Lessons for Winning in the Networked Age from Aerial Combat
By Kris Vette
In my last article, Where are all the Blockchains? I gave a prediction on the timeline for blockchain technology to be adopted as mainstream. In this article, I consider how ‘thought leading’ organisations and individuals can develop mindsets to dominate in the age of networks. Lessons from aerial combat uncover some ancient battlefield principles of success that can be applied today.
In the midst of the aerial combat that took place during the Korean War in the 1950’s, a strange fact emerged. The North Koreans used a Russian Fighter aircraft, the Mig 15. It was a great aircraft. And it was superior to the American F-86 Sabre Jet-fighter in almost every way. The Russian Jet-fighter had better acceleration, higher maximum speed and superior high-altitude performance.
Yet something strange was happening. Despite those seemingly unbeatable advantages, the North Koreans, were losing the combat in the air. And they were losing at a rate of ten Mig’s shot down for each American plane lost. What was happening?
One of the US pilots, the tangential thinking John Boyd, analysed the data. He strongly believed the success rate of the Americans was not as a result of some superiority in pilot training, hand-eye skills or genes. He wanted to uncover the real reason for the higher American success rate.
What he found led to the development of a theory of winning and losing that can be applied to any competitive situation in almost any aspect of life. It also explained many historical battles where inferior forces had overcome far more powerful rivalries.
Boyd found two critical differences when comparing the design and performance of the two aircraft. And in those two design aspects, he found advantages the American Jet-fighter had over the Russian Mig-15.
First, he noted that the US Sabre Jet-fighter had a bubble canopy. This gave the American pilots almost 360-degree vision. Secondly, he found that the US plane had ‘super-hydraulic’ controls so that its pilots could perform any manoeuvre extremely quickly. They could move the aircraft with just a light touch on the control stick. This allowed them to rapidly transition from one position to another and then back again.
The North Korean pilots could not react as fast. They had heavier, non-hydraulic controls. The critical point however, was not that the American pilots could do this quickly. It was that they could do this more quickly than their adversaries. It was the relative advantage that made the difference.
Winning and Losing
This explained the difference in success rates being witnessed in the skies. So John Boyd started thinking on the wider nature of winning and losing. Over the next decade he developed a theory that could be applied to any environment; battlefield, business, sports field or life.
In essence his theory stated that, in any competitive situation the ability to move faster than your adversary is the ultimate advantage, particularly if the move is to a superior relative position. But critically it is not just the new position, but the ‘transition’ to that new position that counts. And the ability to do that again and again is what creates superior tempo. Boyd highlighted using the time element of combat to dislocate an enemy’s mind.
However, Boyd found a second critical element. Fast transitions were great. But in order to make a better move, he believed a superior ‘Situational Awareness’ or orientation to events was needed. The US Sabre fighter had a 360 degree ‘bubble canopy’ and the pilots could now get all-round vision. This increased their chance of making a superior move. The pilots with a wider ‘field of vision’ could build a more accurate mental picture of how the battle could unfold. By continually matching this picture to reality the American pilots were able to build, destroy and rebuild their mental models more quickly. In other words, their mental models more accurately matched real-world events.
But there was one other advantage that a faster move gave them, even when the situation wasn’t always clear in the pilot’s mind. It proved better to move than not move. In other words, when stuck in a losing situation, they increased their chance of getting a win by moving and trying a new angle of attack. By just testing an idea you may get a more informed picture of the problem.
Movement can stimulate fresh thinking and provide real world feedback. So take the initiative.
In later years, Boyd went on to develop a theory of ‘manoeuvre warfare’ based on his theory of winning and losing. However, the ability to make faster transients than one’s foe, again and again, and thereby ‘building’ greater situational awareness, remained at the heart of his thinking.
Mindset in the Age of Emerging Technology
So how could Boyd’s work from days past possibly guide success in our current era?
We live in a fast world. Our business environment is changing, faster than ever before. As has happened since time immemorial, success will go to those who can grasp the ‘context’ more quickly than the rest.
When any organisation is in a competitive situation, the victor is determined by the group that can ‘orientate’ most quickly and exploit that new or evolving situation. But it is relative. You don’t have to be high speed all the time, you just have to be faster than your competitors when it counts.
Recently, we have seen the emergence of three tech trends that are changing the business environment;
1. Cloud Computing (and the abstraction of hardware into software)
2. Blockchain Technology (for Enterprise application as well as public blockchains and cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin)
3. Artificial Intelligence.
These trends will combine to fuel an era so powerful that it will reset the nature of organisations. Connectedness will go beyond ‘the internet’. Networks with evolve, both within and outside of the traditional internet. We are likely to see new ‘secure networks’ operating with ‘permissioned players’. These will create new industry and social groups. Increased opportunities will be exploited. Increasing threats will need to be countered. It will require a rethinking of the Social Physics at play.
