Layout 1

The chapter starts with a general overview of

strategic leadership, provided by Col W.

Michael Guillot in “Strategic Leadership:

Defining the Challenge.” The author will provide

you with components, characteristics, and

challenges of decision-making at the strategic

level, and also provide you with a list of compe-

tencies that are essential for strategic leaders.

After you have a clear understanding of the

definition of strategic leadership, you will read

an example of how grand strategy is imple-

mented at the national level in the White

House’s “National Security Strategy.” In chapter

14 you will trace the development of air power

theory over the past century. Look for broad

concepts on this topic in this reading. Note that

this reading is from the National Security Strat-

egy (NSS) document that was current at the

time this textbook went to press. While updates

are issued by each administration, the over-

arching strategic ideas in the NSS are relatively

stable.

Moving down to a smaller level, the third

article covers the topic of applying systems

thinking to problem solving, such as a military

force (which comprises one component of a

vast national strategy) might use in designing

campaigns. In “Leadership and Systems Think-

ing,” Col George E. Reed explains how leaders

can apply the art of systems thinking. Echoing

the teachings of Peter Senge, Reed urges readers

to examine the interrelationships and patterns

that present themselves in systems. The idea is

to move beyond simple cause-and-effect analysis

and find better solutions through more careful

examination of system components, behaviors,

and relationships.

The fourth article takes you down to a more fa-

miliar level, describing how corporations can

apply strategic leadership to their decision-

making processes. In “Strategic Thinking: Key

to Corporate Survival,” the authors explore the

importance of truly understanding the nature

of strategy and strategic planning. They cau-

CHAPTER 12

INTRODUCTION TO STRATEGIC

LEADERSHIP

In volume 1, you learned a definition of leadership that applied to individuals and small

teams at the tactical level. Volume 2 expanded the concept of leadership to the role of the

NCO, educator, creative thinker, motivator, and communicator, still focusing on the tactical

and operational levels. This chapter introduces you to various perspectives of leadership at

the strategic level. To lead strategically requires careful thought, awareness of systems,

and a broad view of your mission. It requires a big picture view, one that focuses on out-

comes more than methods, and goals more than tactics.

VOLUME FOUR STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVES

tion that companies that conduct long-range

planning incorrectly may actually hinder

rather than help their performance.

For a specific example of applying innova-

tive concepts with strategic planning, the final

article presents the topic of crowdsourcing.

This term refers to the relatively new trend of

assigning work to large group of people, who

may be highly-skilled amateurs, rather than

just a small handful of employees in an organi-

zation. The authors of the final article,

“Crowdsourcing: What it Means for Innova-

tion,” summarize the current state of this

concept. As you read the article, you may dis-

cover new ways to harness the various talents

of a group of people to meet the needs of your

project, team, or squadron.

Strategic Leadership:

Defining the Challenge

Col W. Michael Guillot, “Strategic Leadership:

Defining the Challenge,” Air & Space Power Journal

(Winter 2003): 67-75.

National Security Strategy

The White House, “National Security Strategy,”

(May 2010).

Leadership and Systems Thinking

COL George E. Reed, “Leadership and Systems

Thinking,” Defense AT&L 35, no. 3 (2006): 10-13.

Strategic Thinking:

Key to Corporate Survival

Benjamin B. Tregoe and John W. Zimmerman,

“Strategic Thinking: Key to Corporate Survival,”

Management Review 68, no. 2 (1979): 8-14.

Crowdsourcing:

What it Means for Innovation

Anhai Doan, Raghu Ramarkrishnan, & Alon Y. Halevy,

“Crowdsourcing: What it Means for Innovation,”

Communications of the ACM 54, no. 4 (2011): 86-96.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

This chapter’s readings are:

CHAPTER GOALS

1. Comprehend the concept of

strategic leadership at the national

and organizational level.

2. Summarize the use of systems

thinking for strategic planning.

3. Explain how the use of crowd-

sourcing technologies can help

accomplish team goals.

The only thing harder than being a strategic leader is

trying to define the entire scope of strategic leadership—

a broad, difficult concept. We cannot always define it or

describe it in every detail, but we recognize it in action.

This type of leadership involves microscopic perceptions

and macroscopic expectations. Volumes have been written

on the subject, which may in fact contribute to the diffi-

culty of grasping the concept. One finds confusing and

sometimes conflicting information on this blended concept

that involves the vagaries of strategy and the behavioral

art of leadership. Sometimes the methods and models

used to explain it are more complicated than the concept

and practice of strategic leadership itself. Exercising this

kind of leadership is complicated, but understanding it

doesn’t have to be. Beginning with a definition and char-

acterization of strategic leadership and then exploring

components of the strategic environment may prove

helpful. Future leaders must also recognize the nature of

that environment. Finally, they should also have some

familiarity with ways of developing competencies for

dealing with the broad, new challenges that are part of

leading in the strategic environment.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP?

The common usage of the term strategic is related to the

concept of strategy—simply a plan of action for accom-

plishing a goal. One finds both broad and narrow senses

of the adjective strategic. Narrowly, the term denotes

operating directly against military or industrial installa-

tions of an enemy during the conduct of war with the in-

tent of destroying his military potential.

Today, strategic

is used more often in its broader sense (e.g., strategic

planning, decisions, bombing, and even leadership). Thus,

we use it to relate something’s primary importance or its

quintessential aspect—for instance, the most advantageous,

complex, difficult, or potentially damaging challenge to a

nation, organization, culture, people, place, or object.

When we recognize and use strategic in this broad sense,

we append such meanings as the most important long-

range planning, the most complex and profound decisions,

and the most advantageous effects from a bombing cam-

paign—as well as leaders with the highest conceptual

ability to make decisions.

As mentioned earlier, strategy is a plan whose aim is to

link ends, ways, and means. The difficult part involves the

thinking required to develop the plan based on uncertain,

ambiguous, complex, or volatile knowledge, information,

and data. Strategic leadership entails making decisions

across different cultures, agencies, agendas, personalities,

and desires. It requires the devising of plans that are fea-

sible, desirable, and acceptable to one’s organization and

partners—whether joint, interagency, or multinational.

Strategic leadership demands the ability to make sound,

reasoned decisions—specifically, consequential decisions

with grave implications. Since the aim of strategy is to

link ends, ways, and means, the aim of strategic leader-

ship is to determine the ends, choose the best ways, and

apply the most effective means. The strategy is the plan;

strategic leadership is the thinking and decision making

required to develop and effect the plan. Skills for leading

at the strategic level are more complex than those for

leading at the tactical and operational levels, with skills

blurring at the seams between those levels. In short, one

may define strategic leadership as the ability of an experi-

enced, senior leader who has the wisdom and vision to create

and execute plans and make consequential decisions in the

volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous strategic envi-

ronment.

COMPONENTS OF THE STRATEGIC

ENVIRONMENT

What is the strategic-leadership environment? One con-

struct includes four distinct, interrelated parts: the na-

tional security, domestic, military, and international

environments (fig. 1). Within the strategic environment,

strategic leaders must consider many factors and actors.

This construct is neither a template nor checklist—nor a

12.1 Strategic Leadership: Defining the Challenge

By Col W. Michael Guillot, USAF

OBJECTIVES:

1. Define the term “strategic leadership.”

2. Identify the four components of the strategic leadership environment, and list factors that belong

to each component.

3. Describe four characteristics of consequential decisions.

4. List and define four challenges of strategic leadership.

5. Recall competencies that are essential for leaders who wish to develop strategic leadership skills.

recipe for perfection. The framework recognizes the fact

that strategic leaders must conceptualize in both the po-

litical and military realms. Additionally, it illustrates how

the strategic environment is interrelated, complementary,

and contradictory. Leaders who make strategic decisions

cannot separate the components, especially when they

are dealing with the national security environment.

Strategic leaders must recognize and understand the

components of the national security environment. The

ultimate objectives of all US government personnel are

those presented in the national security strategy. The

strategy and its objectives shape the decision making of

strategic leaders, who must understand the national

instruments of power—political, economic, and military.

These instruments provide the means of influence—for

example, political persuasion (diplomacy), economic

muscle (aid or embargo), or military force (actual or

threatened). Within the national security environment,

strategic leaders should consider national priorities and

opportunities and must know the threats and risks to

national security, as well as any underlying assumptions.

Understanding this environment poses a major undertak-

ing for strategic leaders. It is also the foundation for

understanding the military environment.

Personnel who aspire to be strategic leaders, especially

within the Department of Defense, must thoroughly

understand military strategy. Two reasons come to mind.

First, because the military instrument of power has such

great potential for permanent change in the strategic

environment, all strategic leaders must recognize its risks

and limitations. Second, because military experience

among civilian leaders has dwindled over the years and

will continue to do so, strategic leaders have a greater

responsibility to comprehend policy guidance and clearly

understand expected results. Only then can they effectively

set military objectives and assess the risks of military

operations. Such leaders must develop and evaluate

strategic concepts within the military environment and

recognize potential threats. Finally, strategic leaders will

have to balance capabilities (means) against vulnerabili-

ties and, in doing so, remain aware of the domestic coalition

as a major influence.

Since the founding of our nation—indeed, even before the

signing of the Constitution—the domestic environment

has influenced our leaders. Over the last 200 years, little

has changed in this regard; in fact, most people would

argue that domestic influence has increased. For instance,

strategic leaders today must pay particular attention to

the views, positions, and decisions of Congress, whose

power and influence pervade many areas within the

strategic environment—both foreign and domestic. Congress

has the responsibility to provide resources, and we have

the responsibility to use them prudently and account for

them. This partnership encompasses national and local

politics, budget battles for scarce dollars, and cost-risk

trade-offs. Strategic leaders cannot ignore either the

congressional part of the domestic environment—even

though the relationship can sometimes prove difficult—or

support from the population. Such support is extremely

relevant in democracies and certainly so in the United

States. The problem for the strategic leader lies in accu-

rately measuring public support. Accurate or not, senior

leaders in a democracy ignore public support at their

peril. Actually, because of their power and influence,

components of the media make it impossible to ignore

domestic issues. Strategic leaders must know how to

engage the media since the latter can help shape the

strategic environment and help build domestic support.

Finally, even though the political will may change, envi-

ronmental activism will continue to affect the decisions

of strategic leaders at every level. Environmental

degradation remains a concern for strategic leaders

in this country, as do problems in the international

environment that call for strategic decisions.

When considering the international environ-

ment, strategic leaders should first explore the

context—specifically, the history, culture, reli-

gion, geography, politics, and foreign security.

Who are our allies? Do we have any alliances in

place, or do we need to build a coalition? What

resources are involved— physical or monetary? Is

democracy at stake— creating or defending it?

Leaders should also consider threats to the bal-

ance of power (BOP) in the environment and the

involvement of both official and unofficial organ-

izations. The United Nations may already have

Figure 1

mandates or resolutions that would affect our proposed

operations or interests. Nongovernmental organizations

may also be willing to help—or perhaps require help.

Each of these concerns is legitimate and makes the inter-

national environment the most challenging and unfamil-

iar of them all.

This framework for the components of the strategic envi-

ronment is simple in design yet complicated in practice.

Most US government personnel are intimately familiar

with the national security and military environments

since they are linked (i.e., military strategy follows directly

from national security decisions). But strategic leaders

must recognize that the two greatest influences on their

decisions come from the domestic and international envi-

ronments. To lead effectively, they should use what is

most familiar and be able to synthesize what influences

their strategic decisions.

The four components of the strategic environment present

a challenge for strategic leaders. The national security

environment, with its many taskmasters, will drive both

strategic decisions and military strategy. Leaders will feel

great influence from the familiar domestic environment

and must have its support for strategic action. Further,

strategic leaders can be surprised and their decisions

thwarted if they fail to understand the international envi-

ronment sufficiently. Knowing the disparate components

of the strategic environment is the first step in grasping

strategic leadership. Understanding the nature of the

strategic environment and strategic decisions is the

second step.

NATURE OF THE STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT

The strategic-leadership environment differs from the

climate at lower levels of leadership. We should view the

nature of this environment both broadly—examining

consequential decisions and changes in performance

requirements—and narrowly.

CONSEQUENTIAL DECISIONS

By nature, strategic leadership requires consequential

decision making. All decisions have consequences, but in

the strategic context, they take on a different character—

specifically, they are planned, generally long term, costly,

and profound.

Consequential decisions occur only at the higher levels

within organizations. Generally, decision makers in the

top 20 percent of the organization—the people who have

ultimate control of resources—plan and execute such

decisions. They also think out the implications of their

decisions in advance. That is to say, the decision makers

analyze and evaluate the possible, probable, and necessary

ramifications of a decision beforehand. Some people

argue that the sergeant on patrol in Kosovo or the bomber

crew over Afghanistan can make strategic decisions in a

split second and thus become strategic decision makers.

No doubt, armed forces and government officials do make

lethal, destructive, and sometimes regrettable decisions.

However, these determinations are considered tactical

opportunities or, worse, operational blunders rather than

planned, consequential decisions. Planning becomes

more important when one considers the long-term nature

of consequential decisions.

Such decisions require years to play out. Indeed, in most

cases strategic decision makers may not be around to wit-

ness the actual consequences of the decision, making it all

the more essential that they carefully consider all impli-

cations before taking action. Clearly, a hasty consequential

decision can become very costly.

One may classify these attendant costs as either immedi-

ate or mortgaged. For instance, some consequential deci-

sions—such as declaring war or beginning hostilities—can

have immediate costs or effects. The cost in lives could

become very heavy in a matter of days. World economic

costs could mount within weeks while markets collapse

within hours. Mortgaged costs of consequential decisions,

however, refer to lost opportunities and “sunk” costs. We

see such consequences, for example, when organizations

commit to huge purchases for weapons systems over a

decade-long time frame. Of course in the strategic envi-

ronment, costs are measured not only in dollars but also

in influence (e.g., the costs of supporting one nation over

another or the costs of not supporting a particular position).

Many times, the decision becomes a matter of sunk

costs—gone forever with no chance of recovery. Up to this

point, we have considered only the negative effects of

costs on consequential decisions. Suffice it to say that

many consequential decisions have the aim of decreasing,

avoiding, or postponing costs. In fact, some of the least

costly consequential decisions turn out to be the most

profound (e.g., expanding free-trade agreements and the

NATO alliance, reducing the number of nuclear arms, etc.).

Consequential decisions are profound because they have

the potential to create great change, lead trends, alter the

course of events, make history, and initiate a number of

wide-ranging effects. They can change societies and

advance new disciplines. Most importantly, an entire

organization, a segment of society, a nation, or humanity

in general recognizes such decisions as profound.

PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS

The stratified systems theory of T. Owen Jacobs and

Elliott Jaques classifies the performance requirements for

leaders in organizations as direct, general, and strategic

(in military parlance: tactical, operational, and strategic,

respectively).

