Turn Mismatches into Opportunities to Seize Advantage
“An important mindset flip creative leaders have is instead of seeing friction as a pain, they view it as a gift. The gift of friction is that it shows you where something needs to change.” Suzanne Gibbs Howard
Note: This is the third article in a series exploring how to learn and adapt in the face of uncertainty and constant change. For important background, please see part one and part two.
Beyond the OODA Loop
Colonel John Boyd’s contributions to strategic thought extend well beyond the OODA loop. His body of work also includes a more general theory of the strategic behavior of complex adaptive systems in adversarial conditions.
Boyd ultimately viewed conflict as a dynamic contest between systems that are trying to learn, evolve and adapt in an uncertain, ever-changing reality — while also denying their adversary from doing the same. (Osinga, 2015) Creative adaptation is a central theme running through all of his work.
Boyd argued that adaptability occurs at various levels of conflict (tactical, operational, strategic, grand strategic) and across various time scales. Each level of conflict has its own definition of adaptability and its own requirements.
- In the first article in this series, we discussed how to enhance adaptability at the tactical and operational levels by continually reshaping our orientation to match up with the changing world around us.
- The second article outlined a process for expanding our repertoire of mental models to enhance creative adaptation at the strategic level.
- This article focuses on adaptability at the grand strategic level — our capacity to shape the broader political and societal environment.
What is Grand Strategy?
At a minimum, grand strategy consists of an understanding of the basic contours of the strategic environment, our highest interests and objectives within that environment, the most pressing threats to those interests, and the actions we can take in order to address threats and promote our own survival and well-being. (Kahl & Brands, 2017)
The grand strategic level is also where we decide what mode of engagement (physical, mental, moral) is best suited to the nature of the situation and the power dynamics that are present. Ideally, we have developed a broad enough repertoire that we are able to select a mode of engagement in which the adversary’s weaknesses are accentuated. (Osinga, 2007)
Grand strategy, then, is both diagnostic and prescriptive. It combines an analysis of what is happening in the world and how it impacts us, with a more forward-looking concept of how we might employ our various tools or forms of power to sustain or improve our position. (Kahl & Brands, 2017)
Boyd suggested that “sensible” grand strategy has four functions (Richards, n.d.):
- Improve our fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an ever-changing environment
- Pump up our resolve, drain away our adversary’s resolve, and attract the uncommitted
- End the conflict on favorable terms
- Ensure that the conflict and peace terms do not provide seeds for (unfavorable) future conflict
Unlike military strategy, which must of necessity be kept secret and shrouded in ambiguity and misinformation, grand strategy must be well publicized and proclaimed by leaders on a daily basis. This is especially true during the early phases of a conflict when alliances are being formed. (Richards, n.d.)
Note: When thinking about grand strategy, it’s useful to expand our definition of “adversary” beyond a specific identifiable person or organization. For example, opposition could take the form of a frozen status quo made up of overlapping forces that prevent change from taking root. If these conditions threaten our ability to survive and thrive on our own terms, it may become necessary for us to enter into conflict in order to preserve our own interests.
A Contest of Interaction and Isolation
In formulating his ideas on the strategic behavior of complex adaptive systems, Boyd drew inspiration from a wide range of sources including biology and physics. He understood that all living systems are open systems — surviving only through the exchange of matter, energy and information with the outside world.
Without this kind of interaction, living systems operate in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics by exhibiting increased disorder, or entropy, over time. If a system becomes isolated, it will eventually lose internal cohesion and external support, its delayed and misinformed reactions will be ineffective, and it will fail to adjust correctly to the changed environment.
As a result, Boyd believed that the strategic game is one of interaction and isolation. To succeed in this contest, we must diminish our adversary’s ability to communicate or interact with their environment and each other while at the same time sustaining or improving ours. We can engage in this contest of interaction and isolation across three dimensions: physical, mental and moral. (Boyd, 1987) Each one requires a distinct approach to gain the upper hand.
