Don't Squeeze the Brain
Innovation isn't random ... it happens when we set the conditions for it
To say the US Air Force Weapons School (aka Weapons Instructor Course, or "WIC") is a tough course substantially understates it. Every six months, the WIC inducts the service's best instructors and converts them into warfighting leaders and innovators capable of solving any combat problem.
Fueled by a gallon-a-day caffeine habit, a few hours of quasi sleep each night, and more pizza than anyone should consume in a lifetime, students join a voluntary prison colony, sharing a gilded cell littered with whiteboard markers, classified laptops, and assorted laminated navigation charts.
There they pridefully grind themselves into a fine powder for the purpose of iteratively finding, exceeding, expanding, and then relocating their limits as warfighting leaders. Graduates emerge totally exhausted, not uncommonly in need of physical recovery, having tackled an extended simulation of the intellectual demands of air war, and the crucible of forming its vanguard.
A prime impact of the WIC is its quickening of brain cycle time. By learning to think through the combat execution cycle faster, weapons officers buy themselves more time. This allows them to spot threats and opportunities that would otherwise be missed, and to then rapidly improvise solves.
Around 17 years ago, my five WIC classmates and I were making our way through the heart of the course's cliff-faced learning curve. On a relentless loop, we were handed a tactical scenario to analyze, then rapidly put together a plan, briefed it to all players, created the supporting products for execution, then entered the pre-mission rest cycle.
We'd then execute, debrief, bake in the lessons, and go again. Time was artificially compressed to a ridiculous degree, providing the pressure to make us create at a faster pace.
One particular day, it was my turn to lead the team, a rotating responsibility. And on this day, we were gifted with a flash of tactical brilliance from my classmate and friend Chris Henslee.
The normal tactic for a C-17 formation entering an objective area at that time was to delay descending until the latest point possible, overflying any threats enroute, and then descend rapidly to the low altitude structure to execute an aerial delivery.
Getting the descent plan a little bit wrong is a common formation mistake. Heading down too early means operating within range of more threats for longer. Starting too late can result in not being in position and stable enough to open the doors and execute the airdrop.
Chris theorized and argued effectively that a more gradual, controlled descent initiated at an earlier point could create a number of tactical advantages, including the ability to reduce thrust in the colder air of higher altitude.
With cool engines and the reduced noise of a calm descent, formations would likely better evade shoulder-fired missile threats reliant at the time on independently detecting and tracking aircraft with infrared sensors. The comparative ease of the maneuver would place less demand on the crews, supporting more lucid situational awareness and cleaner execution.
While some data and simulation would be needed to support it, Chris had come up with a potentially game-changing idea. He was inverting long-held notions and re-thinking assumptions about the threat environment. In a future edition, I'll unpack the entertaining chronicle of how I didn't immediately grasp its brilliance. I refused to incorporate it into our mission that day, and totally mishandled the situation in ways that led us both to hilarious pratfalls.
But the reason I share it here is because there is something even more remarkable than the idea itself, and that is the fact it took Chris coming to the WIC to devise it.
This was one of the strongest pilots in our community. With hands of gold and nerves of steel, he'd been equal to our toughest missions. From large-scale paratroop insertion to landing in the dirt to special operations in unnamed hellholes in the dead of night, he was superb at everything. By 2006, Chris had a few thousand hours of C-17 time, most of it either in combat or complex training exercises.
There is no intuitive reason why he wouldn't have come up with his maneuver at some point in the prior six years. The fact that he was able to manifest this innovation under the frenetic, chaotic, over-pressurized circumstances of planning and executing at breakneck pace with deliberately imposed mental fatigue is, on the surface, incredible.
But examined more closely, it really isn't.
Innovation ... that stubbornly elusive and precious mental treasure which separates good organizations from great ones ... doesn't just happen. It occurs when capable individuals and teams are placed in circumstances that support it. Without the right conditions for innovation to happen, no amount of "try harder" will make a difference. Leaders who shout "innovate" at their teams without enabling them to achieve it are simply digging deeper holes in the wrong soil.
