Situational Leadership Decision-Making Continuum

  1  

LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT

© May 18, 2019/Gregory Douglas Poole

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the complex nature of leadership: how it’s not just a

singular phenomenon but one that is influenced by many variables, from individual

attributes to cultural belief systems to national governments. It explores the nature of

decision-making, including the importance of free environments, strong imperatives,

and cross-functional team networks. It explains why certain efforts – in music, in

companies, in space exploration, in disaster response, in medical emergencies – are

successful and why others are not. It looks into cycles, of exploration and discovery,

that affect decision-making; into the ten intelligences that influence learning; into the

problem phases, from unknown-unknowns to known-knowns, that affect business

environments and outcomes; into the advantages of industry clusters and of indigenous

talent. Overall, the paper looks at what it takes to cope successfully with change – the

only constant in our multifaceted lives.

  2  

LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT

Gregory Douglas Poole

Introduction

Study leadership, study critical thinking, study ethics! This is what business

students are told: learn well these three separate subjects. The textbooks of the typical

courses on management, critical thinking, and ethics lead students to believe that these

subjects are mutually exclusive. But my life experiences have shown me that good

leadership, critical thinking, and ethics are, in reality, mutually inclusive.

I have witnessed musical creativity first-hand. I was raised in the View Park

area of Los Angeles, California. I can exaggerate a bit and claim that musicians from

my neighborhood invented rock-and-roll and forever altered the direction of American

music. My best friend’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Turner; yes, Ike & Tina Turner. Ike

Turner recorded what is considered the first rock-and-roll record, “The Rockets.”

(Wikipedia) Across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Turner lived Mr. and Mrs. Ray

Charles. A fifteen-minute bicycle ride down the hill at the intersection of Fairway and

Mullen is where my family lived. Our next-door neighbors and best friends were

George and Louis Johnson, the Brothers Johnson. Maurice White, the founder and

bandleader of Earth, Wind & Fire, lived across the street.

When George, Louis, my brother, and I were not playing ping-pong or

basketball late into the night (anything to avoid homework), we were jamming in the

Johnson’s living room, which had been turned into a music studio for teenagers.

  3  

George once audaciously declared, “My music teacher said I mastered the guitar -- there

is nothing more for me to learn.” And, Louis would always say, “One day, I am going to

be the baddest bass player in the world.” Yes, a lot of innocent adolescent bravado but

also the fierce rivalry among African-American musicians competing for that Number 1

hit. And then, the other kids and I would tease back, “You’re never gonna make it,

you’ll never be better than the Jackson Five.” This was 1970 and the Jackson Five were

number 1 with “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There,” and “ABC.” Michael Porter

describes this spirit of competition in his book and Harvard Business Review article,

“The Competitive Advantage of Nations.” “Domestic rivals engage in active feuds;

they compete not only for market share but also for people, for technical excellence, and

perhaps most important, for ‘bragging rights.’ One domestic rival‘s success proves to

others that advancement is possible and often attracts new rivals to the industry.”

(Porter, 1990)

On Wednesday nights, the neighborhood kids and I would congregate at Mr.

White’s house, to listen to Earth Wind & Fire rehearse until the late night hours. Trial-

and-error musical verses repeated again and again became loud, repetitious noise as

they blew through each musician’s towering six-foot-high Fender Rhodes speaker—

from rehearsal to perfection. Noise pollution? Our neighbors wouldn’t dream of calling

the police. This was an African-American neighborhood and music was deemed our

most important cultural asset. By the mid-70’s the Brothers Johnson proved us

neighborhood kids wrong with such hits as “I’ll Be Good to You,” “Get the Funk Out

Ma Face,” “Strawberry Letter 23,” and “Stomp.” Earth, Wind & Fire recorded such hits

as “September,” “Boogie Wonderland,” “Fantasy,” and “Let’s Groove.”

  4  

Thus, my first intimate experience with creativity, competition, leadership, and

teamwork came from the musicians of my neighborhood. I’m tickled when I think that

the guys from my ‘hood sold over a billion albums either of their own music or as

session musicians for other artists. Louis Johnson was a session musician on sixty

albums for the likes of George Benson (‘Give Me the Night’) and Michael Jackson

(‘Off The Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Dangerous”). Louis Johnson is most famous for

having created the baseline for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” (Wikipedia) A billion

albums is big business! According to the United States Department of

Commerce/International Trade Administration, the U.S. represents a third of the global

share of Media & Entertainment earnings for film, music, book publishing, and video

games. In 2015, U.S. Media & Entertainment earnings were $632 billion. (DaSilva,

2016) The U.S. Media & Entertainment industry plays a major role is shaping

American cultural soft power.

My father, a mechanical engineer, introduced me to technology and innovation

in the halls of the American military-and-space industrial complex (Litton

Industries/Northrop Grumman, Teledyne Technologies, and Ampex) when I

accompanied him to work on weekends before those Monday-morning project

deadlines. I remember well Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing on July 24, 1969,

for I was touched by Commander Neil A. Armstrong’s proclamation, “One small step

for man, one giant leap for mankind.” My father, employed at Ampex, was a member

of the project team that designed a small box made of some aluminum alloy, which

housed core memories to be left on the Moon. My dad’s box is still up there

somewhere.

  5  

Later in life, I founded International Strategic Communications, a boutique

language institute that served the Japanese corporate English-education market. I was

able to foster long-term business relationships with numerous Japanese companies

across a spectrum of industries. Managing a business in Japan allowed me to gain

valuable insights into Japanese management culture. I learned how Japanese managers

employ a holistic, meritocratic, consensus approach to decision-making and decision-

implementing. My intimate experiences with Japanese culture, and Japanese

management practices in particular, would serve as a lens through which to view and

compare my experiences in Saudi Arabia.

My ideas about leadership developed significantly during eight years of serving

as a lecturer in the Core/Humanities Department and the College of Business

Administration at Prince Mohammed Bin Fahd University (PMU) in Al Khobar, Saudi

Arabia. I taught Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Leadership & Teamwork, and

other management courses at PMU, learning from students while they learned from me.

Saudi Arabia is the center of the Arab/Islamic world, where leadership is often

described as tribal, paternalistic, privileged, hierarchically centralized, and soundly

embedded in the “Great Man” theory of management. (Robbins & Judge, 2011)

These varying cultural experiences convinced me that one cannot disentangle

critical thinking, leadership, and ethics from one another. Organizations that are able to

sustain long-term, competitive advantages are gyroscopically managed to harmonize

their imperatives, strategies, and tactics into a decision-making/decision-implementing

culture that embodies critical thinking, innovative leadership, and ethics.

  6  

When teaching critical thinking, I inevitably focus on leadership, and when

teaching leadership, I can’t help but address critical thinking. And then there are the

questions: Why and how does ethics intersect with critical thinking and leadership?

How can an instructor teach one without addressing the others? And how can students

truly understand one without truly understanding the others? The thinker or leader who

fails to explore ethical reasoning will ultimately fail to critically analyze and ethically

balance conflicting moral views for the greater good of the organization and society.

The leader who cannot critically think and the critical thinker who cannot lead

are bound to fail. If one were to write a tagline for a critical-thinking course it could

read “Seeking Superior Solutions!” Similarly, the tagline for a leadership course could

read “Implementing Superior Solutions!” Yet rare is the individual or, for that matter,

the organization that can seamlessly create and implement superior solutions with equal

savvy over the long term. Seeking superior solutions requires deep contemplation and

introspection, while implementing superior solutions requires the ability to act

decisively either alone and/or through organizational networks. To cultivate and sustain

this dual activity and create sustainable competitive advantage is an extraordinary feat.

Is there a way to view leadership, critical thinking, and ethics as mutually

inclusive? More specifically, is there a way of strategically planning and tactically

implementing the four functions of management (planning, organizing, leading, and

controlling) throughout an organization’s hierarchy to achieve long-term sustainable

competitive advantage?

  7  

The Situational Leadership Decision Continuum

LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/n10eh5gqpu-3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy Gregory Douglas Poole

The Situational Leadership Decision Continuum is a framework that allows

decision-makers to contextualize decision events and their decision-implementation

styles on a continuum ranging from the Unknown-Unknown (left-side) to the Known-

Unknown (mid-point) to the Known-Known (right-side). Advancing technology,

business processes, and best business practices from the unknown/unknown to the

known-known does not just happen. A nation’s political and economic institutions must

first create an environment where individuals and organizations are free and even

encouraged to engage in creative pursuits under the protection of the law and property

rights. (Reed, Shedd, Pagnattaro, & Morehead, 2010)

  8  

Absolutist/Extractive Cultural, Political & Economic Institutions

Vs.

Democratic/Inclusive Cultural, Political & Economic Institutions

LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/n10eh5gqpu-3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy Gregory Douglas Poole

The book “Why Nations Fail,” by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson,

offers a convincing social-political-economic framework for why a nation’s

policymakers, business leaders, and citizens make bad decisions or at least fail to

optimize/implement their good decisions. The social-political-economic framework of

a nation can be described on a continuum, with absolutist/extractive cultural, religious,

political, and economic institutions at one extreme and democratic/inclusive cultural,

religious, political, and economic institutions at the other extreme. (Acemoglu &

Robinson, 2013)

Nations that are absolutist/extractive can be classified as Communist,

dictatorship, or oligarchy. The political, social, and economic environment is best

described as extreme concentration of power and wealth. In these nations, leadership

assumes an advocacy/fight-to-win approach with the citizenry and workers (I Win-You

Lose, Parent-to-Child Transactional Relationship). Typically, these nations adhere to

strict cultural, political, and/or religious orthodoxy where segregation is practiced in one

  9  

form or another based on race, tribe, gender, and/or religion. More often than not,

religious faith rules over science and modernity. The nation’s leaders are generally

delusional and engage in fallacious reasoning (appeal to force, appeal to tradition, and

wishful thinking), perpetuating a cycle of autocratic power. (Acemoglu & Robinson,

2013) Fear permeates; creativity and innovation are stifled as individual and

institutional reasoning succumb to autocratic, centralized power. These nations fail to

create competitive advantages across multiple industries.

Nations that are democratic/inclusive give people a say in how they are

governed. Within organizations, management and labor take an inquiry/Socratic

questioning approach with one another (I Win-You Win, Adult-to-Adult Transactional

Relationship). The nation’s leaders are generally open-minded and refrain from

fallacious reasoning. Confidence abounds; creativity is cultivated as individual and

institutional reasoning thrive. These nations generally succeed at creating competitive

advantages across multiple industries.

