Boyd for Business

Time as a competitive weapon

Dr. Chet Richards

April 2000
The Boydian Era
This is not an age of castles, moats, and
armor, where people can sustain a
competitive advantage for very long …
This is an age that calls for cunning,
speed, and enterprise.
Richard D’Aveni, Tuck School, Dartmouth,
Hypercompetition: Managing the Art of Strategic
Maneuvering, 1995.

This will not be an easy time for

control freaks. It will be a great time
for the agile, the small, the cunning,
and the brave. John Perry Barlow, “Cybernomics: Toward a Theory of
Information Energy,” Merrill Lynch On-Line, November
30, 1998

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 Scope of this Presentation

• A quick introduction to time as a competitive

weapon
• We will illustrate
– Differences between business and war
– Ideas for applying Boyd’s “maneuver warfare”
concepts to business

• We’ll end with some suggestions for getting

started
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Introduction: The Effects of
Shock and Trauma
On individuals – stress disorders in varying degrees
• Inability to concentrate or remember
• Difficulty making decisions
• Wild swings in mood and outlook
• Tendency to become angry at the slightest provocation

On groups – focus inward and a breakdown of trust:

• Fracture into non-cooperative (“morally isolated”) factions
• Verbal (and physical) violence within and among factions
• Witch hunts and blame-based “culture”
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 Boyd’s Insight
These debilitating effects do not have to be left to
chance or nature. You can create them in your
opponents by operating at high decision cycle
speed to create cascading impressions of menace
and ambiguity.
When you do, your opponents will cease to
function as effective fighting forces, and you can
engage them, if necessary, with higher confidence
and vastly lower losses.

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 Time-Based Competition in War
• Probe and test
“OODA” Loops: adversary to unmask
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act strengths,
more inconspicuously, more weaknesses,
quickly, and with more maneuvers, intentions
irregularity …
• Select initiative that
Or put another way Permits one to
is least expected
• Generate uncertainty,
Operate inside adversary’s confusion, disorder,
Observation – Orientation –
panic, chaos …
Decision – Action loops, or
get inside his Mind – Time –
shatter cohesion,
Space. produce paralysis,
and bring about
John R. Boyd, Patterns of Conflict, 1986. collapse
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 From A Soldier’s Viewpoint
The domination a soldier seeks over his enemy is
as total as the domination a master has over a
slave, aiming for fear to so completely grip the
enemy that he flees in panic, surrenders, or is
too terrified to even move, let alone resist.
When such domination is complete, the battle is
a “walkover.”
–Dr. Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p. 36

“Get’em scared and then keep the scare on ‘em.” Nathan Bedford Forrest
at the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, Mississippi, June 10-11, 1864.
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 But, Business is a Distinct
Topology of Conflict
War: A vs. B

Commerce: Everything mitigated by the customer

Customer

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 Sun Tzu and $3.25 Will Get You
a Grande Latte at Starbucks
I-Hate-Bill Disease. This malady has infected many an executive
before Oracle's Larry Ellison, including Novell's Ray Noorda and
Bob Frankenberg, Borland's Philippe Kahn and Sun's Scott
McNealy. One symptom is an obsession with beating Bill Gates
instead of delighting customers. Executives with this disease do
things to hurt Microsoft instead of to help their constituency.
Jesse Berst, “Oracle's Hidden Weaknesses,” ZDNet
AnchorDesk, August 12, 1998

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 Oddly Enough …
Boyd’s paradigm, of operating at high
decision cycle speed, and the organizational
climate that enables it, is equally effective in
business as in war.
The rest of this presentation will explore this
perhaps unexpected assertion.

“As well as creating value for the customer and the company, time-based
strategies are often opaque to the competitors–causing confusion within
their executive ranks.” Stalk & Hout, Competing Against Time, p. 254

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 Fast OODA Speed: How
You Drive the Market
• Nokia is providing troubled Motorola Inc., the
leader in old fashioned analog phones, with a
humiliating tutorial on digital communications.
Motorola CEO Christopher B. Galvin glumly
concedes that “the analog market is trending
downward.”
• Already Nokia pumps out new (digital) models
every 35 days. Stephen Baker, Roger O. Crockett, and Neil
Gross, “Nokia,” Business Week, August 10,
1998, 54-60.

