Several years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a retired Marine general who, upon leaving the military, continued to pursue his passion in the area of strategic collaboration. During the course of his military career, at various levels of command, he had seen and wrestled with the challenges of orchestrating the actions of multiple civilian and military organizations in dynamic, uncertain environments. During his presentation, his objective was to discuss the wicked hard problems in the extreme scenarios of disaster recovery and reconstruction events such as post-Hurricane Katrina operations and Iraq reconstruction.
In his review of the myriad reasons for the failed response following Katrina, one that stood out was an organizational change that took place prior to the event. From 1979 to 2003, FEMA stood as an independent agency within the U.S. Government. In 2003, FEMA became part of the new Department of Homeland Security. During that transition, priorities changed leaving core missions marginalized in the new organization. This caused a significant fraction of the senior leadership within the agency to leave.
According to the general, the loss of the senior leadership dealt a significant blow to FEMA's ability to respond to Katrina due to a tremendous loss of social capital. The senior leaders had accumulated years of experience responding to these types of disasters and knew all the key players in the world of disaster recovery and reconstruction. They had developed these critical trust relationships over the years through past experiences working together on similar hard problems. All of this was lost in short order.
A question that came up after the presentation was the following. What options, if any, exist for accelerating the development of trust relationships in such scenarios when you have players from different organizations working together for the first time? At that time, we envisioned an event similar in concept to speed dating that is mediated by technology. Several companies have developed devices (such as SpotMe and nTag) for conferences to aid in networking through the use of profiles and location awareness. In a disaster recovery setting, the goal would be to use technology to mediate introductions between the right individuals that need awareness of one another to support overall mission objectives.
If organization dynamics were driven solely by mission and function, this might provide additional value. Yet one important dimension is missing from the equation. The development of strong bonds between people is primarily driven by compatibility in terms of personality and objectives. The relationship chemistry is not a factor that can be captured in a profile. Yet the determination of compatibility a priori can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of an organization that one is actively constructing. Our goal is to weave trust relationships in such a way that our formal and informal networks are better aligned, leading to positive outcomes in terms of the overall mission.
To improve the effectiveness of mobile devices for network weaving, unconscious or honest social signals must be sensed and processed to assess compatibility. As Sandy Pentland's work in recent years has shown, these signals can be effectively measured and used to predict the outcomes of social interactions in a range of scenarios. According to Pentland, such signals transcend culture and language which is critical in international development contexts.
By profiling individuals both in terms of their organizational role and patterns of social signaling, the goal would be to utilize devices to mediate introductions between people that both need and hopefully want to work together. Taking into account any characterization of social signaling early on could potentially prevent significant breakdowns in communication later on when stakes are high. We want to build effective organizations rapidly by accelerating the discovery of valuable social connections. Today that search is far more time consuming and fortuitous. In reconstruction and recovery events, where time is of the essence, any improvement in efficiency of networking to construct effective organizations is significant.