The period of the Cold War from 1947 (following the end of World War II) to

1991 (shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall) provides an example of an ideological

struggle between two nations: Russia, which had adopted Communism as its political

and economic model, in which economic planning and means of production are under

the control of a highly autocratic centralized government, vs. the United States, which

had adopted capitalism as its political and economic model, in which economic

planning and means of production are laissez-faire and decentralized among central and

local government and private industry. Preeminence in military and space technology

  10  

was fundamental to winning the Cold War for military might, global power, and

ideological superiority.

The United States can rightfully claim victory in the space race but the race was

neck-and-neck, for Russia had many firsts too (first ICBM, August 21, 1957/first

satellite in space Sputnik I, October 4, 1957/first animal in space, Sputnik II, November

3, 1957/first man in space, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, April 12, 1962/the first man to

walk in space, Alexey Leonov, March 18, 1965). (Wikipedia, 2017)

One can argue that winning the space race did not in itself prove that laissez-

faire decentralized capitalism was the better economic model, for the space race was

more about technological superiority than about political-economic superiority. The

crucial factor that proved that capitalism was the better economic model was that the

United States could apply the technological and management know-how gained through

the military/space industrial complex across multiple industries and create national

competitive advantages. Russia could not do the same.

Insofar as pure Communism exists, then Russia came close to exemplifying it.

Conversely, although pure capitalism exists in theory, it has never existed in practice,

for even the United States, the most capitalist of nations, has its share of socialist

policies (public education and public roads). Likewise, one may argue that even the

United States has been far from democratic and inclusive, given its historical biases

against new immigrants and people of color. One may further argue that slavery,

embraced by the U.S. until the Civil War, is as much an economic system as

Communism and capitalism, so the United States was not a capitalist economy but a

  11  

slave/Jim Crow economy for much of its history--at least until the Civil Rights Act of

1964/Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nonetheless, slavery and Jim Crow directly affected

only the African-American population, which accounted for 10 to 15 percent of the

general U.S. population. Hence, for the remaining 85 to 90 percent of the U.S.

population, society was relatively democratic and inclusive, individuals and institutions

being largely free to seek and implement solutions as they deemed best. For this reason,

the United States was able to succeed at creating sustainable competitive advantages

across multiple industries.

The dichotomy between absolutist/extractive and democratic/inclusive

institutions comes to light when comparing the plantation-era southern United States,

where slavery/Jim Crow was the economic model, to the northern United States, where

slavery existed but was significantly less pronounced. The absolutist/extractive

institutions in the southern United States were so focused on securing abundant cheap

labor for their plantations that they failed to see the long-term economic advantages of

transforming agriculture from a low-tech, slave-labor-intensive industry to a high-tech,

knowledge-intensive industry. The northern United States turned to agricultural

innovation in order to compete with the South’s slave-labor cost advantage. After

slavery was abolished, the South gradually caught up with the North, in terms of

innovating. And, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964/Voting Rights Act of

1965, the per-capita income of the South began to improve. By 1990 (25 years later)

the per-capita income gap between the North and the South had basically vanished.

(Acemoglu & Robinson, 2013)

  12  

Sheikocracy and Absolutist/Extractive Institutions

In his article, “Cultural Discontinuity and Arab Management Thought,” Dr. Abbas

J. Ali calls the Arab economic/management model sheiko-capitalism or sheikocracy. In

sheiko-capitalism, typical of the oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council

(GCC) -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates --

economic policy is largely the result of authoritarian, top-down dictates of the ruling

elites who personally control and manage their nations’ wealth. (Ali, 1995) There is

little semblance of a free-market economy where creativity and innovation can flourish.

Nepotism, not meritocracy, is the selection criterion because personal loyalty is deemed

more important to maintaining political and economic power than the professional

qualifications needed to create sustainable national competitive advantages.

A casual observation of any of the GCC nations leads one to believe that these

countries are at the cutting edge of organizational and technological knowledge. Yet,

when one begins to peel the veneer, one sees that the organizational and technological

know-how of these quasi-family nation states is simply paid-for imported technology

and a large dose of savior-faire. Dr. Abbas J. Ali has described Arab management

scholars and practitioners as falling into three categories: palace servants, alienated

scholars, and western imitators. (Ali, 1995)

Many Arab management scholars, practitioners, and much of the Arab media

succumb to the palace-servant phenomenon, which involves the myth that a given ruler

single-handedly accomplishes a country’s economic and technological achievements

throughout his lifetime. Few realize, for example, that it was an American architect,

  13  

Adrian Smith (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architectural and Engineering Firm/USA)

and OTIS Elevator that were the principle architects of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest

structure in the world. Samsung C&T Corporation/Republic of South Korea was the

lead contractor.

It is interesting to note that the Burj Khalifa employs the world-renowned

tubular high-rise design of Dr. Fazlur Rahman Khan (also of Skidmore, Owings &

Merrill). Dr. Khan falls into the category of alienated scholar: Originally from British

India, now Bangladesh, Dr. Khan, a Muslim, moved to the USA upon completion of his

B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering &

Technology after receiving an American Fullbright Scholarship in 1952. In 1955, Dr.

Khan earned a PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign and is considered the father of tubular high-rise design. Dr. Khan became a

naturalized American citizen in 1967. (Talukder)

Finally, many Arab management scholars and business leaders fall into the

category of western imitators. Paying little regard to the distinctive Arab/Islamic

culture of their nations, Arab management scholars and business leaders from the GCC

largely copy Western management practices. Arab managers, unlike Japanese

managers, are not very adept at taking a global approach to identifying, analyzing,

selecting the best technologies and management practices from around the world and

adapting them to their home culture. The Japanese do not simply copy; they identify

the best aspects of a given technology and management practice across multiple cultures

and selectively combine and adapt those practices to their culture to reap sustainable

competitive advantages for Japan. As for the Burj Khalifa and other so-called

  14  

technological and business feats within the GCC, there is little technology or business

process indigenous to the GCC. Arab management scholars and business leaders who

are western imitators are inclined to “treat illusion as reality and confuse imitation with

originality.” (Ali, 1995)

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of democratic/inclusive institutions to

unleashing creativity, innovation, and development of a nation’s industries.

Nonetheless, as important as democracy is to the vibrancy of a nation’s institutions,

religions, and culture, a nation’s people must possess an imperative: the imperative to

continually improve and to ultimately succeed, as put forth in “Search for Excellence.”

(Peters & Waterman, 1982)

  15  

Religiously Imperative/Mission Imperative/Not Imperative

Harmonizing leadership, critical thinking, and ethics into an effective, all-in-one,

mutually inclusive, decision-making process at the individual, organizational, and

societal levels requires that the individual, the organization, and the society agree on

what is imperative and what must be accomplished. The notion of imperative can be

viewed in three contexts: religiously imperative, mission imperative, and not

imperative.

Religiously Imperative

A religious imperative is a belief that obligates one to God. Failure is not an

option, for failure is to fail the Almighty. An example of one such religious imperative

is Salat, which is the second of the five pillars of Islam. Salat is the five daily prayers

(Fahre/Dawn, Dhuhr/Noon, Asr/Afternoon, Maghrib/Evening, and Isha/Night) that

devout Muslims faithfully offer every day. One can arguably assert that of all Muslims,

Saudi Arabians are the most dedicated to practicing Salat from both the individual

perspective and the greater cultural and business perspective. Every day, the 94,304

mosques in Saudi Arabia perform each of the five daily prayers with the precision of a

Swiss watch. When the call to prayer commences, Saudi Arabian life transforms from

the hustle-and-bustle of daily business to the existentialist solitude of prayer. All retail

stores close, factories stop production, and Saudi Arabians cease doing what they are

doing, turn towards Mecca, and pray. Even Saudi Arabian surgeons have been known

to interrupt surgery to pray. To the Saudi Arabian, Salat is imperative. To the Saudi

Arabian, failing Salat is not an option.

  16  

Mission Imperative

Mission imperative is similar to religious imperative, except that mission

imperative is secular. Mission imperative is a duty to one’s culture and society. Failure

is not an option, for failure is to fail human society. An example of a duty that was

mission imperative, where failure was not an option, is expressed in President

Kennedy’s “We Choose to Go to the Moon” speech, delivered at Rice University in

Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and

new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For

space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own.

Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United

States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean

will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or

will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected

against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and

mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has

made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its

hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its

opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the

Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest

mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?

  17  

We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and

do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that

goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that

challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one

we intend to win.” (Wikipedia, 2013)

Epilogue: On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 set off from Kennedy Space Center,

carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and

Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down

at its lunar location, the Sea of Tranquility. Neil Armstrong famously said in a live

television broadcast from the Moon, "One small step for man, one giant leap for

mankind." (Adminisration, 2015).

Not Imperative

Not imperative boils down to not important. Not important generally means that

the individual, the organization, and the society will either not do it, or they will only

attempt to do it, or they will not do a very good job at it. Mediocrity and failure become

acceptable when an endeavor is not imperative.

The Three Failures: (Brandt, 1981)

(A) The first failure involves the individual, the organization, or the society that

fails but doesn’t see the failure as significant. “We tried and we failed but it was not

important because if we had really wanted to succeed, we could have succeeded.” This

is how most fail.

  18  

(B) The second failure involves the individual, the organization, or the society

that fails but does not care. “We tried and we failed but it was not important. We do not

care.” This type of failure is doomed to repeat itself, again and again. This is failure at

its worst.

(C) The third failure involves the individual, the organization, or the society that

fails but cares. “We failed but we care. It was not for us to succeed this time. We tried

our best. We were aware that there were unknown-unknowns so we continually

explored. We inquired and we investigated. We diligently followed the best practices

of the known-knowns. Yes, we failed, but we will try again and again until we

succeed.” This is the kind of failure that propels individuals, organizations, and cultures

to be great innovators and to strengthen the spirit of entrepreneurialism.

Failure is worthy when failure is a valuable learning experience in the pursuit of

cultural excellence. The Apollo space program, and its astronauts, exemplify this

culture of excellence. Yes, there were failures, even very costly and tragic failures;

however, they succeeded in their quest to reach the Moon. Mission imperatives at the

national and cultural level can shape a nation in many unforeseeable ways. One can

only imagine what impact the first American Moon landing in 1969 had on the likes of

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who were in their early teens at the time.

  19  

National Competitive Advantage of Industry Clusters

A business does not exist in isolation. Businesses are shaped by technology,

culture, demographics, and psychographics, which are in turn shaped by history.

Businesses have customers with demands ranging from the simplest to the most

sophisticated for any given product category. Similarly, businesses choose their labor

and supplies and build their labor and supply-chain networks based on the quality

demands of their targeted customer segments.