While some networks will evolve into permissioned access networks with gated off participants enjoying strong protection from cyber-attack, other public, open networks will evolve from decentralised blockchains. These will operate on blockchains without a central point of control. These decentralised networks will compete with the centrally controlled platforms like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Amazon. Public blockchains have wider governance protocols, giving more transparency on things like quality metrics, provenance, component sourcing, trace-ability and outcome recording.
This new environment will produce new business ‘ecosystems’. The ecosystem environment will see different business relationships emerge, both locally and remotely. They will be unconstrained by distance or association. These will impact ways of work, business processes, supply chains, back-end functions, customer responsiveness and market profiles.
As advanced as these new technologies are and while business needs to understand them, it is more important to work out how we need to adapt to this new world. Organisational structures and business relationships are heavily influenced by technology but ultimately it is people that make business happen. ‘Organisational Mindset’ has an intrinsic power well beyond the technology itself.
The question that we need to ask ourselves now, is not how will the environment change, but how will we change to become ‘shape shifters’?
How do business leaders develop a mindset to win with emerging technology?
1. Gain and maintain greater situational awareness — ‘see’ and ‘understand’ the context.
The first and most critical skill for survival let alone success is to be able to map the world we live in. That means being able to see the forces at play, conceptualise how they are changing and gain visibility on who the players are. This is to understand the ‘context’. Ancient Chinese military strategy, like that espoused by Sun Tsu, has always placed a greater emphasis on the context than the participants. This is because of the interactive, dynamic effect that the environment we operate in, has on the nature of our business. We must also grasp that it is impossible to know and understand the world exactly as it is. Any belief we hold that our view is the absolute view is pure perception. A pyramid looks like a triangle when viewed from the ground yet a square when viewed from above. So, we must be continually building and destroying our ‘situational picture’.
For the business context, this really means trying to ‘see’ the networked world we now exist in. We are only just getting used to this for as much as we think the internet wave is old, it has really only just begun. We are just in the early stages of new networked age. In many ways we have not yet grasped the effect of the ‘connectedness’ that we have.
2. Develop a ‘Sixth Sense’, an intuition or a ‘Finger Tip’ feel for action.
Learn how to think faster than your competition about the world we live in. Develop a ‘network sense’.
How? Updating knowledge of the world and the change happening weekly is necessary (Situational Awareness). But skilful application of that knowledge is only gained by testing it out. Try these new ideas and test new assumptions in rapid cycles of learning. To become a shape shifter, one’s thinking must constantly evolve.
Analyse new technologies and new situations. Question how new technologies could change the environment you currently operate in. Break them down into components. Generate a thesis on how those factors and new situations could work. Then synthesise it — put the components back together in a different way. Test again. Fail. Try something new. Test gain. This is how you develop a superior ‘Operational Tempo’. But each test must limit any downside, as the organisational skill level is built up. There is no room anymore for large scale project disasters.
At a team level, question all assumptions. Run regular sessions with your staff on fresh thinking. Brainstorm regularly. Develop a ‘Skunkworks’ or ‘Red Team’ internally that reviews new tech and develops potential moves that your competitors may make. Mind-map the potential solutions. Leadership needs to embrace fresh thinking, encouraging it, not crushing it.
3. Be light, in both mindset and form.
To move fast, you must be light and mobile. So, develop a lean operational form. Have IT, business and people systems in place that could be quickly transformed to new locations, new markets or a new customer base.
The next five years will see a significant shift in markets and competitive forces. New skill sets and capabilities will be needed and the ability to rapidly skill up will be useful. An organisational form that supports a manoeuvrable culture is like a team that can adapt to new competitors with a different ‘play book’.
Learn from other historical epochs
Throughout history there have been periods of rapid technological gain. Each epoch seemingly comes at us with a new order of magnitude over the last. From fire, through tribal grouping, agriculture, organised civilisation, gun powder, steam engines, factories, electricity, the silicon chip, the internet and now networks, there has always been a step change in thinking required.
As these technologies evolve, we must grasp the new context. The context of interaction between ourselves, the new technology and the environment. There is a new topology connecting these three areas. A nimble mind enables one to gain a faster and more complete grasp of any new situation. A petrified mind ensures one remains locked into the context of the previous era. Awareness is more about mindset than anything else. Nothing is static. There will be threats and opportunities ahead. In order to win, we must train our minds to think with a new freshness each day.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new”
Socrates
Kris Vette is an Emerging Technology Strategist. He runs Chain Ecosystems, a consultancy that enables organisations to both understand and posture themselves for success in the age of networks.
