I set out to fix this and the first thing I needed was a map.

Now, it’s worth remembering where I was back in 2004. I had a purpose which wasn’t static despite my belief it was. I was jumping to strategy whilst ignoring landscape, climate and doctrine. I was using storytelling to communicate with the entire group. I had no mechanism of learning. I was simply copying secrets of success from others combined wit... See more

figure 7: the strategy cycle - https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1... See more

The best way I’ve found to cope with this cycle is through the work of the exceptional John Boyd. In order to understand the process of air combat, John Boyd developed the OODA loop. This is a cycle of observe the environment, orient around it, decide and then act. In figure 7 below, I’ve married together both Sun Tzu and John Boyd to create a stra... See more

The point of this example is to demonstrate three things. First, the process of strategy is not a linear process but an iterative cycle. The climate may affect your purpose, the environment may affect your strategy and your actions may affect all. Second, acting is essential to learning. Lastly your purpose isn’t fixed, it changes as your landscape... See more

The best way I’ve found to think about this problem is with the game of paintball. You start off with a purpose, maybe it’s to capture the flag in a building. The next step is to understand the landscape and the obstacles in your path. Naturally, a bunch of newbies will tend to charge out onto the field of battle without understanding their landsca... See more

I was clearly clueless but at least I had found five factors that I wanted to use to fix our strategy, though I had no idea how to do this. But that presented another problem. What order matters? Is climate more important than landscape? Maybe leadership is more important than purpose? Is there a strict order in which we move through these things?