Fighting Yesterday's Battles

 It would be an interesting experiment to dig out newspapers from five or ten years ago and look at the headlines. Apart from the trivial and the ever-present, my guess is that there would be much discussion about some issues that seemed highly consequential at the time but humdrum now. It is not easy to put present anxieties into a wider context.

 

As examples, think of all the military escapades of the USA since 1945. The Korean war started seventy years ago this week and the cause seemed strong enough at the time to justify deploying thousands of soldiers into a highly hostile environment and to accept that many would perish. The Bay of Pigs still holds some intensity, but Vietnam and Iraq less.

 

It is the same about more mundane domestic issues. How can we forget the discussions about toilets and changing rooms for people of rare genders? In that case, much of the excitement was generated for political ends. A cynic might claim that the same could be true of all the warmongering.

 

One of the most heartening articles I read this year was in The Economist about abortion. I find abortion to be a tough subject. I attend Catholic Mass in the USA and observe the passion that it generates. Even in 2020, our local priest came close to suggesting a vote for Trump, with abortion the deciding factor. W were asked to look beyond crime, misogyny, racism, arrogance, bullying and the rest, an antithesis of the gospel teachings, all in the cause of reducing abortion.

 

For the most passionate, the key argument is that all life is sacred. What I find hard to reconcile is that it is often these same people who accept people starving in the streets for a want of societal support, or capital punishment, or even extra-judicial killing of foreign scientists. Can we really judge those lives to be expendable whereas a creature with an undeveloped brain is not?

 

On the other hand, it should never be a trivial thing to abort a child, beyond some point where a scientist might classify it as a human being, so I have some sympathy for the anti-abortion cause.

 

The article in question did not explore these well-worn avenues, but instead pointed out how the science of having an abortion has changed. What used to be a risky operation can now be reliably undertaken at home via cheap and readily available medication, which is becoming available to more and more people in different parts of the world.

 

Over time the result will be that the harrumphing of the anti-abortion evangelicals will have less and less effect. They can close all the clinics and squeeze the professionals, but that will be of little avail if a simple prescription from the Internet will do the trick. Banning the pills would even be difficult if they are available in other countries.

 

We can hope that the upshot of all this will be a reduction in political heat. The new pills is only safe in the first trimester, but hopefully their easy availability will mean women can make a decision and act on it quickly enough. The abortion pill is little more than an extension of the morning after pill. People can still debate the point at which abortion becomes unethical, but once the discussion becomes theoretical rather than consequential it should become less intense. Continuous improvement in sex education, availability of contraceptives and male responsibilities should extend the trend of women’s agency.

 

This is a surprisingly common phenomenon: an issue enflames passions but then quickly becomes old news thanks to societal trends and some game-changing innovation. In the developed world, matters relating to LGBT people have gone this way over one generation. Prejudice still exists and other parts of the world have some catching up to do, but nowadays the diehards emit a sense of having missed the bus.

 

The challenge for activists and policy makers is to discern which issues will vanish of their own accord, which ones need only a nudge and which ones need an almighty heave. An example from a less ethically sensitive area is competition law. Twenty years ago legislators became concerned about the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft, but the problem vanished before they could do much about it. Now the same dilemma exists concerning other tech giants. Most likely that will solve itself over time as well.

 

More difficult is the whole area of populism being fed by conspiracy theories and anger and misinformation, all turbocharged by social media. It is tempting to take an evangelical approach and seek to banish the scourge via prohibitions. But it is very hard to know what to do, partly because any restrictive action risks firing up resentments even more and creating martyrs. As an optimist, I like to hope that this issue will reduce over time too. Successive generations are better educated and less digitally naïve, and platforms will develop to drive more discerning segmentation of content. It could still be a bumpy ride for a while, especially if elites continue to ignore the challenges of inequality and deprivation.

 

Climate change is clearly an issue demanding the almighty heave. But I suspect we are reaching a tipping point, a good one in which humanity does what it needs to rather than a bad one where nature wreaks havoc. Now that the moneymen have started seriously downgrading dirty investments and worrying about insurance, momentum for necessary change will snowball. This example is also salutary, because the temptation ten years ago was to mandate all sorts of solutions, most of which would have been the wrong ones. Even an almighty heave should not be too specific.

