Share: How to beat the "Prisoner's Dilemma"?

On July 9, 2018, Mr. Lee was excerpted from "Empowerment" (US) written by Stanley McChrystal

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The basic concept of game theory can also be explained by the "prisoner's dilemma". In this famous thought experiment, two criminals, two co-defendants, were arrested and placed in separate cells for interrogation. They were all told: "If you remain silent, you will be sentenced to one year in prison; if you betray your companions, you will be free; but if your companions betray you, you will serve two years in prison." Competing self-interest, both prisoners actually have incentives to betray the other. However, as shown in the picture below, if two prisoners betray each other, the result they get is to spend two years in prison together. If the two prisoners are regarded as a whole, this outcome is the best for the whole. Bad; but if they are of the same mind, the outcome they get is that they both serve one year in prison. If the two prisoners are considered as a whole, this outcome is the best for the whole.

The prisoner's dilemma has interesting managerial implications. First, the Prisoner's Dilemma means that in some situations it is better to cooperate than to compete. This may seem obvious, but many managers still feel that if there can be healthy competition between companies (which is also the lifeblood of the free market), then there should also be healthy competition within companies. Some of the most legendary managers of the 20th century embraced this "competitive spirit" and consciously pitted employees and departments against each other. Jack Welch created hierarchical parity, a system in which employees find themselves rated relative to others, and the approach has become popular with many leaders and across many industries. Encouraging collaboration is more often just a bumper sticker than something managers actually do. However, in an interconnected environment, effective cooperation can be a matter of life and death.

We are trapped in a real-life prisoner's dilemma. Every agency fears that sharing information will harm the agency's interests. Competition among agencies makes them less willing to export information, fearing that sister units will not respond accordingly. If every institution cooperates, we achieve the best outcome for us overall, but to achieve this outcome we first have to overcome the prisoner's dilemma.

However, promoting cooperation is easier said than done. To do this, all "prisoners" must know the entire decision-making system from the start, not just what options are before them. If they only knew what choices they could make and what fate those choices would bring to them, each of them would choose to betray their companions. Only when they also know the risks to their peers can they understand what their actions mean in the big picture. This is why we change the layout of physical space, hold forums such as operational intelligence briefings, and pursue transparency in information sharing.

Of course, there are other factors at play. After systematically understanding the overall situation, "every prisoner" will rationally realize that it is beneficial to cooperate with his or her co-defendants, but the problem is that he or she cannot confirm whether his or her co-defendants will also think so. After all, from the selfish point of view, From a perspective, the "dominant strategy" of each criminal is to betray his companions. Even if the prisoners are aware of the overall situation, they have no confidence that their companions will be loyal to them.

We need true cooperation. Transparency and trust are not just theoretical, but putting everyone in the same room is just the beginning, but if we want heartfelt, team-based trust, we have work to do. Go deeper.

Like the prisoners, the stronger the bonds between our teams, the more likely we are to improve our collaboration to the required level.

When we first started cultivating a sense of enjoyment, we did not realize how difficult it would be to overcome cultural barriers. When our sister units come to your desk, they have been around for decades and have their own unique perspective on the problem. From their perspective, anything that happens outside their own field of vision has nothing to do with them. Intelligence agencies want to establish a network to understand the actual situation through human intelligence resources or technical collection methods; diplomatic agencies want to establish a long-term and stable mechanism; counter-terrorism forces want to work "night after night" Solve problems seen in real time on the battlefield. Each of these institutions' perspective on the problem has value, but none alone can achieve overall success. So just telling them the big picture in the abstract is not enough.

To achieve "cross-functionality," our relationships with our sister units must be as strong and strong as the relationships between combat operations teams and their members. Many times, we simply regard sibling units as objects from which we can obtain something and output something. Later, we made improvements and began to view the relationship between us and our brother units as the relationship between various parts of a network, rather than a part in a machine. You input the initial conditions, and it will feed back the results. . The relationship we need is definitely more than a simple exchange of benefits. If we can foster such relationships among sibling units, then when an emergency occurs, one side will be able to say to the other: Trust me this time. "Then the matter is done.

