Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business

by Chet Richards

In May 1863, at about the time Lee was befuddling Hooker at Chancellorsville, Confederate cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest was chasing a regiment of Union cavalry across a wide swath of northern Alabama, finally cornering them a few miles west of the Georgia border near the town of Cedar Bluff. Forrest demanded surrender, and the Union commander, a colonel named Abel D. Streight, refused. At that point, one of Forrest’s men rode up and asked for orders for his regiment, which was coming in from the north, followed shortly by another requesting orders for a regiment approaching from the south. Streight, who could also hear sounds of large amounts of equipment moving in the distance, figured the game was over and honorably surrendered his 1700 men to what turned out (to his horror) to be Forrest’s 350, less than one-quarter of one fully manned regiment. He was still demanding his guns back when Forrest put his arm around him and uttered those immortal words of strategy, “Ah Colonel, all is fair in love and war, you know.”