The Importance of Managing Ignorance

In the latest Dispatch from the Scenius, Gene Kim brings you two of Dr. Steve Spear’s DevOps Enterprise Summit presentations in their entirety.

In Spear’s 2019 presentation, “Discovering Your Way to Greatness: How Finding and Fixing Faults is the Path to Perfection,” he talks about the need and the value of finding faults in our thinking that result in faults in our doing. 

Spear continues to explore this lesson in his 2020 presentation about the US Navy 100 years ago, when they were at a crucial inflection point in both technology and strategic mission. It is one of the most remarkable examples of creating distributed learning in a vast enterprise. 

As always, Gene provides exclusive commentary to the presentations.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System.  A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so they know better faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple “verticals” including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, Army rapid equipping, and Navy readiness.

High velocity learning concepts became the basis of the Alcoa Business System—which led to 100s of millions in recurring savings, the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiatives “Perfecting Patient Care System”—credited with sharp reductions in complications like MRSA and CLABs, Pratt & Whitney’s “Engineering Standard Work”—which when piloted led to winning the engine contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, the operating system for Detroit Edison, and the Navy’s high velocity learning line of effort—an initiative led by the Chief of Naval Operations. A pilot with a pharma company cut the time for the ‘hit to lead’ phase in early stage drug discovery from twelve months to six.

Spear has published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, Health Services Research, Harvard Business Review, Academic Administrator, and the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings He invented the patented See to Solve Real Time Alert System and is principal investigator for new research on making critical decisions when faced with hostile data.  He’s supervised more than 40 theses and dissertations. He holds degrees from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton and worked at the University of Tokyo, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and Prudential Bache.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevespear

Email: steve@hvellc.com

Website: thehighvelocityedge.com

You’ll Learn About:

• The dire consequences when traditional retailers were late creating competitive eCommerce capabilities.
• Creating dynamic learning organizations.
• How fast feedback creates opportunities to self correct and improve in real time
• How the US Navy’s Battle of Midway compares to how organizations are responding to digital disruption today.

Episode Timeline:

• [00:10] Intro
• [01:23] Dr. Steve Spear’s speech
• [01:44] What did I accomplish?
• [02:39] What did I discover today?
• [03:45] Start point with ignorance
• [05:21] High velocity learning
• [06:52] Courtney Kissler and Nordstrom
• [08:09] Steve’s examples of finding a potential solution
• [18:53] The Machine That Changed the World 
• [19:57] High velocity learning is mother of all solutions
• [23:13] Shattered Sword
• [29:45] Homework: Garner feedback and make it better
• [30:59] The importance of high velocity outcomes
• [35:06] Steve’s ask for help
• [37:37] See to Solve
• [38:30] Steve’s presentation at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020
• [45:34] Digital disruption
• [47:17] Bringing the whole Navy to solve the problem
• [50:00] Combat information center
• [53:30] Greyhound
• [54:48] Innovation across a group of ships
• [58:47] Back to Midway
• [1:01:23] Contrast between Japanese’s and American’s Naval doctrine plans
• [1:04:17] Steve’s last encouragement
• [1:04:32] Gene’s two observations
• [1:08:32] Outro

RESOURCES

• Dr. Steven Spear’s DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 London - Virtual presentation - enter your email address to watch
• The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition by Dr. Steve Spear
• Reed Hastings’ quote
• The Machine That Changed the World: Based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5-Million-Dollar 5-Year Study on the Future of the Automobile by Dr. James P. Womack, Dr. Daniel T Jones and Dr. Daniel Roos
• Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway: The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully 
• See to Solve
• Many of the concepts in this talk were explored by Trent Hone's fantastic book: Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945 by Trent Hone
• The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis and Jez Humble
• Greyhound