The Science: Its Purpose
Rapid Strategic Cognition
Its Purpose Overview
Where
Planning Works
Where Instant Insight Is Needed
Why
Strategic Cognition Works
Competition and Production
The
Information Problem Overview
Proof It Works
Overview
How It
Works Overview
How It Compares
Overview
Overview
 Rapid
strategic cognition comes from studying science of classical front-line
strategy. Front-line strategy is not the type of strategy that people equate
with planning. Though strategy is
often used as a synonym for planning, classical front-line strategy
addresses the competitive struggle in a way that cannot be planned.
These flashes of insight are not planning but they are still at the heart of
problem solving and decision making.
Planning follows a series
of steps to produce a well-defined result. Such planning requires control over the
events that create that result.
Planning
within controlled environments is not
only useful but necessary.
Control means that production meets prediction as planned. It
would be nice to think that everything can be planned, but in a fast-changing world, very little that happens is planned.
Outside our control, planning doesn't work. People
compete. Critical resources are contested. Competing plans collide, producing results that no one
plans. Front-line strategy starts with the
humble acceptance that the larger world is
beyond our control.
What works in competition? The study of
success on the front line started with war. Sun Tzu saw
that losers clung to their
plans like an excuse while winners responded to the situation with a different
set of instincts. Instead of a series
of planned steps, the methods of front-line
strategy concern themselves with a way of competitive positions,
expanding and advancing positions, and specific responses to specific challenges.
In the science of strategy we call decision-making in these three areas
positional strategy,
expansion strategy, and
situational strategy.
Both planned production and
competitive strategy are necessary. Together, they create the resources and need for each
other. Productive control and competitive maneuvers
both require human creativity, but they require different methods and skill
sets. The problem is that our knowledge of planned production has overshadowed
our understanding of competitive strategy.
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