Chet Richards interview
Dr. Chester "Chet" Richards was an associate of the late Col John Boyd from the mid-1970s, when they were both at the Pentagon, until Boyd's death in 1997. During his career, he has built computer models for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, sold airplanes in the Middle East, and managed lean production and aircraft requirements programs at Lockheed. He is now a consultant associated with the Atlanta public relations firm, Tarkenton & Addams, http://www.taradd.com, which arranges for him to deliver Boyd's Patterns of Conflict and other presentations on this subject.
Dr. Richards is also a retired USAF reserve colonel, where he served as the Reserve Air Attaché to Saudi Arabia, and he holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Mississippi. His latest book on Boyd and strategy, A Swift, Elusive Sword, was recently translated into Russian.
Few understand the principles of John Boyd as well as Chet Richards. Through his websites War, Chaos, and Business and Defense and the National Interest, he keeps Boyd's genius and contribution to society alive. We at Sonshi.com are grateful for Dr. Richard's work and are proud and honored to have him here. Boyd's briefings are available for download at http://www.d-n-i.net/second_level/boyd_military.htm.
Below is our interview with Dr. Chet Richards. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: You operate www.belisarius.com (War, Chaos, and Business) and www.d-n-i.net (Defense and the National Interest), both of which keep the late Colonel John R. Boyd's principles alive. His contribution to recent US military successes cannot be understated, e.g., the F-16 fighter plane. He is also known for the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop. We're sure you have been asked this question many times before, but for our reader's edification, please explain in your own words what is the OODA loop?
Richards: Perhaps we should begin with what it is not, that is, a sequential cycle of observe, then orient, then decide, then act, then back to observe. That would form a "stage model," and it is known that they don't work very well (interested readers can find a detailed critique of such models in Gary Klein's Sources of Power.) Part of the problem with stage models is that in any competitive situation, we can't afford to quit observing while we try to orient or make decisions. So clearly, all the elements of the "loop" must operate simultaneously. Another problem is that most of the time, action must flow smoothly from orientation, without an intervening (and delaying) decision step. Musashi, for example, insisted that a warrior "must act and react without thinking" (Hanshi Steve Kaufman trans., p. 73) and Klein's research confirms that this is also largely true of participants in all time sensitive situations.
In his last version of the "loop," Boyd put orientation in the middle and drew "implicit guidance and control" feeds to action and observation. So you might think of the OODA loop as focused on orientation-keeping ours closely matched to reality while attempting to disrupt or detach the opponent's-with our actions flowing from orientation. It is difficult to explain just in words (as Musashi would say), but there is a diagram and more explanation at http://www.defense-and-society.org/fcs/ppt/boyds_ooda_loop.ppt.
When action flows (nearly) instantaneously from orientation, the quickness of the loop will be determined by the time to reorient in response to what's happening in the world. The side with the quicker loop will, at times, have a more accurate picture of the situation than will its opponent. This will provide a fleeting opportunity for the quicker side to do something, such as spring a ch'i maneuver, and begin to exploit it before the slower side understands what's happening. If the quicker side can keep it up, ambiguity, then confusion, panic, and chaos will begin to build in the slower side as its reactions become increasingly ineffective. Boyd called this "operating inside their OODA loop."
In this scheme, terms like "offense" and "defense" lose much of their meaning-the question is "who has the initiative?"
Sonshi.com: According to Robert Coram's biography of John R. Boyd, the author considers Boyd as the greatest military theoretician since Sun Tzu. This is a great honor. But many critics would not go that far. Do you feel he deserves this recognition? If so, why? (As scholars and academics in Sun Tzu, we at Sonshi.com emphatically agree with Coram's assessment.)
Richards: Yes, I do. Boyd demonstrated that Sun Tzu is as relevant to the modern age as to the Warring States Period. He did this in individual competition - "40 Second Boyd" - in technology-the F-16 is the most successful combat program ever in terms of production span-and in military strategy. Patterns of Conflict forms the basis of the official Marine Corps doctrine of maneuver warfare as well as much of what is now being called "fourth generation warfare."
