This is a relative new (e.g. only a few years old) Phrankism for me.  During recent circumstances, I have found myself using the phrase ‘Air Cover’ more often.  As a result, it is probably time to define it and place it in its proper place in the ‘Phrankism-Hall-of-Fame’.

Official Definition(s)

The Free Dictionary: air cover, n (Military):

the use of aircraft to provide aerial protection for ground forces against enemy air attack

The Free Dictionary: Extraction, n (Military):

In military tactics, extraction (also exfiltration or exfil), is the process of removing personnel when it is considered imperative that they be immediately relocated out of a hostile environment and taken to a secure area. There are primarily two kinds of extraction:

• Hostile: The subject involved is unwilling and is being moved by forceful coercion with the expectation of resistance. Essentially, it is kidnapping by military or intelligence forces.
• Friendly: The subject involved is willing and is expected to cooperate with the personnel in the operation.

Oxford Dictionary, air cover, noun:

protection by aircraft for land-based or naval operations in war situations: ‘they provide air cover for United Nations convoys of relief supplies‘

Oxford Dictionary, extraction, noun:

the action of extracting something, especially using effort or force:

Phrank’s Definition

As a Phrankism, it is a military term borrowed to provide good imagery within an organization.  My current working definition (e.g. until someone comes up with a better one and I steal it) is:

The support of one’s superiors, organization and/or colleagues while undertaking an assigned task which involves some risk or need for unanticipated resources.  Generally any guarantees are provided in an informal and often verbal manner rather than via a formal organizational structure.

• Employee: I have an idea (or the organization has an idea for the employee to completed), I don’t know exactly what resources I will need, how to proceed or what the organization (e.g. colleagues, peers, subordinates, other areas, customers, suppliers, etc.) will think of it, but it is important we try it.
  

• Boss: I like the idea and I think it might work.  However because it is new to the organization and involves risk, we will do informally.  However, don’t worry because I will provide air cover and extraction if necessary from the project.  That is I will ensure that you will not be punished, reprimanded and will reasonably receive resources if you request them.
  

How, When to Use and the Success of Air Cover and/or Extraction

Air Cover and Extraction are based on trust; in particular trust at a personal level between a subordinate and the superior/organization. In this case, the trust includes:

1. The superior has the resources to provide Air Cover and Extraction.
2. The superior is willing to use them if/when the time comes.
3. The employee will know when to and will call for them appropriately.
4. Once extracted, the employee will not go back to the situation without authorization and thus require further Extraction or Air Cover.

The first two points of trust are top down.  They can also be used to mitigate organizational practices such as Drive By Management or Management through Magical Process.  A word of warning to organizations about trust; the late Steven Covey in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, explored the idea of an emotional bank account.  When meeting someone new, everyone starts with a small positive emotional account balance. They then make contributions or withdrawals based on their actions. The more one contributes, the higher the trust; the more withdrawals, the greater the suspicion and lack of trust. In other words, offering air cover and then leaving a subordinate to languish on the beachhead is a sure-fire way to start you down the road of a dysfunctional organization.

Points three and four are about trust going from the bottom up to the top. If your superior is expecting status reports, provide them! If your boss would have helped you out of a pickle – but you never asked – you have violated your trust relationship.

On the fourth point, a person going back into a situation without authorization, works in adventure movies but seldom in real life. Think about the action hero who violates a direct order and heads back to rescue the damsel or save the world. Some by the book superior is cursing him/her as they see the rocket ship/parachute/starship fly away. Nevertheless by the end of the movie, the hero saves the day/world/universe and all is forgiven and the superior is proven wrong.

In the real world, quit when you are ahead. An organization or a boss may rescue you once. Going back and trying again, without permission, is a trust-busting activity.

Formal/Informal: When to Use and Over Use

Air Cover and Extraction can have a formal arrangement. For example, the structure of an organization is designed to delegate authority down and allowed a set of pre-approved decisions to be made by subordinates.

Informal Air Cover and Extraction is a tactical tool the organization can use in specific circumstances.  Like any good tool, its utility is understanding when it is not being used enough (e.g. an organization is stagnate, dysfunctional or moribund in bureaucracy) or too much (e.g. words such as cowboy, free-for-all, loose cannons or out of control are used to describe the organization… and hopefully not by the auditors or shareholders!).