An industry cluster is a group of directly or indirectly interconnected businesses

and industries that compete and/or support one another in simple to sophisticated

buyer/supplier relationships. Generally, clusters exist within a geographic region and

are strategically located near ports and rivers. Moreover, clusters are typically located

near large markets and/or suppliers and manufacturers, to reap the benefits of

knowledge networks, which create spillovers of technology, skills, and information

across industries. (Baldwin, 2005) Business- and industry-cluster competitiveness are

affected not only by national factors (labor, land, natural resources, capital,

infrastructure) but also by the imperative (religious or mission) that propels cluster

participants to build on the culture, technology and process know-how of one another.

Industry-cluster knowledge is mutually reinforcing. Technology and business-

process knowledge gained in one industry are easily transferred among other industry-

cluster participants. Hence, the sophistication of any given business/industry participant

is in part determined by the technological/business know-how of its fellow cluster

participants. The quality of decisions made and implemented by industry decision-

  20  

makers is largely contingent on the level of sophistication within the area of industry-

cluster influence. (Porter, 1990) Democratic/inclusive cultural, political, and economic

institutions create mission imperatives, which in turn build sophisticated industry

clusters that beget sophisticated industry decisions that beget more sophisticated

industry decisions -- a virtuous cycle of good decisions. (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2013)

  21  

Industry Clusters — Indigenous Homegrown Cultural Phenomena

“Virtually every country in the Gulf right now has either a nuclear

program in progress, or a nuclear program under consideration. We

act in this region for both governments and suppliers. From the

nuclear perspective, the Middle East is an extraordinarily exciting area

right now. We are involved in several of these projects. We have

absolutely cutting-edge expertise in the area. I personally have a very

strong background in nuclear.” Jospeh Huse/Managing Partner of

Freshfields (Matthews & Canty, 2009)

What Huse calls “cutting-edge expertise in the area” refers to the know-how that

comes from rented, foreign-knowledge guest workers. The United Arab Emirates

(UAE) and, more alarmingly, Saudi Arabia lack the indigenous academic and nuclear-

energy industrial infrastructure needed to conceptualize, design, build, and manage a

nuclear power plant, let alone a domestic nuclear industry. An indigenous nuclear-

industry cluster would, of course, emanate from a nation’s universities with

undergraduate and graduate programs in physics, mathematics, nuclear engineering,

nuclear-engineering waste management, computer science, and civil, mechanical, and

electrical engineering, programs largely staffed with PhD’s who are citizens or are on a

citizen track. A cluster of homegrown nuclear-power training programs would be the

next spin-off industry, and it would produce a cadre of homegrown nuclear-power

technicians. The overwhelming talent at the few universities in the UAE and Saudi

Arabia that offer degrees in the relevant disciplines are rented foreign PhD guest

faculty. What is more, these educated guests have no skin in the game – i.e., they know

  22  

they are rented and not an indigenous part of the culture, so their attitude toward their

work is noncommittal. If a contract is about to end, a rented guest worker is content to

let the host country worry about any project that worker may be involved with.

My career in education began in Tokyo, Japan on April 1st 1997, the start of the

Japanese fiscal year. I was an English teacher and travelled every day throughout the

Tokyo metropolis, giving English instruction to various companies. In numerous

teaching assignments, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement as a pre-condition for

employment. I never taught English in a nuclear power plant. I did, however, teach a

six-month course at the corporate headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Company

(TEPCO).

TEPCO manages Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants. My English classes were

held one evening a week from September 2, 1999 to February 24, 2000. My class

consisted of 18 students -- 12 nuclear physicists and 6 secretaries. This started out to be

the best teaching assignment I’d ever had. When each class session ended, the students

invited me to the employee restaurant on the top floor of this elegant skyscraper

overlooking Tokyo’s evening skyline. We enjoyed many culinary delights while

engaging in what the Japanese call “nomo-communication” (drinking lots of alcohol

while talking with friends). This was corporate socialism at its best -- all food and

drinks were free, paid for by TEPCO. We always took the last train home at 1:00 a.m.

On Thursday, September 30th, the fun ended and the nightlong extravagant

dinners ceased because that morning TEPCO had experienced a nuclear accident at its

Tokaimura nuclear power plant. Three secretaries came to class to inform me that class

  23  

had been cancelled. In brief, two technicians had died as a result of severe radiation

exposure and many first responders were hospitalized with lesser degrees of radiation

exposure. Hundreds of nearby residents had been forced to evacuate. (Nuclear Industry)

Words cannot describe the sudden sense of fear as these very concerned

managers, nuclear physicists, and engineers grappled with the many unknown-

unknowns associated with the chaos of a nuclear meltdown. The point I want to stress

is that TEPCO is a Japanese company; the employees are Japanese and share an

uncompromising loyalty to their company and their country. Moreover, the Japanese

are known for their collectivist culture, which impacts all facets of Japanese business.

Teams are cross-functional, members representing diverse professional experiences in

order to confront challenges in all their breadth and depth. The Japanese corporate

philosophy of “Kaizen” -- continuous incremental business/production process

improvements anytime/everywhere -- is admired the world over.

The Tokaimura nuclear accident is not the only nuclear tragedy to beset Japan.

On March 11, 2011, everyone was on edge as Japanese nuclear engineers from around

Japan rushed to Fukushima to grapple with the back-to-back calamities of a 9.0

earthquake and a tsunami that had resulted in three nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima

nuclear power plant. (World Nuclear Association, 2018) The world looked on in horror

as the Japanese nuclear physicists struggled to contain the Fukushima nuclear

meltdown. Would Fukushima become Japan’s Chernobyl? If the Japanese couldn’t fix

this, then who could?

  24  

The UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s peaceful use of nuclear power will have

devastating environmental, public health, energy, and military security consequences

that will reverberate beyond the region in the event of a nuclear-power accident.

Imported cutting-edge expertise can never be a substitute for indigenous cutting-edge

expertise. The global community must ask, “What will happen if there is a nuclear

disaster in the UAE or Saudi Arabia? Will the imported guest experts, who are often

treated as second-class citizens and who have no citizenship and/or religious loyalty,

risk their lives to stay and manage the unknown-unknowns of a nuclear meltdown? Or

will they flee for their safety? How long and to what extent can a nation’s infrastructure

withstand a cascade of system failures (electricity, telecommunications, water and

wastewater, medical facilities, transportation, emergency shelters)? Will the UAE and

Saudi Arabia be able to recruit more rented foreign-knowledge guest workers when the

previous group of imported experts become overwhelmed by the radioactive

pandemonium and flee? Will foreign nations evacuate their citizens?

We have some evidence of imported experts as well as GCC nationals fleeing a

GCC country in the face of national crisis. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, there

was an exodus of foreign workers. (Tripathi & Menon, 1990) Moreover, approximately

800,000 Kuwaiti citizens, including many from the royal family, fled Kuwait. (Ibrahim,

1991) And in 2008 the United Arab Emirates did not escape the Lehman

Brothers/Wall Street financial crisis: laid-off expatriates from several countries,

representing 95 percent of the UAE workforce and 90 percent of the population, left in

droves. (Worth, 2009) In Saudi Arabia, the foreign work force represents 53 percent of

the total labor force of 11.9 million. (Ministry of Labor and Social Development, 2016)

How would the UAE and Saudi Arabia cope with the mass exodus of imported experts

  25  

in the event of a nuclear disaster? And what would happen to Umrah and Hajj in Saudi

Arabia – would those two all-important religious events have to be shut down for a year,

a decade, or even longer?

Where there are no citizenship rights, there are no indigenous industry clusters,

and there is no willingness to die for a country. A short-sighted notion that permeates

the cultures of the GCC nations is “We have the money so we can buy anything --

knowledge and technology and their day-to-day execution.”

No industry and no industry cluster, let alone a nuclear-industry cluster, can be

bought. A nuclear-industry cluster can only be a national indigenous creation where

indigenous knowledge from one industry contributes to and reinforces indigenous

knowledge in interconnected industries in a mutually reinforcing process. (Porter, 1990)

Indigenous culture must be homegrown and cultivated.

  26  

The Individual/Organizational/Cultural Ten Intelligences Learning Curve

Harnessing Knowledge of Cross-Functional Teams

LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT Prezi Presentation http://prezi.com/n10eh5gqpu-3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy Gregory Douglas Poole

The Ten Intelligences Learning Curve is pure business existentialism. It

involves Dr. Howard Gardner’s Nine Intelligences: Existential, Intra-Personal, Inter-

Personal, Naturalist, Musical, Logical-Mathematical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Verbal-

Linguistic, and Visual-Spatial (Examined Existance, 2014), as well as Daniel

Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, which is commonly understood to be the tenth

intelligence. (Goleman, 1998) For definitions of all ten intelligences, see Appendix I.

The Ten Intelligences Learning Curve illustrates multi-intelligence learning on a

personal, organizational, and cultural level. The X/Vertical Axis represents multi-

intelligence learning by time (life-time). The Y/Horizontal Axis represents multi-

intelligence learning in terms of proficiency. What distinguishes the Ten Intelligences

Learning Curve from other learning curves is that there are three Y/Vertical Axes.

  27  

Y/Vertical Axis 1 (Not Smart, So-So, and Smart) and Y/Vertical Axis 2 (Beginner,

Intermediate, and Advanced) represent multi-intelligence as a one-way linear

progression, going from low to high. Y/Vertical Axis 3 represents multi-intelligence

learning as a never-ending, back-and-forth phenomenon among Unknown-

Unknown/Exploration, Known-Unknown, and Known-Known/Perfection-Repetition.

Another distinguishing feature of the Ten Intelligences Learning Curve is the

notion of imperative. Individuals, organizations, and cultures do not excel where there

is no imperative. Conversely, individuals, organizations, and cultures excel where there

is a religious and/or mission imperative. Imperative has proved to be a valuable

companion to knowledge. For learning to occur, there must be an imperative.

Not knowing can easily be forgiven. Yet willfully failing to investigate the

known-unknowns not only inhibits progress, it can be an existential threat when the

decision-maker is in a critical leadership position. Inquisitive, innovative, and

entrepreneurial individuals and organizations are in an everlasting search for continuous

improvement. Visionary scientists and entrepreneurs are never comfortable with the

status quo of today’s known-knowns; they relish the challenge of exploring the

unknown-unknowns with all their risks.