I'll try to illustrate the richness and power of Boyd's ideas. You sometimes read that it is imperative to attack the enemy's critical vulnerabilities. This seems reasonable, if not obvious, but Boyd warned that this approach conceals a trap. If you can identify a "critical vulnerability," say his command and control system, it is quite likely the enemy is aware of this vulnerability, also. He then has any number of options, such as ring it with defenses, distribute it among a variety of nodes, harden it by putting it deep underground, conceal it (say inside a mosque or hotel full of journalists), or make it redundant by having back-up C2 elements somewhere. Even worse, he can use some combination of all these plus whatever other nefarious schemes he can come up with and attempt to lure you into attacking it anyway. All warfare is, of course, based upon deception. This critique also applies to a strategy of attacking Clausewitzian "centers of gravity" or a formula of hurling strength against weakness.
Boyd's alternative was to attack the enemy's mind in the manner of Sun Tzu, except that Boyd also had the advantages of insights from complexity theory, quantum mechanics, foundations of mathematics, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, thermodynamics, and so on to draw from. But the idea is still to play the cheng / ch'i game. Once the enemy is in play, Boyd prescribes selecting the least expected option, not the one we predict will be the most effective, again echoing Sun Tzu - "going by routes they do not expect, attacking where they are not on guard" (Cleary, 153.) The key distinction is that "do not expect" and "are not on guard" apply only after the enemy's perception has been shaped by our activities, in particular by our success in employing cheng and ch'i. One might contrast this approach with most of modern strategy, even including "network centric warfare."
Sonshi.com: Boyd believed Sun Tzu's The Art of War was the only book he read that didn't have any flaws. He was known to own several translations and encouraged close associates to read it. We believe the greatest testament to his understanding of the work was his remark, "My goal was not personal. My work was for the best interest of the country. I tried to do it the Air Force Way and was refused at every turn. Then I did it my way." Sun Tzu said, "The general who does not advance to seek glory, or does not withdraw to avoid punishment, but cares for only the people's security and promotes the people's interests, is the nation's treasure." Do find this to be the underlying theme in his life?
Richards: Boyd might not agree that it didn't have flaws. It is, after all, the creation of mortal human beings. However, he never critiqued Sun Tzu as he did Clausewitz or Jomini, where he identified fundamental problems with their underlying approach to strategy. I'll go into this in more detail below.
As for doing it his way, by the end of his life, this was certainly true. After he realized that the Air Force was not going to promote him to general, he restructured his life style to fit his colonel's retirement pay. By doing this, he freed himself from any need to make more money. This produced an almost Zen-like detachment from material desire.
Sonshi.com: Boyd wrote and published little, and relied more on oral instruction. Why did he choose this method? Many more people could have benefited from his theories.
Richards: I can only speculate. Maybe it was that in Washington, hardly anybody reads, but most people will watch a briefing. The format also suited Boyd's temperament: A briefing is a live performance and Boyd thrived in the leading role-he was something of a frustrated actor with just a touch of ham. Visitors to sonshi.com might also be interested to know that he modeled the text of his briefings after the telegraphic style of The Art of War.
Sonshi.com: A recent hot topic on Sonshi.com is whose ideas are better: Clausewitz's or Sun Tzu's. Boyd certainly preferred Sun Tzu over Clausewitz. What are your thoughts?
Richards: A good strategist develops the ability to mine useful ideas from anywhere-Boyd warned against becoming a devotee of any specific school, even Sun Tzu's. So you can find a lot of Clausewitz in Boyd, particularly his use of "friction," where he generally agreed with Clausewitz, and "centers of gravity," where he emphatically did not. Point is that he took ideas from Clausewitz, but then sometimes used them in different ways. Aspiring strategists will find this a most useful talent.