 

The same is true for all the challenges of racism. Again, this warrants an almighty heave, but success will come more from changing minds than implementing draconian policies, though some police reform is surely in order. Rioting and tearing down statues and demanding reparations all help to make activists feel empowered, but may often be counter-productive.

 

The Economist has also been mounting a subtle campaign in the area of transsexual rights and policies. Rightly feeling guilty about past persecution of gay people, the magazine fears that society has overreacted and used an almighty heave where a nudge might be more effective. It is such an immature area, and young kids risk taking drastic changes to their bodies that they later regret. Over time things will become clearer as evidence builds up, science innovates and professionals improve their skills. If we are cautious, then some kids will surely suffer from being unjustly forced to live with the body they were born with. But is that a bigger risk than creating a cohort of kids regretting drastic changes that cannot be easily reversed?

 

I know little of the subject, but I lean towards the side of The Economist. Patience and caution should not be mistaken for conservative obstructionism. And, as the other examples show, the passage of time can have wonderful benefits. At work, prevarication and inaction can be a good strategy, when the result is a problem disappearing of its own accord. Such miracles can occur in public policy too. 

The Perils of Execution

 I have always been pretty hot at strategy. I can read a big picture, have good imagination for idea generation, can weigh up pros and cons and even produce some sort of plan. Where I failed it was usually in execution, and in most cases that was due to its human aspects.

 

You can’t achieve all that much alone. Your power comes from finding ways to multiply your own abilities by utilizing others. And that is a secret I never really mastered. I recall one humbling example, at a workshop given by some guru or other. There were six of us divided into two groups of three, the three bosses and the three workers. I was the senior worker at the time and was appointed their leader.

 

The whole point of the exercise was that we were supposed to win. My two team members were a Japanese guy who did everything for the group, never lacking energy or willingness, and the secretary, immersed with practical and human skills. The three bosses all talked a good game and were engineers so had some practical skills, but they were supposed to over-theorise and argue about roles while our team got on with the task at hand. Except we didn’t, and I think the reason was my terrible execution leadership. We had the smarter idea, better plan and the more diligent workers, but somehow we lost. I think the fundamental cause was that I did not care enough, and that communicated itself to my teammates.

 

I learned a lot about execution during my short spell in Major Project Management for Shell, but actually not as much as I should have, because I suspect many of the group had the same weaknesses as me. They were wonderful at process, so they made beautiful plans. Major parts of those plans involved stakeholder management and communication. But somehow things often went wrong. Just like in that workshop, this might have had something to do with passion.

 

I recall a couple of other Shell stories with lessons about execution. At one point I was somehow put in charge of building new networks of petrol stations in newly open Eastern Europe. It was a wonderful job and I think I did it quite well. We built strong models, good practices, and attracted excellent talent. We made some good decisions and left a lasting legacy. But the real success went to my successor, a Hungarian man of monumental energy and passion. He took our framework and brought it alive. It helped him that he was local and could relate to his team more authentically. He did a brilliant job.

 

Another example was in Scandinavia, where we had a failing business and I developed a strategy to turn it around. By happenstance, at a perfect moment for us Shell fell in love with a consultant who was peddling a particular method. As it turns out, the method was not especially good strategically and in most countries it failed dismally. But a team of us was able to hitch my strategy to the method and the results were spectacular. The method was the perfect vehicle for a passionate execution.

 

My last example goes against the theme, because it was a success and I was in charge. We had to integrate an acquired company into a running business before closing down the former operation. There was little guidance available, and I did a good job, I think, at defining the issue and forming a plan. Somehow my team also managed to execute it well, despite me being in charge. Perhaps by that stage I had learned a few tricks. Perhaps my team was exceptional. Perhaps the passion for the task somehow created itself. I don’t really know, but the results were certainly satisfying.

 

This discourse on execution is prompted by a series of experiences in 2020. Major Project Management has had a unique role this year because of the pandemic. Most governments have failed dismally. I think I know some reasons why.

 

First, here are some examples. In April, congress showed a rare burst of brilliance and passed a bill allocating $1200 to all citizens. The challenge was always going to be executing this and, true to form, rich people with bank accounts got their money easily whereas the people who really needed it did not. I assumed we would not qualify, but, in September, we received a general letter that led me to believe that our son actually did, so we filled out the forms and made an application. We were told that the application was valid, but three months later he still has not received the money. The funny part was what happened when he called the helpline to ask when he might receive his cash. The clerk, perhaps with a straight face, explained that it might take months because everything was moving slowly – because of the pandemic! Of course the pandemic was the solitary reason for the programme in the first place.