Distinct elements define the leadership

environment within each level. Unmistakable differences

among the three levels include complexity, time horizon,

and focus.

Most people spend their careers leading at the direct or

tactical level (squadron or battalion commander, branch

chief, or below). In this environment, the leader interacts

directly with the same people every day by maintaining

a direct span of control, all the while executing plans,

following policies, and consuming resources with a

defined goal in mind. The time horizon is very short—

normally less than one year. At the direct level of leader-

ship, communications generally occur within the same

organization and focus exclusively on the internal audience.

Because leaders spend more time at this level than any

other, it becomes familiar and comfortable.

Some leaders, however, will mature and move to the general

or operational level, where performance requirements

begin to change. Direct leadership diminishes as the span

of control shrinks. At this level, leaders develop plans,

write some policies, and allocate resources among subor-

dinate organizations. The time horizon also increases—to

as much as five years. Operational leaders begin to shift

the focus of communication and energy outside the

organization, recognizing and questioning how the exter-

nal environment will affect their organizations. Group

commanders, brigade commanders, and division chiefs

represent this general, analytic level of leadership.

From the perspective of budding strategic leaders, per-

formance requirements for the strategic level change the

most and are the least familiar. The power of influence

becomes more important than the power of the position.

Conceptual ability and communications become essential.

Both focus not only on how the external environment will

affect the organization, but also—and more importantly—

on how the organization can influence that environment.

The most challenging of the performance requirements is

the time frame for making decisions, which can extend to

20 years and beyond. The leader at this level must think in

terms of systems and use integrative thinking—the ability

to see linkages and interdependencies within large organ-

izations (or systems) so that decisions in one system will

not adversely affect another system.

The challenges are

great, the stakes are high, and the performance require-

ments are stringent.

VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY,

AND AMBIGUITY

Framing the nature of the strategic environment in a

broad context helps us understand the magnitude of the

challenge. Strategic leaders operate in an environment that

demands unique performance requirements for making

consequential decisions. If we look more closely at this

environment, we discover four characteristics that define

the challenge to strategic leadership in a narrow sense:

volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Now that the world is no longer bipolar, the strategic

landscape has become more volatile. Violence erupts in

the most unlikely places and for seemingly innocuous

reasons. The last few years have given us a glimpse of this

volatility: ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, war and

terrorism in the Middle East, and terrorism within the

United States. The challenge for strategic leaders lies in

anticipating volatile scenarios and taking action to avert

violence.

In most cases, these leaders will be asked to conduct this

action in a landscape of uncertainty—the deceptive char-

acteristic of the strategic environment. They face situations

in which the intentions of competitors are not known—

perhaps deliberately concealed.

At other times, they will

even have reservations about the actual meaning of truth-

ful information. Their challenge is to penetrate the fog of

uncertainty that hugs the strategic landscape. Compre-

hending the nature of the strategic environment consti-

tutes the first step toward solving its complexity.

The interdependence of the components in the strategic

environment produces complexity—its most challenging

characteristic. Integrative thinking is essential to recog-

nizing and predicting the effects of a decision on this

“system of systems.” If leaders are to anticipate the proba-

ble, possible, and necessary implications of the decision,

they must develop a broad frame of reference or perspec-

tive and think conceptually.

The ambiguous character of the strategic environment

stems from different points of view, perspectives, and

interpretations of the same event or information. Strategic

leaders have to realize that broad perspectives (e.g., using

team approaches to solve problems and gain consensus)

help eliminate ambiguity and lead to effective strategic

decisions.

The nature of the strategic environment is challenging

because of the consequences of decisions and unique per-

formance requirements. Although faced with an environ-

ment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity,

and ambiguity, aspiring strategic leaders can nevertheless

learn to master it. Indeed, by acquiring certain skills and

competencies, they can transform this environment into

something more stable, certain, simple, and clear.

DEVELOPING STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

If becoming a strategist is the “ends,” then leadership is

the “ways,” and development is the “means.” Learning to

become a strategic leader requires special preparation in

several areas. First, one must understand how such a

leader develops—in essence the anatomy of strategic lead-

ership. Second, one should recognize some of the essential

competencies a strategic leader must have. Finally, the

prospective leader needs to assess his or her current abili-

ties and commit to a development plan.

ANATOMY OF A STRATEGIC LEADER

Development of a strategic leader involves a number of

important aspects. First, the most important, indeed

foundational, part of this preparation concerns values,

ethics, codes, morals, and standards. Second, the path to

strategic leadership resembles the building of a pyramid

(fig. 2). Shortcuts do not exist, and one can’t start at the

top—strategic leaders are made, not born. Strategic leaders

gradually build wisdom, defined as acquiring experiences

over time.

One must also remember that certain activities

can accelerate these experiences and widen perspectives.

Leaders should know that even though some individuals

with strategic competency may not become strategic

decision makers, they can still influence and contribute

to decisions. Additionally, having strategic competency

will allow one to fully understand strategic decisions and

perspectives.

COMPETENCIES

It is difficult to imagine an all-inclusive list of competencies

required for strategic leadership. However, some skills

seem essential— vision, for instance, which allows the

strategic leader to focus on the future and, in fact, build

that future. Vision makes leaders proactive in the strategic

environment rather than reactive. Furthermore, they

should become transformational in order to inspire people

toward common goals and shared values; they must

anticipate change, lead change, and foster a mind-set of

change; they should critically analyze their own thinking

to make decisions logically; they should foster an attitude

of creativity in their operations and organizations; they

must audaciously seek novel ideas and understand how to

frame decisions and organize chaos; and they should

know how to build effective teams and gain consensus

within large organizations. When consensus fails, strategic

leaders must negotiate effectively, or they put success at

risk. Many times, this kind of success is directly related

to the cultural sensitivity and cross-cultural communica-

tions ability of the leader. Finally, the strategic leader

must assume the role of both teacher and mentor. As Noel

Tichy reminds us, great leaders are great teachers. They

have a teachable point of view and invest in developing

other leaders.

The competencies mentioned above form

the basis of an education for aspiring strategic leaders.

ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

Becoming a strategic leader is a daunting challenge. It

starts with taking stock of leadership abilities, conceptual

capacity, and interpersonal skills. A thorough self-assess-

ment will help identify strengths and weaknesses. Such

assessments can examine personality type, leadership

motivation, originality, innovation, tolerance, teamwork,

and conceptual ability. These assessments are like the

starting point on a map, letting prospective leaders know

where they are so they can take the best route to their

destination. Completing a detailed self-assessment is also

the first step in commitment to the personal and professional

development process required to become a strategic leader.

As a follow-up to the self-assessment, aspiring leaders

should ask themselves a series of questions: What are my

strengths? How can I capitalize on them? Where are my

weaknesses? What can I do about them? Where do I want

to be in the future? How can I get there? Do I really want

to commit to development? The last question is the most

difficult one.

Those who answer yes are ready to begin

the journey toward becoming strategic leaders.

At this point, leader candidates should volunteer for and

accept challenging assignments—especially in areas in

Figure 2

which they might not have worked before. These could

include moving into a different functional area, accepting

joint assignments, or working in an interagency environ-

ment. Such taskings tend to accelerate experience and

broaden perspectives. Furthermore, pursuing a formal

course of study at senior service colleges and participating

in other education programs would broaden one’s knowl-

edge and conceptual ability. Self-learning is also valuable—

especially reading. All strategic leaders are voracious

readers—and they read outside their normal area of

expertise, again, to expand their perspective and increase

their conceptual ability. In fact, many of them are experts

in a number of unrelated fields. Becoming a “dual expert”

helps one think in multiple dimensions.

After committing to some or all of these development

activities, potential leaders should reflect on each activity

as a way of mining the total benefit and seeking greater

meaning. They will also benefit from mentoring other

leaders and being mentored themselves. When mentors

share their experiences, they help others know and

understand them. As Tichy says, sharing experiences or

“telling stories” shapes our own attitude, behavior, and

point of view.

We become the story, and the story guides

our lives. Gen Dwight Eisenhower endorsed mentoring

when he explained that the best way to become a good

decision maker is to be around others who make decisions.

CONCLUSION

The many components of the strategic leadership envi-

ronment challenge even the best leaders. The monumen-

tal consequences of strategic decisions call for individuals

with unique performance abilities who can navigate the

volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity inherent

in the nature of those decisions. Aspiring leaders can rise

to the challenge by undergoing self-assessment and per-

sonal development. Accepting the demands of strategic

leadership involves a transition from the art of the famil-

iar to the art of the possible. This is the realm of strategic

leadership and the strategic environment.

NOTES

1. Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary, 1988 ed., s.v.

“strategic.”

2. T. Owen Jacobs, Strategic Leadership: The Competitive Edge

(Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.: Industrial College of the

Armed Forces, 2000), 24.

3. US Industrial College of the Armed Forces, chap. 1, “Overview,”

Strategic Leadership and Decision Making: Preparing Senior Execu-

tives for the 21st Century (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Uni-

versity Press, 1997), on-line, Internet, September 2000, available

from http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/books%20-

%201999/Strategic%20Leadership%20and%20

Decision-making%20-%20Feb%2099/cont.html.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Jacobs, 46.

8. Noel M. Tichy with Eli Cohen, The Leadership Engine: How Win-

ning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (New York: Harper

Business, 1997), 3.

9. US Industrial College of the Armed Forces, chap. 7, “Developing

Strategic Leaders,” Strategic Leadership and Decision Making.

10. Tichy and Cohen, 77.

11. Edgar F. Puryear Jr., American Generalship: Character Is Every-

thing: The Art of Command (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 2000),

232.

Col Guillot is a former cadet from Louisiana and a

recipient of the Spaatz Award.

From: Col W. Michael Guillot, “Strategic Leadership: Defining the

Challenge,” Air & Space Power Journal (Winter 2003): 67-75. Used

with permission.

OBJECTIVES:

6. List the enduring American interests as outlined in the National Security Strategy.

7. Summarize the goals listed in the National Security Strategy related to Diplomacy.

8. Summarize the goals listed in the National Security Strategy related to Strategic Communications.

12.2 National Security Strategy

The Administration of President Barack Obama

“More than at any point in human history—

the interests of nations and peoples are

shared. The religious convictions that we

hold in our hearts can forge new bonds among

people, or tear us apart. The technology we

harness can light the path to peace, or forever

darken it. The energy we use can sustain our

planet, or destroy it. What happens to the

hope of a single child—anywhere—can enrich

our world, or impoverish it.”

—President Barack Obama,

United Nations General Assembly, September 22, 2009

The United States must renew its leadership in the world

by building and cultivating the sources of our strength

and influence. Our national security depends upon Amer-

ica’s ability to leverage our unique national attributes, just

as global security depends upon strong and responsible

American leadership. That includes our military might,

economic competitiveness, moral leadership, global en-

gagement, and efforts to shape an international system

that serves the mutual interests of nations and peoples.

For the world has changed at an extraordinary pace, and

the United States must adapt to advance our interests and

sustain our leadership.

American interests are enduring. They are:

• The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S.

allies and partners;

• A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an

open international economic system that promotes op-

portunity and prosperity;

• Respect for universal values at home and around the

world; and

• An international order advanced by U.S. leadership

that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through

stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

Currently, the United States is focused on implementing a

responsible transition as we end the war in Iraq, succeed-

ing in Afghanistan, and defeating al-Qa’ida and its terror-

ist affiliates, while moving our economy from catastrophic

recession to lasting recovery. As we confront these crises,

our national strategy must take a longer view. We must

build a stronger foundation for American leadership and

work to better shape the outcomes that are most funda-

mental to our people in the 21st century.

THE STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT—

THE WORLD AS IT IS

In the two decades since the end of the Cold War, the free

flow of information, people, goods and services has accel-

erated at an unprecedented rate. This interconnection has

empowered individuals for good and ill, and challenged

state based international institutions that were largely

designed in the wake of World War II by policymakers

who had different challenges in mind. Nonstate actors

can have a dramatic influence on the world around them.

Economic growth has alleviated poverty and led to new

centers of influence. More nations are asserting them-

selves regionally and globally. The lives of our citizens—

their safety and prosperity—are more bound than ever to

events beyond our borders.

Within this environment, the attacks of September 11,

2001, were a transformative event for the United States,

demonstrating just how much trends far beyond our shores

could directly endanger the personal safety of the Ameri-

can people. The attacks put into sharp focus America’s

position as the sole global superpower, the dangers of

violent extremism, and the simmering conflicts that fol-

lowed the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. And they

drew a swift and forceful response from the United States

and our allies and partners in Afghanistan. This response

was followed by our decision to go to war in Iraq, and the

ensuing years have seen America’s forces, resources, and

national security strategy focused on these conflicts.

The United States is now fighting two wars with many

thousands of our men and women deployed in harm’s

way, and hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to

funding these conflicts. In Iraq, we are sup-porting a

transition of responsibility to the sovereign Iraqi Govern-

ment. We are supporting the security and prosperity

of our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of a

broader campaign to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat

al-Qa’ida and its violent extremist affiliates.

Yet these wars—and our global efforts to successfully

counter violent extremism—are only one element of our

strategic environment and cannot define America’s en-

gagement with the world. Terrorism is one of many

threats that are more consequential in a global age. The

gravest danger to the American people and global security

continues to come from weapons of mass destruction,

particularly nuclear weapons. The space and cyberspace

capabilities that power our daily lives and military opera-

tions are vulnerable to disruption and attack. Dependence

upon fossil fuels constrains our options and pollutes our

environment. Climate change and pandemic disease

threaten the security of regions and the health and safety

of the American people. Failing states breed conflict and

endanger regional and global security. Global criminal

networks foment insecurity abroad and bring people and

goods across our own borders that threaten our people.

The global economy is being reshaped by innovation,

emerging economies, transition to low-carbon energy,

and recovery from a catastrophic recession. The conver-

gence of wealth and living standards among developed

and emerging economies holds out the promise of more

balanced global growth, but dramatic inequality persists

within and among nations. Profound cultural and demo-

graphic tensions, rising demand for resources, and rapid

urbanization could reshape single countries and entire

regions. As the world grows more interconnected, more

individuals are gaining awareness of their universal rights

and have the capacity to pursue them. Democracies that

respect the rights of their people remain successful states

and America’s most steadfast allies. Yet the advance of

democracy and human rights has stalled in many parts of

the world.

More actors exert power and influence. Europe is now

more united, free, and at peace than ever before. The Eu-

ropean Union has deepened its integration. Russia has

reemerged in the international arena as a strong voice.

China and India—the world’s two most populous nations—

are becoming more engaged globally. From Latin America

to Africa to the Pacific, new and emerging powers hold

out opportunities for partnership, even as a handful of

states endanger regional and global security by flouting

interna¬tional norms. International institutions play a

critical role in facilitating cooperation, but at times can-

not effectively address new threats or seize new opportu-

nities. Meanwhile, individuals, corporations, and civil so-

ciety play an increasingly important role in shaping

events around the world.

