Freedom of speech

The well known Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been sentenced to 19.5 years in prison and a financial fine. And for what? For exercising his right to freedom of speech.

For many years, he has criticized the Iranian regime. In recent years, he has been rather positive to the regime. However, no matter if he likes the Iranian government or not and if anybody agrees to his opinion, sending him to jail for expressing it is plain wrong!

Remember Henry Fayol?

In my previous post, I referred to a paper by the Institute of Strategic Studies at the United States Army War College (Unity of Command in Afghanistan: A forsaken principle of war). Here is the feedback I provided on the paper:

Unity of command is one of the 14 principles of management defined by Henry Fayol. It has been a basic principle in organization design for a long time, and has been debated controversially. Concepts such as matrix, process-, or network-organizations have been proposed as more agile alternatives. However, when it comes to military organizations, those (post-)modern approaches seem to have clear limitations. The paper demonstrates that lack of unity of command in the Afghanistan theater is one road block to success. The conclusion, to rectify command and control structures and re-focus on unity of command seems evident. Maybe, also some other principles that Fayol defined should be remembered, such as Unity of Drection.

Just as a reminder ... Here are the 14 principles of management as defined by Henry Fayol:

1. Division of work. This principle is the same as Adam Smith's 'division of labour'. Specialisation increases output by making employees more efficient.
2. Authority. Managers must be able to give orders. Authority gives them this right. Note that responsibility arises wherever authority is exercised.
3. Discipline. Employees must obey and respect the rules that govern the organisation. Good discipline is the result of effective leadership, a clear understanding between management and workers regarding the organisation's rules, and the judicious use of penalties for infractions of the rules.
4. Unity of command. Every employee should receive orders from only one superior.
5. Unity of direction. Each group of organisational activities that have the same objective should be directed by one manager using one plan.
6. Subordination of individual interests to the general interest. The interests of any one employee or group of employees should not take precedence over the interests of the organisation as a whole.
7. Remuneration. Workers must be paid a fair wage for their services.
8. Centralisation. Centralisation refers to the degree to which subordinates are involved in decision making. Whether decision making is centralised (to management) or decentralised (to subordinates) is a question of proper proportion. The task is to find the optimum degree of centralisation for each situation.
9. Scalar chain. The line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks represents the scalar chain. Communications should follow this chain. However, if following the chain creates delays, cross-communications can be allowed if agreed to by all parties and superiors are kept informed.
10. Order. People and materials should be in the right place at the right time.
11. Equity. Managers should be kind and fair to their subordinates.
12. Stability of tenure of personnel. High employee turnover is inefficient. Management should provide orderly personnel planning and ensure that replacements are available to fill vacancies.
13. Initiative. Employees who are allowed to originate and carry out plans will exert high levels of effort.
14. Esprit de corps. Promoting team spirit will build harmony and unity within the organisation.

After all, for a military organization, that doesn't sound too bad, does it?

Organizational mess - the SOF case (unclassified)

I have been interested in issues in multi-dimensional organizational structures for quite a while. The problems related to matrix-style organizations, such as the inherent conflict between the two dimensions (LoB vs projects), are well known to organizational researchers and practitioners alike.

Basically, a matrix organization is a project-type structure that is superimposed on a functional structure. It is often used in organizations where certain expertise must be grouped for complex short- or long-term projects. Teams are formed with staff assigned from functional units, and when the initiative is complete, people would return to their respective groups.

The idea of the matrix organization is to maintain the characteristics of classical design (division of labor, centralization of authority, unity of control, and unity of direction) while adding the flexibility to work on critical projects. However, using a matrix approach might render conflicts between the different dimensions and these conflicts might include disputes about budgets and funding, authority, control, and accountability. And things get worse, if there are not only 2 dimensions, but even more, thus turning the matrix into a n-dimensional vector.

This can be exemplified by the United Combatant Commands (UCCs) in the US Armed Services. A UCC is a joint military command consisting of forces from two or more service branches (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines). The purpose of establishing UCCs was to provide a more effective command and control structure where coordination and collaboration across branches was required either at functional or geographical level. Consequently, UCCs can have a geographical (AFRICOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, ...) or functional (STRATCOM, SOCOM, TRANSCOM) focus. The UCCs also report directly to the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), and not into any of the branches' command structures. A special role is played by SOCOM (Special Operation Command), which is the only UCC with acquisition authorities.

USSOCOM oversees the training, doctrine, and equipping of all U.S. SOF (Special Operations Forces) units and was established in 1986/87 in response to concerns about the status of SOF within defense planning. In particular, the experiences from operational shortcomings due to lack of coordination between SOF units from different services and the potential funding conflicts between SOFs and regular forces within the services resulted in Congressional measures to strengthen the SOF position. USSOCOM is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL. USSOCOM has approximately 54,000 active duty, Reserve and National Guard Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Department of Defense (DOD) civilians assigned to the headquarters, its four components and one sub-unified command, and has an annual budget of ~8.5 b$. (Source: SOCOM presentation)

SOCOM command structure As depicted above, SOCOM has four subordinated commands that comprise the SOFs coming from the different branches (AFSOC - Air Force, ASOC - Army, NAVSOC - Navy, MARSOC - Marines) and a joint subcommand (JSOC), containing the so called special mission units (SMUs), most notably Army 1st SPF Operational Detachment Delta (aka Delta Force or Combat Applications Group) and DEVGRU (Naval Special Special Warfare Development Group). In addition, there are regional Special Operations Commands attached to the regional UCCs (e.g. SOCEUR - Special Operations Command Europe attached to EUCOM - European Command). This means, in peacetime there are three dimensions to the organizational structure of SOCOM: The SOCOM internal command structure, the regional UCCs, and the service branches. This already brings up a variety of questions, such as:

• Are SOFs that are located in specific regions under the primary command of SOCOM or the regional UCC?
• How are commands over CJSOTFs (Combined Joint Special Operations Task Forces, i.e. SOF Task Forces with members from different branches) distributed to give each branch a "fair share" of the available commands and related promotion opportunities?
• How can it be ensured that SOF capabilities within the different service components do not overlap, but are developed in a complementary way?

These kinds of issues are debatable and in peacetime, they are interesting topics for meetings. However, if theater operations are taken into account, they are becoming critical to operational success. Considering that there are additional theater specific command structures, as seen in Afghanistan with the CFSOCC-A (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command) and the CJOSTF-A (Combined Joint Operations Task Force), there are four dimensions to the SOF organizational structure.

Four dimensions influencing SOF in Afghanistan

The above graphic does not take into account the fact that SOFs might need to coordinate with other, non-SOFs, and coalition forces and commands at theater level.

It seems obvious that, with this kind of multi-dimensional structure, it becomes increasingly difficult to set-up clear command and control (C2) structure and to establish operational efficiency and effectiveness.

BTW, the Strategies Studies Institute has published an interesting article on the problem of unified command structures, or rather the lack thereof, in Afghanistan. I had no knowledge of this paper when I wrote this post, but obviously the author has similar concerns. You can find it here: Unity of Command in Afghanistan: A forsaken principle of war.