Diplomats vs. Entrepreneurs
An early look at two methods for protocol warfare
The diplomatic origins of protocols continue to be somewhat overlooked in today’s discourse. Which isn’t a big deal. If modern protocols are related to ancient political procedures, they are unrecognizable descendents. There’s plenty of value in analyzing today’s instances in isolation.
But I think it’s worthwhile looking at them in the broader scheme of things. Old political protocol shares a lot with modern attempts to improve governance mechanisms. Protocol entrepreneurs are rare, and ones well-versed in history are even rarer.
I’m not a history buff, but this throughline is something I’m idly paying attention to. After I read a shoddy translation of the German book Das Protokoll, it was clear that protocol science had a small blindspot.
The diplomat
Fluent in two sets of protocols, if not three. In that of their home country, a foreign partner, and the international organization that connects them. Rules and procedures abound.
Access to political leaders is limited to avoid overload. Filtering mechanisms are like cell walls, stopping most messages while allowing access to some important ones.
Diplomats are an organ of the state, tasked with both defense (filtering) and offense (messaging).
When it comes to reputation, diplomats are cast as industrious protagonists and/or excessively bureaucratic/incompetent villains – maybe even a trust fund kid.
I’ve never actually met one, so I’m mostly working off a Hollywood-based mental caricature. Generally, I imagine them as a worker with protocols for tools. How they use them is the differentiating factor.
Protocols have diplomatic origins. They limit the means by which people communicate. Citizens can’t just knock on their president’s door. The overlap of stakeholders’ varying desires shrinks as an organization scales.
Unlimited access to a head of state brings operations to a standstill. Same goes for any large, hierarchical network – public or private.
Protocols also exist to limit negative human behavior. Our natural impulses aren’t always conducive to highbrow social exchanges.
When you look at protocols in most domains, they share these qualities. There’s an element of channel management and an element of behavioral constraint. At some point in time, we realized that our animal spirits shouldn’t always have a seat at the table.
Ego’s egress
As former U.S. Chief of Protocol Mary Mel French put it:
“...when man first realized he had an ego, protocol found its beginning.”
She goes on to say that “protocol is not political”, which has some truth to it. An ETTO-optimal decision process is the end to which protocols are a means. It’s more like economics than politics.
On the other hand, choices about protocol are deeply political. Take a line of economic questioning far enough and it will always end at a moral conundrum.
You can’t really be one-shot ETTO-optimal. It’s always an uncomfortable tradeoff between efficiency and thoroughness. And that tradeoff is often a moral one.
Diplomacy is like a set of scales. Things seesaw back and forth in terms of who “wins” a deal. But it’s alright because part of the goal is to extend the game. Diplomats are trying to gain the upper hand for their team, but not at the cost of severing ties at the country level.
Winning is done by playing a near-infinite game – and it’s this extended timeframe that smooths out the tradeoffs. Being ETTO optimal is an equilibrium you try to float around by leveraging protocols in your favor. Even dumb protocols.
Dumb protocols + smart results = smart protocols
As long as a protocol achieves sufficiently good results, it doesn’t matter if it looks dumb. That said, if a protocol makes you look dumb, you might abandon it.
This is one reason so many physical therapy interventions fail – prescribed exercises require too large of an emotional callus.
I’d guess that a career in diplomacy has high emotional entry costs. Lots of following protocol down to the level of minutia. Indiscriminately copying everything, even vestigial rituals that no longer serve a purpose. Trying to decipher symbolic acts for meaning.
A competent diplomat – a protocol operator – has thick skin and a nose for bullshit. Thick skin to tolerate all the weird, quirky tedium of political exchange. And a nose for bullshit in order to know which protocols you can (and can’t) snub, cite, twist, or swarm.
I think the diplomat differs from the protocol entrepreneur in one key way. Diplomats are Machiavellian, slightly evil manipulators of existing protocol stacks. They find slack in rigid architecture.
Protocol entrepreneurs start in those systems, but exit entirely. Then they either change the system from outside, or fork off a new branch with their insider protocol knowledge.