – as compared to those created traditionally by combing concepts within a field – noted as directional ideas. Success in intersectional idea generation is dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a "non relationship" or at best limited context between or among fields.

To date, the site has consisted of the electronic magazine website and a Forum for posting of articles between editions. Based on the above, INTERSECTIONS now becomes a third element of PWH. This intersection will be created by providing the thinking of a group with multiple and diverse backgrounds, including medicine, first response, intelligence, academia, and military with experience from Great Britain, Israel, service in both Iraq and Afghanistan and on mean street USA. The content will be operational threads selected for potential to increase actionable understanding. The following two topics have been under discussion and the dialogue provided:

1. Actionable Intelligence and Resilient Communities
2. Training Decision Makers to the "Ace' Level

Please see the Editors Note and the article introductions for more detail and to put this edition in the context of actionable tools – useable by emergency responders, private sector organizations and citizens in the process of building a culture of preparedness. Most assuredly you will find perspectives and intersections. You will find understanding that can be acted upon. You will find answers.

A final note: Given the obvious, finding a picture of a leader on a white horse will surprise no one, but in this case there is more, there is purpose. While there are many representations of those who have been America's leaders throughout our history, including scores of George Washington as commander of the Continental Army and as our first President, the depiction of Washington with his troops, having crossed the Delaware and moving toward the attack at Trenton is, to me, iconic reflection of leadership in severe crisis, His adaptability and audacity after three major defeats saved not only the spirit of the Continental Army, it provided the underpinning that would remain through the victory at Yorktown. In so doing as General Nathanael Greene would say "he will be the deliverer of his own country." A century later, in a classic study of the Revolution, Sir George Otto Trevelyan stated "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever deployed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."

It was he who held the army together and gave it spirit through the most desperate of times… not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual… (but) above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up … again and again in letters to Congress and his officers calling for unremitting courage and perseverance. 1776 by David McCullough

Noted as one of the world's 100 most decisive battles, the Battle of Trenton was most certainly testimony to General Washington's perseverance. He would not quit on the fragile American dream. In the sense of William Shakespeare's Henry V, I submit it is America's Agincourt moment – we few we band of brothers.

As stated in the previous edition, our forefathers by their actions in 1776 placed this country forever at the "dawn of victory." That victory demands perseverance in the face of great crisis and turmoil. It will be found in "a culture of preparedness."

Please join us at Project White Horse 084640

Ed @ PWH
29 April. 2009

After more than 37 years of uniform service to the U.S. army and our nation, I will spend the second half of my life committed to a new mission: Creating a "Culture of Preparedness'' in America. Every effort I take, whether it is this new Web site, public speaking/lectures, fund-raisers, or the books I have written or will write, will be committed to this cause.

Please Visit General Honore's Website: http://www.generalhonore.com/

Ed @PWH

We now move to

• >> Intelligence implications for a resilient community response force team in a low probability/high impact  worst case disaster environment:

• critical information – what, where and how


• education aimed at preventing "victimhood"


• planning on multiple levels


• being a responder not a victim


• building leaders AND followers – who, how 

By necessity that team will most likely include professionals (public safety and military – Guard and  Active Duty), private sector, and individual citizens or community organizations

If all would agree on the "team" response requirement and given the above – how do you inform, plan, and educate/train/learn across a team with few common linkages on a very practical basis?  How do you get ready for the "Black Swan?

It is easy to identify the problems, not too hard to come up with solutions, BUT the how and the doing is something else.

Invest in preparedness, not prediction…I will never get to know the unknown since, by definition, it is unknown. However, I can always guess how it might affect me, and I should base my decisions around that…you always control what you do, so make this your end.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan; The Impact of the Highly Improbable