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

by Chet Richards

The important point is that maneuver warfare is high tempo warfare. People don’t wait around for the commander to make a “decision” before taking action, although the best commanders somehow seem to be at the Schwerpunkt when things start to break loose. With enough mutual experience and trust—Einheit—people throughout the organization know what to do and will take the initiative to make it happen. Quickness is critical, because a gap will only be an opportunity for a brief period, until the enemy force reorients. If the enemy’s collective OODA loop is quicker than ours (reflecting their Einheit and Fingerspitzengefühl), they could arrange traps or ambushes of our penetrating forces. If ours is quicker, we can create or find gaps and exploit them faster than the enemy can cope and perhaps precipitate a collapse and rout.