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

by Chet Richards

During its period of greatest triumph, from 1948 to 1973, the Israeli Army went to great lengths to build mutual trust. You could not, for example, come into the army as an officer. Everybody started as an 18-year old draftee or volunteer. From among this crowd, the best were selected to become NCOs and finally officers. Now here is the critical idea: While they were moving up, from squad leader to platoon leader and company commander, they generally stayed in their original units. All of the officers and sergeants shared a common background, knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and could communicate rapidly and accurately using very few words. So perhaps it is ironic that today, some Israelis credit trust for whatever success was achieved by the first intifada, the largely unarmed Palestinian uprising that caused Israel far more problems than the Arab armies ever did. Intifada leaders, it turns out, built mutual trust through years of organizing within Israeli prison camps. This trust on a person-to-person level had proven stronger than the factional rivalries that divided these leaders before they were jailed.