A couple of quotes from recent articles about the auto industry. The first is from the US, and the second from the UK, but I think you’ll get the idea.
In 2017, for example, there were 11 models available on the U.S. market for less than $20,000, according to Cox data. By the end of 2022, there were four. Then, by March 2023, only 2.
Among the cars discontinued last year was the Chevy Spark, the cheapest of which started at $13,600. Chevy sold more than 24,400 of those cars in 2021 — more than most luxury models can claim. Now, Chevy’s cheapest models cost more than $20,000.
“New cars, once part of the American Dream, now out of reach for many,” Rachel Siegel and Jeanne Whalen, Washington Post, May 7, 2023
And then,
European makers, prominently Ford, abandoning their entry-level models gifts a huge opportunity to predatory Chinese companies.
“Early Chinese cars were like the early efforts from Japanese and Korean makers: bad. No more,” Gavin Green – Car Magazine (UK), June 2023
About 18 months ago, we bought a Volvo XC60, the only car on the lot. It has the Inscription trim package — top of the line at the time — the B5 mild hybrid engine, and the advanced tech package with SAE Level 2 driver automation (same level as Tesla), and several other options. We were a little embarrassed because we really didn’t want anything so fancy, but now, it turns out to be right about the average price for a new car. And yeah, I know, Volvo is owned by Geely, a Chinese auto company (from 1999 – 2010, it was owned by Ford).
I had a lot of fun with this, and I hope you enjoy it, too.
As a reminder (for those of you who haven’t had the experience of doing one of these), this video is uncensored, unexpurgated, and most important, unedited. So if you see me making obvious mistakes, or saying something more than usually ludicrous, it’s a deep fake. I swear!
Ponch, incidentally, is co-author of The Flow System, which has a nice section on Boyd’s OODA loop, tying it into the Cynefin framework.
As Frans Osinga pointed out in his 2006 examination of John Boyd’s philosophy of conflict, Science, strategy and war: The strategic theory of John Boyd, the OODA loop is the best known but probably most misunderstood aspect of Boyd’s body of work. Even today, it’s very common to see people describe the OODA loop as a loop. However, when Boyd finally got around to producing a “sketch” of the “loop” (his terms), it was, as I’m sure practically all readers of this blog know, something entirely different.
From “The Essence of Winning and Losing,” 1996.
Why? The reason is that the OODA “loop” is an answer to a specific problem. It is not, for example a model of decision making — in fact, it simply requires you to make implicit and explicit decisions and link them to actions, all the while experimenting and learning.
On November 30, I gave a lecture on this subject to the Swedish Defense University in Stockholm. My host, Johan Ivari, arranged for it to be recorded and made available on the University’s web site. They broke it into two parts:
Finally, the secret to great leadership is revealed. Shutterstock image.
A couple of points:
The speaker’s rostrum was on a platform about 18″ above the floor, and the audience was seated pretty close to it. It made for a dynamic speaking experience, but it also explains why I seem to be bent over a lot.
The presentation has several animations which in the interests of readability, the version that accompanies my video doesn’t capture. If you’d like to see them, please download the PDF edition on our Articles page (each stage of a build is a separate slide). Also, I’m using an Apple Pencil to underline, circle, draw arrows and the like. You’ll have to infer these.
A subject I know virtually nothing about, apart from the Wikipedia article and a couple of Taleb’s YouTube videos.
That being admitted, here’s the definition from Wikipedia:
Antifragility is a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.
Certainly sounds like a generalization of “operating inside the OODA loop,” which applies to conflict between sentient organisms and organizations.
[11/11/2022 version updates link to annotations] There’s a whole category of leadership practices that are rarely taught nowadays. I’m thinking witchcraft, conjuring, necromancy, divination and the like. People have been practicing these arts for tens of thousands of years — they show up on cave walls and the Bible attests to their power — but you’ll search long and hard to find MBA programs that include them.
So in my keynote at the recently held Kanban Global Summit in San Diego, I set out to remedy this sad state of affairs.
Lycanthropy – a neglected art of leadership (Shutterstock image)
You can download the PDF (12.3 MB) of my presentation, and I’ve also included a helpful set of notes and annotations. WordPress’s Terms of Service appear to prevent me from including the actual spells, hexes, and curses themselves — a liability thing, you know. This is unfortunate, because we have all had occasions when the ability to transform into a werewolf and rip out somebody’s heart would have proven extremely useful*. But I think you’ll find enough to give your leadership that extra edge you need to be successful in these trying times.