Digging in the right soil is like lighting an afterburner on your organization. Which is why it's worth doing these three things:
Build Expertise. While ingenuity is occasionally glimpsed through the fresh eyes of inexperience, the biggest leaps come from those who have plumbed the depths of their own understanding enough to know what they don't know. This plumbing takes time and repetition. Contemporary wisdom champions breadth of experience, which we associate with adaptability. But as a leader, make sure your people are given the opportunity to become an expert in at least one discipline. This affords the chance to internalize the agony and sublimity of working harder intellectually for diminishing but important marginal gains. This process builds the persistence usually found behind cutting-edge innovation.
Model an Innovative Spirit. Leaders need to show curiosity if they expect it in their people. Fight the urge to spout conclusions, and instead ask questions. Fight the intellectual vanity of getting defensive about your ideas and instead proactively search for evidence which disproves them. When amazing suggestions show themselves, have the courage to push through bureaucratic resistance and get them trialled and adopted, or at least shot down on the merits after a fair hearing. Reward those who show the bravery to make their intellect vulnerable, even when their ideas are not ultimately adopted, or prove less fruitful than hoped. When you are seen actively championing creativity, the organizational climate will support an experimental attitude. Hold that climate long enough and it can become a culture. And culture is what you need if you expect to resist the merciless march of bureaucracy, which inevitably captured every organization which succeeds enough to grow.
Permit Idle Time. Contemporary, American-style work cultures are stuck on stupid. The torturously ignorant illogic of management science, which has captured and killed the imaginations of most executives, persists in the belief that an individual earns a salary by being serially exploited to the point of exhaustion. Labour is seen as an expense which needs to self-justify, and therefore needs to be efficient. This drive for efficiency leads to ridiculous workloads, with obligations always exceeding time available. This gets everyone constantly re-shuffling tasks to beat back the alligator closest to the boat in a perpetually defensive game of catch-up. Much to the glee of bean counters who see people as commodites ... assets to be rinsed and depreciated on a balance sheet. But in such an environment, the key ingredient for innovation is never present: an idle mind. Inspiration doesn't happen when minds are racing and heads throbbing, overfilled with competing reactions to an excess workload. It happens when idleness permits reflection, rumination, and proactive thought about a subject. Questioning a subject, without acute urgency but with time to explore the sliver-thin boundary between genius and frivoloity, is how creativity happens for most people. To borrow a phrase currently making the rounds, this is an example of "going slow to go faster."
Chris didn't exercise a particular brand of ingenuity, until one day he did. And he did because he was an expert in his field, operating in an environment where innovation was modelled and rewarded. And most critically, an environment within which he was given time to think in-depth about a subject, in this case because the WIC had given him the power of rapid reasoning ... an Inception-esque gift for temporal distortion.
Most organizations won't have people who can do this, but the good news is it's not essential. Free the minds of your people and innovation will follow. Like innovation itself, this notion is the simplest form of a complex idea.
As a footnote, there's a big trap to avoid on this subject, and that's attempting to mechanize innovation as a corporate program. When you assign a VP or Director or Flag officer to be your Innovation Czar and make that individual responsible for "driving it," you create a rod for your own back.
The result will be trackable and scoreable inputs, top-down pressure to spit forth good ideas on a meeting-driven cadence, and administration to understand and adjust. In other words, structure. Cottage industrialization. Fiefdoms. These things engender an environment contrary to the natural flow of creativity.
I've seen many examples of this. What starts out well-meaning becomes an ornate form of "try harder" with an overall increase in mental confinement. Bureaucracy, abhors idleness, insisting purposeful thought be given full brain occupancy. This is one reason why small organizations and those capable of retaining a small mindset are better innovators than their lumbering counterparts.
Innovation happens for particular reasons. Leaders who get this will set the conditions and see the magic. As a rule of thumb, if you want creativity, don't squeeze the brain too much.
As for Chris Henslee, well ... sometimes, there's a man for his time and place. He fits right in there. Later on, I'll tell you more about how his tactic worked out, because it's a good story and worth telling. Like me, Chris is long since retired.
But I know he shares my gratitude for the extraordinarily capable individuals we have in our midst who are willing to unselfishly supply their genius to our collective defense.
This post appeared originally on the War Stories newsletter, which is hosted on Linked In. Please consider subscribing to receive and engage with my work, and if you enjoy these stories, tell your friends.
