For microorganisms to fighter jets - what does it take to thrive?

Col. John Boyd would like a word.

I was thinking about ‘Agile outside the agile box’ (what I’m calling for now “organizational fitness”) and the weird librarian part of my brain brought this up.

It’s a slide from Col. John Boyd’s ‘Patterns of Conflict’ briefing, which is a kind of mad genius two-day PPT presentation that covers almost everything human, while anchoring on military strategy and fighter design.

Back in the early 1970’s, I recall reading an article about ‘The Fighter Mafia’ and the procurement battles in DC over the F-111 and successor aircraft. It was fascinating but I knew nothing about the subject and most of it was over my head. It was the first place I saw John Boyd’s name mentioned.

Col. Boyd was a fighter pilot and strategist – most of the folks who know me here know who he is at least superficially – as the inventor of the OODA loop (usually seen in a vastly simplified form).

He was a real fighter jock – and what would today be known as a Powerpoint Ranger. His medium was a long briefing, accompanied with dozens (or hundreds) of slides on an overhead projector.

It’s absolutely worth it to read Patterns of Conflict (pdf) - but for most of us mortals, it’s something we’ll scan 20 times and pull different nuggets and patterns from each time.

This particular nugget has been on my mind for a few months, as I’ve been working on my take on agility. It highlights four essential characteristics of a successful organism / organization:

• Variety – not a One Trick Pony, can rapidly develop alternatives (think: Design Thinking, good Product Management);

• Rapidity – can quickly adapt between different paths (agility/adaptability)

• Harmony – moving all the aspects/elements in a coordinated, mutually supportive way (this is the rub with Deep Agile models, and usually leans on leadership or even management)

• Initiative – not just responding to the environment, but taking advantage of the environment in order to act intentionally (Strategy / management / leadership figures here).

 I’m hard-pressed to imagine other broad-brush characteristics that would make up organizational fitness. I need to do some work and map real-world organizational capabilities / skills / structures to these.

But if we set out these four things as ways of judging our organizational North Star, I think we’d be advancing the game quite a bit.

My other favorite quote from this slide deck is on guerilla war (which I see transformation as a genuine analog of) -

Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people—rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*

Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*

* If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!