https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/white-house-installs-political-aides-at-cabinet-agencies-to-be-trumps-eyes-and-ears/2017/03/19/68419f0e-08da-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.66a77240a317
Study up on the what a Matrix Organization is and does with a review of these Google Search Links:
https://www.google.com/search?q=matrix+organizations&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial
During my navy career the Organization Chart was a key document describing structure and operation of the organizational entity. On a ship there were several Organizational Charts beyond the basic staffing structure of Departments and Divisions. The basic Organization Chart was flexible on a Case basis. It changed immediately in the Case of General Quarters. Less quickly and at a normal pace when setting the In Port Watch. In general, the Watch, Quarter and Station Bill dictated who went where and did what as well as reporting to whom. When the Battle Problem was lost at its conclusion, Abandon Ship was the last Case and organizational structure.
I loved my navy career and excelled in the evaluation of superiors. I stepped into every new assignment feeling I was in over my head and would not survive. Not just fail but be inadequate for the task and fail the mission as well as myself. I operated between a carrot and a stick for over 20 years. It was not one year of service 20 times over. Every year built on the shoulders of the previous year. The only thing that each year had in common was the feeling of getting a recruit haircut every year and continuing from that point to climb the mission ladder.
I learned from observing that the best performing officers would often begin a new assignment ashore with a study and restructure of the organization chart applicable to their assignment. Shore duty organization charts were a function of slow change over time. Often lagging in change to the mission, which also changed slowly. No full speed ahead case based mode ashore, at least not often but when it was required usually called a crises.
I was commissioned in 1965.
Early in my career I learned that most crises were usually addressed by what we called a "Tiger Team". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_team
"A 1964 paper entitled "Program Management in Design and Development" introduced tiger teams
and defined the term as "a team of undomesticated and uninhibited
technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy, and
imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible
source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem".[4]"
(I was commissioned in 1965).
"Tiger teams have seen extensive use in governmental organizations. They
are often used for assessment of compliance with and efficacy of
existing policies as well as creating proposals or recommendations for
future policies. In the United States, governmental tiger team
recommendations have directly influenced laws and policies in the
national government.[10]"
Ashore the Organization Chart ran the command mission. I normally had a civilian deputy that knew and performed the management of the established mission better than me. I perceived my mission as more of an agent of change for improved mission performance. I came up with new ideas and was tasked to implement them. The new ideas were sometimes internal to my own official scope of organizational responsibilities. They became increasingly focused on external relationships with other organizations and their related responsibilities.
At the culmination of my career I was in Washington DC. It was at that time in 1984 that I was tasked with an assignment for restructuring the supply support mission within a major navy Systems Command. A job so far above my ability all I had was a bottom of the sea idea of where the surface might be and which way to go to get there. It reminded me of Abandon Ship drills at sea. When the command was passed all we were given was the range and bearing of the nearest friendly land. "Lost at Sea" is both a literal and figurative expression. A compass is a raw idea of which way to go. How to get there is another.
How to get there, where the intention is to go, with the resources at hand was always the problem. The resources at hand were often like a tree to be climbed to get to the moon. At the top of the tree there was a great reliance of the art and skill of improvising. I learned that early in Damage Control Drills. What to do to put out the fire, stop the flow of water into a compartment. The observer watched the performance of the team and after each problem had been addressed by a corrective action would say: "OK, now what do you do if that does not work or if this happens?" We would do something. When it finally came to an end of things we could do and we had no answer the observer said: "OK, lay down and die unless you can find a shower drain to suck oxygen out of until someone comes to save your sorry asses!" It created an attitude about getting the job done. A lesson to be carried for a career.
At the end of my career I was managing information more than anything else. It was the early 1980's. The ultimate answer of what to do to achieve the mission was a step beyond the current structure. A step beyond a networked system with rigid pointers of relationships like an organizational chart or an analogous computer system of rigid network pointers to data data. It was a time of paradigm ship to flexible relational data and object programming from relatively rigid networked data and functional programming.
