How Bimodal IT is akin to Joint Task Force
In his book “Team of Teams”, General Stanley McChrystal narrates how the Joint Special Operations Task Force, an elite military organization set up to wage war on terror, had to go through core transformation to be able to strike a blow to the shape-shifting terrorist organizations. The book lays out how the insights gained from that wartime experience can be extrapolated to any organization undergoing, or need to go through, such structural transformation.
Bimodal IT, championed by Gartner, is a recommended model to structure IT organizations to simultaneously address two deeply different and competing needs: ensuring the safety and soundness of the core business-critical systems; and the pressure to respond to the threat of competition through a means of continuous experimentation and innovation.
As I read the book, I myself could draw many parallels between these two concepts, in my mind corroborating the central theme of the book. From the standpoint of experience and discussions I have had with clients on enabling innovation, digital business, DevOps and such transformative initiatives, I'll relay the ideas espoused in the book.
Premise
Conventional military tactics were failing in the war against terrorist groups. The task force found itself neither planned nor trained to cope up with this fundamentally new threat dynamics. Though being poorly trained and under-resourced, the terror groups designed as a networked organization was resilient, tough and flexible whose people are driven by extreme dogmas and offensive conduct. Change became a necessity.
In a similar vein: Large enterprises are finding themselves overwhelmed by the pace at which they are forced to acknowledge and react to the impact of smaller disruptive players. Even though these disruptors are not as resourceful as the large enterprises are, they are able to align with customers' needs and generate clear, differentiated value. They are able to do this largely because they operate with absolutely no legacy gravity. Their footprint is small enough to afford them to be nimble. Large enterprises have to adapt to be like them and defend their turf. But at the same time hold down the fort on existing mission-critical processes supported by outdated IT. So here too on the business enterprise front, change has indeed become a necessity.
Idea
Led by General McChrystal, the Joint Taskforce approached the challenge by first recognizing that it needs to operate in a way that is radically different from its traditional model. It started this by tearing down existing hierarchical organizational structures. Dissolved the barriers to decentralize decision-making authority. While the larger military organization remained hierarchical to lend itself to effective management, the task force itself transformed to become “a team of teams”.
In a similar vein: Business organizations should carve out the divisions as their “task force” and "team of teams' to cope with the new disruptive competition. Arm these new divisions with decision-making authority and empowered execution. This structure and culture when applied to IT organizations result in a bimodal IT.
Themes
To better appreciate the resonance between these two disparate tracks, I have listed a few highlights from the book that would clearly align with what someone would find in any bimodal IT or lean startup literature:
Restructured the force from the ground up on principles of extremely transparent information sharing, aka Shared Consciousness
Decentralized decision-making authority, aka empowered execution
Being responsive to a constantly shifting environment is more important than the pursuit of efficiency in the world of known variables.
Adaptability, not efficiency, becomes the central competency
Certain traits of agility are limited to smaller teams. Devising a “team of teams” is the only way to scale.
“team of teams” is an organization within which the relationships between constituent teams resembled those between individuals on a single team (recall Scaled Agile Framework!!)
The change was less about tactics and technology than it was about internal architecture and culture
Emergent Intelligence is the hallmark of teams with a high degree of interaction, absence of any one single designer or central planner, and complex operations can be executed without a detailed plan. Order can emerge from the bottom-up.