Innovative organizations that create difficult-to-duplicate sustainable

competitive advantages know their values and are adept at talent management, team

management, and knowledge management. These organizations have a knack for

inventorying the multi-intelligences and work experiences of their talented employees in

order to compete from strength while avoiding weaknesses. These organizations

  28  

continuously conduct feedback analysis and do not succumb to intellectual arrogance,

which causes disabling ignorance. “Far too many people—especially people with great

expertise in one area—are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that

being bright is a substitute for knowledge.” (Drucker, 1999) Perhaps no organizational

culture embodies the multiple intelligences in all their mixture in breadth and depth as

Cirque du Soleil, the daredevil acrobatics circus group founded by Guy

Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix in Quebec, Canada. From creative conception-to-

performing arts execution, spectacle-to-spectacle, department-to-department, team-to-

team, and artist-to-artist, Cirque du Soleil exemplifies a culture that continuously

explores the unknown-unknowns of creativity and steadfastly rehearses to the known-

knowns of performance perfection.

Pioneering organizations are great at harnessing their talent and knowledge

power into cross-functional/sub cross-functional team networks. Cross-functional team

management is a multi-disciplinary, multi-intelligence approach to identifying and

defining problems, brainstorming, and implementing solutions.

Problems can be big, yet big problems beget unlimited opportunities! Effective

solutions management is the ability to disassemble a seemingly big, indefinable,

unmanageable problem into smaller, more definable, more manageable sub-problems.

A cross-functional team network consists of a lead cross-functional team that manages a

network of sub cross-functional teams empowered to research an issue and/or solve a

problem in a given organizational or technical area. Each sub cross-functional team is

disbanded once its objective is accomplished, and it is replaced with another sub cross-

functional team with a different research and/or problem-solution objective. To ensure

  29  

overall cross-functional team manageability and team cohesiveness, the number of sub

cross-functional teams should not exceed ten. Both a cross-functional and sub cross-

functional team are staffed with talent representing a diversity of

educational/professional experience, a mélange of multi-intelligence sets, and an array

of cultural backgrounds.

A cross-functional team can arrive at a solution based on the collective

experiences of its members. A mechanical engineer will sketch a mechanical-

engineering solution. An electrical engineer teamed with a mechanical engineer will

sketch an electro-mechanical engineering solution. Add a software engineer to the mix,

and a software-electro-mechanical engineering solution is sketched. Add a key user,

and a user-friendly software, electro-mechanical engineering solution is sketched. Add

cultural diversity to the team and the sketch will become a marvelous composition

reflecting the intersections of technology, business, and culture.

The power of a cross-functional/sub cross-functional team network is awesome.

Say, for instance, you have a big problem, like the famous Nissan-Renault

Alliance/Nissan Turnaround led by Carlos Ghosn. (Ghosn, Saving the Business Without

Losing the Company, 2002) Imagine you have a cross-functional team that manages a

network of ten sub cross-functional teams. Let’s say each sub cross-functional team

answers a question or solves a problem each week. That is 520 questions

answered/problems solved in one year! In two years that is 1,040 questions

answered/problems solved!

  30  

Good leaders understand that knowledge acquisition is just as often the result of

haphazard curiosity as it is the act of a singular scientific process.

Herbie Hancock on Miles Davis:

“He would put people who play one style with people who would play another

style, a different style. Or maybe a contrasting style. Most people wouldn’t dare do it

because they figure, that’s not going to work. You know, but Miles would put these

elements together because he would trust the spirit of the honesty of each of the

musicians trying to figure out a way to make it work.” (Cuscuna).

Carlos Ghosn on Diversity:

“I mean there is also another reality about diversity, nobody likes diversity. We

like commonality, we like people who look like us, speak like us, think like us, that’s

what we feel comfortable with. The reality of the world is that you learn from diversity;

but you are comforted by commonality. Now, what you want to avoid is people in the

company going for their comfort. If I am an engineer, I want to talk to an engineer, if I

am in manufacturing I want to solve my problem with another manufacturer. It doesn’t

work. You are going to have to seek people who are different. To give you a different

aspect of reality because this is what innovation is and this is where the solution is.”

(Ghosn, Carlos Ghosn on Diversity, 2009)

Steve Jobs on Managing People:

“One of the keys to Apple is Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. And

so, you know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero! We have no

committees… we are organized like a start-up. One person is in charge of iPhone OS

  31  

software, one person is in charge of Mac hardware, one person is in charge of iPhone

engineering, another person is in charge of worldwide marketing, another person is in

charge of operations. It’s like a start-up, were the biggest start-up on the planet. And we

all meet for three hours once a week and we talk about everything we are doing, the

whole business. And there is tremendous teamwork at the top of the company, which

filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company. And teamwork is

dependent on trusting the other folks to come through with their part without watching

them all the time. Trusting that they are going to come through with their parts. And

that’s what we do really well. And we are great at figuring out how to divide things up

into these great teams that we have and all work on the same thing, touch bases

frequently, and bring it all together into a product. We do that really well.” (Jobs, Steve

Jobs Talks About Managing People, 2010)

  32  

Existentialism/The Life Cycle

The life-cycle concept in management is philosophically defined in terms of

existential intelligence. Existential intelligence involves the sensitivity and capacity to

tackle the deep questions about human existence, the meaning of life, and death.

Managers, leaders, and even governments must likewise question the existence of

technologies, products, industries, and even social-political life cycles as each moves

along the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum because nothing lasts forever

except change. In other words, stakeholders must be concerned with the ability of the

organization to continually reinvent itself as its very existence moves along the

Situational Leadership Decision Continuum in tandem with current and newly emerging

technologies, industries, product life cycles, and social-political trends.

Existential intelligence and intra-personal intelligence exist in tandem. Leaders,

managers, and stakeholders must rely on their intra-personal intelligence, their inner

intuition, which is the capacity to understand thoughts and feelings and to plan one’s

life, an organization’s life, and even a product’s life. Intra-personal intelligence applies

to the self and the human condition as well as to the organization’s role in society. Great

leaders and effective managers understand the value of multiple intelligences; they

know how to recruit, train, and strategically position human talent throughout the

organization based on the needs of a specific job task.

Just as change is a constant along the Situational Leadership Decision

Continuum, so is death (nothing but change lasts forever). Steve Jobs said in his 2005

Stanford University Commencement Speech, “Death is the destination we all share, no

  33  

one has ever escaped it and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single

best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent, it clears out the old to make way for the

new.” (Jobs, Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Universtiy Commencement Address, 2005)

Even Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest personalities and political activists of

the 20th century, the greatest boxer of all time, a terrific strategist/tactician, and the

inventor of the rope-a-dope could not escape the inevitability of decline and death. As

Leon Spinks said of Ali before their fight for the 1978 World Heavyweight

Championship, “Any man is old when he is thirty-six.” (McCormack, 2009) Ali lost

that fight, but he vanquished Leon Spinks in Ali vs. Spinks II and retired as the World

Heavyweight Champion for the third time. But Ali found no glory in retirement and

soon the fallacy of wishful thinking took hold as Ali was in denial of reality – i.e., his

athletic decline and death. Ali simply could not resist the urge to be a four-time World

Heavyweight Champion and so in 1980 he signed to fight Larry Holms, his former

sparing partner. Holms would say before the big bout, “Muhammad Ali, there’s no

question about Muhammad Ali anymore. There is no more Muhammad Ali. There is

only one, Larry Holms. Muhammad Ali has seen the bright side—now he’s on the dark

side.” (McCormack, 2009)

The longevity of an athlete is analogous to that of a famous musician. The

musician becomes famous and loved the world over for a hip beat, a trendsetting sound.

The musician’s star shines down on its natural generational fan base. Musicians are

almost always defined, if not confined, by the genre of music they play. But musical

genres and musical tastes change over time. Rarely can a musician adapt his/her style to

match the changing musical tastes of a younger generation; the musician’s generational

  34  

fan base declines and dies off only to be replaced by younger and still younger

generations.

Like the musician, the politician inherently gets stuck in the mud of an outdated

politic. The politician’s ears gradually become tone-deaf to the tune of the new day, the

new era. The Arab Spring, which became the Arab Nightmare, illustrates the

metamorphosis from the Decline/Death phase of an older political era to the

Introduction/Change/Chaos phase of a new political era on the Situational Leadership

Decision Continuum. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for twenty-four years from

October 1987, after a bloodless coup d’état, until he fled in January 2011. Muammar

Gaddafi, following a coup d’etat, ruled Libya for forty-two years, from September 1969

to August 2011, when he was captured and killed by Misratan militia. Muhammad

Hosni El Sayed Mubarak was president of Egypt for nearly thirty-one years, from

October 1981 until February 2011, when he was forced to step down after days of

intense demonstrations. Like the athlete, like the musician, the dictator is not immune

to the existential reality of the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum.

  35  

Unknown-Unknown/Introduction-Change/Chaos/Decentralization-Entrepreneurship

Vs.

Known-Unknown

Vs.

Known-Known/Decline-Death/Centralization

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always

interesting to me because as we know, there are known-knowns; there

are things we know we know. We also know there are known-

unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not

know. But there are also unknown-unknowns—the ones we don't

know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our

country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be

the difficult ones.”

Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld/Iraq War (Morris, 2013)

Management theorists often liken management styles to musical styles. Jazz is

largely improvisational, the soloists being free to play what they want according to their

personal interpretation of the musical moment. In management parlance, this is likened

to laissez-faire, decentralized execution, which is the unknown-unknown (left side) on

the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum. Conversely, in classical music,

musicians are expected to play the notes exactly the way the composer wrote them and

the symphony conductor understands them. In management parlance, this is likened to

pure top-down, centralized execution, which is the known-known (right side) on the

Situational Leadership Decision Continuum.

  36  

When a technology, product, industry, or social trend is in the unknown-

unknown phase, the business environment is unpredictable, unpatterned, and chaotic.

Industry participants and stakeholders must spontaneously adjust to disruptive change in

order to survive the unknown-unknowns. In this chaotic state, problems are not only

new; they cannot even be defined, let alone framed. Even those problems that can be

identified seem to have no structure, no discernible patterns, because there is no

historical background, no recorded data. The decision-maker is operating in a blind,

chaotic state. One doesn’t have a clue as to what type of primary data to collect or even

how to collect it. If data exists, it is likely secondary data that was collected for another

purpose and cannot be reliably applied in the context of unknown-unknowns.

Moreover, the power of deductive and inductive reasoning is limited. Deductive

reasoning ability is hampered because decision-makers frequently do not have the facts

to make simple assumptions -- there are just too many unknown-unknowns, and the

risks of asserting faulty premises are too high. Likewise, inductive reasoning ability is

limited because there is little to no history. There are no data and trend lines.

