(2024-11-21) Konik Strategy A Pilot Named Boyd Part1 Big Picture

Eleanor Konik: Strategy & a pilot named Boyd (Part I: Big Picture). One of the many things to come out of my business trip to Norway back in April was a discussion with my boss, Tristan, about several nonfiction sources he liked.

the book Certain to Win by Chet Richards

Tristan asked me to share some of my takeaways, and I see no particular reason not to share them with y’all as well. Brace yourself, though — Certain to Win is at the precise confluence of topics that a lot of my friends care about but I’ve heretofore avoided: business and war.

Today I’m going to focus mostly on the broad overview. Part II will focus mostly on the bits I found to be useful advice.

The Fundamentals of Strategy

Richards spends a big chunk of the book focused on foundational concepts that will be familiar to anyone who has ever played a game — numbers advantages, initiative, demoralization, speed, going with your gut, etc

I don’t think the point of this book was to blow anybody’s mind. Just like no one expects an analysis of Sun Tzu’s Art of War to be groundbreaking, Richards’ book was in some ways more about compiling well-known concepts, provide useful and relevant anecdotes, and tell the story of how a particular set of priorities made a difference to a particular military force at a particular point in time… in a way that is accessible to business leaders.

I know a lot of guys — my father, with his extensive collection of books about planes and tanks and battleships certainly among them — who have never been to battle but are nonetheless fascinated by 20th century military history.

What better way, then, to make the nuts and bolts of running a business interesting than to frame it in the context of clever and bloody battles? What more inspiring hook for “how to win in today’s world” than tying it back to the last glorious war America fought?

How much does size matter?

Since long before the days of David, we’ve loved the underdog

sort of definitionally, at the life stage where learning is most common, the obvious advantages rest with the other guy

And underdogs do, after all, sometimes win. Richards makes it a point to trot out statistics along those lines, for which I was grateful.
How often does the smaller side win? Certainly not all the time, and the historical evidence suggests that numbers do play a role.

And yet, as with most statistics, I couldn’t quite bring myself to trust them

Prediction markets aren’t my thing — neither is gambling in general, and like most women I am more risk-averse than the men in my family — but I do appreciate it when people “put their money where their mouth is” when making claims and predictions

If we had a model — or even a heurstic — that could do a useful job of picking the winner in a conflict, that would be really useful. We don’t, though. Americans can barely predict the outcomes of our own elections. It’s not like any sensible gambler would just put their chips on “bigger side wins” or even “faster decision-makers win”.

Strategy > Tactics

Keep On Thinking Straight

Under stress, we generally either freeze up or keep going on our default course. I’ve never fought a war, but I can attest that it is hard to solve problems with a baby screaming, a toddler demanding food, and a spouse getting increasingly frustrated that dinner is burning.

Honestly, I found a surprising amount of Certain to Win applicable not to my professional needs (I thank my lucky stars every day that I am never going to be in charge of setting strategy at Readwise) but rather my personal ones.

Strategy is a mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests.

Emily Oster has a book called “The Family Firm” and it is a reminder that families count as organizations

On Trust vs. Numbers

Decision-making speed is the number that matters

being able to see an emerging situation, evaluate it, come up with an idea to take advantage of it, implement that idea, and then evaluate its efficacy — quickly — is obviously important

Does technological superiority matter?

How Old Is All This, Really?

Overall Reaction

I really liked it, and I learned a lot from it. More importantly, I learned a lot about why businesses (particularly the one I work for) do the things they do.