When assessing Clausewitz, it's important to put him into context. He was trying to solve the problem of Napoleonic warfare between uniformed armies fielded by states, practically all of which were monarchies after 1804. Clausewitz saw international politics as a game between these states, where war was a natural play, an "extension of policy by other means," in his famous description. To get ideas, Clausewitz, like Boyd, studied the physics of his day, but unfortunately some of the ideas implicit in Boyd's approach, particularly thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, lay in the future. All of these factors led to a strategy of bringing the enemy army to decisive battle and then defeating it, and (in order to minimize friction and enable maximum force against the "center of gravity") to what Boyd called an obsession with top down control.
Because of the focus on this specific context, Clausewitz does not transfer well to the early 21st Century. For one thing, as the eminent Israeli historian, Martin van Creveld, notes, the notion of "decisive battle" is irrelevant if the opponents possess nuclear weapons. There were, for example, four major conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors between 1948 and 1973, but there have been none since. What is developing instead is "fourth generation warfare," which is "non-trinitarian" (a term van Creveld coined in his 1991 book Transformation of War) and decidedly non-Clausewitzian.
Even between conventional powers, war could not really be an extension of policy. Military force can be a political instrument, but, as Sun Tzu notes, in war, victory is determined by the opponent. (Cleary, 112) Then there's Clausewitz's endorsement of unbridled force at the beginning of the book. In an increasingly crowded and interconnected world, unrestrained force may be fine for winning the immediate military conflict (at least among non-nuclear powers), but it tends to cause problems in the ensuing "peace."
In Boyd's view, a conflict fought according to Clausewitz would inevitably descend into attrition warfare. I believe history, particularly the First World War and much of the Second, has proven him right. Interested readers might consult Boyd's critique of Clausewitz and Jomini on pages 40-46 of Patterns of Conflict.
It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to lecture your readers on the contrasting philosophy of Sun Tzu. However it may be worth a gentle reminder to refer back to Griffith's introduction, p. 39, where he summarizes the goals of Sun Tzu's strategy as to defeat the enemy 1) in the shortest possible time; 2) at the least possible cost in lives and effort; and 3) with the infliction on the enemy of the fewest possible casualties. These goals seem even more applicable today than when they were first written down; Boyd, needless to say, is firmly within the Sun Tzu tradition.
Sonshi.com: It is no big secret how Boyd felt about some of the top brass, and more shockingly, made his feelings known. He once said the system produced "gold-plated shit shovels" that "hurt us more than the enemy." The contempt was mutual as they sent only one general to his funeral. What is perhaps most troubling was numerous military works using Boyd's principles were published without giving him credit. "If you insist on getting credit for the work you do, you'll never get far in life," Boyd said. The picture some people get is a man without any tact, manners, or political savvy. Is this an accurate picture or representation of him?
Richards: In his public persona, yes, leading some to suspect that he might have been the reincarnation of Musashi.
However, he would sometime call my house and if I were out, he'd talk to whichever of the kids answered. "How are you doing in school? Do you like math? What did you make on your last test? What's your favorite book?" and so on. They really looked forward to his calls and would pester me to let them talk when I got through.
Even in his official life, he could play the political game well, as the F-16 program (still in production after 28 years) shows. Also, it was no mean feat getting Chuck Spinney on the March 7, 1983, cover of Time Magazine!
Sonshi.com: You have a new book soon to be published, "Certain to Win: The Strategy of John R. Boyd Applied to Business." The phrase "certain to win" is Sun Tzu's prognosis for generals who follow his advice. Please tell us more about it.
Richards: I started the book back in 1988, and Boyd commented on all the drafts up until he died in 1997. He always believed that his ideas should apply to any form of conflict, not just war, but he had devoted his life to studying war and strategy. So he did not feel that he could produce a business version of Patterns of Conflict. He was fascinated, however, by the Toyota Production System (TPS) and read everything he could find by people like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo. In these works, he found many of the same ideas that he had put into his own briefings, particularly the fundamental role of harmony and the use of time as the basis for shaping competition.