(1999 market share: Nokia 26.2%, Motorola 15%)

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 Shaping the Marketplace

The customer invents nothing. The customer does not

contribute to design of product or the design of the service.
He takes what he gets. Customer expectations? Nonsense.
No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic
tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are
only what you and your competitor have led him to
expect. He knows nothing else.

Tim Stevens, “Dr. Deming: ‘Management today does not

know what its job is.’“ Industry Week, January 17, 1994,
21 ff.

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 OODA Loops in Business:
One Recent Example
The successful companies get into the market and
get the segments that would value the thing as it
is today. They're playing the ball as it lays. And
then they're improving it because they are going
through more, faster cycles of learning than the
incumbents
–Gary Getz, Integral Inc., in “Should You Fear
Disruptive Technologies?” Fortune, April 3, 2000

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Summary: The One Cardinal,
Unforgivable Sin of Business
Strategy
One cartoon was of two guys in a factory
office. A chart on the wall showed that the
business had dropped to zero. One guy was
saying to the other, “It can’t be our product’s
quality. We make the finest buggy whips in
the world!”
–Kurt Vonnegut, The Bagombo Snuff Box, p. 66

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Decision cycles—e.g., OODA Loops—are a
key to employing time as a weapon. The next
several charts introduce its components.
By the way, Boyd always wrote it as O-O-D-A
to emphasize that the parts are indistinct and
flow into each other.

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 The OODA "Loop"
Sketch
Observation Orientation Decision Action

Implicit Implicit
Guidance & Guidance &
Control Cultural Control
Traditions

Outside
Information Genetic
Heritage

Decision
Feed Analyses/ Feed Feed Action Unfolding
Observations Forward Synthesis Forward (Hypothesis) Forward
(Test)
InteractionWith
Environment
New
Information

Unfolding
Circumstances

Previous
Experiences
Unfolding
Environmental
Interaction

Feedback
Feedback

J. R. Boyd, “The Essence of

Winning and Losing,” 1995.
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 Observation
Real Implicit
(Orientation)
World Guidance &
Control

Outside
Information

Observations Feed Forward (Orientation)

Unfolding
Circumstances

Unfolding
Environmental Feedback
Feedback
Interaction From
From Decision
Action

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 Ideas for Improving Observation
• Send everybody on at least 2 customer visits each year (Tom
Peters) (Note: makes change much easier)
• If you’re GM, buy Fords & Toyotas for company cars
• Insist that you company newsletter focuses outside the
company (customers, competitors, the environment, etc.) and
includes a “bad news” section
• If you’re a Delta Airlines VP, book your own tickets (directly
& through travel agents). Stand in line to check bags. Fly
coach. Now do the same thing on Continental. Talk to
everybody while you’re there. Fly Delta no more than 50%

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 Don’t Leave It To Chance
• Hardest part: If you’re the Chairman of
Delta, design a system that rewards this
type of behavior

“Equally important is the opportunity that incoming e-

mail gives me to be exposed to the thoughts, reactions,
biases, and preferences of large numbers of people.
(Andy Grove, CEO, Intel, Only the Paranoid Survive,
156.)

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Observations on (Note: There are a number of
Orientation for Business techniques for improving the
(re-)orientation process.)
Orientation

Implicit Implicit
Guidance & Guidance &
Control Cultural Control
Traditions

Genetic
Heritage

Observations Feed
Forward Analyses/
Feed
Forward Decision Action
Synthesis
New
Information NOTES
• Without genetic heritage and cultural
traditions, the influence of previous
Previous
Experiences experience increases
• In particular, it exerts a much stronger
effect on analyses and synthesis
• Therefore, it becomes vitally important to
beef up the feed forward into “New
Observation is the only Information”
feed into Orientation – Quantity
– Quality
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(Key point: “”Decision” has
only one input, so it can be
thought of as flowing from
orientation. If you have done
an adequate job of observing
and (re-)orienting, you’ll rarely
Decision
have trouble making
decisions.)