Everything is unpatterned, so probability is impossible to predict.

The unknown-unknown phase requires a highly decentralized, entrepreneurial,

strategic, and laissez-faire culture in order to effectively identify and frame problems.

Once the problems are framed, a list of solutions can be generated and the most superior

can be selected and executed throughout the organization’s hierarchy. This necessitates

a corporate culture that welcomes the abstract associated with exploration, a culture that

thrives on brainstorming, benchmarking, identifying key performance indicators,

conducting root-cause analysis, and managing by objectives in the abstract. Those

  37  

closest to the problem should have ownership in the diagnosis of the problem, the

solution, and its implementation.

Such spontaneous change is not suitable to rigid long-range planning because

the only certainty is lack of certainty. Hardly anything is predictable with absolute

confidence – or even the lowest level of confidence. In essence, the unknown-

unknowns overwhelm the decision-maker’s ability to critically reason. Effective and

efficient decision-making is unreliable and costly. There are just too many unknown-

unknown blind spots. Everything is low data/high risk. Yet, through the power of

imperatives and multiple intelligences, today’s unknown-unknowns have the potential

to become tomorrow’s known-unknowns.

In the known-unknown phase, decision-makers at least know what they do not

know. Moreover, deductive and inductive reasoning ability increase because the

business environment becomes more patterned and predictable. Managers can better

direct their management and financial resources to specific research & development

projects.

As a technology, product, industry, or social trend enters the known-known

phase, the business environment becomes highly stable and forecastable. Decision-

makers may experience change but this change is usually foreseeable and measurable.

Known-knowns beget anticipated, stable, and calculable low-risk work environments.

This state of known-knowns comes from the increased power of deductive and

inductive reasoning ability; industry decision-makers can use the power of information

science and big data to look back in history, crunch vast amounts of information,

  38  

instantly analyze it, and realize that what initially seemed to be chaotic is now patterned,

connected, and normal. Events, with all their commonalities and cause-and-effect

phenomena, can be predicted and measured. Brainstorming, benchmarking, identifying

key performance indicators, conducting root-cause analysis, and managing by

objectives cease to be a difficult. Hence, decision-makers can make near-accurate

assumptions with high confidence as to what is true and what is not true. Everything is

high data/low risk.

When a technology, product, industry, or social trend is in the known-known

phase, change exists, but it is predictable. The known-known phase is best

characterized as patterned and predictable. There is structure. Workflows are

standardized and repetitious, which is perfectly suitable for centralized, top-down

decision-making. Tasks, process-flows, and management are conducive to deductive

binary reasoning (0’s or 1’s) and logical reasoning (if A, then B). All inputs are known,

and a known input equals a known output. “Patterns are only patterns, patterns on top

of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns, patterns that are hidden by other patterns,

patterns within patterns. If you watch closely, history does nothing but repeat itself.

What we call chaos is patterns, just patterns we have not recognized. What we call

random is just patterns we can’t decipher.” (Chuck Palahniuk) Effective and efficient

decision-making is as low-cost as it is reliable. Risks are almost non-existent and

premises are near perfect. There are almost no unknown-unknown blind spots.

No sooner does a phenomenon peak at the known-known phase, then a new

technology, product, industry, or social trend appears. What was once a known-known

phenomenon reincarnates into a known-unknown or even an unknown-unknown. There

  39  

is always change. Either change is hiding in an unknown-unknown blind spot or change

is somewhere beyond the horizon.

Michael Porter

Michael Porter’s Five Industry Competitive Forces is an excellent representation

of the ever-changing business environment that decision-makers must face. (Porter,

1990) There is no escape. Every organization, technology, product, industry, and social

trend must face the realities of the five competitive forces (threat of new entrants, power

of suppliers, power of buyers, threat of substitutes, and rivalry of among existing

competitors) as each oscillates among the unknown-unknown, known-unknown, and

known-known phases on the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum. Change can

be either an existential threat or an existential opportunity. One decision-maker’s

unknown-unknown is another decision-maker’s known-known.

  40  

Leading-edge companies have a vibrant and dynamic culture, one that thrives on

the dichotomy between the unknown-unknown, requiring a decentralized and

entrepreneurial administration, and the known-known, requiring a centralized and top-

down administration. These organizations are adept at identifying and distinguishing

business processes that are best decentralized from those that are best centralized. This

is creative business practice at both the strategic-conception level and tactical, hands-on

implementation level. This is cultural; the organization must have the ability to dance

back and forth between decentralization (custom-made, single-use un-patterned

solutions and implementations) and centralization (multiple-use, patterned solutions and

implementations). Few organizations have the capacity to sustain this cultural swing

over an extended period of time. Generally, an organization is either one or the other.

Rarely is it both.

The dichotomy of decentralization vs. centralization is about composition—

organizational, policy, and decisional composition. We are familiar with compositional

dichotomy in music. The composer Gunther Schuller, in a lecture at Brandeis

University in 1957, coined the term “Third Stream” to describe a musical genre that is a

synthesis of jazz improvisation and classical music. (Wikipedia, 2015) One can hear

the dichotomy of decentralization vs. centralization in the music of Miles Davis and his

jazz combo (Miles Ahead/1957, Porgy and Bess/1958, and Sketches of Spain/1960).

Ever the soloist, Miles colorfully improvises with the jazz swing of his combo,

meanwhile backed by a full orchestra executing the strict, top-down arrangements of the

conductor, Gil Evans.

  41  

Successful leaders accept change as a natural component of all living/non-living

entities; yet they recognize that organizations require continuity, so they strive to

produce an organizational culture that is both spontaneously dynamic and structurally

harmonized (centralized top-down). The links connecting decentralization and

centralization are state-of-the-art information technology (IT) and big data.

Organizations that are adept at dancing across this IT/Big Data Bridge reap substantial

economies of scale and create sustainable, difficult-to-duplicate, competitive

advantages.

Decentralized decision-making is best when a customized, tailored solution is

required to solve a unique, un-patterned problem or to take advantage of a unique

opportunity. Decentralized decisions are generally more costly and time-consuming to

implement than centralized decisions because they are about one-off events that require

considerable inquiry and research.

Another drawback of decentralization is that managers are prone to seeing

business processes and the accompanying decision-making and implementation

procedures as exceptions. Hence, management fails to see the broader picture of

common-patterned events from department to department, which beget patterned

decisions and patterned processes throughout the organization both hierarchically and

horizontally.

Centralized decision-making is best when a packaged, pre-programmed solution

is required to solve a recurring patterned problem or to take advantage of a repetitious

opportunity. The decision and solution implementation of centralized decisions are

  42  

generally low-cost and not so time-consuming because the cost of inquiry and research

is spread over the number of times the decision/implementation event occurs. Relying

on big data means using information technology and data mining to analyze trends by

deciphering repetitive patterns, no matter how subtle. Using big data creates

organizational consistencies and economies of scale because business processes can be

standardized.

The drawback of centralization is that centralized business processes and their

accompanying decision-making and implementation procedures cannot readily be

adapted to the one-off exception. Economies of scale, by their very nature, mean that

patterned events beget patterned decisions and patterned processes. Any exception is

poised to create organizational confusion and dis-economies of scale.

Managers and policy-makers are prone to failing miserably if they apply a

decentralized decision to a largely centralized phenomenon. They will not gain

economies of scale. Similarly, when they apply a centralized decision to a largely one-

off decentralized phenomenon, they wrongly assume that a one-size decision fits all.

  43  

Making and Implementing Decisions

How decisions are made and implemented depends on who is making and

implementing them. This means that the nature of the decisions varies according to the

qualities of the individual. Decision-making is best when the decision-maker has a

balanced personality and background. Decision-making will be skewed, if not outright

flawed, because of a maladjusted personality, inadequate education/experience, or

dysfunctional social-cultural-political framework. A lack of education, experience, or

critical-reasoning skills can deny the decision-maker the necessary breadth and depth of

knowledge required to make a well-balanced executable decision.

Decision-making at the group/organizational level can be exponentially easier or

more difficult depending on the complexity of the problem, the personality of the

individual decision-makers, the combined multiple-intelligences of the decision-makers,

the decision-implementation environment, and last but not least, the group dynamics

and organizational culture.

Decision-making becomes more complex when we consider that decisions are

based on both objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is indisputable fact -- reality and

truth. Reality and truth are outside the individual decision-maker’s imagination,

interpretation, and bias. Subjectivity is internal reality, or an individual’s way of

perceiving and interpreting phenomena. Subjectivity is related to the individual

decision-maker’s imagination and biases. It comes from conscious/unconscious

experiences, assumptions, beliefs, feelings, and desires.

  44  

In a simplistic sense, decisions surface where objectivity and subjectivity

intersect on a Venn diagram. Both objectivity and subjectivity involve an element of

fear. Fear can come from being afraid to make a wrong decision that will lead to bad

consequences. Fear can also come from anticipating the consequences of not obeying.

(Taylor, 2016) In the real world, as found on the Situational Leadership Decision

Continuum, decisions that workers, managers, leaders, and organizations make are not

always so simplistic.

Decision-making in organizations, as found on the Situational Leadership

Decision Continuum, can range from laissez-faire (left side on the Continuum) to top-

down decision-making (right side on the Continuum). Laissez-faire, in French

management parlance, means “let those closest to the problem decide how to solve the

problem.” This is pure decentralized decision-making. On the opposite side of the

Situational Leadership Decision Continuum is top-down decision-making. Top-down

decision-making is centralized decision-making. Decisions are either individual

decisions or group decisions. Decisions can be laissez-faire individual/group decisions

or top-down individual/group decisions.

Top-down/centralized decision-making is often mistaken for autocratic decision-

making. Top-down/centralized decision-making is effectively employed in those

situations where information technology and data mining have defined and isolated

repetitive business processes where one solution/one procedure fits all similar

situations. Autocratic decision-making is decision-making through strict close-minded

adherence to the rules.

  45  

Decision-making is either advocacy-based or inquiry-based. (Garvin & Roberto,

1995) Advocacy-based decisions may be understood in terms of a contest. One fights

to win the decision, as in an “I win, you lose” zero-sum negotiation. In advocacy-based

decisions, weaknesses in arguments are downplayed or hidden for the sake of winning.

Conversely, in inquiry-based decisions, weaknesses in arguments are openly and freely

debated via brainstorming, asking tough questions, identifying and even innovating new

key performance indicators, benchmarking, and conducting root-cause analysis on every

facet of a problem to discover facts and truths for the better good, the public good. The

best decision is the result of an “I win-you win” negotiation. (Fisher, Ury, & Patton,

1991) “I win, you win” negotiations benefit from the multiple intelligences/multiple

perspectives that different stakeholders bring to the table.