In Certain to Win, I begin with classical Boyd: his organizational climate and how he employed time as a competitive weapon in war. You can't go very far down this path, though, because business is not war. War is a two-sided conflict, where the goal is to compel an opponent to do something he (or she) would rather not do. As a result, the specific strategies and tactics of war, including those of Sun Tzu, are coercive and destructive in nature, and so the techniques of warfare-even maneuver warfare-don't apply to business. This is a point that Ralph Sawyer made much more eloquently that I can in his interview here at sonshi.com, by the way.
Since this may still seem odd to your readers, let's explore it further. You may read, for example, that in business, as in war, one should avoid strength and attack weakness. This seems obvious, but let's look at it closely. First, in business, unless you are the Mafia, you can't "attack" anything, just offer products and services to the marketplace. So the advice becomes something like: Find areas where competitors are vulnerable, that is, create products and services that customers will buy instead of your competitors', which when you put it that way doesn't seem terribly profound. And since it prescribes nothing about cost and profitability, you could put yourself out of business by successfully following this strategy.
The weakness in the "business is a lot like war" approach is that business, in contrast to war, is attractive and constructive. Topologically, it is a many-sided conflict (us, customers, and competitors) where the goal is to attract customers to give money to us instead of to our competitors. It would also be nice if the cost of doing this were less than the amount of money they give us. A number of studies have shown that the Toyota Production System best addresses both of these problems, at least as far as manufactured products are concerned.
As it turned out, the TPS also provided the Rosetta Stone that allowed translation of Boyd's ideas to the business world. I suspect the main reason this worked is that ultimately the Toyota Production System, like maneuver warfare, traces back to the ideas of Zen and Taoism, in other words, to Sun Tzu. They can be thought of as separate manifestations of the same underlying philosophy.
In the book, I show how this translation works in a way that I hope will be accessible to modern entrepreneurs and other business people. The idea is not to provide a roadmap for business success. That would never work since all competitors could read and follow it and so nobody would gain any advantage. Instead, the book introduces and explores-in a variety of settings involving both war and business-a small collection of principles that enables groups of human beings to work together to accomplish their goals, even when other groups of human beings are doing everything in their power to stop them.
[End of interview]
Dr. Richards is also a retired USAF reserve colonel, where he served as the Reserve Air Attaché to Saudi Arabia, and he holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Mississippi. His latest book on Boyd and strategy, A Swift, Elusive Sword, was recently translated into Russian.
Few understand the principles of John Boyd as well as Chet Richards. Through his websites War, Chaos, and Business and Defense and the National Interest, he keeps Boyd's genius and contribution to society alive. We at Sonshi.com are grateful for Dr. Richard's work and are proud and honored to have him here. Boyd's briefings are available for download at http://www.d-n-i.net/second_level/boyd_military.htm.
Below is our interview with Dr. Chet Richards. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: You operate www.belisarius.com (War, Chaos, and Business) and www.d-n-i.net (Defense and the National Interest), both of which keep the late Colonel John R. Boyd's principles alive. His contribution to recent US military successes cannot be understated, e.g., the F-16 fighter plane. He is also known for the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop. We're sure you have been asked this question many times before, but for our reader's edification, please explain in your own words what is the OODA loop?
Richards: Perhaps we should begin with what it is not, that is, a sequential cycle of observe, then orient, then decide, then act, then back to observe. That would form a "stage model," and it is known that they don't work very well (interested readers can find a detailed critique of such models in Gary Klein's Sources of Power.) Part of the problem with stage models is that in any competitive situation, we can't afford to quit observing while we try to orient or make decisions. So clearly, all the elements of the "loop" must operate simultaneously. Another problem is that most of the time, action must flow smoothly from orientation, without an intervening (and delaying) decision step. Musashi, for example, insisted that a warrior "must act and react without thinking" (Hanshi Steve Kaufman trans., p. 73) and Klein's research confirms that this is also largely true of participants in all time sensitive situations.