Our most controversial action is the "embedded plan", which is an exchange system that was implemented in about the second half of 2003. According to this system, We will take a person from one team and assign him to another team for 6 months. For example, we will transfer an Army Special Forces operator to work with the Navy SEALs for 6 months, or transfer a group of analysts to work. The reason for working with the SEALs for 6 months is to allow our operational operators to see the entire war from the perspective of other teams, and at the same time, he can establish personal relationships with people from other teams. This resulted in a rapport between the teams that had previously been limited to one team. Predictably, there was strong resistance at first. I was told: “Our teams all train in completely different ways. "Someone else told me that the members of the assault team have worked together for many years to develop an unbreakable relationship. Now that an outsider is forced in, this means that the team will bear additional risks. You must know that these assault teams are already executing the most demanding tasks. Difficult missions,

It would be neither wise nor fair to subject them to these additional risks. In short, there is no such practice in the history of selecting, training, and fighting Special Operations Force personnel. , and this approach is simply deviant, but I and some other leaders believe that we are going to have to integrate all the elite forces in the task force to a whole new level, and we can only rely on one to win this war. Tightly connected organizations.

What we see when we implement such an exchange plan does not seem to be divorced from the predictions of a sociologist. Although this is a forced order. But once the order is given, the elite troops will naturally send out their best combat personnel and officers. These people sent out represent their respective organizations, so the sense of group honor makes these teams send out the elites within their own teams. Go out, and these teams themselves are already carefully selected role models. These top talents often have the natural ability to communicate with others, not to mention the leadership and personal combat capabilities in their environment. It is also the benchmark by which his peers measure him.

For example, we would ask Army Special Forces operators to embed themselves into the Navy SEALs.

If we think of our global enterprise as an organism, the heart is at the heart of the war zone and the key liaison officers are our nerve endings.

When nominating key liaison officers for some key positions, we follow two criteria: first, if it doesn’t matter to you that this person leaves your team, then you must replace him; Second, if this person calls you at two o'clock in the middle of the night and you don't recognize his voice, then you must find someone else. In the past, we might have made decisions based on level, position, and sometimes the candidate's expectations for their career; but now, in order to get things right, personal quality considerations override everything else. These individuals have the difficult task of entering an unknown, sometimes hostile, bureaucratic environment and then establishing a trusting relationship with the leadership there.

Once the key liaison officers are in place, they cannot be "in their seats and distracted", which is often a common problem. Nor can they be viewed merely as reinforcements for other agencies; rather, we view these individuals as valuable resources, provided we select the right people and provide appropriate support.

We knew before this that if these people were to be effective when sent out, these key liaison officers had to have contact with and be trusted by the senior leaders of that agency, but this It is not something that can be done easily.

Major Conway's (not his real name) reception was intimidating. In an unstable Middle Eastern country, the U.S. Embassy had just reluctantly allowed our task force to send a liaison officer to join them in the broader anti-Al Qaeda war. But when this SEAL officer, who had been tempered by the flames of war, appeared there, the other party clearly showed some reservations, and this reservation was actually understandable, because the other party was worried about the sensitive information. Will it be leaked and will the task force's combat troops show up at the scene? Some concerns are as banal as newcomers taking their space at the embassy; others are deeply rooted in the cultural differences between the two institutions. Most of these worries and fears are unfounded and natural, but they do pose obstacles.

Our choice of Conway was carefully considered. He is a big man, full of energy, positive and optimistic, and loves to help others. In the course of his past missions, he once wore body armor and night-vision goggles and tiptoed with al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq in Anbar Province, but his new mission now is to make his new colleagues accept he. In Iraq, Major Conway had to fight through life and death, but now he had to rein in his conceited side.

In his new position, he initially had no access to any intelligence and nothing to do, so Conway volunteered to take out the trash. Every afternoon he went from office to office, collecting trash and throwing it into the trash. When he discovered that a colleague at the embassy liked boneless chicken breast sandwiches, Conway immediately asked the task force to bring more of the sandwiches next time. You know, the training process of a Navy SEAL costs the U.S. government hundreds of thousands of dollars, but such a person has gloriously served as a garbage collector and fast food delivery driver for three months.

