Vanguard Magazine

18DECEMBER 2024/JANUARY 2025 www.vanguardcanada.com I N T E R V I E W BGen HORNER: The way I look at it from the Fusion Lab perspective is every year is a rebuilding year for my team. Because every iterative development we have to do requires a dif- ferent set of skills or a different set of hu- man capacity to get after the challenge. And so, I want to recognize that some- times we're on the defense and sometimes we're on the offense. And those times when we're on the offense, and that's the experi- mentation series we're working through, or the targets we're trying to get after, you need more data analytics and more analy- sis and more operational planning thinkers when it changes to a different role, or a different sport even. You need to be able to transition and adapt your team to what you need to do. Fundamentally, it's the mechanism to create a rebuilding year every year in that arena. To create the capacity to change on the fly, as it were, from offense to defense in a way that allows you to transition and not lock yourself into enduring contracts that are 10 or 15 years long and (worth) hundreds of millions of dollars, but short, innovative contractual solutions to deliver small, iterative development in an agile fashion. DAVE ANDERSON: Q: There's a truism that you can't surge trust, and it's usually followed by, trust is hard won, but it's easily lost. From your perspective, in terms of which part of the ecosystem you represent, what does that mean to you? Talk to me about trust from your perspective. BGen HORNER: So, the Canadian forces is a risk-averse organization unless it's facing the enemy on the battlefield. And then we will take unbelievable risk for our country, for our countrymen, for our comrades in arms and so on. When we are here in the glorious town of Ottawa, we take no risk because we're not allowed. And so, trust comes from creating a space, at least the way I see it, to operate with some risk. I'm lucky that my commander...gave me freedom of maneuver and trust to solve a problem that I told him honestly, I didn't know how to solve. And so, from that innovation ecosystem perspective, it was early conversations around, Hey I need you to de-risk, the NDOIC, or the National Defense Operation Intelligence Center. Ten years from now, we will have built it, and we will all move into it, and it will be level three and it'll be awesome.... (My Commander said) "de-risk that, don't build it." Right. But (I said), "You want me to de-risk this, but I don't know what that looks like yet." And he said, "I know, neither do I. Figure it out." That's the concept of, hey I trust you to do your job, even though we are not re- ally sure what that means yet. But when we get to the future, you better have that squared away. WENDY HADWEN: I don't agree that it's risk averse. I hear what you're saying about the freedom to take all the risk on the battlefield and feel- ing like Ottawa is a place of no risk. But I work every day with CAF colleagues, and I see a lot of risk-taking, in terms of the advice that they're providing, in terms of their appetite to do something innovative, and in terms of their willingness to take difficult decisions. I acknowledge that there may be a feel- ing when you talk about big procurements that the trust isn't there. And the lack of trust may feel like it manifests in a reduc- tion of appetite for risk. But what I think really is that trust usually follows a proven track record and being honest about mis- takes. And I'll be honest with you, I think trying to advance major IT transforma- tion and technology issues is an environ- ment where there isn't really a proven track record in government. And I know that many CAF feel like they're not part of government. In and of itself, that is already a bad place to start from. So of course we can do better. I think that one of the ways to get through this is to build the relationships with partners that are non-traditional inside govern- ment. I mentioned elected officials, and now I'm gonna mention your friends and mine in the Department of Treasury, or Treasury Board or Finance. The more they understand the environment and the more they understand the trust and the proven track record that you're building, ...I think the more you're positioned for success as you take bigger risks. PAT THAUBERGER: Risk and trust are absolutely either two sides of the same coin or there is definitely a complex interrelationship. Actually, not even that complex, a pretty linear relation- ship between trust and risk and how that manifests itself. And I think you started it Dave, and then you mentioned it as well, Chris and Wendy, where the trust aspect of it all comes down to communication and establishing that relationship right out of the gate, where you can at least start in- forming some expectation management.... So I think that's the first step, establish- ing that and then having continuous lines of communication open where you are reaffirming your shared goals and shared objectives to try and achieve an outcome. And then right away, you've minimized or mitigated a lot of those levels of risk. And I think there's also an opportunity for us to reconsider what we mean by risk versus uncertainty. Is uncertainty the same as risk? Uncertainty is a facet of risk, and it impacts on the risk, but I think then, un- derstanding if we are talking about the risk – reputational, institutional, financial, pro- grammatic? All too often it comes down from an industry perspective. It comes down to very, very defined discrete risks – scope, schedule, and cost, all of which are bad. As opposed to some of what I would offer are higher strategic risks of sover- eign capability, sustainment of domestic industry, the ability to respond for future requirements to CAF requirements and needs. COL STROHMEYER: I would offer a slightly different perspec- tive on risk. And this may not be right, and many may disagree with that, and that's okay. When I, and the effort that I'm lead- ing for the Deputy Secretary of Defense, think about risk, I think about it in the way that the Army taught me to think about it in Army school like 10 years ago. And that's in terms of risk actually being some- thing to be actively sought out as an op- portunity to seize and exploit initiative. That's a pretty significant paradigm shift. Obviously, we want to be prudent with how we do that. But when we think about

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