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Nifty snowmobile

A “snowmobile” is Boyd’s metaphor for creating a solution to a problem, particularly when competitors or opponents — and, therefore, time — enter the picture. The ability to build and employ snowmobiles in the heat of conflict so intrigued Boyd that he made it the heart of his strategy:

A winner is someone — individual or group — who can build snowmobiles, and employ them in an appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and unpredictable change. (Revelation)

Here’s a neat new example:  “Not a car or bicycle, but a blend — an ELF vehicle.”

Organic Transit CEO Rob Cotter took technology from aircrafts, boats and bicycles and incorporated them into a “green” 130-pound vehicle.

In Boyd’s framework, a “snowmobile” could be a piece of hardware but more likely it’s a concept or idea for achieving your objective, usually in the face of determined opposition. Even if it is hardware, you have to have an accompanying concept for employing it. Musing on how to do all this eventually led Boyd to his Conceptual Spiral, where snowmobiles become not just hardware or even concepts but underlying virtues like insight, imagination, and initiative. [Conceptual Spiral and the Revelation are available from our Articles page.]

A tip of the hat to Mitch Musgrove out in the San Francisco Bay area for sending me this link!

 

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Interlude: More Southern ambience

MSC IlonaWe had guests in a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things we often do is drag them off to Savannah for strolling and libations. While we were there, the MSC Ilona sailed majestically up the Savannah River, providing the afternoon’s entertainment for the tourists on River Street.  As always, click for a larger view.

The Port of Savannah is the country’s fourth busiest container port and fastest growing over all.  In the FY ending June 30, the port moved right at 3 million containers (imports and exports) and should comfortably exceed that figure in 2014. The port is beginning a deepening and expansion program to be able to accommodate the larger ships that will be coming through the expanded Panama Canal.

Although we don’t have an IKEA store within a 4-hour drive, we do have a giant, 789,000 sq-ft IKEA distribution center that handles 15,000 containers through the Port every year. The store recently installed a 182,300-square-foot solar array producing approximately 1,973,562 kWh of electricity annually. Virtually all the furniture in our house came from you-know-who.

Georgia TheatreAnd then last Saturday, I went up to Athens to celebrate my brother’s retirement, after teaching for 31 years at Georgia State.  We did what everybody does in Athens, we hung out.  It has to be one of the greatest towns on the planet for that purpose. I went to Ole Miss and so am partial to Oxford, but it’s just too small to compete with Athens and its incredible band scene. In keeping with the spirit of the two schools, we go in more for culture — Faulkner and that sort of thing.

Here’s the Georgia Theatre last Saturday night, featuring the Bobby Compton band. You can see his bus on the left side of the picture.

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A couple of delicious articles on Microsoft

First off, I’m  not a Microsoft basher: We have a Windows 7 PC (Dell) that we use for accounting and database work. It was inexpensive and works great more than three years after we bought it.

And I looked at the Surface before buying a Kindle Fire HD 7. Nice little machine, but much too expensive for what I use a tablet for. I didn’t buy an iPad mini, either, for much the same reason. At this point, I should confess that my wife and I own three Macs, an iPad, and two iPhones, and if I can nurse my nearly 5 year old MacBook, which I’m using to write this, until the fall or early 2014, I’ll most likely buy a MacBook Pro.

With that off my chest, there were a couple of great articles this week on the Fall of the House of Microsoft. Continue reading →

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More box technology

I’m still fascinated by these things.

brooksHere are a couple from recent shoe purchases. They are similar but not identical, which suggests that somebody is working on the design.

It’s amazing that they fabricate these boxes, apparently by the hundreds of thousands, out of cardboard no less, and with such precision that they don’t need glue, tape, or staples to stay together during shipping, at the store, or on the way home. and all for what must be negligible cost.

sauconyThe Saucony pair, by the way, represents my first foray into “zero drop” shoes. Actually they have 4mm, compared to the 10-12 on my regular shoes. I’ve been running for about 40 years, so it’s with some trepidation that I’m trying them, but they do seem to be all the rage.

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Temporary insanity

Not long ago, I received an offer to become a “temporary, part-time” faculty member at a local institution. The letter went straight to the shredder, but the thing I remember most was the section that emphasized what I was not entitled to:

  • Health care
  • Any other benefits
  • Physical space at the university
  • Tenure or progress towards tenure in any form
  • Membership in any faculty organization
  • Right to call myself “adjunct”

Other than that, welcome to the team. Continue reading →

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New Edition of the Origins of Boyd’s Discourse

OriginsOfJohnBoydsDiscourseFigureJPEGWhat better way to celebrate US Independence Day, or a slightly belated Canada Day, than with a new edition of “The Origins of Boyd’s Discourse”? Click for a larger view, and a full-sized PDF is now on the Articles page.

