1/Great post here on the importance of Diversity of Thought in your organization. This is a real challenge in SOF and the IC. https://fs.blog/2019/03/stormtrooper-problem/

2/ In my classes I talk about the idea that it isn’t possible to think outside the box because your box is your mindset created by your own experiences, education, training, worldview, and constrained by biases and external factors.

3/You can grow your box or add more boxes, but you can’t think outside of it. If you have people with the same experiences, etc., then their mindset (boxes) probably overlap too much and you will run into this Stormtrooper Problem.

4/If you want to solve the wicked problem, the answer may lay outside of your own mindset, so you can either grow that mindset which takes time, or add a diverse mindset to your organization

5/How we hire in SOF and IC (due to security requirements) limits the diversity of our thought, and thus limits our approach to problems. I can imagine that many members of the OSS would never have made it through today’s security.

6/However, leaders must be aware that if you hire someone that is such a “misfit” as this post describes, that they can not fit within your organizational culture, *or your culture can’t adapt,* then it won’t work. If the boxes don’t overlap at all, people may not work together.

7/I’ve seen this happen in the past, what on paper looked like exactly what this post suggested, but it failed ultimately because the organizational culture was built on “what have you done like us = credibility”, and this person was quickly isolated and ineffective.