The balance of just enough Air Cover is a sub-theme found in some previous blogs (see list below) and one which I hope to return to in future blogs. What are your thoughts on this?  Leave me a comment but please don’t ‘carpet-bomb’ my site!

Further OrgBio thoughts on the themes of Air Cover and Extraction are as follows… in order of relevance:

1. Drive By Management
2. The Propensity to Mediocrity
3. Top 10 Ways to Guarantee Your Best People Will Quit
4. Contra-Free Loading: Why Do People Want to Do Good Work?
5. Collaboration – Not the Vichy Variety
6. AIIM’s Collaboration Definition
7. AIIM’s Life-Cycle Collaboration Model
8. Three P’s and a G over T Collaboration Framework
9. Collaboration – Is it Hard Wired?
10. Paying Volunteers – Experience

Drive Bys, Definitions and Dilbert

Now that cycling season is over, it is time to get back to thinking about Organizational Biology – and this includes updating Phrankisms.  What really jogged my memory (and motivation) was coming across a couple of old Dilbert cartoons introducing the concept of ‘Drive-By-Management’.

Provide courtesy of www.dilbert.com per the Uclick terms of use policy, all rights reserved by Uclick and its associates.

The urban dictionary defines Drive By Management as:

A management style bearing the characteristics of a drive-by shooting. Typically, this involves firing off pointers at subordinates with a total lack of regard for accuracy or willingness to take personal responsibility. The manager will then make a quick getaway without accomplishing anything.

I am not sure that quite captures my thoughts on the matter so my definition is:

The assignment of work objectives without the opportunity to negotiate the corresponding details to ensure an optimal result. These details may include due dates, quality or quantity measures, the purpose or ultimate use of the output and a discussion on how to improve the quality and productivity of similar, future requests.

John Wayne, the Military and What is the Problem?

So, what is the problem with Drive-by-management? Heck, think of a John Wayne war movie where he orders (or is ordered to) take that hill/building/machine-gun-nest. The doomed squad goes off with determined grit on their face to achieve the objective despite the possible costs. Later, a smaller number return having achieved the objective and saving the day. Hearty pats on the back and more determined gritted-faces follow. What is not to love about Drive-By-Management!

From a leadership position, the ability to send men (and women) off to do the impossible, without the bother of having to provide details or context, sounds pretty good. In reality it does not work that way. Let’s go back to Mr. Wayne and the military example.

Militaries don’t tend to willy-nilly send their soldiers off to certain doom simply because soldiers, in particular modern ones, are hard to come by.  Perhaps the last time we saw such willy-nilly’ness on a large-scale was during the First World War. Thus a military squad capturing a hill is actually not really Drive-By-Management. Before being sent off, the squad has had training on such things. It benefits from resources such as weapons, supporting fire, and communications between it and the rear.  The squad also has a visible objective – the hill/building/machine-gun-nest. After the objective is achieved, it will be carefully documented in the war diary and will likely be debriefed and evaluated by the higher-ups to see what can be learned for the next hill/building/machine-gun-nest. As a result John Wayne and real life equivalents display very little Drive-By’ness.

A better military example of Drive-By-Management in a military context is the Charge of the Light Brigade. If you don’t know the history the summary is there was:

1. Personal antagonism on the part of the leadership of the English Military leaders,
2. Poor communication that provided insufficient clarity and details on the objective, and
3. Unwillingness on part of the subordinate to verify the details and facts before going and charging into what was asked of him.

The result was a great poem by Alfred Tennyson, the death of 156 men, and the loss of a critical fighting force the English could have used later on if it had not been wasted.

Are You a Victim or a Perpetrator of Drive By’s?

This is where the catchy name/metaphor breaks down a bit. Drive-By-Management is easy to thwart by the driver getting out of the car and asking such basic questions as ‘Do you understand or can you do it?’ The person on the receiving end has the ability to stop the car and ask questions such as ‘When do you need it or how will it be used?’ This is where Drive-By-Management meets Management-By-Walking-Around (and the subject of some future blogs).

