I've been fascinated with John Boyd and his OODA loops for a while now. But, equally, I'm always suspicious of the seductive allure of military strategy. Communications planners find that stuff very sexy but, I suspect, there aren't many transferrable lessons.
Experiences at GDS, though, did really make me understand the advantage of speed and of thinking hard about tempo, as Robert Coram puts it:
"Thinking about operating at a quicker tempo—not just moving faster—than the adversary was a new concept in waging war. Generating a rapidly changing environment—that is, engaging in activity that is so quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy—inhibits the adversary’s ability to adapt and causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives"
And this brilliant piece about Trump and his bid for the Republican nomination reminded me to think about speed again. Trump can move fast because he's an evil lunatic with no need to check his facts or consult with others. This gives him massive destabilising power in a political campaign, but hopefully, means he won't survive in the long-term because he's too disconnected from actual, real reality.
A small, non-lunatic, non-evil team, with a shared understanding of their situation and their goals - and lots of trust - can move as fast.
Coram again:
"Trust emphasizes implicit over explicit communications. Trust is the unifying concept. This gives the subordinate great freedom of action. Trust is an example of a moral force that helps bind groups together in what Boyd called an “organic whole.”
Hopefully, such a team can remain connected to reality. The challenge for them is maintaining the speed while scaling.
"A crucial part of the OODA Loop—or “Boyd Cycle,” as it has come to be known—is that once the process begins, it must not slow. It must continue and it must accelerate. Success is the greatest trap for the novice who properly implements the OODA Loop. He is so amazed at what he has done that he pauses and looks around and waits for reinforcements. But this is the time to exploit the confusion and to press on"
"The debate around the review of the BBC Charter is in full swing. As the broadcaster and the government start the process of defining its future role, what can be learned from previous rounds of negotiations? In the first of two events organised by the Mile End Institute and the BBC, we brought together a panel of speakers with direct experience of Charter rounds to reflect on the lessons of the past."
"Chaired by Lord (Peter) Hennessy, the panel featured Baroness (Tessa) Jowell, former Secretary of State for Culture Media & Sport, Lord (Norman) Fowler, former chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and David Levy, former Controller of Public Policy at the BBC and now Director of the Reuters Institute at Oxford University."
But most of the discussion on the night focused on the last one or two charter rounds, since they were the ones the panelists were involved in. And given that it must have been obvious during those rounds that new technologies were going to completely overturn the world the BBC operated in I was looking forward to a lively debate about the BBC's role in a changed media/technology landscape. After all, the equivalence of those various technologies are enshrined in the current charter:
"The BBC’s main activities should be the promotion of its Public Purposes through the provision of output which consists of information, education and entertainment, supplied by means of
(a) television, radio and online services;
(b) similar or related services which make output generally available and which may be in forms or by means of technologies which either have not previously been used by the BBC or which have yet to be developed"
You can now read the conversation that actually unfolded for yourself, as the MEI have generously published a transcript. But if you don't want to plough through it yourself I've done a little bit of textual analysis.
The event was summed up for me by the Lords Tom McNally and Melvyn Bragg cautioning Tony Hall not to be beguiled by the idea that people might consume the BBC on things other than TVs or radios and making it clear, if more clarity was needed, that all the BBC should do is make TV and radio programmes.
Lord (Tom) McNally – "You asked Tony what he’d learned from this, I just hope he’s learned from this that although there’s lots of beguiling ideas, that we’ll all be watching programmes on our watches before long, essentially the main job of the BBC will be sending programmes to televisions and to radios and that’s where the vast majority of people watch."
Lord (Melvyn) Bragg: "Huw Wheldon said the BBC is the sum of its programmes, we pay for the programmes. If they get the programmes right for as diverse a group of people as possible, then they're OK – that’s what we want, and all the rest is to prop up that."
Digital
Uses of the word 'digital' : 6
Uses of the word 'digital' outside the context of 'digital switchover' : 2 (one of these seems to be a mishearing of the word 'judicial')
The remaining use of the word 'digital':
Tony Hall: "Increasingly more and more of what you do in the BBC is global by its very nature, that’s the digital world we’re in so the impact you have, one of the strengths over the last 2-3 years, is you now see World Service reporters reporting back to the UK, or listen to them, as well as broadcasting out there."