The United States retains the strengths that have enabled

our leadership for many decades. Our society is excep-

tional in its openness, vast diversity, resilience, and en-

gaged citizenry. Our private sector and civil society

exhibit enormous ingenuity and innovation, and our

workers are capable and dedicated. We have the world’s

largest economy and most powerful military, strong al-

liances and a vibrant cultural appeal, and a history of

leadership in economic and social development. We con-

tinue to be a destination that is sought out by immigrants

from around the world, who enrich our society. We have

a transparent, accountable democracy and a dynamic and

productive populace with deep connections to peoples

around the world. And we continue to embrace a set of

values that have enabled liberty and opportunity at home

and abroad.

Now, the very fluidity within the international system

that breeds new challenges must be approached as an

opportunity to forge new international cooperation. We

must rebalance our long-term priorities so that we suc-

cessfully move beyond today’s wars, and focus our atten-

tion and resources on a broader set of countries and

challenges. We must seize on the opportunities afforded

by the world’s interconnection, while responding effec-

tively and comprehensively to its dangers. And we must

take advantage of the unparalleled connections that

America’s Government, private sector, and citizens have

around the globe.

THE STRATEGIC APPROACH—

THE WORLD WE SEEK

In the past, the United States has thrived when both our

nation and our national security policy have adapted to

shape change instead of being shaped by it. For instance,

as the industrial revolution took hold, America transformed

our economy and our role in the world. When the world

was confronted by fascism, America prepared itself to

win a war and to shape the peace that followed. When the

United States encountered an ideological, economic, and

military threat from communism, we shaped our practices

and institutions at home—and policies abroad—to meet

this challenge. Now, we must once again position the

United States to champion mutual interests among nations

and peoples.

Building Our Foundation

Our national security begins at home. What takes place

within our borders has always been the source of our

strength, and this is even truer in an age of interconnection.

First and foremost, we must renew the foundation of

America’s strength. In the long run, the welfare of the

American people will determine America’s strength in

the world, particularly at a time when our own economy

is inextricably linked to the global economy. Our prosper-

ity serves as a wellspring for our power. It pays for our

military, underwrites our diplomacy and development

efforts, and serves as a leading source of our influence in

the world. Moreover, our trade and investment supports

millions of American jobs, forges links among countries,

spurs global development, and contributes to a stable and

peaceful political and economic environment.

Yet even as we have maintained our military advantage,

our competitiveness has been set back in recent years. We

are recovering from underinvestment in the areas that are

central to America’s strength. We have not adequately

advanced priorities like education, energy, science and

technology, and health care—all of which are essential to

U.S. competitiveness, long-term prosperity, and strength.

Years of rising fiscal and trade deficits will also necessi-

tate hard choices in the years ahead.

That is why we are rebuilding our economy so that it will

serve as an engine of opportunity for the American people,

and a source of American influence abroad. The United

States must ensure that we have the world’s best-educated

workforce, a private sector that fosters innovation, and

citizens and busi-nesses that can access affordable health

care to compete in a globalized economy. We must trans-

form the way that we use energy—diversifying supplies,

investing in innovation, and deploying clean energy tech-

nologies. By doing so, we will enhance energy security,

create jobs, and fight climate change.

Rebuilding our economy must include putting ourselves

on a fiscally sustainable path. As such, imple-menting our

national security strategy will require a disciplined approach

to setting priorities and mak¬ing tradeoffs among competing

programs and activities. Taken together, these efforts will

position our nation for success in the global marketplace,

while also supporting our national security capacity—the

strength of our military, intelligence, diplomacy and devel-

opment, and the security and resilience of our homeland.

We are now moving beyond traditional distinctions be-

tween homeland and national security. National security

draws on the strength and resilience of our citizens, com-

munities, and economy. This includes a determination to

prevent terrorist attacks against the American people by

fully coordinating the actions that we take abroad with

the actions and precautions that we take at home. It must

also include a com-mitment to building a more secure

and resilient nation, while maintaining open flows of

goods and people. We will continue to develop the capac-

ity to address the threats and hazards that confront us,

while redeveloping our infrastructure to secure our people

and work cooperatively with other nations.

America’s example is also a critical component of our

foundation. The human rights which America has stood

for since our founding have enabled our leadership, pro-

vided a source of inspiration for peoples around the

world, and drawn a clear contrast between the United

States and our democratic allies, and those nations and

individuals that deny or suppress human rights. Our efforts

to live our own values, and uphold the principles of democ-

racy in our own society, underpin our support for the

aspirations of the oppressed abroad, who know they can

turn to America for leadership based on justice and hope.

Our moral leadership is grounded principally in the

power of our example—not through an effort to impose

our system on other peoples. Yet over the years, some

methods employed in pursuit of our security have com-

promised our fidelity to the values that we promote, and

our leadership on their behalf. This undercuts our ability

to support democratic movements abroad, challenge nations

that violate international human rights norms, and apply

our broader leadership for good in the world. That is why

we will lead on behalf of our values by living them. Our

struggle to stay true to our values and Constitution has

always been a lodestar, both to the American people and

to those who share our aspiration for human dignity.

Our values have allowed us to draw the best and brightest

to our shores, to inspire those who share our cause abroad,

and to give us the credibility to stand up to tyranny.

America must demonstrate through words and deeds the

resilience of our values and Constitution. For if we com-

promise our values in pur¬suit of security, we will under-

mine both; if we fortify them, we will sustain a key source

of our strength and leadership in the world—one that sets

us apart from our enemies and our potential competitors.

Pursuing Comprehensive Engagement

Our foundation will support our efforts to engage nations,

institutions, and peoples around the world on the basis of

mutual interests and mutual respect.

Engagement is the active participation of the United

States in relationships beyond our borders. It is, quite

simply, the opposite of a self-imposed isolation that denies

us the ability to shape outcomes. Indeed, America has

never succeeded through isolationism. As the nation that

helped to build our international system after World War

II and to bring about the globalization that came with the

end of the Cold War, we must reengage the world on a

comprehensive and sustained basis.

Engagement begins with our closest friends and allies—

from Europe to Asia; from North America to the Middle

East. These nations share a common history of struggle

on behalf of security, prosperity, and democracy. They

share common values and a common commitment to in-

ternational norms that recog-nize both the rights and re-

sponsibilities of all sovereign nations. America’s national

security depends on these vibrant alliances, and we must

engage them as active partners in addressing global and

regional security priorities and harnessing new opportu-

nities to advance common interests. For instance, we pur-

sue close and regular collaboration with our close allies

the United Kingdom, France, and Germany on issues of

mutual and global concern.

We will continue to deepen our cooperation with other

21st century centers of influence—including China, India,

and Russia—on the basis of mutual interests and mutual

respect. We will also pursue diplomacy and development

that supports the emergence of new and successful part-

ners, from the Americas to Africa; from the Middle East

to Southeast Asia. Our ability to advance constructive co-

operation is essential to the security and prosperity of

specific regions, and to facilitating global cooperation on

issues ranging from violent extremism and nuclear prolif-

eration, to climate change, and global economic instabil-

ity—issues that challenge all nations, but that no one

nation alone can meet.

To adversarial governments, we offer a clear choice: abide

by international norms, and achieve the political and eco-

nomic benefits that come with greater integration with

the international community; or refuse to accept this

pathway, and bear the consequences of that decision,

including greater isolation. Through engagement, we can

create opportunities to resolve differences, strengthen

the international community’s support for our actions,

learn about the intentions and nature of closed regimes,

and plainly demonstrate to the publics within those nations

that their governments are to blame for their isolation.

Successful engagement will depend upon the effective

use and integration of different elements of American

power. Our diplomacy and development capabilities must

help prevent conflict, spur eco¬nomic growth, strengthen

weak and failing states, lift people out of poverty, combat

climate change and epidemic disease, and strengthen

institutions of democratic governance. Our military will

continue strengthening its capacity to partner with foreign

counterparts, train and assist security forces, and pursue

military-to-military ties with a broad range of govern-

ments. We will continue to foster economic and financial

transactions to advance our shared prosperity. And our

intelligence and law enforcement agencies must cooper-

ate effectively with foreign governments to anticipate

events, respond to crises, and provide safety and security.

Finally, we will pursue engagement among peoples—not

just governments—around the world. The United States

Government will make a sustained effort to engage civil

society and citizens and facilitate increased connections

among the American people and peoples around the

world—through efforts ranging from public service and

educational exchanges, to increased commerce and pri-

vate sector partnerships. In many instances, these modes

of engagement have a powerful and enduring impact

beyond our borders, and are a cost-effective way of pro-

jecting a positive vision of American leadership. Time and

again, we have seen that the best ambassadors for Ameri-

can values and interests are the American people—our

businesses, nongovernmental organizations, scientists,

athletes, artists, military service members, and students.

Facilitating increased international engagement outside

of government will help prepare our country to thrive in a

global economy, while building the goodwill and relation-

ships that are invaluable to sus¬taining American leader-

ship. It also helps leverage strengths that are unique to

America—our diversity and diaspora populations, our

openness and creativity, and the values that our people

embody in their own lives.

PROMOTING A JUST AND SUSTAINABLE

INTERNATIONAL ORDER

Our engagement will underpin a just and sustainable

international order—just, because it advances mutual

interests, protects the rights of all, and holds accountable

those who refuse to meet their responsibilities; sustain-

able because it is based on broadly shared norms and

fosters collective action to address common challenges.

This engagement will pursue an international order that

recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations.

As we did after World War II, we must pursue a rules-

based international system that can advance our own

interests by serving mutual interests. International insti-

tutions must be more effective and representative of the

diffusion of influence in the 21st century. Nations must

have incentives to behave responsibly, or be isolated

when they do not. The test of this international order

must be the cooperation it facilitates and the results it

generates—the ability of nations to come together to con-

front common challenges like violent extremism, nuclear

proliferation, climate change, and a changing global economy.

That is precisely the reason we should strengthen en-

forcement of international law and our commitment to

engage and modernize international institutions and

frameworks. Those nations that refuse to meet their

responsibilities will forsake the opportunities that come

with international cooperation. Credible and effective

alternatives to military action—from sanctions to isolation—

must be strong enough to change behavior, just as we

must reinforce our alliances and our military capabilities.

And if nations challenge or undermine an international

order that is based upon rights and responsibilities, they

must find themselves isolated.

We succeeded in the post-World War II era by pursuing

our interests within multilateral forums like the United

Nations—not outside of them. We recognized that institu-

tions that aggregated the national inter-ests of many na-

tions would never be perfect; but we also saw that they

were an indispensable vehicle for pooling international

resources and enforcing international norms. Indeed, the

basis for international cooperation since World War II

has been an architecture of international institutions, or-

ganizations, regimes, and standards that establishes certain

rights and responsibilities for all sovereign nations.

In recent years America’s frustration with international

institutions has led us at times to engage the United Nations

(U.N.) system on an ad hoc basis. But in a world of trans-

national challenges, the United States will need to invest

in strengthening the international system, working from

inside interna¬tional institutions and frameworks to face

their imperfections head on and to mobilize transnational

cooperation.

We must be clear-eyed about the factors that have impeded

effectiveness in the past. In order for collective action to

be mobilized, the polarization that persists across region,

race, and religion will need to be replaced by a galvanizing

sense of shared interest. Swift and effective international

action often turns on the political will of coalitions of

countries that comprise regional or international institu-

tions. New and emerging powers who seek greater voice

and representation will need to accept greater responsi-

bility for meeting global challenges. When nations breach

agreed international norms, the countries who espouse

those norms must be convinced to band together to en-

force them.

We will expand our support to modernizing institutions

and arrangements such as the evolution of the G-8 to the

G-20 to reflect the realities of today’s international envi-

ronment. Working with the institutions and the countries

that comprise them, we will enhance international capac-

ity to prevent conflict, spur economic growth, improve

security, combat climate change, and address the challenges

posed by weak and failing states. And we will challenge

and assist international institutions and frameworks to

reform when they fail to live up to their promise.

Strengthening the legitimacy and authority of international

law and institutions, especially the U.N., will require a

constant struggle to improve performance.

Furthermore, our international order must recognize the

increasing influence of individuals in today’s world.

There must be opportunities for civil society to thrive

within nations and to forge connections among them.

And there must be opportunities for individuals and the

private sector to play a major role in addressing common

challenges—whether supporting a nuclear fuel bank, pro-

moting global health, fostering entrepreneurship, or

exposing violations of universal rights. In the 21st century,

the ability of individuals and nongovernment actors to

play a positive role in shaping the international environment

represents a distinct opportunity for the United States.

Within this context, we know that an international order

where every nation upholds its rights and responsibilities

will remain elusive. Force will sometimes be necessary to

confront threats. Technology will continue to bring with

it new dangers. Poverty and disease will not be completely

abolished. Oppression will always be with us. But if we

recognize these challenges, embrace America’s responsi-

bility to confront them with its partners, and forge new

cooperative approaches to get others to join us in over-

coming them, then the international order of a globalized

age can better advance our interests and the common

interests of nations and peoples everywhere.

STRENGTHENING NATIONAL CAPACITY—

A WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT APPROACH

To succeed, we must update, balance, and integrate all of

the tools of American power and work with our allies and

partners to do the same. Our military must maintain its

conventional superiority and, as long as nuclear weapons

exist, our nuclear deterrent capability, while continuing

to enhance its capacity to defeat asymmetric threats, pre-

serve access to the global commons, and strengthen partners.

We must invest in diplomacy and development capabili-

ties and institutions in a way that complements and re-

inforces our global partners. Our intelligence capabilities

must continuously evolve to identify and characterize

conventional and asymmetric threats and provide timely

insight. And we must integrate our approach to homeland

security with our broader national security approach.

We are improving the integration of skills and capabilities

within our military and civilian institutions, so they com-

plement each other and operate seamlessly. We are also

improving coordinated planning and policymaking and

must build our capacity in key areas where we fall short.

This requires close coopera-tion with Congress and a

deliberate and inclusive interagency process, so that we

achieve integration of our efforts to implement and moni-

tor operations, policies, and strategies. To initiate this

effort, the White House merged the staffs of the National

Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

However, work remains to foster coordination across

departments and agencies. Key steps include more effec-

tively ensuring alignment of resources with our national

security strategy, adapting the education and training of

national security professionals to equip them to meet

modern challenges, reviewing authorities and mechanisms

to implement and coordinate assistance programs, and

other policies and programs that strengthen coordination.

• Defense: We are strengthening our military to ensure

that it can prevail in today’s wars; to prevent and deter

threats against the United States, its interests, and our

allies and partners; and prepare to defend the United

States in a wide range of contingencies against state and

nonstate actors. We will continue to rebalance our mili-

tary capabilities to excel at counterterrorism, counterin-

surgency, stability operations, and meeting increasingly

sophisticated security threats, while ensuring our force is

ready to address the full range of military operations.