Turn Mismatches into Opportunities to Seize Advantage
By alerting us to the need to reshape our orientation, mismatches play an essential role in the process of creative adaptation. Boyd’s ideas about interaction and isolation come alive when we practice seeking out these mismatches — between people’s expectations/theories/beliefs, and their experience of the world — within both our own system and that of our adversary.
Interacting with the external world through a diverse array of communication channels provides us with valuable information that helps us to detect the presence of mismatches. The analytical/synthetic feedback loop (as outlined here) illustrates how we can resolve such mismatches and adapt our understanding of the world. Ideally, our evolving orientation helps us to identify mismatches more quickly and easily than our adversary so we can shape the unfolding dynamics of the conflict.
As we are working to resolve our own mismatches, we must also identify and exploit the physical, mental and moral mismatches within an adversary’s system in order to increase their internal friction and isolate them from their environment, their allies and each other.
The most powerful way to exploit an adversary’s mismatches in the social and political realm is through the moral dimension of conflict.
Winning Hearts and Minds with “Motherhood and Mismatches”
In moral conflict, our power is proportionate to the degree that our actions and messages reflect and resonate with the deepest values and aspirations of the population. (Backbone Campaign, n.d.) An effective moral strategy can act as a force multiplier for the rest of our strategic efforts. It pumps up friendly resolve and undermines the dedication and determination of any competitors or adversaries.
Moving beyond the physical conflict roots of his earlier work, Boyd applied his enthusiasm for mismatches to the social and political arena in his development of Motherhood and Mismatches (M&M) strategy.
Chuck Spinney (2013) explains that the basic goal of an M&M strategy is to build support for and attract people to our cause by framing a “motherhood” position — i.e., a unifying vision or position of unassailable good to which no one can object, like the mythical American way of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’ Boyd believed the U.S. Constitution represented such a theme for this country.
“The key to setting up a successful M&M strategy is building the motherhood position, then making it into a moral fortress. This is easier said than done, because it involves defining your cause nontrivially in self-evidently positive terms and then shaping the environment as well as your self-definition in a way that always reinforces that motherhood position.” (Spinney, 2008)
We then invite our adversary to repeatedly engage with our unifying vision in a way that exposes the mismatches between:
- what our adversary claims to be true and people’s actual experience of reality,
- what our adversary claims they are doing and what they are actually doing, and
- who they say they are and who they actually are.
By violating codes of conduct or behavior patterns that they profess to uphold or that others expect them to uphold, our adversary becomes increasingly isolated on the mental and the even more decisive moral level of conflict. At the same time, our unifying vision increasingly draws people to our cause by reflecting their values and aspirations.
If we choose to pursue this type of strategy, it is crucial that we strive to minimize or avoid moral mismatches ourselves. By failing to match word and deed, we create a vulnerability in our system that can breed uncertainty and mistrust and generate disorder, or entropy, within our organization. At that point, all the adversary has to do is take advantage of our own self-induced weakness via their own M&M strategy.
According to Chet Richards (2013), the M&M strategy is quite useful in politics and bureaucratic conflict, and in these arenas it often works better than trying to unravel an adversary by operating inside their OODA loops.
See recent examples of this type of strategy in the political sphere here and here.
The Importance of Attracting the “Uncommitted”
The M&M strategy doesn’t assume that our adversary’s most enthusiastic supporters will change their minds as a result of our campaign. It’s not designed to. Remember that grand strategy instead seeks to attract the “uncommitted” — people who feel pressed by circumstances into supporting the adversary. This group is often slighted or even antagonized in modern day discussions of conflict. (Richards, n.d.) Boyd placed special emphasis on the uncommitted due to their importance in isolating adversaries from potential allies.