Online
Uses of the word 'online': 3
These were
a. As a general description of the world we're in these days:
Tony Hall: "So I would love to explore ways in which we can build on that body of support for the BBC knowing that it in the future it’s going to be easier to find out what people are thinking in the online world, to try to cement audiences more firmly into the way that the BBC kind of runs itself."
b. As a way of soliciting opinion:
Tony Hall: "I suggested last week a dual lock for fundamental changes, and I mean fundamental changes, for the next charter which might be subjecting those fundamental changes to a two thirds resolution of each of the houses of Parliament, but also looking at some way of linking the people who are paying for us into discussion and debate about those changes - an online vote or something very similar. So I don't have all the answers, I’m really looking forward to hearing the comments this evening and thank you all very much for your time."
c. On people using the BBC website as a way of finding out if things are true:
Tony Hall: "When you look at what do people use BBC online, globally, or in this country for, often it is a test. I want to know what’s happened and I want it clarified and I’ll go to the BBC to do that but actually I might use 3 or 4 on average other news sites at the same time."
Phone
Uses of the word 'phone': 3
Uses of the word 'phone' outside the context of phoning the Channel 4 Press office: 2
Those two uses of the word 'phone' are here:
Baroness (Tessa) Jowell: "I remember when I first became secretary of state in 2001 and I was introduced to convergence. When it was described to me that in 6 or 7 years’ time, we might be taking pictures with our telephone and watching TV from our telephones, it seemed unimaginable. I think when you think more than 5 years’ hence, you have to think but how will technology have changed the world?"
Web
Uses of the word 'web': 2
Uses of the word 'web' outside the context of Alan Webb's name: 1
That use of the word 'web' is here:
Lord (Norman) Fowler: "And the present government is no exception to this, as Tessa has said, financing old people’s television licences out of the licence fee or, one proposal I saw, giving advice on how the BBC website should be set up so as not to upset local newspapers. I think that is getting into a degree of detail, which no government should get in."
Technology
Uses of the word 'technology': 2
They were:
Baroness (Tessa) Jowell: "I think when you think more than 5 years’ hence, you have to think but how will technology have changed the world?"
Baroness (Tessa) Jowell: "I agree that the World Service is precious, the standard of its broadcasting is excellent. My question is in 5 or 10 years’ time, will it still be as relevant or will technology have made it easier to create the sense of presence and immediacy that journalists on the ground manage to do? That I think is generally a big question for the BBC and don’t really feel I know the answer but I know it is a question and a challenge which is coming down the road"
Blog
Uses of the word blog: 1
That was, here, as something young people do:
Baroness (Jane) Bonham Carter: "In the same way I think the BBC news organisation is something in my experience young people turn to because they know blogs represent certain types of information which are often very interesting and often news breaking but there is a central point they can rely on I think that’s true of the World Service too."
I went to MagCulture's shop the other week. Lovely place for a browse. Felt like part of a change in magazine land - magazines are decreasingly a cheap thing you find almost everywhere and increasingly an expensive thing you find in only specialised places.
As David Hepworth points out, that's the remaining power of magazines, their specialness, their gloss. They're no longer the best at getting info to you, or at distributing mass culture, but they're still good at 'environment'. As Clay Shirky said, all those years ago, Brides magazine will be the last one standing.
I watched a fantastic documentary about 10CC the other week. They were clearly a brilliant combination - all good musicians, two old-school high-craft song-writers and two let's-just-try-new-stuff-lunatic artists. Inevitably I found myself wanting to hear more from the loonies (Godley and Creme). And, having listened, I have to report that it's mostly interesting but mostly not that enjoyable.
I get this a lot. I look for novelty in music, new possibilities, new noises, new combinations, so my most listened to playlist is try - designed for weekly try-outs of things I don't know. Problem is, most of it's not that good. It's interesting but not viscerally pleasurable. That's why I've recently reminded myself to spend more time listening to music I reliably know I like, specifically the best, so music isn't just an intellectual exercise.
Not that I'm against empty intellectual exercises in music. I went to a few nights at the London Contemporary Music Festival and quite a lot of it was tedious, dull-witted and annoying, but it was all delivered with massive commitment and self-belief, exactly what you need for truly strange and wonderful stuff to emerge.