Stepping back two assignments before Washington DC I was working for Admiral Rickover. That brings me (finally) to my interest in the subject line of this blog entry. The nature of Matrix Organizations and how that might be applicable to what the Trump administration is (might well be) doing at the Cabinet and below level. I have seen this before. Rickover was an expert and matrix management was his method. He controlled far more than what was under his Organizational Chart.
Me and my Division was one of those things he controlled. Indirectly, officially. Very much directly in reality. It was called being "two hatted". I worked for two Admirals. The one in charge of my command on the official Organizational Chart. The Admiral I really worked for was outside of my official Organizational Chart but had within in his direct official Organization Chart an officer junior to me assigned to the command I worked for. Someone that reported on me, as well as my commanding officer, also an Admiral, to Admiral Rickover's people in high level positions.
It was a matrix of things and associated functions structured outside the traditional organizational bureaucratic tree. It was extremely effective then. Even more effective now that the old school organizational tree is still in existence for routine business but increasingly being displaced by a matrix structure that gets more important business of change done. Important as defined or directed by the one in charge....Trump.
Leverage is the key. Trump is a leverage guy. Study up on it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=leverage&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial
Rickover was a leverage guy. What they have in common is leveraging objects over which they do not have direct control to produce functions of the objects. Nuclear Power is a functional result of a system structure of physical object relationships that produce it. Political Power is the same. Grasp direct control of the objects involved and the functional outcome is owned. Grasp more or all of the objects is any domain and the function of the domain is owned.
I think the Rickover method of control was to have a agent, a spy, in every organization that related to the domain of nuclear power. The agent did not necessarily have to be in a dominant role in the organization. The power of the agent however was far greater than the position of the agent and the pay for the position. The motivation of the agent? The reward of loyalty, fear of being fired, dedication to the mission, the self serving satisfaction of the possession of power beyond the actual grade of the position assignment. Young and hungry junior agents slugging beyond their weight. A matrix of agents operating for Rickover installed in organizations associated with his mission. Agents of leverage.
I could go on with a number of stories about what it was like to be in the double hatted position I was in and be the one that the matrix agent of Admiral Rickover acted upon to put his program first and foremost for funding and performance in my own command far beyond its internal command mission priorities distributed among the divisions of the command. I got funding and staffing that others did not. Overall, the Nuclear Navy came first in a command that supported the fleet. That was totally consistent with the ideology priorities of Admiral Rickover and intentions to put his priorities first with a management method to accomplish that.
To a great extent there was a relationship to a higher order mission. That was the absolutely safe and reliable operation of nuclear power plants. If funding or any other resources were ever short for Rickover, and they never were in the end, that is the card he would play and hammer to use to get whatever was needed.
There was also a relationship to a high level of classified mission operations and secrecy. Won't go into that but the entire matter of secrecy involves many matrixed organizational entities.
Deep State: I see the Deep State as a Matrix organization. A 1% or more cross sector matrix that is the leverage key to control an vast and rigidly structured government. The 1% or more that can act swiftly depending on case or mode to address immediate requirements much like the the manner in which a navy ship is designed to perform its mission. That is the key to winning in battle.
I don't see as clearly exactly what Trump's battle space or mission winning objective is. Is he in control or the one being controlled?
Perhaps the answer is to be found in exactly who is the mastermind behind this plan to install a matrix of agent spies in cabinet level organizations reporting to controllers outside the various Cabinets. How far down the organizational level does this matrix reach. To maximize its effectiveness I would think only 3 levels covered by a total of 9 agents in each Cabinet Department.
Who is behind this pulling the strings?
Taking an even broader view of the effectiveness of Matrix Organizations is it really Trump's executive level staff behind this. It could just as well be that it originates elsewhere. Perhaps in a dominant Cabinet?
Hmmm....From the link at the beginning of this blog entry:
"These aides report not to the secretary, but to the Office of Cabinet
Affairs, which is overseen by Rick Dearborn, a White House deputy chief
of staff, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide,
John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are
in constant contact with the White House."
http://www.ozy.com/politics-and-power/the-white-houses-man-in-the-middle/75927
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