 

We had a similar experience this month when trying to obtain covid PCR tests.  We will be flying tomorrow and our airline demanded a PCR test carried out within 72 hours of the flight, which in practice meant yesterday. Our challenge was that most commercial providers, except the most exorbitant ones, have a turnaround time for getting results of up to week. I really wonder what the value of such a test is to anybody, since within a week we can infect most of our neighbourhood. Still, in their wisdom NYC had a particular scheme that was perfect for us, offering rapid turnaround lab tests at specific locations. The appointment could only be made two days before the test, and that led to the challenge, because the website was such that most of the time no appointments were on offer. Luckily by getting up at 4am on the relevant day I managed to game the system.

 

Since arriving in the US, we have been willing to donate blood. But at first we were told that our foreign blood wouldn’t be on any use to them, first for five years and then for seven or ten. Seemingly they believe most European blood in contaminated by mad cow disease, which would be a scary thought if I trusted the US professionals who reached that conclusion. Now, almost every week, the NYC blood service issues a call for more people to donate because the pandemic has increased demand. So I tried again, calling the helpline a couple of times, but they either failed to call back or lacked key information, so we have still been stymied.

 

All of these are execution failings. I could add many more. The NYC plan to reopen schools has lurched from problem to problem, though on that one I have sympathy for the mayor, who took a brave position and is constrained by teacher’s unions with dubious motives. Cuomo’s late intervention to a subway tunnel repair was hardly exemplary, though the outcome seems to have been good. Every encounter with the DMV has given me plenty of evidence of poor execution.

 

I can draw a few general lessons. Firstly, execution is difficult. We can all complain about the school reopening but that is a tough, multi-dimensional challenge. It should make us appreciate those organisations that seem to pull off tough execution challenges as a core competence: Amazon and IKEA come to mind. Public sector examples are harder to find, especially military ones. The Chinese seem to have acquired this competence recently, and it may be why they are progressively eating our lunch. 

 

Second, execution and politicians don’t mix. The mayor’s office doubtless had great intentions with his rapid covid testing idea, but the Major Project execution was probably a terrible process with mixed motives, little attention to motivation, and too many last-minute interventions. Politicians love to overpromise, and also hate to compromise until the very last minute, which is poison to project execution. Just ask the poor mandarins currently trying to find a Brexit path forward.

 

Lastly, passion can overcome a multitude of sins. 2020 has seen many miracles of execution along with the failings, and the key ingredient has been humans with passion. I can only admire such people, recalling that humiliating workshop when I let down my fellow workers and lost to the bosses.     

Against Covert Activity

 Our latest pandemic binge watch is The Americans. We are lucky to have so much good TV to pass evenings at home. This series alone offers something like sixty hours of viewing. We are nearly half way through. I expect we will take a break soon, watch something else before coming back for the second half in a few months. You can have too much of a good thing.

 

The Americans is cleverly conceived and written and well acted. The lead couple are a Welshman and an American woman, partners in real life, playing a pair of KGB agents deeply embedded into Washington society. It is set in the 1980’s, in the Reagan era, as the cold war was raging but Russia was starting to implode.

 

The choice of the 1980’s is very clever. It allows the writers to be somewhat more balanced in their scripts. Anything more recent would surely feel forced to be more jingoistic to retain mass US appeal. It is just about acceptable to provoke thoughts about equivalence between Reagan’s CIA and Andropov’s KGB, in both moral and practical terms. In that sense the show is quite courageous.

 

To my taste, the show is improving as we progress through its series. In series one, a chase for ratings and funds led to fast-moving, sensational storylines that stretched credulity too far. The lead couple live with their kids in American suburbia, and happen to have a senior FBI agent as a neighbour. In the very first episode the neighbour is suspicious, because of course the lead couple are gallivanting around in their mainly nocturnal double lives.

 

But once the show became established, and the writers could plot many series, priorities changed and that led the pace to slow. An intriguing element is how the KGB insists on recruiting the teenage children of the protagonists, something that could only be developed at a cautious pace. Other storylines become stretched over multiple episodes as well and become more credible as a result, and a slow build up of tension replaces most of the adrenaline rush of violent resolutions. A covert life is surely a very patient and tense one, and the series is does an excellent job of exploring the human side of this sort of existence.