Lots of changes, but the basic idea remains the same: To illustrate Boyd’s “many-sided, implicit cross referencing process” at work. As he wrote in his “Abstract”:

As a result, the process not only creates the Discourse but it also represents the key to evolve the tactics, strategies, goals, unifying themes, etc., that permit us to actively shape and adapt to the unfolding world we are a part of, live in, and feed upon.

Some of the changes are:

  • Explicit incorporation of “Destruction and Creation”and Conceptual Spiral
  • Highlighting the theory of evolution by natural selection, which Boyd cites on Patterns 11 as one of the two fundamental sources of his theory of conflict
  • More thematic treatment of the ideas in Patterns of Conflict, rather than just stating their names
  • Edits, rearrangements, formatting, and other kaizen

[If you’re really into the theory of conflict, or just appreciate incredible scenery and intense competition by some of the world’s greatest athletes, the Tour de France is being covered live on the NBCSports cable channel and on various web sites.]

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Boyd, Jobs, and Creativity

Steve Jobs, that is. Unfortunately, if you take this path, you may not get a job with Bill Gates or other corporate overlord, and you probably won’t get promoted, but you just might do something wonderful.

Liberal Arts and Humanities Education: Who Is Right—Bill Gates, or the Late Steve Jobs? by Vivek Wadhwa, Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University

When students asked me what subjects they should major in to become a tech entrepreneur, I would say engineering, mathematics, and science. I used to believe that education in these fields was a prerequisite for innovation, and that engineers made the best entrepreneurs.

That was several years ago. Read more …

I’ve uploaded a chart I did for zenpundit several years ago showing some of the sources Boyd drew on for the Discourse.  Those of you who have been to the Boyd Collection at Quantico know that he didn’t just dabble in these areas, he devoured them, developing a deep understanding of subjects from military science to quantum mechanics to Taoism. Available on the Articles page.  I’m working on an update, maybe later this month.

At our little PR firm, J. Addams & Partners, we never hired anyone with a PR degree. As the founder, Jeannine Addams often said, if you’re bright and energetic, we can always teach you PR, but we can’t give you a 4-year degree in how to create, write, or think.

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Delta CEO: Orientation is the Schwerpunkt

He didn’t actually say that (Boyd did, on Organic Design, 16), but Delta CEO Richard Anderson expressed the sentiment well in a recent interview with the Associated Press. For example:

AP: As you fly around, where do you sit?
ANDERSON: I was in row 28 coming up here. I wear my badge. And I fly in coach.

I really like this, especially because it’s exactly what I recommended that Delta execs should do back when I wrote Certain to Win:

If you’re a high roller with some airline, call your 1-800 telephone number to make a reservation. Try your web site. Stand in line to check in. Check a suitcase. Fly coach. Try to change a reservation. What do you think? Excited by your own stuff? Any sign of magical pizzazz there? Any reason anybody with a choice would do it again? And while you’re back there in coach, talk to people. (p. 157)

I don’t know if he does all of these things, and I also have no idea whether other high Delta execs follow suit (a little pun, sorry). But it’s a very good sign that Delta is getting a lot right.

I’ve also berated loyalty checks — where you only use your company’s products — remember how Detroit auto factories (when there were auto factories in Detroit) used to put signs in their parking lots telling people with imported cars to go park somewhere else?

So I was delighted to read this:

ANDERSON: I’ve done long-haul to Asia. You know what I like to try to do? I like to try to fly on the competition when I go long-haul. I take my little black book and just make notes and observe what’s going on and how the airports are operating, and how your competitors are operating.

Hell yes!  But again, my question would be whether such behavior is part of the Delta culture now; do all Delta personnel fly the competition on a regular basis, and do they report on what they found? Is there an institutional process to use these reports? Put another way, does this information become part of Delta’s common implicit orientation?

Anyway, kudos to Delta. As a Million Miler living in the South, I’ve flown them, and will be flying them, a lot.

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Rededication of Boyd Hall

On June 13, 2013, Maj. Gen. John N. T. “Jack” Shanahan, USAF, gave the rededication speech of Boyd Hall at the Weapons Center, Nellis AFB, Nevada.

With the general’s kind permission, I have added a copy of his remarks to our Articles page.  General Shanahan gave a speech for the ages, and if it were possible to have embarrassed Boyd, such encomia might have done the trick.

General Shanahan is the commander of the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency at Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland, TX. AFISR is the successor unit to my old organization.