The Fine Art of Burning Your Ships

I recently took a line of reasoning from Game Theory and applied it to change management; the take away being that in order to change the behaviour of others you must yourself be willing to change. But perhaps I stopped short. While willingness is in fact a necessary precondition for change, willingness in and of itself does not start change.

Action does

Action requires commitment beyond an action plan; it requires sealing off the way backwards, not simply pointing the way forwards: (6m41s excerpt from Open Yale, Game Theory Lecture 13 - Sequential games: moral hazard, incentives, and hungry lions):

When watching the clip it dawned on me that perhaps we have inadvertently been ignoring a key strategic, and maybe radical, option available to anyone with the authority to make a decision: burning the ships (i.e. making a decision that fundamentally alters how we perceive the way forward because there is no longer a way backwards).

But we tend to shy away from the notion because we prefer to think about change in terms of great leaders inspiring action or small groups collaborating. The result of which is usually the same: clamouring hopelessly about the slow pace.

Is it any wonder change is so slow? We chase it without the full benefit of all available tactics, or even a framework within which to do a cost-benefit analysis of those tactics?


In Practice

I've had the good fortune to spend most of my career in close proximity to senior decision makers within the public service, and can say with all honesty that very seldom have I seen any of them burn their ships in order to secure the way forward.

Yet our organizations are being challenged in some significant ways. We talk so much about the importance of leadership, but what I've learned is that but our leaders don't lack the competencies required to make tough decisions, they lack the means. When more advanced leadership tactics (e.g. burning your boats) are cast as indefensible they are effectively neutered as a viable options.

Burning your organization’s boats may never be a popular choice, but given the changing nature of the bureaucracy, we may find ourselves in a position where we either willingly burn our ships now to speed up the change, or we sit back on our laurels and have someone else burn them for us.

Personally, I'd rather work in an organization that is willing to practice the fine art of burning their ships; but regardless of who does the burning, we need to a whole lot better at dealing with what comes after they are laid asunder.


Editorial Note:

If game theory, collaboration, and organizational change appeal to you, I would suggest reading (in order):

1. The Collaborator's Dilemma (by me)
2. Thoughts at the Confluence of Game Theory and Inciting Action (also by me)
3. Mutuality, Group Dynamics and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (by Chelsea Edgell)

The last of which ties in many of the ideas I wanted to get at in my original postings but didn't have the bandwidth to achieve. Chelsea's reflections about the iterated nature of collaboration, selecting an appropriate strategy for collaboration, and avoiding the tragedy of the commons are especially pertinent and worth investing the time in.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

Thoughts at the Confluence of Game Theory and Inciting Action

I've stated before that the Open Yale Game Theory course is a must watch for anyone interested in thinking more strategically about their work, more specifically I think it can help people working in change management or otherwise trying to incite people to action.


Key Concepts: backwards induction, best response and Nash equilibrium

One of the rules of game theory is to put yourself in the other player's shoes. The reasoning that informs the rule is simple: you need to understand how players will react to each others strategies as they interact with one another. Once you understand how each of the other players react you can reason backwards from the end of the game to determine the best course of action moving forward, this process is called backwards induction.

Another important rule in game theory is that players will always play a best response to other players. In other words, players don't generally select sub-optimal strategies on purpose. When every player plays their best response the game has achieved a Nash equilibrium. Colloquially referred to as the point of no regrets, the Nash equilibrium is the point at which every player has done the best they can given the actions of all the players.


The link to inciting action

We could think of the status quo as the current Nash equilibrium, no one seems to have a strong incentive to deviate given the responses of everyone else. Change management then is akin to setting a new Nash equilibrium. Given what I know about game theory, I think it provides a unique insight on how exactly to achieve this:

1. determine the desired outcome
2. put yourself in that person's shoes
3. use backwards induction
4. determine what would incent others to move towards the desired outcome
5. amend your own behavior in order to realign the responses of others

The lesson, I think is simple. If you want to incite others to change, you yourself will have to be willing to change, perhaps this is what Gandhi meant when he said, "be the change you want to see in this world".

[image credit: Maia C]

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

The Collaborator’s Dilemma

I've been thinking a lot lately about collaboration and Game Theory. More specifically I've been examining and re-examining the Prisoner’s Dilemma in hopes of learning more about how transparency affects collaboration, and I think I may be on to something.


Primer

Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behaviour in strategic situations (games). The prisoner's dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory and demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in their best interest to do so.

From Wikipedia:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

... In this game, as in most game theory, the only concern of each individual player (prisoner) is maximizing his or her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff. The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution, that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect, even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperatively.

In the classic form of this game, cooperating is strictly dominated by defecting, so that the only possible equilibrium for the game is for all players to defect. No matter what the other player does, one player will always gain a greater payoff by playing defect. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect, all things being equal...

The classical prisoner's dilemma can be summarized thus (click to enlarge):

The Collaboration Payoff Matrix

If we mash up the payoff matrix above to focus on collaboration between two parties (as opposed to prisoners) and apply it to time spent working on a project (as opposed to jail time) it would look something like this (click to enlarge):




The New Dilemma

At the heart of the prisoner's dilemma is the inability of the prisoners to communicate with one another. It makes information sharing difficult and verification impossible. The uncertainty creates tension which in turn creates incentives for defection. If the two parties could simply bridge the physical distance between them, they could communicate, share information, be assured that the other party is keeping their word and collectively achieve the optimum outcome (no jail time).

Similarly, at the heart of the collaborator's dilemma is an inability to communicate with one another. However, would-be collaborators aren't dealing with physical distance imposed on them by police interrogators but rather geographical distance, language barriers, organizational boundaries, information asymmetry and an opacity that generally defines the culture of bureaucracy. The result is often the same, opacity-creating tension, in turn creating incentives for free-loading (defection) as neither side can verify the actions of or the information put forward by the other. If bureaucrats can bridge the information divide between them they could have more confidence in the system as a whole and would be more likely to collectively achieve the optimum outcome (faster production) and perhaps start to more effectively undermine the longstanding culture of knowledge as power.

Defection or in this case, free-loading, becomes next to impossible in a system where people can't hide in the shadows, where information can't be hived off for personal gain, or where strategic relationships can't be easily exploited. Transparency just may be the answer to many of our organization's problems; it may also create new ones. But all in all, what I find fascinating is that as our public institutions open up, the systematic pressure towards sub-optimal outcomes (defection) seemingly decreases. This creates room for new incentives to start to take root, and I think we are all in agreement that we could use some new incentives.


Still Work to Do

The trouble is that we aren't there yet, we are still a system in transition, which means that would-be collaborators can be easily taken advantage of by old school bureaucrats. The environment we find ourselves in is one where collaboration, especially in the face of traditional defectors, requires great courage. It requires even greater courage when those traditional defectors occupy higher positions than the would be collaborators within the hierarchy.

Do you have the courage it takes to collaborate or are you just another prisoner?

[Image credit: pasukaru76]