However, when the situation in the Iraqi capital deteriorated, the Ambassador approached Conway, our key liaison officer, and asked him if he knew how to provide armed protection and deal with the growing al Qaeda threat in Iraq. Our Major Conway immediately gave the answer the ambassador needed, saying, "I know, that's what I'm trained to do, and I can do it better than you think—let me make the call first." Soon, all of the task force's resources were at the disposal of the interagency team within the embassy. Our key liaison officers are there doing things that have a strong sense of community, from collecting rubbish to countering terrorism. The relationship between the task force and the diplomatic team stationed in the country immediately became closer. Another node in our network comes online and is starting to make a big difference.

We found it necessary to place some important key liaisons in other departments. Like Conway, many on the task force are able to accomplish a lot with their strength of character and talent, but these individuals also need some day-to-day help from the task force. I envisioned our key liaison officer as an old-fashioned diver, with his mouth connected to the surface by an oxygen tube. Whether they can be effective depends on our ability to export resources and information to them so that they can be effective and become the people the agencies they are assigned to need. Among the things that our brother units can give, the most valuable thing is their views on the war on terrorism we are conducting. After all, our own perspective is limited, and our understanding of the full picture of the war is vague. . So we continue to provide intelligence to key liaison officers and empower them to share it with others as they see fit. Sharing information is critical because we may one day also ask for feedback from institutions that have previously benefited. Ideally, a key liaison officer would have excellent relationships with organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. For example, when we really need some sensitive signals or image intelligence urgently, the data will come to us quickly, comprehensively and without any sloppiness. Just make a phone call and the other party will never use bureaucratic politeness to stall us. . As a result, our ability to track and identify targets has improved.

As brother units began to appreciate our key liaison officers, they also began to send key liaison officers to us, so our talent pool here steadily expanded. Because our brother units are beginning to realize that the more capable their key liaison officers are, the faster they can get task force help on their most difficult missions. The empty chairs around the war communication room were now filled with people. The Joint Affairs Task Force is filled with analysts from across the United States. SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition Training builds lateral connections among aspiring SEALs, and our collaborative approach not only strengthens connections between teams within the task force, but also allows Special Agents to Strengthen ties between contingents and fraternal units. Without the cooperation of these brother units, we will have difficulty winning this war. As this liaison relationship increases, the quality of personnel dispatched by various fraternal units is also getting higher and higher, and they express their enthusiasm for us in this way. If you send a public official with little talent, it often means that the agency that sent him has built a stone wall and refuses good collaboration; if you send a "super star", it means that they are eager to participate. Our cause.

As internal "embedded programs" and key liaison officer programs are implemented, and operational intelligence briefings continue to mature, we begin to eliminate internal competition and barriers to cooperation, and trusting connections begin to form. People from all over the place find themselves increasingly familiar with each other, and even newcomers are now integrated into this close, trusting whole, and there is no doubt that everyone benefits a lot. Best of all, this is not a zero-sum game: the more you put into the system, the more feedback you get.

What best illustrates the disappearance of this territorialism is the exchange of air assets, which has always been a coveted area.

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Now, we will modify and equip Predator drones, small manned turboprop aircraft (such as Beechcraft King Air) Reconnaissance equipment, this is the so-called "intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance system". Today, this equipment has become a critical factor in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a level of importance never seen in previous wars. The intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance system has greatly increased our ability to collect target intelligence and discover new targets. During a raid, this system can transmit real-time, full-motion video from multiple locations on the ground, whereas previously commanders had to deploy large numbers of troops to surround the target location to prevent the target from escaping.

It can now distribute force more effectively, prevent the arrival of enemy reinforcements, block the target's escape route, and thus reduce the number of assault troops to a minimum. Without an ISR system, each assault might require the deployment of an additional platoon or more of troops, as well as more helicopters and other reinforcements. In short, the more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems a force can possess, the more combat missions they can perform.