This includes preparing for increasingly sophisticated

adversaries, deterring and defeating aggression in anti-

access environments, and defending the United States

and supporting civil authorities at home. The most valu-

able component of our national defense is the men and

women who make up America’s all-volunteer force. They

have shown tremendous resilience, adapt¬ability, and

capacity for innovation, and we will provide our service

members with the resources that they need to succeed

and rededicate ourselves to providing support and care

for wounded warriors, veterans, and military families. We

must set the force on a path to sustainable deployment

cycles and preserve and enhance the long-term viability

of our force through successful recruitment, retention,

and recognition of those who serve.

• Diplomacy: Diplomacy is as fundamental to our

national security as our defense capability. Our diplomats

are the first line of engagement, listening to our partners,

learning from them, building respect for one another, and

seeking common ground. Diplomats, development experts,

and others in the United States Government must be able

to work side by side to support a common agenda. New

skills are needed to foster effective interaction to convene,

connect, and mobilize not only other governments and in-

ternational organizations, but also nonstate actors such as

corporations, foundations, nongovern¬mental organizations,

universities, think tanks, and faith-based organizations,

all of whom increasingly have a distinct role to play on

both diplomatic and development issues. To accomplish

these goals our diplomatic personnel and missions must

be expanded at home and abroad to support the increas-

ingly transnational nature of 21st century security challenges.

And we must provide the appropriate authorities and

mechanisms to implement and coordinate assistance pro-

grams and grow the civilian expedi¬tionary capacity

required to assist governments on a diverse array of issues.

• Economic: Our economic institutions are crucial

components of our national capacity and our economic

instruments are the bedrock of sustainable national

growth, prosperity and influence. The Office of Manage-

ment and Budget, Departments of the Treasury, State,

Commerce, Energy, and Agriculture, United States Trade

Representative, Federal Reserve Board, and other institu-

tions help manage our currency, trade, foreign investment,

deficit, inflation, productivity, and national competitive-

ness. Remaining a vibrant 21st century economic power

also requires close cooperation between and among de-

veloped nations and emerging markets because of the in-

terdependent nature of the global economy. America—

like other nations—is dependent upon overseas markets

to sell its exports and maintain access to scarce commodi-

ties and resources. Thus, finding overlapping mutual eco-

nomic interests with other nations and maintaining those

economic relationships are key elements of our national

security strategy.

• Development: Development is a strategic, economic,

and moral imperative. We are focusing on assisting devel-

oping countries and their people to manage security

threats, reap the benefits of global economic expansion,

and set in place accountable and democratic institutions

that serve basic human needs. Through an aggressive

and affirmative development agenda and commensurate

resources, we can strengthen the regional partners we

need to help us stop conflicts and counter global criminal

networks; build a stable, inclusive global economy with

new sources of prosperity; advance democracy and

human rights; and ultimately position ourselves to better

address key global challenges by growing the ranks of

prosperous, capable, and democratic states that can be

our partners in the decades ahead. To do this, we are ex-

panding our civilian development capability; engaging

with international financial institutions that leverage our

resources and advance our objectives; pursuing a devel-

opment budget that more deliberately reflects our policies

and our strategy, not sector earmarks; and ensuring that

our policy instruments are aligned in support of develop-

ment objectives.

• Homeland Security: Homeland security traces its

roots to traditional and historic functions of government

and society, such as civil defense, emergency response,

law enforcement, customs, border patrol, and immigra-

tion. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the foundation of the

Department of Homeland Security, these functions have

taken on new organization and urgency. Homeland secu-

rity, therefore, strives to adapt these traditional functions

to confront new threats and evolving hazards. It is not

simply about government action alone, but rather about

the collective strength of the entire country. Our approach

relies on our shared efforts to identify and interdict

threats; deny hostile actors the ability to operate within

our borders; maintain effective control of our physical

borders; safeguard lawful trade and travel into and out of

the United States; disrupt and dismantle transnational

terrorist, and criminal organiza¬tions; and ensure our

national resilience in the face of the threat and hazards.

Taken together, these efforts must support a homeland

that is safe and secure from terrorism and other hazards

and in which American interests, aspirations, and way of

life can thrive.

• Intelligence: Our country’s safety and prosperity de-

pend on the quality of the intelligence we collect and the

analysis we produce, our ability to evaluate and share this

information in a timely manner, and our ability to counter

intelligence threats. This is as true for the strategic intel-

ligence that informs executive decisions as it is for intelli-

gence support to homeland security, state, local, and

tribal govern¬ments, our troops, and critical national mis-

sions. We are working to better integrate the Intelligence

Community, while also enhancing the capabilities of our

Intelligence Community members. We are strengthening

our partnerships with foreign intelligence services and

sustaining strong ties with our close allies. And we con-

tinue to invest in the men and women of the Intelligence

Community.

• Strategic Communications: Across all of our efforts,

effective strategic communications are essential to sus-

taining global legitimacy and supporting our policy aims.

Aligning our actions with our words is a shared responsi-

bility that must be fostered by a culture of communication

throughout government. We must also be more effective

in our deliberate communication and engagement and do

a better job understanding the attitudes, opinions, griev-

ances, and concerns of peoples—not just elites—around

the world. Doing so allows us to convey credible, consis-

tent messages and to develop effective plans, while better

understanding how our actions will be perceived. We

must also use a broad range of meth¬ods for communicat-

ing with foreign publics, including new media.

• The American People and the Private Sector: The

ideas, values, energy, creativity, and resilience of our citi-

zens are America’s greatest resource. We will support the

development of prepared, vigilant, and engaged commu-

nities and underscore that our citizens are the heart of a

resilient country. And we must tap the ingenuity outside

government through strategic partnerships with the pri-

vate sector, nongovernmental organizations, foundations,

and community-based organizations. Such partnerships

are critical to U.S. success at home and abroad, and we

will support them through enhanced opportunities for

engagement, coordination, transparency, and information

sharing.

“‘For every problem there is a solution that is

simple, neat – and wrong.’ This maxim has

been attributed at various times to Mark

Twain, H.L. Mencken, and Peter Drucker as a

wake-up call to managers who mistakenly

think that making a change in just one part of a

complex problem will cure the ails of an entire

system. Everyday management thinking too

often looks for straightforward cause and

effect relationships in problem solving that

ignores the effect on, and feedback from, the

entire system.”

-Ron Zemke,

writing in the February 2011 issue of Training

Leaders operate in the realm of bewildering uncertainty

and staggering complexity. Today’s problems are rarely

simple and clear-cut. If they were, they would likely

already have been solved by someone else. If not well

considered—and sometimes even when they are—today’s

solutions become tomorrow’s problems. Success in the

contemporary operating environment requires different

ways of thinking about problems and organizations. This

article introduces some concepts of systems thinking and

suggests that it is a framework that should be understood

and applied by leaders at all levels, but especially those

within the acquisition community. It is insufficient and

often counterproductive for leaders merely to act as good

cogs in the machine. Leaders perform a valuable service

when they discern that a venerated system or process has

outlived its usefulness, or that it is operating as originally

designed but against the organization’s overall purpose.

Sometimes we forget that systems are created by people,

based on an idea about what should happen at a given

point in time. A wise senior warrant officer referred to

this phenomenon as a BOGSAT—a bunch of guys sitting

around talking.

SYSTEMS ENDURE

Although times and circumstances may change, systems

tend to endure. We seem to be better at creating new sys-

tems than changing or eliminating existing ones. Sociolo-

gist Robert K. Merton coined the term “goal displacement”

to describe what happens when complying with bureau-

cratic processes becomes the objective rather than focus-

ing on organizational goals and values. When that happens,

systems take on a life of their own and seem immune to

common sense. Thoughtless application of rules and pro-

cedures can stifle innovation, hamper adaptivity, and

dash creativity. Wholesale disregard of rules and proce-

dures, however, can be equally disastrous.

When members of an organization feel as though they

must constantly fight the system by circumventing estab-

lished rules and procedures, the result can be cynicism or

a poor ethical climate. Because of their experience and

position, leaders are invested with the authority to inter-

vene and correct or abandon malfunctioning systems. At

the very least, they can advocate for change in a way that

those with less positional authority cannot. Leaders at all

levels should, therefore, be alert to systems that drive

human behavior inimical to organizational effectiveness.

It is arguable that military organizations placing a pre-

mium on tradition and standardization are predisposed to

goal displacement. We need leaders, therefore, who can

see both the parts and the big picture; to this end some of

the concepts of systems thinking are useful.

The Department of Defense is a large and complex social

system with many interrelated parts. As with any system

of this type, when changes are made to one part, many

others are affected in a cascading and often unpredictable

manner. Thus, organizational decisions are fraught with

second- and third-order effects that result in unintended

consequences. “Fire and forget” approaches are rarely

sufficient and are sometimes downright harmful. Exten-

sive planning—combined with even the best of intentions—

does not guarantee success. Better prediction is not the

answer, nor is it possible. There are so many interactions

in complex systems that no individual can be expected to

forecast the impact of even small changes that are ampli-

fied over time.

GETTING BEYOND THE MACHINE

METAPHOR

In her book Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and

Postmodern Perspectives, Mary Jo Hatch provides an

introduction to general systems theory that is useful in

12.3 Leadership and Systems Thinking

By COL George E. Reed, USA

OBJECTIVES:

9. List three steps in the systems thinking approach.

10. Identify barriers to our ability to use systems thinking.

thinking about organizations. She makes a point worthy

of repeating: The use of lower level models is problematic

when applied to higher level systems. Thus, the language

of simple machines creates blind spots when used as a

metaphor for human or social systems; human systems

are infinitely more complex and dynamic. In other words,

it can be counterproductive to treat a complex dynamic

social system like a simple machine.

Noted management scholar Russell Ackoff puts it another

way. He asserts that we are in the process of leaving the

machine age that had roots in the Renaissance and came

into favor through the industrialization of society. In that

era the machine metaphor became the predominant way

of looking at organizations. The universe was envisioned

by thinkers such as Isaac Newton, as having the charac-

teristics of a big clock. The workings of the clock could be

understood through the process of analysis and the ana-

lytical method.

Analysis involves taking apart something of interest,

trying to understand the behavior of its parts, and then

assembling the understanding of the parts into an under-

standing of the whole. According to Ackoff, “One simple

relationship—cause and effect—was sufficient to explain

all relationships.” Much machine-age thinking remains

with us today; however, there are alternatives.

SYSTEMS THINKING

Systems, like the human body, have parts, and the parts

affect the performance of the whole. All of the parts are

interdependent. The liver interacts with and affects other

internal organs—the brain, heart, kidneys, etc. You can

study the parts singly, but because of the interactions, it

doesn’t make much practical sense to stop there. Under-

standing of the system cannot depend on analysis alone.

The key to understanding is, therefore, synthesis. The

systems approach is to:

• Identify a system. After all, not all things are systems.

Some systems are simple and predictable, while others

are complex and dynamic. Most human social systems are

the latter.

• Explain the behavior or properties of the whole sys-

tem. This focus on the whole is the process of synthesis.

Ackoff says that analysis looks into things while synthesis

looks out of things.

• Explain the behavior or properties of the thing to be

explained in terms of the role(s) or function(s) of the

whole.

The systems thinker retains focus on the system as a

whole, and the analysis in step three (the third bullet) is

always in terms of the overall purpose of the system.

Borrowing Ackoff’s approach and using the example of a

contemporary defense issue might help clarify what is

admittedly abstract at first glance.

Consider the Institute for Defense Analyses report Trans-

forming DoD Management: the Systems Approach. The

authors of this study suggested an alternative approach to

Service-based readiness reporting, one that considered

the entire defense transportation system. One section of

the report suggests that knowing the status of equipment,

training, and manning of transportation units is helpful

but insufficient to determine the readiness of a system

that includes elements such as airfields, road networks,

ships, and ports. The defense transportation system

includes elements of all Services and even some commercial

entities. It only makes sense, therefore, to assess readi-

ness of these elements as part of a larger system that has

an identifiable purpose—to move personnel and materiel

to the right place at the right time. In this example you

can clearly see the approach recommended by Ackoff.

THE PROBLEM OF BUSYNESS

Few would disagree, in principle, that senior leaders

should see not only the parts, but also the big picture. So

why don’t we do more of it? One reason is because we are

so darned busy. Immersed in the myriad details of daily

existence, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

While it may be important to orient on values, goals, and

objectives, the urgent often displaces the important.

Fighting off the alligators inevitably takes precedence

over draining the swamp.

The problem of busyness can be compounded by senior

leaders who are overscheduled and uneducated in systems

thinking. It seems as though military officers today work

excessive hours as a matter of pride. A cursory examina-

tion of the calendar of most contemporary officers, espe-

cially flag officers, will indicate an abusive pace. Consider

as an alternative the example of one of America’s greatest

soldier-statesmen, Gen. George C. Marshall. Even at the

height of World War II, Marshall typically rode a horse in

the morning for exercise, came home for lunch and visited

with his wife, went to bed early, and regularly took retreats

to rejuvenate. To what extent are such pauses for reflec-

tion and renewal valued today? Simple cause and effect

thinking combined with a culture of busyness can result

in decision makers who rapid-fire short-term solutions at

long-term problems without taking time to think about

the actual impact of those solutions.

A common symptom of this phenomenon can be seen in

leaders who unrealistically demand simplicity and cer-

tainty in a complex and uncertain environment. The drive

for simplicity can lead to the need for excessive assump-

tions. Few contemporary issues of significance can be un-

derstood, much less solved, in a two-page point paper or a

PowerPoint® slide. We might also ask whether speed and

decisiveness in decision making, so valued at the tactical

level, work to the detriment of good decisions at the

strategic level. Absent some discipline and techniques to

do otherwise, it is very hard to find time for reflection and

thoughtful decision making.

Most people expect learning to just happen

without their taking the time for thought and

reflection, which true learning requires. In the

past, with slower communication systems, we

often had a few weeks to ponder and rethink a

decision. Today we’re accustomed to emails,

overnight letters, and cell phones, and have

come to believe that an immediate response is

more important than a thoughtful one.

— Steven Robbins, writing in Harvard Business School

Working Knowledge in May 2003.

INTERRELATIONSHIPS, NOT THINGS

Peter Senge submits, in The Fifth Discipline, that systems

thinking provides just the type of discipline and toolset

needed to encourage the seeing of “interrelationships

rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather

than static ‘snapshots.’” Senge argues that this shift of

mind is necessary to deal with the complexities of dynamic

social systems.

He suggests that we think in terms of feedback loops as a

substitute for simple cause and effect relationships. As an

example, systems scholar Daniel Aronson suggests that

we imagine a farmer who determines that an insect infes-

tation is eating his crop. The conventional approach is to

apply a pesticide designed to kill the insect. Our example

at this point depicts the lowest level of the thinking hier-

archy—reaction. In response to the appearance of insects,

the farmer applies a pesticide because he assumes that

what has worked in the past will work in this instance. As

additional insects appear, the farmer applies more pesticide.