Feed Decision Feed

(Orientation) (Action)
Forward
(Hypothesis) Forward

Note: Feedback directly from

Feed Decision to
Back Observation (A
decision tends to
narrow the focus, to
Note: Decision is fed detect the effects of the
(Observation)
only from Orientation decision. Also, “My
mind is made up; don’t
confuse me with
facts.”) 21
 Re-Orientation & Decision
at (The Old) Intel
But in a few months we came to the inevitable conclusion that
this halfway decision was untenable and we finally worked up
our determination and clearly decided—not just in the
management ranks but throughout the whole organization—
that we were getting out of the memory business, once and for
all. Grove, 92.

I gathered them all in an auditorium and made a speech. The

theme of the speech was, “Welcome to the mainstream.” I said
that Intel’s mainstream was going to be microprocessors.
Grove, 93.

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 Action
e.g., prejudice,
instinct, reflex
Implicit
Guidance
Real
(Orientation)
and Control World

Feed
Action Unfolding
Interaction with
(Decision) Forward
(Test) Environment

Feedback Feedback

(Observation)

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Did Wal-Mart Kill Woolworth?

The charm of the stores, however, was often outweighed

by their flaws: old cash registers with scan guns that could
read only half the merchandise; a toy department full of
moth-eaten puzzles but no action figures; small, confusing
aisles and a lack of customer service.

Jennifer Steinhauer, “Woolworth Says Goodbye to the Dime Store,”

NYT OL, July 18, 1997

Answer: No, we killed Woolworth when we chose to shop at Wal-

Mart.
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 Question
What determines OODA loop speed?

Answer:
• Ultimately, a moral climate/culture/environment
that encourages people to use and harmonize their
initiatives to further the goals of the organization
• Under such a climate, people will evolve new ways
to solve the technical (and even organizational)
problems

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 This is Widely Recognized
• Institute leadership (Deming’s Point 7)
• Drive out fear (Point 8)
• The waste due to fear is enormous (Wm. W.
Scherkenbach, The Deming Route, P. 76)
• We began to cultivate self-confidence among our
leaders by turning them loose, giving them
independence and resources, and encouraging them
to take big swings. (Jack Welch, Ch, & CEO, GE,
1995 Annual Report)

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Constructing A Climate for Fast
OODA Loops
The issue of human nature is the
most basic problem … The most
important factor is maintaining a
relationship of trust between labor
and management–Shigeo Shingo,
one of the architects of the Toyota
Production System. (emphasis
added)

The Tao of military operations lies in harmonizing people.

Zhuge Liang, c. 300 AD
business, too
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 Boyd’s Organizational Climate
(The Principles of the Blitzkrieg)
• Without focus and direction (Schwerpunkt) at all levels, people
will not know what they should do
• Without mission responsibilities (Auftrag), people can only
execute explicit instructions
• Without intuitive competence (Fingerspitzengefühl), people
will see only the obvious
• Without mutual trust (Einheit), there is no moral force to
harmonize group goals with individuals’; people will focus on
justifying decisions (CYA), rather than on taking the initiative

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A New Climate at the New Intel

Gerhard H. Parker, the Intel veteran who heads the

company's New Business Group, says people are so
excited about the opportunity that an employee recently
chased him into the bathroom clutching a business plan.
''It's wonderful to see that kind of enthusiasm,'' Parker
says. ''It wouldn't have happened a few years ago.'’
BusinessWeek Online, March 13, 2000

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 As in the USMC, as in GE

The ability to think and act boldly, to take the initiative,

to shape change, or to adapt quickly to the unexpected is
the quintessence of the superior professional officer.
Pentagon Analyst Franklin C. (Chuck) Spinney

