Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

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No offense but I don't think you understand Special Operations. You are describing how conventional forces largely operate.

SOF on the other hand are typically given a problem and asked to figure out a solution. Watch Charlie Wilson's war or read any of the books about the weeks after 9/11 in Afghanistan as a good example of this in practice.

For example in Number 4: How does this work when the teams assignment is to come up with an objective, rather than just have one assigned to them.

Answer: They would splinter and struggle because they are following a chain of command.

This is completely wrong. In fact the majority of the problems SOF are given are within the domain of objective identification for effects. When problems come down, everyone works together equally (back to the communication piece) to come up with a solution just like we do with startups. When it's time to execute, you execute within that chain and take direction based on your role.

Basically these are great for teams who just take commands from the actual guy makes the decisions.

Again, that's not how it works. Often the "commands" are even more nebulous than within narrow software domains. For example: "Keep [wartorn city] stable enough to allow for elections to run."

Special Ops::Conventional forces :::: Skunk Works :: corporate workplace.

They are specially selected and are non-representative. Whatever lessons that can be drawn there are inapplicable to conventional forces, let alone regular teams in the corporate environment. They might apply to special project teams ('skunk-works' type projects), but that has limited value as it is not scalable.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss its applicability.

I imagine a large part of what SOF do is solve unforeseeable problems in the context of trying to accomplish some goal, and to be able to adapt quickly if the goal changes. This is pretty analogous to what a startup is faced with when trying to accomplish a goal, when you'll find that most of your team's initial ideas, as good as they seemed at the outset, were wrong, and you'll be trying to face problems and seize opportunities that you didn't even know you had. For both SOF and these teams, being able to adapt quickly to new information and circumstances, and to resolve the problems that come up which will destroy you, are critical.

I apply "startup" also in the sense of "startup-like" teams in large companies who are required to innovate rapidly.

> I apply "startup" also in the sense of "startup-like" teams in large companies who are required to innovate rapidly

I think we are in agreement - the applicability is likely to limited to 'small' specially chosen/specially tasked teams. i.e. it does not scale to thousands of employees (otherwise the army would be doing the same for conventional forces)

I think your answer shows how you are already narrowing and then differing to an authority to give you scope. Relative to you, that might seem like creation, but its actually just following through on a pre-planed, however vague, agenda. This is common among military-mindset types who scope out the problem they can't process and then claim to have solved it. They are rightly trained to ignore what is "above their pay grade."

The "higher pay grade" problem a team must solve in your example is to shift a popular mindset in a region to inspire them to create elections, not keep the city safe while elections occur as assigned from your superior officer.

These teams need to decide the human social agenda, not just the strategy and execution of one given to them.

narrowing and then differing to an authority to give you scope.

I think the difference is that you assume that is not happening in the entrepreneurial world. In fact it is, only guided by consumer demand, or some broadly defined corporate niche or group of uncoordinated individuals [1].

But that gets off the point however. Lets be clear here though, the scope of the article was how Google builds teams within the already defined "higher pay grade" problems. So by definition that is the context of what I am discussing teams already within a system. As it relates to Google they have "higher pay grade orders" from the Executive team of Page/Brin etc.... This is not Valve we are talking about here.

I think you are trying to make a larger statement about entreprenurial endeavors in sum total at the economy level which is not the scope of this discussion and it not relevant.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

The larger statement is that civilian teams are focusing on optimistic futures to create value and military teams are focusing on horrible realities to mitigate loss. The team configurations for those two things I think should be radically different.

We become dystopian when we apply the ultimately violent tactics of the military to the creation based goals of civilians.

The SOF individuals are some of the smartest entrepreneurial individuals you will meet. They are able to work together as a team because they build from what the OP has said.

Taking a simplified example to make further arguments is not fair. There can always be further counter-arguments. SOF will be deployed and then they adapt to problems with a clear goal.

If you told the team, develop plans for the stabilization of a government, they can do it.

> This is common among military-mindset types who scope out the problem they can't process and then claim to have solved it. They are rightly trained to ignore what is "above their pay grade."

I'm sorry, but you could not be more wrong. Even in the "conventional" Marine Corps infantry, we were not trained to ignore any problem. We were constantly being taught to take over the job of our superiors at a moment's notice. All downtime was filled with adhoc classes to train the lowest grunt to operate at several levels above his pay grade.

If you think SOF or even Marines defer silently to officers, you only know what you have seen on TV. You are just completely off base here.

Look at what he's saying, it's not a deep insight but there is a credible amount of truth to it.

At the bottom entry level units do defer. Boots stick around for morning formation after weekend leave still buzzed drunk because they're just told what to do and face consequences otherwise.

But then in the Corps the TIG promotions tend to weed those types out so that the motivated and qualified ones go upward the chain as NCOs. Then TIS promotions tend to be push those more qualified into SNCO roles.

To say that every single boot, or that every single service member is immediately capable of stepping up to be field officers because the one charge that was saluted all the time got sniped off is a ridiculous assertion.

But it is heavily incorporated, and more specifically in the Corps, for lateral movement up, or even down, a few ranks.

That's setup to optimize for the resiliency of the organization whereas in a corporation that's fragile because people working there are merely linked by bank account and therefore inspire no loyalty.

Again...I'm comparing ELITE SOF units, not line units so your comparison misses the point.

Massive difference.

Similarly, not every company can hire and pick and choose from a bunch of highly motivated individuals like Google could. Skills are easy to find, but finding people to have any enthusiasm for large corporations' work is incredibly hard and the military tends to use peer pressure basically to get people to conform to certain standards, but I can't do that as a lead in a behemoth corporation people only stay awake for because of a paycheck. If I fired everyone that wasn't engaged, I wouldn't exactly have a team.

Hence, I think it's massively important to realize that hiring for elite anything is really nothing like hiring for random warm bodies-at-problem techniques oftentimes used by mediocre performing companies that have a lack of leadership capabilities.

Okay motivator, I get what you're saying and if the entirety of the operators community is all we needed for every situation and conflict we got going on in this world then so be it.

But there's still plenty of work for everyone else. Turning a 17 year old high school dropout into a team player with good attitude and good work ethic and good mind set is what this thread deviated to.

What is an MVP? Why do you build funnels to guide your conversion process?

Any professional endeavor fundamentally is about scoping around a particular solution that will deliver value to your stakeholders.

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