The propensity to unwittingly or wittingly commit fallacious reasoning

inevitably compromises the decision-making process and results in defective decision

outcomes. Some common fallacies that leaders, managers, and workers cling to are

wishful thinking, appeal to tradition, and appeal to force. Positive thinking is one thing;

but the fallacy of wishful thinking is based on the intoxication of hope rather than the

sobriety of sound logic, investigative inquiry, and critical reasoning. The fallacy of

appeal to tradition assumes that tradition is always good and should never be

challenged. Relying on this fallacy, one refuses to critically question the sense of

tradition, both inside the organization and in society at large. The fallacy of appeal to

force is that it involves an “I win, you lose” negotiation as in a “Parent-to-Child” power

relationship and will never achieve agreement through an “I win, you win” negotiation

as in an “Adult-to-Adult” relationship. (Berne, Transactional Analysis in Psycotherepy,

1961) The decision-maker who assumes compliance based on the fear of power is

  46  

delusional. Compliance lasts only until the losing party finds a better alternative and/or

gains the necessary power to fight for its interests. Compliance does not mean

agreement.

Many decision-makers have a dysfunctional social-cultural-political outlook on

life. For instance, one may have a “Theory X” as opposed to a “Theory Y” outlook on

workers and decision-making. (McGregor, 1960) Under “Theory X” workers are seen

as unmotivated and disliking their jobs, which encourages an authoritarian style of

management. According to this view, management must actively intervene to get things

done and supervise employees at every step. This style of management assumes that

workers avoid responsibility, and must be controlled, forced, and threatened to perform.

On the contrary, “Theory Y” assumes that workers are content with their jobs, which

allows for a decentralized, participative style of management. “Theory Y” assumes that

employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with

greater responsibility. (Eyre)

When decision-makers make policy and technology decisions based solely on

faith and not scientific reasoning, the result is a culture that is delusional. The

cumulative effects of delusional decisions can be devastating to workers and ultimately

render the organization dysfunctional, thereby creating an existential threat to the

organization and the greater society. The astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, said

it well: “I do not want the religious person in the lab telling me that ‘God’ is responsible

for what it is they cannot discover. Because look at the hubris of that. You are in the

lab and you say, I don’t know how this works and not only that, no one alive on earth

knows how this works, and not only that, no one who will ever be born knows how this

  47  

works. That’s kind of audacious when you think about it and then you put it down and

you go on to the next problem. This problem is a cure for Alzheimer, cancer or

whatever else, I do not want them [delusional religious people] in the science classroom

so the issue is simply about progress and discovery.” (Tyson, 2006)

Effective decision-making and -implementing at the group/organizational level

is the result of harmonizing the different objectivities, subjectivities, and goals of the

individual decision-makers/-implementers into an all-inclusive decision-making and

decision-implementation process. At its best, leadership is not about making decisions

per se; leadership is about creating a holistic, all-inclusive environment where all

stakeholders with their differing multiple intelligences are empowered to freely inquire,

critically analyze, creatively make and implement innovative decisions that create

sustainable competitive advantages for the organization and the greater society.

  48  

The Eastman Kodak Company

Failure to Relinquish Outdated Known-Knowns

Kodak, founded in 1879 by George Eastman in Rochester, New York, is a

classic example of a corporate culture that mastered the knowledge-acquisition process

of going from the unknown-unknown through the known-unknown to reach the

ultimate state of the known-known. By 1976, Kodak had achieved a 90 percent share

of the U.S. photographic film market and an 85 percent share of the American point-

and-shoot camera market (Hudson, 2012). In 1996, after a century of groundbreaking

research & development, Kodak was the leading photographic innovator with its global

film manufacturing, photo finishing, and retail distribution network. Kodak’s revenues

peaked at $16 billion in 1996 and its profits peaked at $2.5 billon in 1999. (The

Economist, 2012)

With peaking revenues and profits, Kodak was one of five brands on the

mountaintop of market capitalization. Fujifilm was slowly making inroads into

Kodak’s analogue-chemical roll-film photography market with comparable and

sometimes better quality roll-films; but it was not Fujifilm that would ultimately kill

Kodak. What killed Kodak’s traditional business (and Fujifilm’s, for that matter) was a

convergence of human ingenuity and technological innovation: in 1975 a Kodak

engineer named Steve Sasson invented the digital camera. The toaster-sized digital

camera required 16 batteries and took 23 seconds to record a single image, using a

cassette tape that was the equivalent of today’s memory card. (Pangarker, 2012) Steve

Sasson reported Kodak’s response to his crude bulky-sized digital camera: “It was

  49  

filmless photography, so management’s reaction was, ‘That’s cute—but don’t tell

anyone about it.’” (Mui, How Kodak Failed)

In 1981, in response to Sony’s introduction of its first electronic camera, Kodak

conducted a comparative market-research study on the core technologies of traditional

analogue-chemical roll-film cameras versus digital photography. The finding was that

digital photography had the potential of cannibalizing analogue-chemical roll-film

technology, thus killing Kodak’s traditional business. The good news was that it would

take as much as ten to fifteen years for digital-photography technology to catch up with

analogue-chemical roll-film technology. Hence, Kodak and Fujifilm had time to

transition away from the market known-knowns of the traditional photography industry

and re-invent themselves, their corporate culture, and their technology into the new

world of digital photography.

If culture is, in part, ideology, then changing corporate culture is never easy. In

1988, Kodak had 145,000 employees working in various administrative, distributive,

and analogue-chemical positions. (Kotter, 2012) Kodak was a global organization

filled with passionate chemical engineers who built a culture and tradition of innovation

and continuous change based on the largely known-known technology ranging from

film manufacturing to photo finishing. But Kodak’s ideology of innovation and

continuous change in imaging technology was totally immersed in an analogue-

chemical roll-film photographic context with its analogue visual look. In the words of

Clay Christensen, “Kodak faced the technological discontinuities challenge,” which

means a new technology with fierce competitors, where low margins cannibalize your

high-margin core business. (Kotter, 2012) Hence, Kodak had succumbed to the fallacy

  50  

of tradition in the sense that its corporate ideology could not change from the known-

known analogue-chemical roll-film technology to the realm of the new, unexplored,

unpredictable, unknown-unknown digital technology.

Kodak’s major problem, from an industry-cluster perspective, was that the

company was insulated, both technologically and geographically, from the up-and-

coming digital-photography market. Kodak was primarily in both the analogue-

chemical roll-film business, where it targeted the amateur and professional market

segments, and in the point-and-shoot amateur-camera business. Kodak’s only

American competitor was Polaroid, which competed in the amateur point-and-shoot

instant-photography market segment. There were no American camera manufacturers

in the advanced amateur/professional camera market.

Industry clusters do not always exist in isolation. Often, one industry cluster is

inextricably linked to another industry cluster. Different industry clusters may work

closely together to reap combined industry-cluster synergies. A perfect example of this

is the analogue-chemical/digital-film cluster and the camera-manufacturer cluster in

Japan (Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony). The major Japanese camera

manufacturers, always searching for the newest incremental improvement, the newest

gadget, eagerly embraced the unknown-unknowns and the limitless possibilities of

digital photography.

The major Japanese camera manufacturers first targeted photojournalists with

their new hi-tech professional digital cameras. The idea of taking a picture in the

morning and having it appear in that evening’s newspaper was just too appealing for

  51  

photojournalists. Image quality did not have to meet museum-exhibition quality as

long as the camera was dependable. As digital-camera technology improved and

manufacturing cost lowered, Japanese camera manufacturers began targeting the mass-

consumer amateur point-and-shoot digital-camera market. These cameras were small,

light, and inexpensive to buy. What is more, consumers had the unlimited convenience

of point-and-shoot without incurring the expense of film and the time necessary to

process that film. Consumers could take a picture, send it via email, and print it on

their computer printers.

Industry clusters are not protected from existentialism and the life cycle.

Industry clusters too go through the life-cycle phases of birth, growth, maturity, and

decline/death. If Steve Sasson killed the film camera, then Steve Jobs and Mark

Zuckerberg killed the point-and-shoot digital camera. Steve Jobs’ 2007 iPhone, with its

multiple intelligences and array of applications, revolutionized point-and-shoot

photography from the camera to the smart phone. What a device! Mark Zuckerberg

started Facebook in 2004 when he was only twenty years old. Facebook would become

everybody’s digital photo album, everyone’s digital yearbook, and the world’s global

digital-communications platform. Facebook’s net income in 2018 was $22.111 billion.

With over 2.32 billion monthly active users, Facebook has more users than Judaism and

Islam have believers. At Facebook’s current growth rate, Facebook will soon have

more monthly active users than the three major Abrahamic religions have believers.

No pun intended, Facebook is so profitable Zuckerberg could be anointed “Profit”

Zuckerberg. No other invention better exemplifies the intersection of technology and

culture – American pop culture. From a technological perspective, Facebook is nothing

but a database -- a very big, robust, relational database MySQL. (Facebook) From an

  52  

American pop-culture perspective, Facebook is a reincarnation of the photo album and

the school yearbook Americans so cherished from elementary to high school. It is no

accident that Zuckerberg started Facebook for himself and fellow Harvard University

students. Zuckerberg took the photo album and the school yearbook to university. The

rest is history.

In the end, Kodak could never seem to reinvent itself to compete in the new era

of digital photography, smart phones, and digital photo albums. Kodak simply

succumbed to the “competency trap” – an organization becomes so good at one thing, it

can’t learn to do anything new. (Lohr & Carlos, 2018)

  53  

Battlefield Trauma-Care Technology

Morality & Decision-Making

Venturing among Unknown-Unknowns, Known-Unknowns, and Known-Knowns

Decision-making styles in the American military parallel decision-making

styles on the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum. Although trauma care

presents both mental and physical challenges, this discussion is looking primarily at

physical challenges. American military leaders have adjusted their leadership,

management, and decision-making styles to the appropriate technology, product, and

industry life-cycle phase on the Situational Leadership Decision Continuum.

Almost every war gives rise to unique medical issues and accompanying

medical and military innovations. In the Spanish-American War, a team of military

doctors led by Maj. Walter Reed proved that mosquitos carried the deadly virus Yellow

Fever, which killed so many soldiers. (Zoroya, 2006) World War I saw the perfection

of large-scale blood transfusions. (Zoroya, 2006) World War II provided the impetus to

manufacture penicillin on an industrial war scale. (Musuem) The Korean War marked

the start of battlefield medical evacuations by helicopter. Both the Korean and Vietnam

Wars showed that many U.S. soldiers died because trauma caregivers on the battlefield

and in medical-evacuation helicopters did not coordinate in real time with Combat

Support Hospital emergency-room surgeons.