In his last version of the "loop," Boyd put orientation in the middle and drew "implicit guidance and control" feeds to action and observation. So you might think of the OODA loop as focused on orientation-keeping ours closely matched to reality while attempting to disrupt or detach the opponent's-with our actions flowing from orientation. It is difficult to explain just in words (as Musashi would say), but there is a diagram and more explanation at http://www.defense-and-society.org/fcs/ppt/boyds_ooda_loop.ppt.
When action flows (nearly) instantaneously from orientation, the quickness of the loop will be determined by the time to reorient in response to what's happening in the world. The side with the quicker loop will, at times, have a more accurate picture of the situation than will its opponent. This will provide a fleeting opportunity for the quicker side to do something, such as spring a ch'i maneuver, and begin to exploit it before the slower side understands what's happening. If the quicker side can keep it up, ambiguity, then confusion, panic, and chaos will begin to build in the slower side as its reactions become increasingly ineffective. Boyd called this "operating inside their OODA loop."
In this scheme, terms like "offense" and "defense" lose much of their meaning-the question is "who has the initiative?"
Sonshi.com: According to Robert Coram's biography of John R. Boyd, the author considers Boyd as the greatest military theoretician since Sun Tzu. This is a great honor. But many critics would not go that far. Do you feel he deserves this recognition? If so, why? (As scholars and academics in Sun Tzu, we at Sonshi.com emphatically agree with Coram's assessment.)
Richards: Yes, I do. Boyd demonstrated that Sun Tzu is as relevant to the modern age as to the Warring States Period. He did this in individual competition - "40 Second Boyd" - in technology-the F-16 is the most successful combat program ever in terms of production span-and in military strategy. Patterns of Conflict forms the basis of the official Marine Corps doctrine of maneuver warfare as well as much of what is now being called "fourth generation warfare."
I'll try to illustrate the richness and power of Boyd's ideas. You sometimes read that it is imperative to attack the enemy's critical vulnerabilities. This seems reasonable, if not obvious, but Boyd warned that this approach conceals a trap. If you can identify a "critical vulnerability," say his command and control system, it is quite likely the enemy is aware of this vulnerability, also. He then has any number of options, such as ring it with defenses, distribute it among a variety of nodes, harden it by putting it deep underground, conceal it (say inside a mosque or hotel full of journalists), or make it redundant by having back-up C2 elements somewhere. Even worse, he can use some combination of all these plus whatever other nefarious schemes he can come up with and attempt to lure you into attacking it anyway. All warfare is, of course, based upon deception. This critique also applies to a strategy of attacking Clausewitzian "centers of gravity" or a formula of hurling strength against weakness.
Boyd's alternative was to attack the enemy's mind in the manner of Sun Tzu, except that Boyd also had the advantages of insights from complexity theory, quantum mechanics, foundations of mathematics, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, thermodynamics, and so on to draw from. But the idea is still to play the cheng / ch'i game. Once the enemy is in play, Boyd prescribes selecting the least expected option, not the one we predict will be the most effective, again echoing Sun Tzu - "going by routes they do not expect, attacking where they are not on guard" (Cleary, 153.) The key distinction is that "do not expect" and "are not on guard" apply only after the enemy's perception has been shaped by our activities, in particular by our success in employing cheng and ch'i. One might contrast this approach with most of modern strategy, even including "network centric warfare."
Sonshi.com: Boyd believed Sun Tzu's The Art of War was the only book he read that didn't have any flaws. He was known to own several translations and encouraged close associates to read it. We believe the greatest testament to his understanding of the work was his remark, "My goal was not personal. My work was for the best interest of the country. I tried to do it the Air Force Way and was refused at every turn. Then I did it my way." Sun Tzu said, "The general who does not advance to seek glory, or does not withdraw to avoid punishment, but cares for only the people's security and promotes the people's interests, is the nation's treasure." Do find this to be the underlying theme in his life?