In the meantime, what do you have to say; have you been a recipient of Drive-By-Management recently? Alternatively, have you been the one doing the driving? My impression is that Drive-By-Management is more prevalent to the public service but I have no real data to support this (and I see yet another blog on the subject). As a result, any comments or perspectives would be greatly appreciated.

I have written a series of blogs on the idea and background of organizational collaboration (Vichy, Definition, Lifecycle and 3Ps and a G over T). For this blog, I want to leave the organization and think about the question, why on earth would humans ever WANT to collaborate? In a modern setting, how does it help you by helping a fellow worker resolve a problem that he or she has? Or, go back a few hundred thousand years, why on earth would a hunter, gatherer or human in general want to collaborate?

A possible answer can be found in David Brooks’ book, The Social Animal (and subject of a previous blog). He discusses a “… generalized empathetic sense, which in some flexible way inclines us to cooperate with others. But there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that people are actually born with more structured moral foundations…” [p. 286]. Brooks goes on to describe five possible ‘moral concerns’. These concerns are common to all humans and all cultures and are:

1. 1. Fairness/reciprocity: equal and unequal treatment
2. 2. Harm/care: empathy, concern for suffering of others
3. 3. Authority respect: reverence for and moral outrage against those who disparage authority
4. 4. Purity/disgust: avoiding social contamination
5. 5. In-group/loyalty: visceral loyalty to their group even if the group is arbitrary

Compare this to AIIM’s definition of collaboration, discussed in two previous blogs:

AIIM Collaboration Definition

Humans are likely hardwired to collaborate, cooperate and be part of an organization (be it a tribe or modern organization). That is not to say that we will not look for a chance to advance our own cause (or personal-utility as economists like to say). This is why the collaboration model introduced in a previous blog includes the concept of Governance – someone has to mind the shop.

This of course leads to an interesting question of why do organizations spend time and resources encouraging collaboration – why does it not simply happen naturally? I suspect that a few individuals maximizing their utility obligate an organization to treat all its members as potential miscreants. Thus a few people end up dictating the cultural norms for an entire organization. I call this effect the ‘Propensity to Mediocrity’ and a subject of a future blog.

A model for evaluating and managing organizational collaboration. Combines the People, Process, and Product mnemonic with a consideration of both time (past, present, and future) and the role of Governance.

In a previous blog (Collaboration – Not the Vichy Variety) I provided an overview of the Association for Information and Image Management’s (AIIM) definition and model of collaboration.  I like the definition as it focuses on people and business objectives rather than technology.  The definition, with my annotations, is as follows:

AIIM Collaboration Definition

Collaboration is Directed: whether an organization likes it or not, people will collaborate because human contact is a need of all of us.  For organizations, the important point is to direct that need toward, a ‘working practice’. 

Collaboration Involves People: collaboration amongst machines (computer, mechanical or otherwise) is straightforward.  Establish a channel of communication; create standardized messages: deal with any noise along the communication channel; receive and verify the message; act per the instructions, lather, rinse and repeat (for more on this, see my blog post: Drums, Writing, Babbage and Information).  Humans are not so simple.  We have complex and extremely rich methods of communications, we form tribal-like social bonds which may affect that communication and we tend to have our own agendas. 

Requires Effort: Collaboration is work, good collaboration is a lot of work.  Like anything of value, an effective collaborative model requires effort, resources and organizational support. 

Has a Business Reason/Need: Organizations have three very good value propositions to encourage collaboration.  The first is it reduces the transaction cost for the business process being collaborated upon.  The second is that it can lead to innovation within and outside of that business process.  The third is it encourages the social bonds amongst staff which in turn (hopefully) improves staff productivity, loyalty and interest for the work at hand.  These immediate and less tangible results are the pay back to the organization for nurturing a collaborative culture. 

I like the AIIM definition but for further consider, the following are some other potential definitions for organizations to consider and adopt as their own.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration

AIIM Definition: http://www.aiim.org/What-is-Collaboration

What is a collaborative organization: http://p2pfoundation.net/Collaborative_Organization