If these people choose to join our cause, that’s great, but it’s not necessary. At the very least, our efforts can persuade them to refrain from actions that actively provide support to the adversary. (Richards, n.d.) In effect, we can try to minimize the number of opponents we face by winning over (or even just neutralizing) those who are only marginally committed to the adversary’s cause.
To attract these allies, “Boyd advises gaining an appreciation for the underlying self interests, critical differences of opinion, internal contradictions, frictions and obsessions” that we and any potential or real adversaries must contend with. (Richards, n.d.)
Making Choices for Successful Evolution
Creative adaptation is at the heart of our ability to survive and thrive in an uncertain and ambiguous world. If we want to be successful in our work, we must be able to learn and evolve faster than those who wish to hold us back. John Boyd’s body of work helps us strengthen our sensemaking skills at every level — from tactics to grand strategy. By understanding the factors that enhance our own capacity to adapt and those that impair our adversary’s ability to do so, we increase our ability to achieve our desired impact even in the face of sophisticated resistance.
Where in your organization do you see warning signs of physical, mental and/or moral isolation? How is this impacting your effectiveness? Can Boyd’s work illuminate any outdated assumptions that may be contributing to the isolation?
Is your organization taking full advantage of all of its forms of power, or are you leaving important tools on the table? How can you begin applying these principles to accelerate progress in the areas you care about most?
Thanks for reading. You can follow me here to read upcoming articles in this series as they are published.
Previous in this Series
Sources
Backbone Campaign (n.d.). Grand strategy and Backbone’s theory of change. Retrieved from http://www.backbonecampaign.org/gs-toc
Boyd, J. R. (1987, June). A strategic game of ? and ? Retrieved from http://www.dnipogo.org/boyd/pdf/strategy.pdf
Boyd, J. R. (1996, January). The essence of winning and losing. Retrieved from http://pogoarchives.org/m/dni/john_boyd_compendium/essence_of_winning_losing.pdf
Hammond, G. T. (2012, March 23) The essential Boyd. Retrieved from https://americawar.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/thefullboyd.pdf
Hammonds, K. H. (2002, May 31). The strategy of the fighter pilot. FastCompany.com. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/44983/strategy-fighter-pilot
Kahl, C., & Brands, H. (2017, January 31). Trump’s grand strategic train wreck. ForeignPolicy.com. Retrieved from http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31/trumps-grand-strategic-train-wreck/
Osinga, F. P. (2007). Science, strategy and war: The strategic theory of John Boyd. [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Osinga, F. P. (2015). The enemy as a complex adaptive system: John Boyd and airpower in the postmodern era. In J. A. Olsen (Ed.), Airpower reborn: the strategic concepts of John Warden and John Boyd. [Kindle version, pp. 48–92]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Richards, C. (2013, March 22). John Boyd, Conceptual Spiral, and the meaning of life. Retrieved from https://fasttransients.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/boyd_cs_meaning_of_life8.pdf
Richards, C. (n.d.). Grand strategy. Retrieved from http://www.dnipogo.org/fcs/boyd_grand_strategy.htm
Schake, K. (2017, February 7). Republicans are willing to ride the Trump rollercoaster for one simple reason. Qz.com. Retrieved from https://qz.com/904024/moderate-republicans-havent-turned-on-donald-trump-for-one-simple-reason/
Spinney, F. C. (2008, November 5). How Obama won. Retrieved from http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/11/05/how-obama-won/
Spinney, F. C. (2013, August 27). Chuck Spinney: Robert Parry on CIA within CIA coup against Jimmy Carler [sic]. Retrieved from http://phibetaiota.net/2013/08/chuck-spinney-robert-parry-on-cia-within-cia-coup-against-jimmy-carler/
Spinney, F. C. (2014, May). George Hishmeh — Pope Francis confronting Zion in courageous brilliant manner. Retrieved from: http://phibetaiota.net/2014/05/chuck-spinney-george-hishmeh-on-pope-francis-confronting-zionist-israel-is-a-courageous-and-brilliant-manner/