 

The longer I watch the show, the more one primary message becomes obvious. Apart from being cruel, covert operations must be stunningly wasteful and often doomed. Much happens in our name, but we little about it and there is unlikely to be much scrutiny of activities.

 

The Americans does an excellent job of portraying how tough it is to keep activities restricted. Because nobody can be trusted, there need to be many levels of security clearance and a huge number of audits and checks carried out, all of which must make progress next to impossible. It is not just the scientists who must be vetted, but the maintenance engineers, janitors, door staff, administrators and everybody else, and a determined adversary will inevitably target the weakest link in the chain.

 

A neat example is how the male star infiltrates a senior FBI office by wooing a secretary. His entry point is to convince her that he is secretly auditing the department of her boss. The story is credible because surely that must happen, and relatively easy to pull off with some accreditation that the secretary cannot seek to check because the supposed department of her suitor is so confidential that nobody is supposed to know about it. The web of departments and clearances and verifications must surely be almost impossible to disentangle.

 

It may be a little sensationalised, but an extension of this concept means that many characters are somehow playing both sides as double agents or triple agents. When everybody knows something embarrassing about everybody else, this must be a likely outcome.

 

Ultimately, the secret activity becomes largely for its own purpose and otherwise futile, because true technological advantage will usually be fleeting. The value for money must surely be terrible. In our cyber age, this must be even more true now than in the 1980's of The Americans.

 

But the worst part of covert activity is how it must be sold so the population accepts it. Within a state, corporations and individuals are accountable under law. States themselves have few such limitations. International law is flimsy and routinely ignored, including by states claiming moral high ground. And somehow we are supposed to think this is a good thing.

 

So we have a retiring MI6 officer giving an interview to Time in which the interviewer asks how we are supposed to trust the ethics of his organisation, and all he can say is that they are good chaps who police themselves. We have semi-official state propaganda that aims to make us feel happy that Mossad and/or the CIA have taken out an Iranian nuclear scientist. Even Saint Barack timed the extra-judicial assassination of Bin Laden for electoral gain.

 

We only swallow it because we are constantly fed jingoistic messages, about axes of evil, about national security interests, about the unique heroism of our armed forces and about the evil intentions of our adversaries. There is not much detail: Americans are not asked to ponder why a Saudi war should be supported while an Iranian one should be countered. A neat episode in The Americans has the KGB trying to expose Reagan for his overt support of apartheid South Africa. Good luck with that one: such nuanced thinking is not encouraged, and sadly beyond the wit or interest of most citizens anyway.

 

It is the jingoistic propaganda which is the source material for the worst forms of populism, and the cynical practices of so-called civilised nations which give succour to autocrats elsewhere. If the true goal is uprisings leading to regime change, why do we make our own side seem so unattractive and offer such a barrage of propaganda opportunities? How can we pretend to promote cooperation between nations when we brazenly act in ways that undermine it?

 

One of the saddest legacies of Hitler was the belief in the west that he was defeated by war and that appeasement was by its nature a bad thing. Another word for appeasement is diplomacy. In the same way, perhaps the saddest legacy of the Reagan era is that the CIA defeated Russian communism. In truth, Russian communism imploded under its own contradictions, steered by a rare statesman in Gorbachev. Indeed, Russian communism appears to be making a comeback.

 

No, covert activity is part of the problem and never the solution. A well-led world would strive to systemically reduce covert activity. It tends to mushroom otherwise, because of the lack of scrutiny and the impossibility of its goals. The US and China appear to be in the process of making the same mistakes once again and ratcheting up a new cold war. We will all be losers.

 

The Americans is an excellent show. It makes me sad that its main message, so powerfully demonstrated, is not a routine part of discourse in society. Of all the things we should be marching about, I believe it is covert activity by our own side that should be the top target. One day this will happen, but humanity has to find a way of unwrapping itself from its national flags and their jingoistic messages before it happens.

The Americans did revive one more thought in my head. Might Donald Trump somehow be a Russian asset? Even if the idea is a little farfetched, the show suggests it is feasible, and it would certainly explain a lot of his behaviour. If so, the last month has played out as an absolute dream for Russia: by extension, it would now have tens of millions of assets. What a frightening thought that is.