While the farmer’s goal is to produce a crop, his activity is

increasingly consumed by recurring applications of the

chemical. He is surely busy, but he may not necessarily be

productive. A systems thinker might step back from the

problem, take a broader view, and consider what is hap-

pening over time.

For example, he might think about whether there are any

patterns that appear over weeks or months and attempt

to depict what is actually occurring. Recognizing the pat-

tern of a system over time is a higher-order level of thinking.

The systems thinker might notice that insect infestation

did decrease after applying pesticide, but only for a short

time. Insects that were eating the crop were actually con-

trolling a second species of insect not affected by the

pesticide. Elimination of the first species resulted in a

growth explosion in the second that caused even more

damage than the first. The obvious solution caused unin-

tended consequences that worsened the situation.

An accomplished systems thinker would model the above

example using a series of feedback and reinforcing loops.

The specifics of the modeling technique are less important

at this point than the observation that systems thinking

tends to see things in terms of loops and patterns aided by

constant assessment of what is happening, rather than

flow charts and reliance on what should be happening. At

the highest level of thinking, the farmer would try to

identify root causes or possible points of intervention

suggested by these observations.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT

In Why Smart Executives Fail, Sydney Finkelstein examined

over 50 of the world’s most notorious business failures.

His analysis indicated that in almost every case, the failures

were not attributable to stupidity or lack of attention. To

the contrary, the leaders of well-known corporations such

as Samsung Motors, WorldCom, and Enron were excep-

tionally bright, energetic, and deeply involved in the

operation of their businesses. Up to the point of massive

corporate failure, they were all extremely successful, and

in almost every case, there were some in the organization

who vainly raised objections to the course that eventually

proved disastrous. In most instances, the executives failed

to see or accept what was actually happening. In some

cases, they were blinded by their own prior successes; in

other cases they inexplicably held tenaciously to a vision,

despite plenty of evidence that the chosen strategic direc-

tion was ill-advised. The systems thinker’s pragmatic

focus on determining what is actually happening serves

as a preventative to self-delusional wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking is no substitute for a realistic appraisal.

In the language of systems thinking, the executives were

trapped by their own faulty mental models.

The continuous assessment process that is characteristic

of systems thinking is essential in a volatile, rapidly

changing environment. It takes time and good habits of

critical reflection to engage in this kind of learning, both

for individuals and organizations.

A systemic approach to failure is more likely to result in

effective long-term solutions. Imagine for a moment if the

incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib were chalked up merely

to ineffective leadership or just miscreant behavior by

some thugs on the night shift. If other factors contributed

to the problem, after relieving the chain of command for

cause and prosecuting the abusers, the members of the

replacement chain of command might have found them-

selves in an equally untenable situation. While inspired

leadership can make a difference under the worst of con-

ditions, we might ask just how heroic we expect our lead-

ers to be on a regular basis. When a system is so obviously

stacked against our leaders, there is a moral imperative to

change the system.

Systems thinking is no panacea. There is no checklist to

work through that will guarantee someone is thinking in

a way that will capture the big picture or identify root

causes of difficult problems. There are some concepts and

approaches embedded in the systems thinking literature,

however, that can be very helpful when considering why

a situation seems to be immune to intervention, or why a

problem thought to be solved has returned with a

vengeance. Here are some of the concepts:

• Focus on the purpose for which a system was created

over the processes and procedures of the system.

• Simple cause-and-effect relationships are insufficient to

understand or explain a complex social system. Patterns

over time and feedback loops are a better way to think

about the dynamics of complex systems.

• Think in terms of synthesis over analysis; the whole

over the parts.

• Busyness and excessive focus on short term gains inter-

feres with our ability to use a systems approach.

• Leaders must see what is actually happening over what

they want to see happen.

• Thinking about systems and their dynamics suggests al-

ternative approaches and attunes leaders to important as-

pects of organizational behavior, especially in military

organizations that value tradition and standardization.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Reed is the director of command and leadership studies at

the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. He has

25 years of experience as a military police officer. He holds

a doctorate in public policy analysis and administration.

From: COL George E. Reed, “Leadership and Systems Thinking,”

Defense AT&L 35, no. 3 (2006): 10-13. Used with permission.

Most companies face the future unprepared. Though

long-range planning has saturated our corporate environ-

ment, it does not guarantee success. In our constantly

changing environment, the key to corporate survival lies

not so much in the quality of our long-range planning as

in the clarity of our strategic thinking. To survive and

flourish, organizations must face the future knowing

what they want to be – strategic planning – as well as how

to get there – long-range planning and operational deci-

sion making.

It is our thesis that strategy should provide a picture

of the organization as it wants to look in the future. Strat-

egy is vision. It is totally directed at what the organization

should be rather than how the organization will get there.

Unfortunately, the word “strategy” has been used rather

casually in both management literature and the market-

place. In fact, it has assumed a variety of meanings, some

of which confuse the “what” and “how” dimensions.

For example, strategy is sometimes called “strategic

planning” and then is used indiscriminately with “long-

range planning.” Executives talk frequently about a “mar-

ket strategy” or a “pricing strategy” when they really

mean a plan to penetrate a market or a plan to keep prices

competitive. Such “strategies” are really major operational

decision points that presume an overall corporate or divi-

sional strategy.

While not interested in legislating the meaning of the

word strategy, we are interested in avoiding the confusion

we have observed. For us, strategy has a very precise

meaning, which we define as a framework that guides

those choices that determine the nature and direction of an

organization. These “choices” confront an organization

every day. They include choices about an organization’s

products or services, the geographical markets and cus-

tomer groups the organization serves, the organization’s

capabilities of supporting those products and markets, its

growth and return, and its allocation of resources.

How these choices are made determines the nature of

an organization. If they are made within the context of a

strategic framework, the organization’s direction is

clearly under the control of the managers who develop

that framework. If these choices are made in the absence

of a strategic framework, you abdicate that control and

run the risk of having a direction that is uncoordinated

and in the hands of whoever is making these choices.

THE STRATEGY/OPERATIONS

RELATIONSHIP

Since strategy sets direction, it must be formulated

prior to long-range planning and the day-to-day decision

making that flows from such planning. Failure to separate

strategy formulation from planning and operations com-

promises corporate strategic thinking.

The chart below illustrates the relationship between

strategy and operations. Clear strategy and effective oper-

ations are a winning combination, but with unclear strategy

and ineffective operations, you are bound to be a loser. If

strategy is clear but operations are ineffective, the result

is uncertain – you may still win, but winning depends

almost totally on your ability to predict and then be carried

by the kindness of external forces such as the economy

and competition, forces not generally known for their

beneficence. Similarly, if operations are effective but the

strategy is unclear, you may survive by being swept forward

efficiently – but for how long?

OBJECTIVES:

11. Define the term “strategy” as used in this article.

12. Describe the relationship between strategy and operations.

13. Identify reasons why long-range planning impedes strategic thinking.

14. List the advantages of separating strategic thinking from long-range planning.

15. Define the term “driving force” as it relates to long-term strategy.

12.4 Strategic Thinking: Key to Corporate Survival

By Benjamin B. Tregoe and John W. Zimmerman

What

How

Clear Strategy Unclear Strategy

Effective

Operations

Clear strategy and

effective operations

have equalled success

in the past and will in

the future

Unclear strategy but

effective operations

have equalled success

in the past, but success

doubtful in the future

Ineffective

Operations

Clear strategy but

ineffective operations

have sometimes

worked in the past in

the short run, but

increasing competition

makes success doubtful

in the future

Unclear strategy and

ineffective operations

have equalled failure in

the past and will in the

future

The late W. T. Grant Company is a recent, vivid exam-

ple of the bottom right quadrant of the chart. It was a

loser because it did not have a clear idea of what it should

be in the future and had inadequate operations plans. The

following commentaries from Business Week attest to

Grant’s lack of direction:

Worse yet, early on Grant seemingly could not make

up its mind what kind of store it was. “There was a lot

of dissension within the company whether we should

go the K Mart route or go after the Ward and Penney

position,” says a former executive. “Ed Staly and Lou

Lustenberger were at loggerheads over the issue, with

the upshot being we took a position between the two

and that consequently stood for nothing.”

In addition to its lack of direction, Grant’s day-to-day

results suffered from ineffective operations:

From 1963 to 1973 Grant opened 612 stores and ex-

panded 91 others, with the bulk of the increase start-

ing in 1968 under the guidance of president Richard

W. Mayer and chairman Edward Staley. “The expan-

sion program placed a great strain on the physical and

human capability of the company to cope with the

program,” says Chairman James G. Kendrick. “These

were all large stores – 6 million to 7 million square

feet per year – and the expansion of our management

organization just did not match the expansion of our

stores.” Adds a former operations executive: “Our

training program couldn’t keep up with the explosion

of stores, and it didn’t take long for the mediocrity to

begin to show.”

In the upper left quadrant, Sears, Roebuck & Com-

pany is typical of a “winner.” With a clear image of what it

should be in the future, it has also been eminently successful

in its operations. While Sears has had its share of trouble

recently, over the years it has consistently demonstrated

the ability to anticipate needed changes in direction and

to organize quickly and efficiently in order to make those

changes.

The majority of organizations probably fit in the other

two quadrants of the chart. For example, many conglom-

erates could be placed in the lower left quadrant because

they are characterized by well defined growth and finan-

cial objectives and ineffective operations. Such organiza-

tions tend to see themselves as diverse giants that provide

a wide range of products and services. However, the care-

fully thought-out grand scheme has often been marred by

poor operational planning, with resultant over-expansion

and inability to manage.

The Swiss watch industry is typical of the upper right

quadrant of companies. Superbly efficient at producing

and marketing, the industry was overtaken by changes in

technology. The Swiss watchmakers’ strategy was inade-

quate to help them anticipate external threats to their

survival.

In the United States, strong operations historically

have been more important than clear strategic thinking.

In the past, many U.S. organizations survived even when

they lacked a clear sense of strategic direction. After all,

with unlimited resources, skilled labor, and a large, ho-

mogeneous market, who needed to think much about

what kind of a business they wanted to be in the future?

Now, however, with diminishing resources, world

competition, and rising costs, even the most efficient op-

erations may no longer survive the handicap of operating

without a clear, strategic direction. Today’s company

must formulate a clear strategy from which effective

operations flow.

LONG-RANGE PLANNING: ROADBLOCK TO

STRATEGIC THINKING

Since strategy provides the framework or picture of

what the organization wants to be at some future point in

time, it must precede and provide the basis for opera-

tional planning. Most long-range planning and all short-

range planning are operational – they define the “how.”

Paradoxically, the real danger to an organization’s

strategic thinking often comes from its own long-range

planning. From our research on strategy, conducted in

over 200 major American , Canadian, and European

firms, and our strategic-planning consulting with the

chief executives of some 75 of these firms, we have seen

that primary emphasis on long-range planning impedes

strategic thinking. It is ironic that the process on which

executives rely most heavily to prepare for the future is

doing the most damage, but here is how it happens:

1. Long-range planning invariably predicts the organiza-

tion’s future by extrapolation from the present. Projecting

from current activities straitjackets the future. Starting

with a base of current products and markets makes it dif-

ficult to incorporate the new and to eliminate the old in

the light of a changing external environment.

2. Theoreticians who urge the establishment of long-range

objectives as a starting point for long-range planning fail to

recognize this fact: Most managers do not set objectives

that define their future because they lack a process to assist

them. Without practical tools, managers are forced to

build their futures on the shaky foundations of the pro-

jections instead of on a clear definition of what they want

their organizations to be. Where long-range objectives do

exist, they are usually set in financial terms. Plans are

then developed down the line and are force-fit into the

financial constraints imposed by top management. Top

executives review these plans and then congratulate

themselves on the realism of their financial objectives,

while middle management congratulates itself on its skill

in planning to meet those objectives. Planning against

objectives that are unconnected to a larger strategy may

lead to self-satisfaction; in time, however, it may very well

lead to a dead-end future.

3. Since long-range planning consists of a series of projections

about the future, the future picture of the organization can

only be a composite of these projections. Under this approach,

the plans companies make determine their direction in-

stead of providing a clear sense of direction determining

their plans. Long-range plans are built up from the lowest

levels, where information exists to make projections.

These projections are additive for the various parts of the

organization and, in total, tend to become the recom-

mended plan. But by the time these detailed plans reach

the top, there is virtually no opportunity for interjecting

fresh insight about the future. In fact, top management’s

ability to modify these plans, except in minor ways, is

practically nil. Flexibility vanishes. The comment of one

chief executive immersed in the planning cycle is typical:

“By the time we get through with our long-range plan-

ning cycle, we are all so engrossed in the precision of our

projections that we have lost our ability to question

whether they are taking us where we want to go.”

4. Long-range plans invariably tend to be overly optimistic.

This results primarily from the desire of those making the

projections at various levels of the organization to do bet-

ter in their respective areas in the years ahead. By the

time this optimism reaches top management, every unit

predicts it will do 15 percent better in the years ahead.

Such projections tend to become the prevailing corporate

wisdom, further restricting the ability of top management

to make changes. Any changes that are not purely per-

functory appear arbitrary and capricious to the rest of the

organization. Since the allocation of resources is tied to

these basically optimistic plans, the persuasiveness of

strong personalities and the unrealistic goals they guaran-

tee to reach often determine future resource allocation.

5. Long-range planning usually begins with assumptions

about the environment – the economy, technological

change, sociopolitical events, and so on – and the organiza-

tion’s strengths and weaknesses. Though this information

could have great strategic significance, long-range plan-

ning tends to utilize such data only as a guide for deter-

mining how optimistic or pessimistic to make the

long-range product/market projections. This is so be-

cause long-range planning is not a process that enables

critical information to be used for strategic purposes.

6. Long-range plans tend to be inflexible (even though they

are usually presented in three-ring binders as evidence of

their “flexibility”). It takes a tremendous amount of work

to project five years ahead; such effort acts as a deterrent

to change and transforms most long-range plans into

Gothic structures of inflexibility. This inflexibility makes

it difficult to react to unanticipated changes int the envi-

ronment and to adjust plans accordingly. Modification of

long-range plans usually occurs only when events reach

crisis proportions.

7. Long-range planning is more short-range than anyone re-

ally cares to admit. To be sure, long-range planning theory

suggests that planning should project out five years and

then recede back to one year out. But how can this be

done in the absence of a framework for looking ahead five

years? Without such a structure, the sheer force of neces-

sity leads most managers to reverse the theory and begin

by projecting from year one, but beyond that point proj-

ects become iffy. Since so much work is involved, the first

year usually gets the most thorough analysis. After all, the

manager knows he can make changes in the following

years; it is only the coming year that cannot be changed –

and this year becomes the budget. The shorter the time

focus, the more easily a manager is locked in to the con-

straints of current operations, and the less likely he is to

be influenced by information of potential strategic signifi-

cance. Anyway, most rewards for performance are meas-

ured by only first year results.