In the Iraq War, real-time emergency-care coordination between caregivers on

the battlefield or on medical-evacuation helicopters with emergency-room trauma

surgeons at Combat Support Hospitals was perfected. (Zoroya, 2006) Unlike soldiers in

  54  

the Vietnam War, soldiers in Iraq wore body armor, which largely protected them from

deadly head and torso injuries. Battlefield injuries were mostly confined to body

extremities -- legs and arms. (Evans, 2017)

On the battlefield, in the heat of the moment, everything from injuries, medical

decision-making, and medical care at first glance seems to be largely unpredictable, un-

patterned, and spontaneous. American military medical decision-makers have

historically recognized that their battlefield medical-care decisions needed to be based

on evidence and driven by knowledge. Every phase of the medical-care continuum,

from the battlefield to surgery and rehabilitation, presents a unique set of issues,

technology, and accompanying data. (Elster, Schoomaker, & Rice, 2013)

In a singular chaotic battlefield trauma case, too many unknown-unknowns are

the reality. But when many similar cases occur again and again, and when valuable data

is collected, analyzed, synthesized, and disseminated, patterns begin to emerge. As data

and knowledge accumulate, unknown-unknowns become known-unknowns and patterns

become evident. Andrew Pollak, an associate professor of orthopedics at the University

of Maryland School of Medicine, said it well: “When you see these injuries in numbers

of 1, 2, and 3, you never gain any experience. But when you see a high volume … you

can teach people what works and what does not work. The knowledge gained in Iraq

will prove priceless.” (Zoroya, 2006)

The U.S. military’s Joint Trauma System (JTS/Air Force, Army, and Navy) is

the largest combat medical-relational database ever created. The purpose of JTS is to

improve trauma-care delivery across the military-care continuum. Through careful data

  55  

collection and analysis, military medical personnel were able to improve clinical

outcomes in real time by implementing system-wide clinical-practice guidelines and

identifying and implementing advanced training needs throughout all segments of the

military-care continuum.

Ground-breaking battlefield trauma-care decisions do not just happen. They are

derived from cultural norms. While most innovations in military-trauma medical care

were the result of U.S. government-, taxpayer-sponsored research, many innovations

happened because battlefield caregivers saw new ways of employing existing medical

care or tried untested technology when all else failed. Leading-edge battlefield trauma-

care decisions are the result of a military medical culture that takes a quasi ad-hoc,

informal/formal, cross-functional/multi-disciplinary, multi-intelligence team approach

to identifying problems and generating solutions. Such innovative organizational

cultures are built on the premise that the best ideas, supported by knowledge and data,

prevail over hierarchy. Theory “Y” is the organizational culture, and Adult-to-Adult is

the transactional communication style. (Berne, Transactional Analysis in

Psychotherapy, 1961, and Solomon, 2003)

Once the data are collected, analyzed, and synthesized to improve system-wide

clinical practices, unknown-unknowns become known-unknowns and patterns began to

emerge. More data, better data, more knowledge, and better technology mean that more

known-unknowns then become known-knowns. Patterns become clear and almost

everything becomes predictable, automatic, and repetitious. Chaos associated with

battlefield trauma care largely ceases to exist. Battlefield trauma care in all its

  56  

technological manifestations moves from unknown-unknown/chaos to near known-

known/certainty.

In Iraq most battlefield deaths occurred within the first 10 minutes of a soldier

being wounded. This first 10 minutes became known as the “Platinum 10 Minutes.”

(Brazel, 2015) In training, doctors practice the newest battlefield trauma care life

saving surgical techniques on pigs and goats. To simulate real time battlefield injuries

and battlefield trauma care, a pig or a goat is inflicted with multiple gunshot wounds or

bomb blasts. Next the pig or goat is anesthetized and doctors then practice to perfection

the latest surgical procedures and amputations (Martinic, 2017). All combatants are

trained to act as first emergency-care responders. Medics are trained to respond to life-

threatening injuries in realistic scenarios based on highly regimented yet simple

standardized procedures.

On the battlefield, each soldier is equipped with a combat lifesaver medical kit,

which consists of a needle and a catheter for relieving pressure caused by a chest

wound. Also included are two tourniquets and an airway tube, which have dramatically

reduced the incidents of choking and bleeding to death. (Wood, 2011) When a soldier

is wounded, fellow combatants follow a set of standardized procedures: Stop the

bleeding; clear the airways--keep the soldier breathing; stop the pain -- give the soldier

Fentanyl. In a matter of minutes, Medical Emergency Response Teams (MERT) arrive

in Chinook medical-evacuation helicopters to transport the wounded. MERT consists of

specialized medical personnel (medical consultant, emergency nurse, two paramedics)

who give life-saving care on the way to Combat Support Hospitals located throughout

Iraq to provide state-of-the-art emergency care to wounded soldiers. In essence,

  57  

American military trauma-care technology brought the hospital emergency room to the

wounded on the battlefield.

The Golden Hour, in American military trauma-care parlance, means that, no

matter how grave a wounded soldier’s injuries are, if that soldier arrives at a CSH

surgery room within one hour of being wounded, he/she has a high probability of living.

(Brazel, 2015) During Vietnam, many U.S. casualties resulted in death because

wounded soldiers did not receive such basic pre-hospital trauma care as having a

tourniquet placed on a bleeding extremity, receiving morphine to reduce excruciating

pain, and being medically evacuated in a timely manner. In contrast to Vietnam, where

25 percent of all combat injuries resulted in death, in Iraq only 5 percent of combat

injuries resulted in death, despite an overall increase in the severity of combat injuries

(Brazel, 2015). Yes, 95 percent of American soldiers wounded in Iraq lived. In eleven

years of war, only 4,487 died in action.

Iraq War military surgeons mastered the most up-to-date science and technology

of emergency battlefield surgery. The chaos associated with medical unknown-

unknowns and known-unknowns was all but eliminated. Everything became a known-

known or as close to a known-known as science would allow. The best data and the

best technology were accessed. Patterns were near perfectly clear and everything was

near predictable, automatic, and repetitious. The surgeons followed the most advanced

standardized surgical procedures to stay in the realm of the known-knowns. When in

doubt, amputate a leg, amputate both legs, amputate an arm, and so on; but, do not leave

the certainty of the known-knowns by taking the surgical risk of the known-unknowns,

or the unknown-unknowns for the sake of trying to save an un-savable limb. The

  58  

military surgeon’s singular goal is to save lives, not limbs.

Unfortunately, a casual observance of these and other Iraq War statistics lead to

the false belief that U.S. government leaders and their military medical decision-makers

can triumph over God’s life cycle for the soldier who has suffered traumatic injury.

Many of the injured are “functionally dead” – i.e., technically alive but in need of

support 24/7 to accomplish basic daily tasks. According to Paul Sullivan, Program

Director of Veterans for America, “The signature wounds from the current wars will be

(1) traumatic brain injury, (2) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (3) amputations,

and (4) spinal cord injuries, with PTSD being the most controversial and expensive.

(Stiglitz & Bilms, 2008) “By December 2007, 224,000 returning soldiers had applied

for disability benefits. Most of these veterans are providing evidence of multiple health

problems. The average claim cites five separate disabling medical conditions (e.g., loss

of hearing, skin disease, vision impairment, back pain, and mental-health trauma). The

least fortunate among our veterans have suffered unimaginable horrors, such as brain

trauma, amputations, burns, blindness, and spinal damage. Some have multiple injuries,

a condition physicians refer to as ‘poly-trauma.’ One in four returning veterans has

applied for compensation for more than eight separate disabling conditions.” (Stiglitz &

Bilms, 2008) The Dole-Shalala Commission estimated that in 20 percent of families of

veterans who were wounded, injured, or otherwise incapacitated (e.g. with mental

illness), someone has been forced to leave his or her employment in order to become a

full-time caretaker to conduct such routine activities as bathing, dressing, and preparing

meals. (Stiglitz & Bilms, 2008) Thirty-three percent of sufferers of PTSD are

permanently incapable of working, classified as “individually unemployable.” (Stiglitz

& Bilms, 2008)

  59  

In 2003, Larry Lindsey, President Bush’s economic advisor and head of the

National Economic Council, estimated that the cost of going to war in Iraq might reach

$200 billion. In December 2002, The Office of Management and Budget director Mitch

Daniels and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld estimated the cost of the Iraq War

to be from $50 to $60 billion. In 2008, Joseph E. Stiglitz, author and Nobel Laureate in

economics, and Linda J. Bilmes, coauthor, estimated that the total direct and indirect

cost of the Iraq War would exceed $3 trillion. (Stiglitz & Bilmes, 2008)

In retrospect, given that weapons of mass destruction were never found (the

primary reason for waging the war) and a democratic Iraq still had not been achieved

some 16 years after the start of the war, one can only conclude that the Iraq War was a

delusional, wishful-thinking, advocacy-based, I Win-You Lose, policymaking cause.

The total cost of destruction to the Iraqi people and the country of Iraq will forever be

unknown, as they will be incalculable. And that doesn’t even consider the war’s cost to

the greater Middle East and humanity.

  60  

Conclusion

A decision that, by chance, happens to be good is not necessarily in itself a good

decision in the classic sense of methodical decision-making but simply an accidental act

of good luck.

The Situational Leadership Decision Continuum is a meritocratic inquiry-based

decision framework that balances critical reasoning theory with the reality that decision

environments are forever changing, holistic, and multi-contextual where any given

aspect of a decision can fluctuate among the unknown-unknown, the known-unknown,

and the known-known.

The Situational Leadership Decision Continuum is a decision framework that

attempts to (1) foster organizational culture and purpose to build long-term sustainable

competitive advantages; (2) avoid the pigeonholing and mummification of the decision-

making/decision-implementation process; (3) maintain that leaders and managers should

not in themselves make decisions in as much as they should strive to create an

organizational culture that is conducive to effective and ethical decision-making

throughout the organization and (4) be broad enough to allow stakeholder-centric

decision-makers from a variety of industries and professional backgrounds to make

innumerable decision types across innumerable decision environments.

Decision-making should not be a casual, singular, one-off event. It should come

from a culture of observing, questioning, hypothesizing, and testing. Good decision-

making emerges from continual trial and error, much like good music. Whatever the

  61  

context, we need to experiment and fail; seek new information, learn, and grow;

rehearse and rehearse, before we can approach perfection in any given endeavor.