An organization’s ability to learn, share that learning, and

then act on that learning is absolutely the biggest
competitive advantage … we want people who get up in
the morning with a passion about finding a better way.
GE CEO Jack Welch, Fortune, 1/1/99

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Climate Follows System. If this describes your personnel
management system, don’t look for radical changes in
performance anytime soon! Do people:
• wait for orders?
• believe they must do everything "by the book”?
• actually believe "the book" knows best?
• learn never to tell the boss anything that will make him or her
squirm?
• learn never to tell the boss anything that will make the boss look
bad if passed to higher echelon?
• learn to never trust anything but documentation that one has
followed orders and followed the rules?
• have ever been rewarded for cooperating with peers?
• have ever experienced relying on independent decisions generated
by trust in peers?
• have any idea of what it is like to take responsibility and make
decisions in a high trust environment–period!
E-mail from an “anonymous field grade Army officer”
http://www.defense-and-society.org/FCS_Folder/comments/c346.htm
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Ancient Strategic Principle:

You can’t make an

omelet without breaking
eggs.
But you have to break them in productive ways.

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 The “Edge of Chaos”: Where
Interesting Things Happen
First Second
Monostability:
Bifurcation Bifurcation
evolution impossible
Chaos

Steady State

Opportunistic Regime
Could apply to “Edge of Chaos”
either a functional Conducive to Self Organizing Systems Organizations
or programmatic Conducive to Complex Adaptive Systems
capable of evolving
design and adapting

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Diagram courtesy of Dr. Linda Beckerman, Director of Systems Engineering, the ASSET Group, SAIC
Edge of Chaos? Complex Adaptive
Systems? Bifurcations?

Do the people you have worked with for 20 years

seem to be talking gibberish? If so, it’s time to pay
attention to what’s going on. — Andy Grove,
Chairman of Intel

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 Be Chaotic, or Be Dead
At first glance chaotic behavior appears to be the
antithesis of organizational behavior, that
necessitates order, regularity and predictability so
as to ensure coordination, planning and control. A
second look will remind us that variety and
irregularity allow the resilience and creativity
which are a necessity for learning, which is a
condition to be able to survive.
The late Dr. Uri Merry, Israeli complexity theorist,
“Nonlinear Organizational Dynamics,”
http://pw2.netcom.com/~nmerry/Urihome.htm
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 The Military is Getting Serious
About These Things
What we need to focus on is achieving an understanding of
what emergent behaviors we desire our agents/entities to
exhibit in the context of the battlespace of the future, then
attempt to understand the rule set that we need to put in place
to achieve that behavior or set of behaviors. A good rule set,
coupled with a well articulated commander’s intent and the
ability to exchange value-adding information (share
awareness) will give rise to desired emergent behavior
through the interaction of the combat agents/entities with
each other, the enemy and the environment

CDR John Dickmann, USN, Naval War Development

Command, e-mail message, 14 June 1999
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 Is the Toyota Production System
a Complex Adaptive System?
It certainly has attributes of a CAS:
• Kanban enable the workforce to manage the flow
of production: “the workers themselves are
completely in charge” (29)
• Kaizen — continuous improvement — is a key
part of the TPS: “Ultimately, kaizen is about job
ownership” (46)
• Standardized work: “Team leaders and their teams
are free to adjust working sequences as
necessary.” (41)
Source: Toyota Motor Corporation,
Toyota Production System, 1992
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Is the Toyota Production System Really
a Complex Adaptive System?

“The Toyota Production System is

based on the idea of constantly
decreasing the time between when
a customer orders a car and when
we deliver it.”

Source: Toyota Motor Company, Toyota

Production System, 1992

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 Let’s Get Started
• Find Out More
– What does the theory actually say?
– How did GE, Intel & the USMC do it?
• Make a Decision: Is This Really For Us?
• Implement and Assess
– Top down commitment
– Institutionalize via education (e.g., GE’s “Crotonville”)
– Re-wicker functional systems

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