CHECK YOUR STRATEGY

In summary, strategic thinking is in trouble. Opera-

tional long-range planning is no longer adequate to cope

with the complexities of today’s world.

How is your organization doing? Ask yourself these

questions:

• Are your product-market policies and decisions too

frequently a reaction to outside influences such as the

government, competition, unions, and other outside factors?

• Are acquisition and investment opportunities setting

the direction of your company?

• Is the way you are currently organized determining

what your company will be doing in the future?

• Do your annual budgets determine what your company

will be in the future?

• Do your long-range projections establish the kind of

company you will be in the future?

• Do you lack a systematic method to anticipate changes

in the environment that may impact your company?

• Do you actually generate assumptions about the envi-

ronment, but use them for projecting and assessing plans

instead of as an input to formulate strategy?

• Is the persuasive manager – the one who is getting

the resources – setting the direction of your company?

• Would different members of your management team

paint different pictures of what the company should be in

the near and distant future?

• Is your statement of future strategy more helpful for

public relations purposes than as a clear guide for future

products and markets?

The more of these questions you answered “yes,” the

more your company’s strategy is in trouble. If you an-

swered all “yes,” then you can probably hold last rites for

strategy in your organization. It is officially dead.

HOW STRATEGIC THINKING CAN SURVIVE

Strategic thinking has long been considered an intel-

lectual nicety; it has provided a patina of respectability to

corporate statements built solely on operations consider-

ations. Management attention, however, has been given

mainly to operational planning and decisions, for it is

here that the “big payoff” could be pursued. In addition,

without a process, managers have tended to shy away

from the high risks inherent in strategic thinking. They

preferred instead to dwell in the lower risk, more secure

area of long-range planning. But, in today’s world, even

the best operations planning and decisions are not enough.

We can no longer afford the “security” of avoiding high

risk strategic discussions. What, then, can be done?

Strategic thinking must be separated from long-range

planning and must precede it. Preaching separation of

strategy and long-range planning may appear platitudi-

nous, but most organizations tend to confuse the two.

One major corporation, for example, has this patchwork

quilt of overall objectives:

…to market and produce legitimate products and serv-

ices at quality levels in their respective markets…to

utilize resources fully in order to maximize return on

stockholders’ investment…to structure the Company

and assign responsibility in ways that promote effi-

ciency and incentive, and reward achievement…to

provide satisfying, healthful, long-term employment

at all levels…to maintain through fluctuating business

cycles the confidence of customers, employees, and

stockholders…to preserve the integrity of the com-

pany in its accounting and reporting procedures, and

thereby, the confidence of the investing public.

The first two objectives above say something, how-

ever vague, about what the company wants to be in terms

of products, markets, and return. But the remaining ob-

jectives are operations; they are how-to oriented guide-

lines for the operation of the business. By masking

strategic considerations with operational ones, the above

company is headed for an identity crisis as it is pushed

and pulled into the future with no clearly defined picture

of itself.

Besides making strategic considerations usable,

another advantage of separating strategic thinking from

operations thinking is that it simplifies the long-range

planning process. Strategic thinking and long-range plan-

ning in most instances should not cover the same time

perspective. A clear, specific statement of strategy cover-

ing the next five years generally diminishes the need to

project long-range plans over the same time frame. We

have found that organizations with clear strategies can

put their planning focus on shorter-range plans. Once a

strategy is formulated and key areas identified, detailed

long-range planning can be limited to these areas.

There is a tendency to feel that because long-range

planning covers a longer time span than short-range plan-

ning, it is strategic. Conversely, there is a tendency to feel

that the short range is not strategic, but operational. Both

the operational and the strategic, however, can have either

immediate or long-range time significance. Strategy is a

function of direction, not time. Operations are a function

of how this direction is achieved, not time.

Separating strategic from operational thinking also

diminishes any controversy over the merits of “top down”

versus “bottom up” planning. Both approaches are

needed; it is just a matter of where and when. Strategy

must be set at the top.

If top management has a unique responsibility, it is to

determine the future nature and direction of the organi-

zation. Given this strategic framework, the long and short-

range operational planning must be done at all levels in

the organization where the needed information exists.

If middle and lower levels of management have one

unique responsibility, it should be to plan their operations

to support the overall direction of the organization.

Once separated from the operational, strategic think-

ing can survive only if it is clear, specific, and simple. Only

then can it provide a framework in which long-range

planning and day-to-day decision making can proceed.

And only in this way can the executive intelligently assess

which products and markets should be emphasized,

which should be de-emphasized or abandoned, and what

the scope of new products and markets should be. But not

many companies have such a framework.

When companies do have a simple statement of cor-

porate strategy, their statements tend to be so general that

they are relatively useless as guidelines for specific future

product/market choices. Consider this summary state-

ment of corporate strategy:

Our business is the creation of machines or methods

to help find solutions to the increasingly complex

problems of businesses, government, science, space

exploration, education, medicine, and nearly every

area of human endeavor.

Could you establish new market and product priori-

ties based on this?

THE “DRIVING FORCE”: KEY TO STRATEGY

The key to developing a simple, clear, and useful

statement of strategy lies in the concept of the “driving

force.” Our research has identified nine strategic areas

that impact and influence the nature and direction of any

organization. These nine areas can be grouped into three

basic categories:

Category Strategic Areas

1. Products/markets: Products offered

Market needs

2. Capabilities: Technology

Production capability

Method of sale

Method of distribution

Natural resources

3. Results: Size/growth

Return/profit

In every one of the 75 major organizations with which

we have worked, we have found that one of the above

nine areas can be identified as the driving force – the

strategic area that is the primary determinant of the orga-

nization’s products and markets. The driving force also

determines the requirements of the organization’s other

strategic areas.

The following examples, taken from observations of

the product and market actions of companies in various

industries, further illustrate the concept of the driving

force.

1. Products offered. The organization with products of-

fered as its driving force will continue to produce prod-

ucts similar to those it has. New products will tend to be

very similar to current products, and the organization

will seek new markets where there is a need for its exist-

ing product line. Its capabilities will be directed toward

the support of its basic products. For example, research

and engineering would be devoted to product improve-

ments rather than to the development of different kinds

of products. The actions of the major automobile compa-

nies suggest that their driving force is “products offered.”

2. Market needs. The organization whose driving force

is market needs determine its products or services from

needs in the markets or market segments it serves. This

organization will constantly look for new and different

products to fill these market needs. It will also search for

new or emerging needs in these markets. While its capa-

bilities are directed to the support of its current markets

and products, it is perfectly willing to acquire very differ-

ent capabilities to introduce new kinds of products. The

actions of major consumer products companies, such as

Procter & Gamble, suggest that their driving force is

“market needs.”

3. Production capability. An organization is driven by

production capability when it offers products or services

that can be performed using its production know-how,

equipment, and processes. Looking for economies of

scale, it will focus on efficiencies in production, and any

new products will utilize the same production know-how,

equipment, and processes that produced the original

products. The actions of commodity-based companies,

such as many of those in the paper industry, suggest that

their driving force is (or was) “production capability.”

4. Return/profit. An organization driven by

return/profit will have very specific return/profit targets

that may be quite different from its current level of per-

formance. These targets are the basis for developing or

acquiring future products and/or markets. Such a driving

force will frequently lead this organization into very dif-

ferent and unrelated products or markets as a means of

achieving these return/profit objectives over time. The

actions of certain conglomerates, such as ITT World

Communications, suggest that their driving force is

“return/profit.”

On first thought many top managers see return/profit

as their driving force because profit is equated with sur-

vival and is the key measure of continued success. Thus

all companies have profit objectives by which to measure

operations. Profit, however, is a driving force only if it is

the primary determinant of the kinds of future products

and markets that characterize an organization. But this is

the case in very few companies.

There is no implication in the above examples that

the driving force remains fixed. Changes in external

events or the desires of top management can change an

organization’s driving force. A typical pattern of change is

from “products offered” to “market needs.” For example,

this pattern is true for many of the consumer goods and

services companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Gillette,

Playboy Enterprises, and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner &

Smith.

Another common pattern is to shift from “production

capability” to “products offered,” a change that has char-

acterized such companies as Kimberly-Clark and Inter-

national Multifoods (formerly International Milling

Company).

Four key reasons explain why the concept of driving

force is critical to setting strategy:

• The essential nature of an organization is reflected in

its products or services, the markets or customers it serv-

ices, its capabilities to support these products and mar-

kets, and its growth and return. The driving force is the

focal point for describing and integrating these key

strategic elements.

• Top management discussions to arrive at a driving

force bring to the surface issues that must be resolved if

an organization is going to arrive at an effective strategy

statement. An approach that allows top management to

stop short of this will facilitate agreement, but will also

result in a general statement of strategy that is no more

useful than those previously illustrated.

• Every organization has a momentum that carries it in

a certain direction. This momentum is generated by the

driving force. Unless the driving force is recognized, at-

tempts to change this direction will be futile. You must

know from what you are changing. The driving force pro-

vides the basic means for thinking about alternative fu-

tures and what each might mean in terms of products,

markets, capabilities, and return.

• The concept of driving force also has great value in

tracking the competition. Since there generally is no way

to know the stated strategy of your competitors, assuming

they have one, simply observe their actions to determine

their driving force and then project what their future

courses of action might be.

The rate of change and the complexity of today’s

world make strategic thinking essential to survival. How-

ever, the vehicle that organizations generally have used to

cope with the future – long-range planning - is in many

ways primarily responsible for stifling their ability to sur-

vive and triumph over the challenges ahead. Long-range

planning is killing strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking must be separated from and pre-

cede long and short-range operational planning. Strategic

thinking must result in a statement of strategy that is spe-

cific, simple, and clear enough to provide a framework for

the determination of future products, markets, capabili-

ties, and return. The driving force is the key to developing

such a statement.

The chief executives we know voice an increasing

sense of urgency about the importance of clear strategic

thinking and about their own role in the strategy formula-

tion process. For this urgency to be translated into effec-

tive action, top management must devote its most serious

and incisive thinking to strategic issues.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Benjamin B. Tregoe, Jr., is chairman of the board of direc-

tors and chief executive officer of Kepner-Tregoe, Inc., an

international management education and organization de-

velopment firm located in Princeton, New Jersey. Formerly

associated with the Rand Corporation, Dr. Tregoe and his

colleague, Charles H. Kepner, Ph.D., developed the Kepner-

Tregoe Rational Process – the application of cause-effect

logic to management activities.

John W. Zimmerman is senior vice-president of the Kepner-

Tregoe organization, where his responsibilities include new

conceptual research and various aspects of corporate busi-

ness development. Over the last five years he has special-

ized with Dr. Tregoe in the development of a program to

help chief executive officers clearly determine the future

nature and direction of their businesses.

From: Benjamin B. Tregoe and John W. Zimmerman, “Strategic

Thinking: Key to Corporate Survival,” Management Review 68, no. 2

(1979): 8-14. Used with permission.

Crowdsourcing systems enlist a multitude of humans to

help solve a wide variety of problems. Over the past

decade, numerous such systems have appeared on the

World-Wide Web. Prime examples include Wikipedia,

Linux, Yahoo! Answers, Mechanical Turk-based systems,

and much effort is being directed toward developing

many more.

As is typical for an emerging area, this effort has appeared

under many names, including peer production, user-pow-

ered systems, user-generated content, collaborative sys-

tems, community systems, social systems, social search,

social media, collective intelligence, wikinomics, crowd

wisdom, smart mobs, mass collaboration, and human

computation. The topic has been discussed extensively in

books, popular press, and academia.

1,5,15,23,29,35

But this

body of work has considered mostly efforts in the physi-

cal world.

23,29,30

Some do consider crowdsourcing systems

on the Web, but only certain system types

28,33

or chal-

lenges (for example, how to evaluate users

This survey attempts to provide a global picture of

crowdsourcing systems on the Web. We define and clas-

sify such systems, then describe a broad sample of sys-

tems. The sample ranges from relatively simple well-

established systems such as reviewing books to complex

emerging systems that build structured knowledge bases

to systems that “piggyback” onto other popular systems.

We discuss fundamental challenges such as how to re-

cruit and evaluate users, and to merge their contributions.

Given the space limitation, we do not attempt to be ex-

haustive. Rather, we sketch only the most important aspects

of the global picture, using real-world examples. The goal

is to further our collective understanding—both concep-

tual and practical—of this important emerging topic.

It is also important to note that many crowdsourcing plat-

forms have been built. Examples include Mechanical

Turk, Turkit, Mob4hire, uTest, Freelancer, eLance,

oDesk, Guru, Topcoder, Trada, 99design, Innocentive,

CloudCrowd, and [Crowd Flower]. Using these platforms,

we can quickly build crowdsourcing systems in many do-

mains. In this survey, we consider these systems (that is,

applications), not the crowdsourcing platforms themselves.

CROWDSOURCING SYSTEMS

Defining crowdsourcing (CS) systems turns out to be sur-

prisingly tricky. Since many view Wikipedia and Linux as

well-known CS examples, as a natural starting point, we

can say that a CS system enlists a crowd of users to explic-

itly collaborate to build a long-lasting artifact that is ben-

eficial to the whole community.

This definition, however, appears too restricted. It ex-

cludes, for example, the ESP game,

where users implic-

itly collaborate to label images as a side effect while

playing the game. ESP clearly benefits from a crowd of

users. More importantly, it faces the same human-centric

challenges of Wikipedia and Linux, such as how to recruit

and evaluate users, and to combine their contributions.

Given this, it seems unsatisfactory to consider only explicit

collaborations; we ought to allow implicit ones as well.

The definition also excludes, for example, an Amazon’s

Mechanical Turk-based system that enlists users to find a

missing boat in thousands of satellite images.

Here,

users do not build any artifact, arguably nothing is long

lasting, and no community exists either (just users com-

ing together for this particular task). And yet, like ESP,

this system clearly benefits from users, and faces similar

human-centric challenges. Given this, it ought to be con-

sidered a CS system, and the goal of building artifacts

ought to be relaxed into the more general goal of solving

problems. Indeed, it appears that in principle any non-

trivial problem can benefit from crowdsourcing: we can

describe the problem on the Web, solicit user inputs, and

examine the inputs to develop a solution. This system

may not be practical (and better systems may exist), but it

can arguably be considered a primitive CS system.