  62  

APPENDIX

Dr. Howard Gardner (Nine Intelligences)

Dr. Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence)

Intelligence Skills and Career Preferences 1. Existential Intelligence

Sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence, such as the meaning of life, how we got here, and why we die

Skills – Reflecting and deep thinking, designing abstract theories Careers – Scientist, philosopher, theologian

2. Intra-Personal Intelligence Capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs, and thinking processes

Skills – Recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses, reflecting, being aware of inner feelings Careers – Researchers, theorists, philosophers

3. Inter-Personal Intelligence Capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations, and desires of others

Skills – Seeing from other perspectives, empathizing, understanding, cooperating Careers – Counselor, salesperson, politician, business person, minister

4. Naturalist Intelligence Ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals, and other phenomena in nature

Skills – Recognizing one’s connection to nature, applying science theory to life Careers – Scientist, naturalist, landscape architect

5. Musical Intelligence Ability to understand and exhibit rhythm, pitch, and timber

Skills – –Singing, playing instruments, composing music Careers – Musician, disc jockey, singer, composer

6. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence Ability to think conceptually and abstractly; capacity to discern logical or numerical patterns

Skills – Problem solving (logic & math), performing experiments Careers – Scientists, engineers, accountants, mathematicians

7. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence Ability to control one's body movements and to handle objects skillfully

Skills – Dancing, participating in sports, doing hands-on experiments, acting Careers – Athlete, PE teacher, dancer, actor, firefighter

8. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence Well-developed language skills; sensitivity to the meanings and effects of words

Skills – Listening, speaking, writing, teaching Careers – Writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, translator

9. Visual-Spatial Intelligence Capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly

Skills – puzzle-building, painting, constructing, fixing, designing objects Careers – Sculptor, artist, inventor, architect, mechanic, engineer

10. Emotional Intelligence Ability to recognize one’s own emotions, understand what they're indicating, and realize how one’s emotions affect other people. Ability to perceive and understand emotions of others.

Self-Awareness – Realistic view of one’s self Self-Regulation – Ability to control impulses, comfort with ambiguity Motivation – Strong drive to achieve, optimism even in the face of failure Empathy – Expertise in building and retaining talent, cross-cultural sensitivity Social Skill – Effectiveness in leading change, expertise in building and leading teams

  63  

Bibliography 1. Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2013). Why Nations Fail. London, England:

Profile Books LTD. 2. Adminisration, N. A. (2015, September 17). Apollo 11. Retrieved October 13,

2015, from NASA: www.nasa.gov/missions_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

3. Ali, A. J. (1995). Cultural Discontinuity and Arab Management Thought. Int. Studies of Mgt & Organization , Vol. 25 (3), 7-30.

4. Baldwin, R. E. (2005). Industry locations: The causes. Swedish Economic Policy Review , 12, 29.

5. Berne, E. (1961). Transactional Analysis in Psychotherepy. New York, New York, USA: Grove Press.

6. Brandt, J. (1981). (G. D. Poole, Interviewer) Pacifica, California, USA. 7. Brazel, R. (Director). (2015). PBS NOVA S31E14 Life and Death in the War

Zone Full Documentary [Motion Picture]. 8. Carleton, M. G. (Producer), Zarifeh, R. (Writer), & Carleton, M. G. (Director).

(2015). Off the Rails: A Journey Through Japan [Motion Picture]. Aljazeera. 9. Committee on Military Trauma Care's Learning Health System and Its

Translation to the Civilian Sector; Board on Health Sciences Policy; Board on the Health of Select Populations; Health and Medicine Division; National Academies of Sciences,Engineering. (2016, September 12). Retrieved August 30, 2017, from The National Center for Biotechnology Information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390321/

10. DaSilva, A. (2016). 2016 Top Markets Report/Media and Entertainment. U.S. Department of Commerce/International Trade Association. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government.

11. Drucker, P. (1999, March). Managing Oneself. Harvard Business Review. 12. Elster, E., Schoomaker, E., & Rice, C. (2013, December 18). The Laboratory of

War: How Military Trauma Care Advances Are Benefiting Soldiers and Civilians. Health Affaires Blog. Bethesda, MD, USA.

13. Evans, D. B. (2017, September 24). Specialist, 17th Air Caverly, 3rd Squadron, Troop B, Vietnam 1967-1968. (G. D. Poole, Interviewer)

14. Examined Existance. (2014). Examinedexistance.com/the-nine-different-types- of-intelligence/. (E. Existance, Editor) Retrieved from Examined Existance.

15. Eyre, E. (n.d.). Theory X and Theory Y Understanding Team Member Motivation. Mind Tools.

16. Facebook. (n.d.). Facebook. Retrieved August 29, 2017. 17. Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (1991). Getting To Yes. Penguin Books. 18. Garvin, D. A., & Roberto, M. A. (1995, Septmber-October). What You Don't

Know About Making Decisions. Harvard Business Review. 19. Ghosn, C. (2002, January). Saving the Business Without Losing the Company.

Harvard Business Review. 20. Ghosn, C. (2009, June 22). Carlos Ghosn on Diversity. (R. Schwartz,

Interviewer) YouTube. 21. Goleman, D. (1998). What Makes a Leader. Harvard Business Review. 22. Hudson, A. (August 29, 2012). The Rise & Fall of Kodak. PhotoSecrets 23. Ibrahim, Y. M. (1991, March 15). AFTER THE WAR: KUWAIT; Kuwaiti

Emir, Tired and Tearful, Ruturns to His Devistated Land. New York Times.

  64  

24. Jobs, S. (2005, June 12). Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Universtiy Commencement Address. Palo Alto, California, USA: Standford University.

25. Jobs, S. (2010). Steve Jobs Talks About Managing People. All Things Digital D8 Conference. (W. Mossberg, & K. Swisher, Interviewers) Video Insider.

26. Jobs, S. (2015, June 14). "You've Got to find what you love," Jobs says. Stanford News.

27. Kotter, J. (2012, May 5). Barriers to Change: The Real Reason Behind the Kodak Downfall. Forbes.

28. Lohr, S., & Carlos, T. (2018, Jan 31). The Era That Made it a Verb, Xerox, in a Sale, Is Past Tense. New York Times . N.Y. , USA.

29. Martinic, G. (2017, April). Military ‘live tissue trauma training’ using animals in the US – its purpose, importance and commentary on military medical research and the debate on use of animals in military training. Journal of Military and Veterans' Health , 20 (4).

30. Matthews, S., & Canty, D. (2009, June 26). Nuclear Power in the Middle East. Utilities Middle East.

31. McGregor, D. (1960). The Human Side of Enterprise. Columbus, Ohio, USA: Mc Graw Hill.

32. Ministry of Labor and Social Development. (2016). Saudi Arabia Labor Market Report 2016. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

33. Morris, E. (Writer). (2013). Unknown Known [Motion Picture]. 34. Mui, C. (2012, January). How Kodak Failed. Forbes. USA. 35. Mulderry, N. (Producer), Cuscuna, M. (Writer), & Lenz, C. (Director). "Kind of

Blue" Miles Davis [Motion Picture]. 36. Murray, D. (Producer), & McCormack, P. (Director). (2009). Facing Ali

[Motion Picture]. 37. Musuem, N. W. (n.d.). Science and Technology of WWII. Retrieved from

www.ww2sci-tech.org 38. Nuclear Industry. (n.d.). Accident Treatment Plant Tokaimura Nuclear Fuel.

Retrieved August 8, 2018, from Nuclear Industry: https://nuclear- energy.net/nuclear-accidents/tokaimura.html

39. Pangarker, N. (2012, 3 5). A Failure of focus: Lessons from Kodak. NUS Business School.

40. Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (1982). In Search of Excellence. New York, New York, USA: Harper Collins.

41. Porter, M. E. (1990). The Competitive Advantage of Nations. Harvard Business Review, 85.

42. Reed, L. O., Shedd, P. J., Pagnattaro, M. A., & Morehead, J. W. (2010). Legal & Regulatory Environment of Business. New Yourk, New York, USA: McGraw- Hill.

43. Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational Behavior. Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

44. Slocum, J.W., & Hellriegel D. (2018). Principles of Organizational Behavior. London, England: South-Western Cengage Learning.

45. Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007, November). A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review.

46. Solomon, C. (2003, January 1). Transactional Analysis Theory: the Basics. Transactional Analysis Journal. San Francisco, California, USA.

47. Stiglitz, J. E., & Bilms, L. J. (2008). The Three Trillion Dollar War. New York and London, USA and England: W.W. Norton & Company.

  65  

48. Talukder, A. (n.d.). Muslim Engineers Network. Retrieved August 27, 2017, from http://www.mengineersnet.com

49. Taylor, D. E. (2016, May). (G. D. Poole, Interviewer) 50. The Economist. (2012). Kodak is at Death's Door. The Economists (1). 51. The Economist. (2014). UAE expatriates and the bottom line/A briefing paper

by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Economist. 52. Tripathi, S., & Menon, R. (1990, September 15). Iraq's invasion of Kuwait sets

off massive exudos of Indian workers, closes major foreign exchange source for India. India Today.

53. Tyson, N. d. (2006). 2006 Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival. LogicInspiresLiberty. Youtube.

54. Wikipedia. (2013, November). We chose to go to the Moon. Retrieved October 13, 2015, from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon

55. Wikipedia. (2015, September 11). Third Stream. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_stream

56. Wikipedia. (2017, June 15). Wikipedia. Retrieved June 15, 2017, from en.m.wikipedia.org

57. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Ike Turner. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ike_Turner

58. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Johnson_(bassist)

59. Wilipedia. (2017, April 5th). Miles Davis. Retrieved from Miles Davis Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis

60. Wood, D. (2011, October 11). Beyond The Battlefield: With Better Technology And Training, Medics Saving More Lives. Retrieved September 19, 2015, from Huffington Post: www.huffington Post

61. World Nuclear Association. (2018, June 20). Fukushima. Retrieved August 15, 2018, from World Nuclear Association: http://www.world- nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima- accident.aspx

62. Worldometers. (2018, August 5). Worldometers. Retrieved August 5, 2018, from United Arab Emirates Population: http://www.worldometers.info/world- population/united-arab-emirates-population/

63. Worth, R. F. (2009, February 11). Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down. The New York Times.

64. Zoroya, G. (2006, March 27). Lifesaving knowledge, innovation emerge from war's deadly violence. USA Today.