Richards: Boyd might not agree that it didn't have flaws. It is, after all, the creation of mortal human beings. However, he never critiqued Sun Tzu as he did Clausewitz or Jomini, where he identified fundamental problems with their underlying approach to strategy. I'll go into this in more detail below.
As for doing it his way, by the end of his life, this was certainly true. After he realized that the Air Force was not going to promote him to general, he restructured his life style to fit his colonel's retirement pay. By doing this, he freed himself from any need to make more money. This produced an almost Zen-like detachment from material desire.
Sonshi.com: Boyd wrote and published little, and relied more on oral instruction. Why did he choose this method? Many more people could have benefited from his theories.
Richards: I can only speculate. Maybe it was that in Washington, hardly anybody reads, but most people will watch a briefing. The format also suited Boyd's temperament: A briefing is a live performance and Boyd thrived in the leading role-he was something of a frustrated actor with just a touch of ham. Visitors to sonshi.com might also be interested to know that he modeled the text of his briefings after the telegraphic style of The Art of War.
Sonshi.com: A recent hot topic on Sonshi.com is whose ideas are better: Clausewitz's or Sun Tzu's. Boyd certainly preferred Sun Tzu over Clausewitz. What are your thoughts?
Richards: A good strategist develops the ability to mine useful ideas from anywhere-Boyd warned against becoming a devotee of any specific school, even Sun Tzu's. So you can find a lot of Clausewitz in Boyd, particularly his use of "friction," where he generally agreed with Clausewitz, and "centers of gravity," where he emphatically did not. Point is that he took ideas from Clausewitz, but then sometimes used them in different ways. Aspiring strategists will find this a most useful talent.
When assessing Clausewitz, it's important to put him into context. He was trying to solve the problem of Napoleonic warfare between uniformed armies fielded by states, practically all of which were monarchies after 1804. Clausewitz saw international politics as a game between these states, where war was a natural play, an "extension of policy by other means," in his famous description. To get ideas, Clausewitz, like Boyd, studied the physics of his day, but unfortunately some of the ideas implicit in Boyd's approach, particularly thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, lay in the future. All of these factors led to a strategy of bringing the enemy army to decisive battle and then defeating it, and (in order to minimize friction and enable maximum force against the "center of gravity") to what Boyd called an obsession with top down control.
Because of the focus on this specific context, Clausewitz does not transfer well to the early 21st Century. For one thing, as the eminent Israeli historian, Martin van Creveld, notes, the notion of "decisive battle" is irrelevant if the opponents possess nuclear weapons. There were, for example, four major conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors between 1948 and 1973, but there have been none since. What is developing instead is "fourth generation warfare," which is "non-trinitarian" (a term van Creveld coined in his 1991 book Transformation of War) and decidedly non-Clausewitzian.
Even between conventional powers, war could not really be an extension of policy. Military force can be a political instrument, but, as Sun Tzu notes, in war, victory is determined by the opponent. (Cleary, 112) Then there's Clausewitz's endorsement of unbridled force at the beginning of the book. In an increasingly crowded and interconnected world, unrestrained force may be fine for winning the immediate military conflict (at least among non-nuclear powers), but it tends to cause problems in the ensuing "peace."
In Boyd's view, a conflict fought according to Clausewitz would inevitably descend into attrition warfare. I believe history, particularly the First World War and much of the Second, has proven him right. Interested readers might consult Boyd's critique of Clausewitz and Jomini on pages 40-46 of Patterns of Conflict.
It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to lecture your readers on the contrasting philosophy of Sun Tzu. However it may be worth a gentle reminder to refer back to Griffith's introduction, p. 39, where he summarizes the goals of Sun Tzu's strategy as to defeat the enemy 1) in the shortest possible time; 2) at the least possible cost in lives and effort; and 3) with the infliction on the enemy of the fewest possible casualties. These goals seem even more applicable today than when they were first written down; Boyd, needless to say, is firmly within the Sun Tzu tradition.