OBJECTIVES:

16. Identify four challenges that a crowdsourcing system must address.

17. List the dimensions used to classify crowdsourcing systems.

18. Define the roles that humans can play in a crowdsourcing system.

19. Name some common crowdsourcing systems found on the Web.

20. List strategies that crowdsourcing systems can use to recruit and retain users.

12.5 Crowdsourcing Systems on the Web

By Anhai Doan, Raghu Ramakrishnan, & Alon Y. Halevy

Consequently, we do not restrict the type of collaboration

nor the target problem. Rather, we view CS as a general-

purpose problem-solving method. We say that a system is

a CS system if it enlists a crowd of humans to help solve a

problem defined by the system owners, and if in doing so, it

addresses the following four fundamental challenges:

How to recruit and retain users? What contributions can

users make? How to combine user contributions to solve

the target problem? How to evaluate users and their con-

tributions?

Not all human-centric systems address these challenges.

Consider a system that manages car traffic in Madison,

WI. Its goal is to, say, coordinate the behaviors of a crowd

of human drivers (that already exist within the system) in

order to minimize traffic jams. Clearly, this system does

not want to recruit more human drivers (in fact, it wants

far fewer of them). We call such systems crowd manage-

ment (CM) systems. CM techniques (a.k.a., “crowd coor-

dination”

) can be relevant to CS contexts. But the two

system classes are clearly distinct.

In this survey we focus on CS systems that leverage the

Web to solve the four challenges mentioned here (or a

significant subset of them). The Web is unique in that it

can help recruit a large number of users, enable a high de-

gree of automation, and provide a large set of social soft-

ware (for example, email, wiki, discussion group,

blogging, and tagging) that CS systems can use to manage

their users. As such, compared to the physical world, the

Web can dramatically improve existing CS systems and

give birth to novel system types.

Classifying CS systems. CS systems can be classified

along many dimensions. Here, we discuss nine dimen-

sions we consider most important. The two that immedi-

ately come to mind are the nature of collaboration and

type of target problem. As discussed previously, collabora-

tion can be explicit or implicit, and the target problem

can be any problem defined by the system owners (for ex-

ample, building temporary or permanent artifacts, exe-

cuting tasks). The next four dimensions refer respectively

to how a CS system solves the four fundamental chal-

lenges described earlier: how to recruit and retain users;

what can users do; how to combine their inputs; and how to

evaluate them. Later, we will discuss these challenges and

the corresponding dimensions in detail. Here, we discuss

the remaining three dimensions: degree of manual effort,

role of human users, and standalone versus piggyback ar-

chitectures.

Degree of manual effort. When building a CS system, we

must decide how much manual effort is required to solve

each of the four CS challenges. This can range from rela-

tively little (for example, combining ratings) to substan-

tial (for example, combining code), and clearly also de-

pends on how much the system is automated. We must

decide how to divide the manual effort between the users

and the system owners. Some systems ask the users to do

relatively little and the owners a great deal. For example,

to detect malicious users, the users may simply click a

button to report suspicious behaviors, whereas the own-

ers must carefully examine all relevant evidence to deter-

mine if a user is indeed malicious. Some systems do the

reverse. For example, most of the manual burden of merg-

ing Wikipedia edits falls on the users (who are currently

editing), not the owners.

Role of human users. We consider four basic roles of hu-

mans in a CS system. Slaves: humans help solve the prob-

lem in a divide-and-conquer fashion, to minimize the

resources (for example, time, effort) of the owners. Exam-

ples are ESP and finding a missing boat in satellite images

using Mechanical Turk. Perspective providers: humans

contribute different perspectives, which when combined

often produce a better solution (than with a single

human). Examples are reviewing books and aggregating

user bets to make predictions.

Content providers: hu-

mans contribute self-generated content (for example,

videos on YouTube, images on Flickr). Component

providers: humans function as components in the target

artifact, such as a social network, or simply just a commu-

nity of users (so that the owner can, say, sell ads). Hu-

mans often play multiple roles within a single CS system

(for example, slaves, perspective providers, and content

providers in Wikipedia). It is important to know these

roles because that may determine how to recruit. For ex-

ample, to use humans as perspective providers, it is im-

portant to recruit a diverse crowd where each human can

make independent decisions, to avoid “group think.”

Standalone versus piggyback. When building a CS system,

we may decide to piggyback on a well-established system,

by exploiting traces that users leave in that system to

solve our target problem. For example, Google’s “Did you

mean” and Yahoo’s Search Assist utilize the search log

and user clicks of a search engine to correct spelling mis-

takes. Another system may exploit user purchases in an

online bookstore (Amazon) to recommend books. Unlike

standalone systems, such piggyback systems do not have

to solve the challenges of recruiting users and deciding

what they can do. But they still have to decide how to

evaluate users and their inputs (such as traces in this

case), and to combine such inputs to solve the target

problem.

SAMPLE CS SYSTEMS ON THE WEB

Building on this discussion of CS dimensions, we now

focus on CS systems on the Web, first describing a set of

basic system types, and then showing how deployed CS

systems often combine multiple such types.

The accompanying table shows a set of basic CS system

types. The set is not meant to be exhaustive; it shows only

those types that have received most attention. From left

to right, it is organized by collaboration, architecture, the

need to recruit users, and then by the actions users can

take. We now discuss the set, starting with explicit sys-

tems.

Explicit Systems: These standalone systems let users col-

laborate explicitly. In particular, users can evaluate, share,

network, build artifacts, and execute tasks. We discuss

these systems in turn.

Evaluating: These systems let users evaluate “items” (for

example, books, movies, Web pages, other users) using

textual comments, numeric scores, or tags.10

Sharing: These systems let users share “items” such as

products, services, textual knowledge, and structured

knowledge. Systems that share products and services in-

clude Napster, YouTube, CPAN, and the site programma-

bleweb. com (for sharing files, videos, software, and

mashups, respectively). Systems that share textual knowl-

edge include mailing lists, Twitter,

how-to repositories (such as

ehow.com, which lets users contribute

and search howto articles), Q&A Web

sites (such as Yahoo! Answers2), on-

line customer support systems (such

as QUIQ,

which powered Ask Jeeves’

AnswerPoint, a Yahoo! Answers-like

site). Systems that share structured

knowledge (for example, relational,

XML, RDF data) include Swivel, Many

Eyes, Google Fusion Tables, Google

Base, many escience Web sites (such as

bmrb.wisc. edu, galaxyzoo.org), and

many peer-to-peer systems developed

in the Semantic Web, database, AI, and

IR communities (such as Orches-

tra

8,27

). Swivel, for example, bills itself

as the “YouTube of structured data,”

which lets users share, query, and vi-

sualize census- and voting data, among

others. In general, sharing systems can

be central (such as YouTube, ehow,

Google Fusion Tables, Swivel) or dis-

tributed, in a peer-to-peer fashion (such as Napster, Or-

chestra).

Networking: These systems let users collaboratively con-

struct a large social network graph, by adding nodes and

edges over time (such as homepages, friendships). Then

they exploit the graph to provide services (for example,

friend updates, ads, and so on). To a lesser degree, blog-

ging systems are also networking systems in that bloggers

often link to other bloggers.

A key distinguishing aspect of systems that evaluate,

share, or network is that they do not merge user inputs, or

do so automatically in relatively simple fashions. For ex-

ample, evaluation systems typically do not merge textual

user reviews. They often merge user inputs such as movie

ratings, but do so automatically using some formulas.

Similarly, networking systems automatically merge user

inputs by adding them as nodes and edges to a social net-

work graph. As a result, users of such systems do not need

(and, in fact, often are not allowed) to edit other users’

input.

Building Artifacts: In contrast, systems that let users build

artifacts such as Wikipedia often merge user inputs

tightly, and require users to edit and merge one another’s

inputs. A well-known artifact is software (such as Apache,

Linux, Hadoop). Another popular artifact is textual

knowledge bases (KBs). To build such KBs (such as

Wikipedia), users contribute data such as sentences,

paragraphs, Web pages, then edit and merge one an-

other’s contributions. The knowledge capture (k-cap.org)

and AI communities have studied building such KBs for

over a decade. A well-known early attempt is openmind,

which enlists volunteers to build a KB of commonsense

facts (for example, “the sky is blue”). Recently, the suc-

cess of Wikipedia has inspired many “community

wikipedias,” such as Intellipedia (for the U.S. intelligence

community) and EcoliHub (at ecolicommunity.org, to

capture all information about the E. coli bacterium).

Yet another popular target artifact is structured KBs. For

example, the set of all Wikipedia infoboxes (that is, attrib-

ute-value pairs such as city-name = Madison, state = WI)

can be viewed as a structured KB collaboratively created

by Wikipedia users. Indeed, this KB has recently been ex-

tracted as DBpedia and used in several applications (see

dbpedia.org). Freebase.com builds an open structured

database, where users can create and populate schemas to

describe topics of interest, and build collections of inter-

linked topics using a flexible graph model of data. As yet

another example, Google Fusion Tables (tables.google-

labs.com) lets users upload tabular data and collaborate

on it by merging tables from different sources, comment-

ing on data items, and sharing visualizations on the Web.

Several recent academic projects have also studied build-

ing structured KBs in a CS fashion. The IWP project35

extracts structured data from the textual pages of

Wikipedia, then asks users to verify the extraction accu-

racy. The Cimple/DBLife project

4,5

lets users correct the

extracted structured data, expose it in wiki pages, then

add even more textual and structured data. Thus, it builds

structured “community wikipedias,” whose wiki pages

mix textual data with structured data (that comes from an

underlying structured KB). Other related works include

YAGONAGA,

BioPortal,

and many recent projects in

the Web, Semantic Web, and AI communities.

1,16,36

In general, building a structured KB often requires select-

ing a set of data sources, extracting structured data from

them, then integrating the data (for example, matching

and merging “David Smith” and “D.M. Smith”). Users can

help these steps in two ways. First, they can improve the

automatic algorithms of the steps (if any), by editing their

code, creating more training data,

answering their ques-

tions

12,13

or providing feedback on their output.

12,35

Sec-

ond, users can manually participate in the steps. For

example, they can manually add or remove data sources,

extract or integrate structured data, or add even more

structured data, data not available in the current sources

but judged relevant.

In addition, a CS system may per-

form inferences over its KB to infer more structured data.

To help this step, users can contribute inference rules and

domain knowledge.

During all such activities, users can

naturally cross-edit and merge one another’s contribu-

tions, just like in those systems that build textual KBs.

Another interesting target problem is building and im-

proving systems running on the Web. The project Wikia

Search (search.wikia.com) lets users build an open source

search engine, by contributing code, suggesting URLs to

crawl, and editing search result pages (for example, pro-

moting or demoting URLs). Wikia Search was recently

disbanded, but similar features (such as editing search

pages) appear in other search engines (such as Google,

mahalo.com). Freebase lets users create custom browsing

and search systems (deployed at Freebase), using the

community-curated data and a suite of development tools

(such as the Metaweb query language and a hosted devel-

opment environment). Eurekster.com lets users collabo-

ratively build vertical search engines called swickis, by

customizing a generic search engine (for example, speci-

fying all URLs the system should crawl). Finally, MOBS,

an academic project,

12,13

studies how to collaboratively

build data integration systems, those that provide a uni-

form query interface to a set of data sources. MOBS en-

lists users to create a crucial system component, namely

the semantic mappings (for example, “location” = “ad-

dress”) between the data sources.

In general, users can help build and improve a system

running on the Web in several ways. First, they can edit

the system’s code. Second, the system typically contains a

set of internal components (such as URLs to crawl, se-

mantic mappings), and users can help improve these

without even touching the system’s code (such as adding

new URLs, correcting mappings). Third, users can edit

system inputs and outputs. In the case of a search engine,

for instance, users can suggest that if someone queries for

“home equity loan for seniors,” the system should also

suggest querying for “reverse mortgage.” Users can also

edit search result pages (such as promoting and demoting

URLs, as mentioned earlier). Finally, users can monitor

the running system and provide feedback.

We note that besides software, KBs, and systems, many

other target artifacts have also been considered. Exam-

ples include community newspapers built by asking users

to contribute and evaluate articles (such as Digg) and

massive multi-player games that build virtual artifacts

(such as Second Life, a 3D virtual world partly built and

maintained by users).

Executing Tasks: The last type of explicit systems we con-

sider is the kind that executes tasks. Examples include

finding extraterrestrials, mining for gold, searching for

missing people,

23,29,30,31

and cooperative debugging

(cs.wisc.edu/cbi, early work of this project received the

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2005). The 2008

election is a well-known example, where the Obama team

ran a large online CS operation asking numerous volun-

teers to help mobilize voters. To apply CS to a task, we

must find task parts that can be “crowdsourced,” such

that each user can make a contribution and the contribu-

tions in turn can be combined to solve the parts. Finding

such parts and combining user contributions are often

task specific. Crowdsourcing the parts, however, can be

fairly general, and platforms have been developed to as-

sist that process. For example, Amazon’s Mechanical

Turk can help distribute pieces of a task to a crowd of

users (and several recent interesting toolkits have even

been developed for using Mechanical Turk

13,37

). It was

used recently to search for Jim Gray, a database re-

searcher lost at sea, by asking volunteers to examine

pieces of satellite images for any sign of Jim Gray’s boat.

Implicit Systems: As discussed earlier, such systems let

users collaborate implicitly to solve a problem of the sys-

tem owners. They fall into two groups: standalone and

piggyback.

A standalone system provides a service such that when

using it users implicitly collaborate (as a side effect) to

solve a problem. Many such systems exist, and the table

here lists a few representative examples. The ESP game

lets users play a game of guessing common words that de-

scribe images (shown independently to each user), then

uses those words to label images. Google Image Labeler

builds on this game, and many other “games with a pur-

pose” exist.

Prediction markets

23,29

let users bet on

events (such as elections, sport events), then aggregate

the bets to make predictions. The intuition is that the

“collective wisdom” is often accurate (under certain con-

ditions)

and that this helps incorporate inside informa-

tion available from users. The Internet Movie Database

(IMDB) lets users import movies into private accounts

(hosted by IMDB). It designed the accounts such that

users are strongly motivated to rate the imported movies,

as doing so bring many private benefits (such as they can

query to find all imported action movies rated at least

7/10, or the system can recommend action movies highly

rated by people with similar taste). IMDB then aggregates

all private ratings to obtain a public rating for each movie,

for the benefit of the public. reCAPTCHA asks users to

solve captchas to prove they are humans (to gain access to

a site), then leverages the results for digitizing written

text.

Finally, it can be argued that the target problem of

many systems (that provide user services) is simply to

grow a large community of users, for various reasons (such

as personal satisfaction, charging subscription fees, sell-

ing ads, selling the systems to other companies). Buy/

sell/auction websites (such as eBay) and massive multi-

player games (such as World of Warcraft) for instance fit

this description. Here, by simply joining the system, users

can be viewed as implicitly collaborating to solve the tar-

get problem (of growing user communities).

