NEWS ARTICLES

6/18/2012 ANDY'S UNPOPULAR INSIGHTS. HOW TO IMPROVE AMERICA'S MILITARY. Today's Model for Successful Large Organizations is a Collection of "Organization Men" and Misfit Advisors.

The "Problem" with the Pentagon is that at the top its 99+% straight-arrow "organization men." It's an organization only for organization men.

However, it's the Geeks, Misfits, and Dyslexics who make up a big part of the creative thinkers. The big picture is that Misfits cannot run a big organization, but organization men cannot think outside of their big boxes.

By some estimates, close to 40% of all new companies are started by Dyslexic people like myself. Organizations like: Ford, General Motors, IBM, The Virgin Group, Cisco, Apple, IKEA, etc. were started by Dyslexics.

I'm Dyslexic and I started a dozen different companies and organizations. One of them lasted 45 years.

If anyone at the Pentagon reads my comments I'm sure they say, "He's not one of us." That's true, but they are not getting it. The reason why they should listen to the Misfits is because we are NOT one of them.

Today's  SUCCESSFUL organizations have "organization men" who are aware that there talents are excellent, BUT LIMITED on the creative big picture side. The modern organization needs to have misfits who know that they can see what isn't there, AND also know that as misfits they cannot run a large organization.

History is changing. A hundred years ago "Big" was enough to succeed. Today the creative misfit side of the equation becomes more important with each new year.

As a Dyslexic I can "see" past the walls of the Pentagon. I can SEE that the future US Military is going to have a LOT LESS MONEY. For the simple reason that the Pentagon is NOT its own world. America is already de facto bankrupt, and is becoming MORE bankrupt every day.

The Pentagon has to "see" that getting into dumb wars in dumb places (because they can) does NOT Prove that they are still viable. To the world outside of the Pentagon it only proves that serious grand strategy change is seriously needed.

For the Pentagon to make the transition it will have to listen to the Geeks and Misfits. 85% of the Geek ideas are ALWAYS undoable mud. 80% of Geeks die as poor Geeks. Geeks think about what's ideal, and NOT about what's doable. But in the tons of Geek Mud there are also some gold nuggets.

The POWER of Geeks is that they are usually too organizational dumb to know that they cannot do what they start to do. Every great new organization and system ALWAYS started with a 100 truly Good reasons for why it could not work.

The Pentagon has to re-train itself. If the Pentagon wants to survive into the 22nd Century it's has to find (and/or train) officers who can get into the mud and find the gold. The Pentagon also needs a total re-think of its Super Grand Strategy for the next 100 years keeping in mind that it is NOT a separate world from the real world.

Today, the Pentagon is General Motors, but wasting a LOT More Government money. That's NOT going to last for much longer. Better to Drive the Painful Changes to a smarter working military rather than have the world impose its changes. No Pain - No Gain.