Sonshi.com: It is no big secret how Boyd felt about some of the top brass, and more shockingly, made his feelings known. He once said the system produced "gold-plated shit shovels" that "hurt us more than the enemy." The contempt was mutual as they sent only one general to his funeral. What is perhaps most troubling was numerous military works using Boyd's principles were published without giving him credit. "If you insist on getting credit for the work you do, you'll never get far in life," Boyd said. The picture some people get is a man without any tact, manners, or political savvy. Is this an accurate picture or representation of him?
Richards: In his public persona, yes, leading some to suspect that he might have been the reincarnation of Musashi.
However, he would sometime call my house and if I were out, he'd talk to whichever of the kids answered. "How are you doing in school? Do you like math? What did you make on your last test? What's your favorite book?" and so on. They really looked forward to his calls and would pester me to let them talk when I got through.
Even in his official life, he could play the political game well, as the F-16 program (still in production after 28 years) shows. Also, it was no mean feat getting Chuck Spinney on the March 7, 1983, cover of Time Magazine!
Sonshi.com: You have a new book soon to be published, "Certain to Win: The Strategy of John R. Boyd Applied to Business." The phrase "certain to win" is Sun Tzu's prognosis for generals who follow his advice. Please tell us more about it.
Richards: I started the book back in 1988, and Boyd commented on all the drafts up until he died in 1997. He always believed that his ideas should apply to any form of conflict, not just war, but he had devoted his life to studying war and strategy. So he did not feel that he could produce a business version of Patterns of Conflict. He was fascinated, however, by the Toyota Production System (TPS) and read everything he could find by people like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo. In these works, he found many of the same ideas that he had put into his own briefings, particularly the fundamental role of harmony and the use of time as the basis for shaping competition.
In Certain to Win, I begin with classical Boyd: his organizational climate and how he employed time as a competitive weapon in war. You can't go very far down this path, though, because business is not war. War is a two-sided conflict, where the goal is to compel an opponent to do something he (or she) would rather not do. As a result, the specific strategies and tactics of war, including those of Sun Tzu, are coercive and destructive in nature, and so the techniques of warfare-even maneuver warfare-don't apply to business. This is a point that Ralph Sawyer made much more eloquently that I can in his interview here at sonshi.com, by the way.
Since this may still seem odd to your readers, let's explore it further. You may read, for example, that in business, as in war, one should avoid strength and attack weakness. This seems obvious, but let's look at it closely. First, in business, unless you are the Mafia, you can't "attack" anything, just offer products and services to the marketplace. So the advice becomes something like: Find areas where competitors are vulnerable, that is, create products and services that customers will buy instead of your competitors', which when you put it that way doesn't seem terribly profound. And since it prescribes nothing about cost and profitability, you could put yourself out of business by successfully following this strategy.
The weakness in the "business is a lot like war" approach is that business, in contrast to war, is attractive and constructive. Topologically, it is a many-sided conflict (us, customers, and competitors) where the goal is to attract customers to give money to us instead of to our competitors. It would also be nice if the cost of doing this were less than the amount of money they give us. A number of studies have shown that the Toyota Production System best addresses both of these problems, at least as far as manufactured products are concerned.
As it turned out, the TPS also provided the Rosetta Stone that allowed translation of Boyd's ideas to the business world. I suspect the main reason this worked is that ultimately the Toyota Production System, like maneuver warfare, traces back to the ideas of Zen and Taoism, in other words, to Sun Tzu. They can be thought of as separate manifestations of the same underlying philosophy.
In the book, I show how this translation works in a way that I hope will be accessible to modern entrepreneurs and other business people. The idea is not to provide a roadmap for business success. That would never work since all competitors could read and follow it and so nobody would gain any advantage. Instead, the book introduces and explores-in a variety of settings involving both war and business-a small collection of principles that enables groups of human beings to work together to accomplish their goals, even when other groups of human beings are doing everything in their power to stop them.
[End of interview]