The second kind of implicit system we consider is a pig-

gyback system that exploits the user traces of yet another

system (thus, making the users of this latter system im-

plicitly collaborate) to solve a problem. For example, over

time many piggyback CS systems have been built on top

of major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Mi-

crosoft. These systems exploit the traces of search engine

users (such as search logs, user clicks) for a wide range of

tasks (such as spelling correction, finding synonyms, flu

epidemic prediction, and keyword generation for ads

Other examples include exploiting user purchases to rec-

ommend products,

and exploiting click logs to improve

the presentation of a Web site.

CS SYSTEMS ON THE WEB

We now build on basic system types to discuss deployed

CS systems on the Web. Founded on static HTML pages,

the Web soon offered many interactive services. Some

services serve machines (such as DNS servers, Google

Map API server), but most serve humans. Many such

services do not need to recruit users (in the sense that the

more the better). Examples include pay-parking-ticket

services (for city residents) and room-reservation serv-

ices. (As noted, we call these crowd management sys-

tems). Many services, however, face CS challenges,

including the need to grow large user bases. For example,

online stores such as Amazon want a growing user base

for their services, to maximize profits, and startups such

as epinions.com grow their user bases for advertising.

They started out as primitive CS systems, but quickly im-

proved over time with additional CS features (such as re-

viewing, rating, networking). Then around 2003, aided by

the proliferation of social software (for example, discus-

sion groups, wiki, blog), many full-fledged CS systems

(such as Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace)

appeared, marking the arrival of Web 2.0. This Web is

growing rapidly, with many new CS systems being devel-

oped and non-CS systems adding CS features.

These CS systems often combine multiple basic CS fea-

tures. For example, Wikipedia primarily builds a textual

KB. But it also builds a structured KB (via infoboxes) and

hosts many knowledge sharing forums (for example, dis-

cussion groups). YouTube lets users both share and evalu-

ate videos. Community portals often combine all CS

features discussed so far. Finally, we note that the Seman-

tic Web, an ambitious attempt to add structure to the

Web, can be viewed as a CS attempt to share structured

data, and to integrate such data to build a Web-scale

structured KB. The World-Wide Web itself is perhaps the

largest CS system of all, encompassing everything we

have discussed.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Here, we discuss the key challenges of CS systems:

How to recruit and retain users? Recruiting users is one

of the most important CS challenges, for which five major

solutions exist. First, we can require users to make contri-

butions if we have the authority to do so (for example, a

manager may require 100 employees to help build a com-

pany-wide system). Second, we can pay users. Mechanical

Turk for example provides a way to pay users on the Web

to help with a task. Third, we can ask for volunteers. This

solution is free and easy to execute, and hence is most

popular. Most current CS systems on the Web (such as

Wikipedia, YouTube) use this solution. The downside of

volunteering is that it is hard to predict how many users

we can recruit for a particular application.

The fourth solution is to make users pay for service. The

basic idea is to require the users of a system A to “pay” for

using A, by contributing to a CS system B. Consider for

example a blog website (that is, system A), where a user U

can leave a comment only after solving a puzzle (called a

captcha) to prove that U is a human. As a part of the puz-

zle, we can ask U to retype a word that an OCR program

has failed to recognize (the “payment”), thereby con-

tributing to a CS effort on digitizing written text (that is,

system B). This is the key idea behind the reCAPTCHA

project.

The MOBS project

12,13

employs the same solu-

tion. In particular, it ran experiments where a user U can

access a Web site (such as a class homepage) only after

answering a relatively simple question (such as, is string

“1960” in “born in 1960” a birth date?). MOBS leverages

the answers to help build a data integration system. This

solution works best when the “payment” is unintrusive or

cognitively simple, to avoid deterring users from using

system A.

The fifth solution is to piggyback on the user traces of a

well-established system (such as building a spelling cor-

rection system by exploiting user traces of a search en-

gine, as discussed previously). This gives us a steady

stream of users. But we must still solve the difficult chal-

lenge of determining how the traces can be exploited for

our purpose.

Once we have selected a recruitment strategy, we should

consider how to further encourage and retain users.

Many encouragement and retention (E&R) schemes exist.

We briefly discuss the most popular ones. First, we can

provide instant gratification, by immediately showing a

user how his or her contribution makes a difference.

Second, we can provide an enjoyable experience or a nec-

essary service, such as game playing (while making a con-

tribution).

Third, we can provide ways to establish,

measure, and show fame/trust/ reputation.

7,13,24,25

Fourth,

we can set up competitions, such as showing top rated

users. Finally, we can provide ownership situations, where

a user may feel he or she “owns” a part of the system, and

thus is compelled to “cultivate” that part. For example,

zillow.com displays houses and estimates their market

prices. It provides a way for a house owner to claim his or

her house and provide the correct data (such as number

of bedrooms), which in turn helps improve the price esti-

mation.

These E&R schemes apply naturally to volunteering, but

can also work well for other recruitment solutions. For

example, after requiring a set of users to contribute, we

can still provide instant gratification, enjoyable experi-

ence, fame management, and so on, to maximize user par-

ticipation. Finally, we note that deployed CS systems

often employ a mixture of recruitment methods (such as

bootstrapping with “requirement” or “paying,” then

switching to “volunteering” once the system is suffi-

ciently “mature”).

What contributions can users make? In many CS sys-

tems the kinds of contributions users can make are some-

what limited. For example, to evaluate, users review, rate,

or tag; to share, users add items to a central Web site; to

network, users link to other users; to find a missing boat

in satellite images, users examine those images.

In more complex CS systems, however, users often can

make a far wider range of contributions, from simple low-

hanging fruit to cognitively complex ones. For example,

when building a structured KB, users can add a URL, flag

incorrect data, and supply attribute-value pairs (as low-

hanging fruit).

3,5

But they can also supply inference rules,

resolve controversial issues, and merge conflicting inputs

(as cognitively complex contributions).

The challenge is

to define this range of possible contributions (and design

the system such that it can gather a critical crowd of such

contributions).

Toward this goal, we should consider four important fac-

tors. First, how cognitively demanding are the contribu-

tions? A CS system often has a way to classify users into

groups, such as guests, regulars, editors, admins, and “dic-

tators.” We should take care to design cognitively appro-

priate contribution types for different user groups.

Low-ranking users (such as guests, regulars) often want

to make only “easy” contributions (such as answering a

simple question, editing one to two sentences, flagging an

incorrect data piece). If the cognitive load is high, they

may be reluctant to participate. High-ranking users (such

as editors, admins) are more willing to make “hard” con-

tributions (such as resolving controversial issues).

Second, what should be the impact of a contribution? We

can measure the potential impact by considering how the

contribution potentially affects the CS system. For exam-

ple, editing a sentence in a Wikipedia page largely affects

only that page, whereas revising an edit policy may poten-

tially affect million[s] of pages. As another example, when

building a structured KB, flagging an incorrect data piece

typically has less potential impact than supplying an in-

ference rule, which may be used in many parts of the CS

system. Quantifying the potential impact of a contribu-

tion type in a complex CS system may be difficult.

12,13

But

it is important to do so, because we typically have far

fewer high-ranking users such as editors and admins

(than regulars, say). To maximize the total contribution of

these few users, we should ask them to make potentially

high-impact contributions whenever possible.

Third, what about machine contributions? If a CS system

employs an algorithm for a task, then we want human

users to make contributions that are easy for humans, but

difficult for machines. For example, examining textual

and image descriptions to decide if two products match is

relatively easy for humans but very difficult for machines.

In short, the CS work should be distributed between

human users and machines according to what each of

them is best at, in a complementary and synergistic fash-

ion.

Finally, the user interface should make it easy for users to

contribute. This is highly non-trivial. For example, how

can users easily enter domain knowledge such as “no cur-

rent living person was born before 1850” (which can be

used in a KB to detect, say, incorrect birth dates)? A natu-

ral language format (such as in openmind. org) is easy for

users, but difficult for machines to understand and use,

and a formal language format has the reverse problem. As

another example, when building a structured KB, con-

tributing attribute-value pairs is relatively easy (as

Wikipedia infoboxes and Freebase demonstrate). But

contributing more complex structured data pieces can be

quite difficult for naive users, as this often requires them

to learn the KB schema, among others.

How to combine user contributions? Many CS systems

do not combine contributions, or do so in a loose fashion.

For example, current evaluation systems do not combine

reviews, and combine numeric ratings using relatively

simple formulas. Networking systems simply link contri-

butions (homepages and friendships) to form a social net-

work graph. More complex CS systems, however, such as

those that build software, KBs, systems, and games, com-

bine contributions more tightly. Exactly how this happens

is application dependent. Wikipedia, for example, lets

users manually merge edits, while ESP does so automati-

cally, by waiting until two users agree on a common word.

No matter how contributions are combined, a key prob-

lem is to decide what to do if users differ, such as when

three users assert “A” and two users “not A.” Both auto-

matic and manual solutions have been developed for this

problem. Current automatic solutions typically combine

contributions weighted by some user scores. The work

12,13

for example lets users vote on the correctness of system

components (the semantic mappings of a data integration

systems in this case

), then combines the votes weighted

by the trustworthiness of each user. The work

lets users

contribute structured KB fragments, then combines them

into a coherent probabilistic KB by computing the proba-

bilities that each user is correct, then weighting con-

tributed fragments by these probabilities.

Manual dispute management solutions typically let users

fight and settle among themselves. Unresolved issues

then percolate up the user hierarchy. Systems such as

Wikipedia and Linux employ such methods. Automatic

solutions are more efficient. But they work only for rela-

tively simple forms of contributions (such as voting), or

forms that are complex but amenable to algorithmic ma-

nipulation (such as structured KB fragments). Manual so-

lutions are still the currently preferred way to combine

“messy” conflicting contributions.

To further complicate the matter, sometimes not just

human users, but machines also make contributions.

Combining such contributions is difficult. To see why,

suppose we employ a machine M to help create

Wikipedia infoboxes.

Suppose on Day 1 M asserts popu-

lation = 5500 in a city infobox. On Day 2, a user U may

correct this into population = 7500, based on his or her

knowledge. On Day 3, however, M may have managed to

process more Web data, and obtained higher confidence

that population = 5500 is indeed correct. Should M over-

ride U’s assertion? And if so, how can M explain its rea-

soning to U? The main problem here is it is difficult for a

machine to enter into a manual dispute with a human

user. The currently preferred method is for M to alert U,

and then leave it up to U to decide what to do. But this

method clearly will not scale with the number of conflict-

ing contributions.

How to evaluate users and contributions? CS systems

often must manage malicious users. To do so, we can use

a combination of techniques that block, detect, and deter.

First, we can block many malicious users by limiting who

can make what kinds of contributions. Many e-science CS

systems, for example, allow anyone to submit data, but

only certain domain scientists to clean and merge this

data into the central database.

Second, we can detect malicious users and contributions

using a variety of techniques. Manual techniques include

monitoring the system by the owners, distributing the

monitoring workload among a set of trusted users, and

enlisting ordinary users (such as flagging bad contribu-

tions on message boards). Automatic methods typically

involve some tests. For example, a system can ask users

questions for which it already knows the answers, then

use the answers of the users to compute their reliability

scores.

13,34

Many other schemes to compute users’ relia-

bility/trust/fame/reputation have been proposed.

9,26

Finally, we can deter malicious users with threats of

“punishment.” A common punishment is banning. A

newer, more controversial form of punishment is “public

shaming,” where a user U judged malicious is publicly

branded as a malicious or “crazy” user for the rest of the

community (possibly without U’s knowledge). For exam-

ple, a chat room may allow users to rate other users. If the

(hidden) score of a user U goes below a threshold, other

users will only see a mechanically garbled version of U’s

comments, whereas U continues to see his or her com-

ments exactly as written.

No matter how well we manage malicious users, mali-

cious contributions often still seep into the system. If so,

the CS system must find a way to undo those. If the sys-

tem does not combine contributions (such as reviews) or

does so only in a loose fashion (such as ratings), undoing

is relatively easy. If the system combines contributions

tightly, but keeps them localized, then we can still undo

with relatively simple logging. For example, user edits in

Wikipedia can be combined extensively within a single

page, but kept localized to that page (not propagated to

other pages). Consequently, we can undo with page-level

logging, as Wikipedia does. However, if the contributions

are pushed deep into the system, then undoing can be

very difficult. For example, suppose an inference rule R is

contributed to a KB on Day 1. We then use R to infer

many facts, apply other rules to these facts and other facts

in the KB to infer more facts, let users edit the facts ex-

tensively, and so on. Then on Day 3, should R be found in-

correct, it would be very difficult to remove R without

reverting the KB to its state on Day 1, thereby losing all

good contributions made between Day 1 and Day 3.

At the other end of the user spectrum, many CS systems

also identify and leverage influential users, using both

manual and automatic techniques. For example, produc-

tive users in Wikipedia can be recommended by other

users, promoted, and given more responsibilities. As an-

other example, certain users of social networks highly in-

fluence buy/sell decisions of other users. Consequently,

some work has examined how to automatically identify

these users, and leverage them in viral marketing within a

user community.

CONCLUSION

We have discussed CS systems on the World-Wide Web.

Our discussion shows that crowdsourcing can be applied

to a wide variety of problems, and that it raises numerous

interesting technical and social challenges. Given the suc-

cess of current CS systems, we expect that this emerging

field will grow rapidly. In the near future, we foresee

three major directions: more generic platforms, more ap-

plications and structure, and more users and complex

contributions.

First, the various systems built in the past decade have

clearly demonstrated the value of crowdsourcing. The

race is now on to move beyond building individual sys-

tems, toward building general CS platforms that can be

used to develop such systems quickly.

Second, we expect that crowdsourcing will be applied to

ever more classes of applications. Many of these applica-

tions will be formal and structured in some sense, making

it easier to employ automatic techniques and to coordinate

them with human users.

37–40

In particular, a large chunk

of the Web is about data and services. Consequently, we

expect crowdsourcing to build structured databases and

structured services (Web services with formalized input

and output) will receive increasing attention.

Finally, we expect many techniques will be developed to

engage an ever broader range of users in crowdsourcings,

and to enable them, especially naïve users, to make in-

creasingly complex contributions, such as creating soft-

ware programs and building mashups (without writing

any code), and specifying complex structured data pieces

(without knowing any structured query languages).

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

AnHai Doan (anhai@cs.wisc.edu) is an associate professor

of computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madi-

son and Chief Scientist at Kosmix Corp.

Raghu Ramakrishnan (ramakris@yahoo-inc.com) is Chief

Scientist for Search & Cloud Computing, and a Fellow at

Yahoo! Research, Silicon Valley, CA, where he heads the

Community Systems group.

Alon Y. Halevy ([email protected]) heads the Structured

Data Group at Google Research, Mountain View, CA.

From: Anhai Doan, Raghu Ramarkrishnan, & Alon Y. Halevy,

“Crowdsourcing: What it Means for Innovation,” Communications of

the ACM 54, no. 4 (2011): 86-96. Used with permission.