A Spy's Guide to Thinking

by John Braddock

Thinking, in its simplest form, looks like this: Notice the end: Action. If thinking doesn’t end with action, it’s useless. Taking action is why we think. If you’re thinking just to think, that’s useless, too.

When Boyd broke thinking into those steps, he discovered something interesting: Whichever pilot goes through the process quickest is the one who usually wins. He called going through the process and repeating it a loop.

The scientific method says: Develop a hypothesis, Test it and observe the results. With results in hand, decide whether your hypothesis was correct.

You’ll notice something interesting about the way scientists think: they don’t start with data. They start with a hypothesis. Then they go to the data. Good thinkers, including intelligence agencies, don’t start with data, either.

When thinking about what someone else will do, it’s easy to ask the wrong question first. We might ask something like, “What’s the other side trying to achieve?” Or “What’s their endgame?”

The first question should always be, “What kind of game do they think we’re playing?”

Power politics are zero-sum games, no matter what politicians want us to believe.

Whatever the context, positive-sum games require exchange. They require voluntary action. Benefits to both sides.

Best of all, the games shortcut gets us closer to the Holy Grail of thinking: predicting what others will do next.

The best way to win a zero-sum game is to be good at positive-sum games.