Boyd’s Theories

by

For example, …

One of the most frequent complaints by people when they first attempt Boyd’s “Destruction and Creation” is “What in the heck is he talking about?”

Several years ago, one of Boyd’s closest associates, Chuck Spinney, attempted to fix this problem by supplying examples to illustrate some of Boyd’s conclusions. With his kind permission, I’ve uploaded his briefing Evolutionary Epistemology to our Articles page.

Suggest you do a careful read of the original, then go back and forth with Chuck’s a couple of times.

by

A dash of chi goes a long way

I haven’t traveled by car much in Pennsylvania and the Northeast, so although I know what Sheetz and Wawa are, the loyalty even fanaticism they inspire are new to me.

Wawa’s customers have been known to tattoo its name on their biceps. Its Facebook page has passed one million “likes.” The tie-dyed Hoagiefest T-shirt that the chain sells each summer is a collectors’ item.

Nobody down here gets this excited by Circle K or Quick Stop.

The New York Times ran a feature on them Saturday, by the suspiciously named Trip Gabriel, that provided clues to this strange phenomenon, and it turns out to be our old friend chi:

They operate convenience stores that update the old formula known as “Coke and smokes” by offering self-serve soda fountains and cappuccino bars, friendly service and, especially, fresh sandwiches ordered on a touch screen.

You see, most people who own convenience stores seem obsessed with cost cutting as the key to success, giving their places a dreary Third World atmosphere. You expect gasoline and junk food and you get gasoline and junk food. Sun Tzu, though, advised generals to engage with the cheng and win with the chi. In other words, do the expected well but then also (they don’t trade-off) throw in something delightful:

Wawa is my local bank. The best marketing tool in the world is that you don’t pay a fee for the ATM. Obviously, many people will spend something in the store at the same time. Still, it is a marvelous perk.

The trick is that it has to be something customers find delightful, and, because people quickly become jaded, it’s a dynamic process.

 

by

Table I

It has come to my attention …

that some of the e-book versions of Certain to Win, well at least one of them, is missing Table I, What Wins, from page 43.

Sorry about that. Here it is:

Table I—What Wins

Things We Want To Have On Our Side:

  • Sense of Mission
  • Morale
  • Leadership
  • Harmony
  • Teamwork

Which Allow Us To:

  • Appear Ambiguous
  • Be Deceptive
  • Generate Surprise & Panic
  • Seize & Keep The Initiative
  • Create & Exploit Opportunities

Which Cause These In The Enemy:

  • Bickering
  • Scapegoating
  • Confusion
  • Panic
  • Rout
  • Mass Defections & Surrender
by

Why not just call it “lean”?

Chris Anderson, CEO of the civilian drone company 3D Robotics, has an opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times where he coins the catchy term “quicksourcing.”  His main operation is in San Diego, and to better compete with the Chinese, he set up a second plant across the border in Tijuana. As he put it:

As any entrepreneur can tell you, the shorter and more nimble a supply chain is, the better.

A textbook description of “lean,” but should be “any manufacturer.”

After enumerating all the internal advantages, which are real but important only if you’re cranking out products that sell, he comes to the strategic advantages:

Finally, a short supply chain is an incentive to innovate. … when you’re doing just-in-time manufacturing, you can change the product every day if you want — whether to take advantage of some better or cheaper component or to improve the design.

In other words, you can learn more quickly and incorporate, that is, test, what you learn more quickly.  Observe, orient, hypothesis, test. Should be familiar.

by

Did we just surrender?

The United States cannot fight a war against radical Islamism and win …

There are those who will tell you that if you can’t sit in on meetings of our national security apparatus, the best alternative is to read George Friedman. So his most recent column in Stratfor, Avoiding Wars that Never End, might be taken as a trial balloon for a less intrusive policy for dealing with the treat posed by radical Islam. Friedman proposes returning to the strategy that proved successful in the two great wars of the twentieth century:

The United States cannot fight a war against radical Islamism and win … But the United States has the option of following U.S. strategy in the two world wars. The United States was patient, accepted risks and shifted the burden to others, and when it acted, it acted out of necessity, with clearly defined goals matched by capabilities. Waiting until there is no choice but to go to war is not isolationism. Allowing others to carry the primary risk is not disengagement. Waging wars that are finite is not irresponsible.

Continue reading →

by

Apres moi, le deluge

George Friedman, Founder and CEO of Stratfor, is always worth reading for the same reason that, say, James Kilpatrick was: You might not have agreed with much that he wrote, but there were usually a few nuggets amidst the infuriation, and he wrote so amazingly well. In fact, in his later years, his columns on writing were all I remember.

Friedman has an important column today in Stratfor, The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power. He opens with:

I received a great deal of feedback, with Europeans agreeing that this is the core problem and Americans arguing that the United States has the same problem, asserting that U.S. unemployment is twice as high as the government’s official unemployment rate. My counterargument is that unemployment in the United States is not a problem in the same sense that it is in Europe because it does not pose a geopolitical threat. The United States does not face political disintegration from unemployment, whatever the number is. Europe might.

And proceeds to argue most eloquently that the United States faces exactly that. This was also something Boyd worried about. For examples, here’s part of his discussion of the prerequisites for an insurrection:

Insurrection/revolution becomes ripe when many perceive an illegitimate inequality—that is, when the people see themselves as being exploited and oppressed for the undeserved enrichment and betterment of an elite few. (Patterns, 94)

Continue reading →

by

OODA sighting

I assume most of you have seen Tom Friedman’s oped in the NYT today, “More risk-taking, less poll-taking.”

He opens with:

THE U.S. military trains its fighter pilots on a principle called the “OODA Loop.” It stands for observe, orient, decide, act. The idea is that if your OODA Loop is faster and more accurate than the other pilot’s, you’ll shoot his plane out of the sky. If the other pilot’s OODA Loop is better, he’ll shoot you down. Right now, our national OODA Loop is broken.

Although we could quibble with his use of the term (for how Boyd actually used it, see “Boyd’s OODA Loop” on the Articles page), his claim that our “national OODA loop is broken” has some validity.

Recall that in Boyd’s framework, action flows from orientation. Individuals have orientations, but when we’re talking about countries or other groups, we need a surrogate for orientation. What Boyd suggested was something called a “common outlook” or “similar implicit orientation,” which he describes on pages 74 and 79 of Patterns and pp. 18-23 of Organic Design.

What Friedman appears to be arguing, and in this I think he’s right, is that we have nothing like the common implicit orientation that we need to implement solutions to our problems, and that the President’s focus now should be on creating one.

I haven’t seen the movie, but didn’t Lincoln say something about a house divided?