Many thanks to David J. Anderson, founder, honcho, and chief sensei at Kanban University, for inviting me back. The University’s Kanban Maturity Model provides a tested framework for incorporating the OODA loop (the one Boyd intended) into practically any type of organization.
Also, my extreme gratitude to the staff of Kanban University for putting up with all my questions, objections, and negotiations over the past three years — the Summit was originally scheduled for 2020.
And, finally, our host facility, the Rancho Bernado Inn, might be a great place for that mid-winter, or, if you’re from my part of the world, mid-summer getaway.
*If you go around ripping out peoples’ hearts without first transforming into a werewolf, that’s not magic. You may have anger management issues.
Shepherd.com has just published my recommendations for your light summer reading. The concept is to explain why people should read one of your books, and then to recommend five others, all around a common theme. I took my inspiration from Boyd, whose basic method was to look for common themes — “invariants” — across a wide variety of domains and then use these as the building blocks for his syntheses.
Here’s an example from his 1987 briefing, Strategic Game of ? and ?
Typical Boyd to begin his presentation on strategy with stuff from mathematical logic and physics. In that spirit, I recommend works from:
Statistics
Literature
Ancient wisdom & philosophy
Anatomy and Physiology
And Robert Coram’s Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.
Just seemed like what every person ought to know. The site limits authors to five books, so I tried to pick subjects that you might have overlooked.
One of the most common ways to block change is to challenge, “OK, specifically, what do we do Monday morning?” You really can’t answer with “Oh, read over Patterns of Conflict a dozen times, and then we’ll hold a roundtable on Sun Tzu.” It just doesn’t work. Nor does “Monday morning, right after the meeting on the new promotion criteria, we’ll start working on einheit.*”
And be suspicious of the common suggestion to “create a sense of urgency.” If you really are in a situation where survival on your own terms is at risk, then ensuring a shared perception of reality will be all the motivation you need.
This post offers ideas for creating a solution to the problem of declining competitive power due to cultural reasons. In other words, you have lots of energetic, educated, and experienced people, but compelling products and services aren’t rolling out the door. Corporate entropy: Plenty of energy, but it isn’t accomplishing useful work. In that regard, here’s a short example on Blue Origin vs. Space X: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/revealed-the-secret-notes-of-blue-origin-leaders-trying-to-catch-spacex/
This was once known as the “Sears Tower”
But first, a disclosure. I’ve known David Anderson for some 11 years and have spoken at several of his events. I’ve even been mentioned in one of his books. The reason for bringing up his methodology anyway is that it’s firmly grounded in Boyd’s philosophy and has evolved into a specific answer to “What do we do Monday morning?”
With that in mind, download the “KANBAN Maturity Model: Barriers to Adoption.” Don’t worry about what the words mean at this stage, just read over some of the barriers. Here are a few right at the very first:
LACK OF UNDERSTANDING
LACK OF AGREEMENT
LACK OF TRUST OR INSUFFICIENT EMPATHY
LACK OF CUSTOMER FOCUS OR SERVICE-ORIENTATION
These should seem familiar: Einheit (“mutual trust” was Boyd’s translation)? Schwerpunkt (“focus and direction”)? Orientation (“common outlook/understanding”)? Etc.
There are some real gems as we move through the various maturity levels:
Oblivious Careerists
Managers as dating agents and traffic cops
Failure to understand the intent behind regulations (i.e., not leading by auftragstaktik)
Lack of mathematical and risk management literacy (lack of fingerspitzengefuehl)
You get the idea. It’s important to keep in mind that these are symptoms. What you need, and what the KMM methodology addresses, are the underlying causes.
I’m certainly not going to claim that this is the only methodology that will get at fundamental causes. But even if you never take the first step up the maturity levels, you might find several useful parts for your snowmobiles in this chart.
Should you be interested in more information, you can visit them at: https://djaa.com. Incidentally, I’ll be doing a keynote at the Kanban Global Summit in San Diego, March 14 – 16, 2022. Not to give away any spoilers, but I shall resurrect “The Lost Arts of Leadership.”
*Observant readers may have noticed the lack of initial caps, or italics, or the odd umlaut in the elements of Boyd’s organizational climate. Got tired of all this, so I’ve declared them to be English words, where we don’t do such things. Consider them recent loan words from German, on a par with autobahn, blitzkrieg, kindergarten, schadenfreude (my personal favorite), and umlaut.
Slightly East of New 
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