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

by Chet Richards

happened upon Tom Peters’ Thriving on Chaos.

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes, IX, 1

“Much strategy,” ancient commentators wrote, “triumphs over little.”

In other words, the purpose of Blitzkrieg strategy was not so much to cope with chaos, but to cause and then exploit it, and it is this cascading of panic and chaos that accounts for the German’s “string of luck.”

He that would run his company on visible figures alone will soon have neither company nor visible figures to work with. W. Edwards Deming20

What does it take to win? This question occupies the rest of the book, which will base its answer on a concept known as agility, another word that has lost its original meaning through careless application. Boyd, however, used the term in a specific sense, to mean the ability to rapidly change one’s orientation—roughly, worldview—in response to what is happening in the external world.

The essence of agility and of applying Boyd’s ideas to any form of competition is to keep one’s orientation well matched to the real world during times of ambiguity, confusion, and rapid change, when the natural tendency is to become disoriented.

Time—in particular how long it takes our side to reorient compared to how long it takes the opponent—is Boyd’s primary device for accomplishing this, which is why the name “time-based competition” also came to be applied to this approach to strategy.21

“C’est magnifique, ma c’est ne pas la guerre.”

Boyd was famous for browbeating his audiences with the mantra, “People, ideas, and hardware—in that order!” What we have seen so far reinforces Boyd’s conclusion. In all the battles and business examples noted in chapter II, as well as in the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, groups of dedicated people found and exploited weaknesses in their larger and better-financed adversaries.

This might lead one to suspect that in any competitive endeavor, if you can be modeled (“sand-tabled,” as Boyd referred to it) you aren’t using strategy at all, and you can be defeated.

Boyd called them “an organizational climate for operational success,” and the organization can be a business, a political campaign, or, of course, an army. Key Attributes of the Blitzkrieg • Einheit: Mutual trust, unity, and cohesion • Fingerspitzengefühl: Intuitive feel, especially for complex and potentially chaotic situations • Auftragstaktik: Mission, generally considered as a contract between superior and subordinate • Schwerpunkt: Any concept that provides focus and direction to the operation

Fingerspitzengefühl: Intuitive Skill Literally a fingertip feeling or sensation, it is usually translated as “intuitive skill or knowledge.” It provides its owner an uncanny insight into confusing and chaotic situations and is often described as the “ability to feel the battle.”

Schwerpunkt: Focus and Direction This brings us to Schwerpunkt, which is any device or concept that gives focus and direction to our efforts. The word literally translates as “hard/difficult point,” but its real meaning is more like center of gravity, focal point, or main focus. It can also mean “emphasis.”

that one side is better at it than the other. An “asymmetric fast transient,” though, is not a traditional maneuver done more quickly, even much more quickly. In business, it should not conjure up an image of doing what you’re doing now, just doing it faster. The “transient” is the change between maneuvers. In Boyd’s concept, the ideal asymmetric fast transient is an abrupt, unexpected, jerky, disorienting change that causes at least a hesitation and preferably plants the seeds of panic in the other side. It’s a “What-the f___k!” change in circumstances,

“Orient” is the key to the process. Conditioned by one’s genetic heritage, surrounding culture, and previous learning, the mind combines fragments of ideas, information, conjectures, impressions, etc., to form the “many-sided, implicit cross-references,” which become a new orientation. How well your orientation matches the real world is largely a function of how well you observe, since in Boyd’s conception, “observe” is the only input from the outside. Like the canopy on the Korean-era MiGs, anything that restricts the inflow of information or ideas can lead to mismatches (disorientations) between what you think is happening and what actually is and may also delay you from spotting (and so acting upon) these mismatches.

This means that in the OODA concept as Boyd envisioned it, competition is not a simple cycle. This is a critical idea that is often misunderstood: You are simultaneously observing any mismatches between your conception of the world and the way the world really is, trying to reorient to a confusing and threatening situation, and attempting to come up with ideas to deal with it. It is the quickness of the entire cycle, and in particular, the time it takes to, in Boyd’s language, “transition from one orientation state to another,” and not just or even particularly the speed of the O-to-O-to-D-to-A axis, that determines agility and competitive power.74

way, Boyd defined “agility” in these terms: A side in a conflict or competition is more agile than its opponent if it can execute its OODA loops more quickly.

Friction “Friction,” wrote the 19th century Prussian general and philosopher Carl von Clausewitz, “is the only conception that more or less corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper.”

The Americans would be less dangerous if they had a regular army. British General Frederick Haldimand, Boston, 1776.90