Within our task force, competition for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems is fierce. Early in the war, one of the most time-consuming tasks for senior leadership was deciding how to deploy our limited intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. When a ground commander has to hand over his intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system, it often causes shock within the task force, and the morale of the affected units may be severely damaged. From the perspective of ground combatants, one moment they have a helicopter or a Predator, and the next moment there is none. In their eyes, someone just stole their equipment and it was a zero-sum game. They were convinced that they could no longer complete their mission.

When they have a clear understanding of the overall situation of the entire war, they will begin to trust their colleagues. Like the prisoner deciding whether to betray a co-defendant, our commanders have an overall understanding of the context of the entire superior's decision-making. With an understanding of the people who take away their assets, they have no idea that their needs will not be met. Opinions will also mature. In the past, for a commander, the world outside the commander's jurisdiction was a "black box". Once an asset was out of his control, he considered it to be a lost asset. Once they understand why these assets left their control and how they were used after they left their control, they will immediately understand this and respect the people who now control these tools. Things have changed. In the past, decisions were made behind closed doors; now, resource allocation is discussed in front of everyone during operational intelligence briefings. "When we talk about this all the time in front of lower-level people in our organization, we all see where the fighting is intense and where it's not," said a SEAL who worked with the task force in Iraq. In addition, sometimes we will find that handing over these assets is actually beneficial to us..." With this understanding, they can also be sure that if they want to. Perform a vital mission and get the equipment they need when necessary. A sense of holistic understanding of the entire organization now extends to all levels.

As relationships deepen throughout the organization, unit commanders will voluntarily hand over valuable equipment, sometimes even when their men are initially stunned and discouraged, because they believe The equipment was put into the hands of teams that needed it more and were performing more critical missions, and they began to see that they could quickly reap substantial rewards for doing so. In this way, even the most suspicious, tough, and aggressive combatants on the team will begin to trust the other teams. Suddenly, we have overcome the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Through trial and error, we found a way to deal with the "prisoner's dilemma" in the task force.

Nobel Prize winner and cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman believes that humans have two completely different decision-making paths psychologically: "System 1" makes decisions automatically and quickly; System 2, on the other hand, makes decisions thoughtfully and thoughtfully. Note that we often and reflexively use System 1, such as venting our emotions in front of someone, while System 2 is used when we are weighing the pros and cons of making a difficult decision or trying to perform complex calculations. system".

When we look at task forces, we find that when decisions are made using System 2, teams begin to collaborate (“If I help them now, they will help us in the future; collaboration is in my favor.” ), and the fruitful results brought by continuous cooperation will enable each team to start cooperating with other teams as long as they make decisions based on the reflexive "first system". In a word, in this case, true trust is appeared. Furthermore, this kind of trust will have a critical effect: once the degree of this trust exceeds a certain threshold, trust will become the norm.

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No superior officer planned this operation, or even directed this operation in real time. All plans emerged through intensive interactions on the ground. I can only act as a bystander in this situation. The key to the success of such an operation is to provide everyone with background information through operational intelligence briefings, and to overcome the challenges posed by the "prisoner's dilemma" through "embedded plans" and "liaison officers"

Plan" builds strong connections between teams. Only in-depth familiarity with each other can enable these different teams to work together closely - to entrust their lives and fortunes to each other. On the surface, time efficiency has been reduced, but in fact this is the cornerstone of our ability to adjust and adapt.

The understanding of the whole system and the strong interconnection are the two cornerstones. It is the combination of these two cornerstones that gives us a sense of sharing. These two cornerstones are very different from MECE. We have adhered to reductionist dogma for most of our lives, but in new environments and in response to new threats, these two cornerstones have been effective. In addition to the two cornerstones of shared consciousness, there are other factors that work together, and these factors at a lower level ensure that our small team can be successful for decades. For example, "seeing the entire system" is actually an enlarged version of the goal sharing principle. It allows our combatants to know the overall background and their own responsibilities, so that they can be calm in any situation; and the connection between teams is used by us to break the "Prisoner's Dilemma" ” This is also similar to the mutual trust between team members. As we discussed in Chapter 6, implementing some of the characteristics of the team on a larger scale and building a large team composed of small teams is what we need to do.

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