This is an edited letter to a Naval officer that I correspond with:
You flatter me by saying about my approach to strategy formulation, “such a model would improve our approach to military strategy.” Although I do think it would improve anyone’s approach ;-)
You flatter me by saying about my approach to strategy formulation, “such a model would improve our approach to military strategy.” Although I do think it would improve anyone’s approach ;-)
But it has dangers.
First, most people won’t take the career risks involved in doing it. The highest-probability way to move forward in a career is to do what you are told with no questions asked. In business, that means understanding the goals assigned to you and executing flawlessly. Management is running the business today. Strategy is running the business tomorrow.
My approach means doing something a boss almost never asks you to do; rethink the current strategy. Any new approach is an explicit or implicit criticism of the status quo. And your boss either created the current strategy or has benefited from executing it well. So, even if your boss asks you to formulate something new, she almost never feels great about what you come up with. (Unless your boss already has come up with a similar strategy and wants to use you as a pawn to test it out so that he can de-risk it for his own career!)
If a person is not willing to take career risk, it’s almost impossible for a person to follow my path.
Second, and related to the first, the farther from same/same you go towards different/different, the lower the likelihood of finding something that you can implement back at same/same. And, even if you have a strong instinct that there is something valuable out in different/different, you don’t know how long it will take or how much it will cost to find it. Think of the sailors like Vasco da Gamba, Christopher Columbus, or Magellan. You might risk more than your career; your life is at risk. Out in the realm of different/different, “there be dragons.”
Finally, a person who follows this path has to retrain their mind. It starts with cultivating curiosity. It includes rigorous practice of epistemological humility. You have to think like a heretic and/or rebel; challenging all received wisdom. It requires stripping away of cognitive biases. Then it requires building skills in the new areas of exploration. Dilettantes may find a new strategy but that is certainly luck. A polymath (and, polyglot) is more likely to find the gold in the “new world.”
Such people are very rare.
If you respond positively to this—if you already do this—you are very rare!
Email me. I want to be in your orbit!
Email me. I want to be in your orbit!