Not surprised this would make sense from an Army perspective, because infantry especially will need to be able to think fast on the fly, keeping the focus on the overall mission whilst adapting tactics to meet often rapidly-changing circumstances. Rigid rule-following was necessary in Roman or Napoleonic times, because the tactics (the line, the square) depended on unity and on interlock; but it’s not a viable tactic in an urban guerilla context. The old Taylorist analytic ‘scientific management’, with its rigid hierarchies and equally rigid separation between ‘brain’ and ‘brawn’, does indeed work well for specific tasks (McDonald’s ‘THE way to clean a floor”) or for a wider context when there is little or no change; but the ‘anarchist’ skillset needs to come more to the fore wherever there are complex conditions and high rates of change. Neither the ‘analyst’ nor the ‘anarchist’ are correct for all circumstances: we need to be able to do either, as appropriate, according to the context. Which means we first need to know what the context is, how we use each skillset, and when and why we need to switch between them.

On the Cynefin ‘sense / analyse / respond’ etc, perhaps ought to point out that these are selected decision/response tactics that would be used within a full process-loop such as John Boyd’s OODA, Deming’s PDCA or the Six-Sigma DMAIC. Follow the link on the Wikipedia page on Cynefin to Dave Snowden’s HBR article for more details on this, or contact Dave direct at Cognitive Edge. (Dave was formerly one of IBM’s leading consultants on knowledge-management – I know he’s worked with US Army and similar groups in the past, if that’s of interest.)

I was intrigued by your comment about “comparing business anarchist, organizational anarchist, and enterprise anarchist”. You’re right, they are different contexts, with somewhat different skillsets, though what I was focussing more on here was the contrasts between the roles and functions of overall ‘analyst’ and ‘anarchist’ skillsets. As you’ll see from my other weblog ( weblog.tomgraves.org ), my main business focus at present is an extended form of enterprise-architecture that covers the whole enterprise rather solely the enterprise-IT. The ‘enterprise-anarchist’ skillset comes in with common concerns such as applying a business-, performance- or technical-reference model (see FEAF or DODAF) to a real-world context where ‘the rules’ specified by the reference-model need adaptation to be usable in practice. In essence, I regard this aspect of enterprise-architecture and like as a bridge between strategy, operations and risk/opportunity-management – with the former and the latter relying more on the ‘anarchist’, and operations (or management, at any rate!) probably more preferring the ‘analyst’.

I also agree strongly with your point about the distinction between ‘breaking rules’ versus ‘superseding rules’ – a subtle but very important distinction. The key anchor here is that the vision (‘overall mission of missions’ might be an equivalent term in a military context?) provides both the justification and the guiide for any context in which we need to supersede ‘the rules’ of the ‘standard operating procedure’ or the like. If we bend the rules, we expect to do so with full responsibility, and also with sufficient reason to show why we supersede the standard rules.

Much food for thought – many thanks again, anyway.

Of Michelle Tripp’s six skills, I concur completely – however, I would like to build upon skill #1. Instead of breaking rules, I would prefer superseding rules. This is important to bring out a focus on the actual concern. The concern would be upon that which is created such that that which is superseded is demonstrated as such. Interestingly, the superseding state obtained is gained though the exercise of the other five skills. What really intrigued me was the discussion of sense/ analyze/ respond. There are several of these types of process outlines. However, I find John Boyd’s OODA loop (observe/ orient/ decide/ act) to be most compelling due to its mathematical foundation and its demonstrated truth. I say truth, because a true anarchist enjoys heresy. I end with the following links – good places to start looking into this, if you wish:

http://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)