Decentralized Governance … In the Military?
Humans are social animals whose brains evolved to support complex social interactions. These interactions were more easily managed when we lived in small hunter-gatherer groups. Anthropologists suggest that our brains are of a size to handle close social relationships in groups that are roughly the size of hunter-gatherer groups — and a military company (100–250 people, with a commonly quoted value of 150). This concept is known as Dunbar’s number.
Around 12,000 years ago, the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution transformed humankind’s hunter-gatherer existence into one based on agriculture. By 5000 years ago, massive civilizations were developing around the world, resulting in increasingly complex organizations and today’s nation states. The success of nation states as organizational structures has led many to believe that top-down command and control is needed to deal with the increasingly complex world we live in.
Another view, however, is that the world we live in actually requires a great deal of widely dispersed low-level transactional trust. Our employer transfers money to our bank that we withdraw at will. Excellent food choices magically appear at our grocery stores, giving us a wide array of variety, price, and quality. The energy we need for our homes and our transportation appears at the flip of a switch or activation of a simple pump. We rarely think about the numerous cascade of transactions — without centralized control — that are required for these things to effortlessly appear at our fingertips.
One of the most complex and well-functioning organizations that has been studied by organizational theorists is that employed on US naval aircraft carriers. The characteristics of aircraft carrier organizations are well documented in an interesting study published in 1987: The Self-Designing High-Reliability Organization: Aircraft Carrier Flight Operations at Sea.
Organizing a modern aircraft carrier would seem to have much going against it. Thousands of personnel routinely execute complex mission-critical tasks, many of which could result in death or injury if done incorrectly. Add to that the high level of turnover and the diversity of tasks required on a carrier, and one might conclude it was an impossible organization to manage — at least from the top down. But it’s not … because it’s done from the bottom up. This organization is remarkably successful for a few key reasons.
- Dispersed authority and responsibility. Though there is a formal top-down chain of command, individual officers and sailors have a high degree of authority over their individual areas of responsibility. From the above study:
Even the lowest rating on the deck has not only the authority but the obligation to suspend flight operations immediately, under the proper circumstances, without first clearing it with superiors. Although his judgment may later be reviewed or even criticized, he will not be penalized for being wrong and will often be publicly congratulated if he is right.
- High turnover. Paradoxically, what would appear to be a negative turns out to be a positive. Moving personnel from position to position allows a great deal of flexibility, especially under adverse conditions. Naval personnel are purposefully assigned to multiple job classifications, usually on multiple ship assignments. This creates the ability of the organization to respond to crises or suddenly unavailable specialties with a minimum of disruption and a maximum of efficiency.
- Redundancy. Redundancy allows for critical units and components to continue to function in ways that create a high-reliability organization. Although physical redundancy is important, so is the ability of an organization to adapt under stress. Most of the personnel on carriers are familiar with several tasks and can execute them in an emergency.
This is a fantastic model for how complex societies can, and in reality, do, operate. Our most open and competitive commercial markets certainly embrace these features.
One of the beauties of our federalist system’s constitutional bias toward the lowest levels of government and individual authority is that this governance model is already built in. Unfortunately, the increasing centralization of power in nation states has meant that we harbor a misconception that top-down command-and-control structures are the best way to solve our problems.
What we fail to realize is that these centralized modes of governance actually erode society’s ability to deal with complex issues. The temptation of top-down structures is their imagined efficiency. Redundancy seemingly means wasted resources. Turnover seemingly means poorly trained workers. And dispersed authority seemingly means lack of control.
In nature, plants and animals that are overly specialized to a particular environment are more likely to become extinct when that environment changes. Top-down approaches to organizations almost invariably lead to rigid and sclerotic ways of governing. Governments (and other large organizations) end up being poor at adapting to new situations.
Just as in nature, when there are multiple organizations and multiple individuals engaged, the sclerotic failures of a few don’t result in extinction. When government retains its monopoly on action, rigid and sclerotic becomes the only game in town. Those that desire a strong central state often fail to take into consideration such failures from the past.
Even those that claim to favor free and diverse markets often prefer strictures that are in fact less free and less diverse. Some of our largest and most powerful companies often prefer a strong central government to have more power over their actions, rather than either local governments or individuals. You have heard the arguments:
“We need to have uniform and predictable regulations.”
“A broad economic benefit is more important than local concerns.”
“Things just work better this way.”
Perhaps we should take a cue from the lessons learned by US Navy. Local control seems to work pretty well.
