X : Is doctrine more important than maps?
Me : Part of the same thing. Doctrine (i.e. universally useful principles) are derived from maps and also mapping helps implement some of them but they can be used alone. To explain ...
Me : Part of the same thing. Doctrine (i.e. universally useful principles) are derived from maps and also mapping helps implement some of them but they can be used alone. To explain ...
Let us start with the strategy cycle. Understanding the landscape is useful for learning patterns (climate, doctrine, gameplay aka leadership) and communication. However, the most important concept is ... 
... MttR, our Mean time to Respond to some change (which either we or others introduced). This depends upon our ability to ...
observe the change, orient around it, decide what to do and act. All have a "Mean time to" associated with them ...
... one of the beauty of maps is we can take a map and apply climatic patterns to it. This enables us to scenario plan where to attack, what to prepare for because we can not only learn but anticipate ...
... we can even add gameplay. All of this helps us prepare for anticipatable impacts. It's not a crystal ball, it doesn't solve the unknown but it is however a way of accelerating MttR ...
... without the landscape, we can't do this sort of planning. We can't even learn climatic patterns (the rules of the game) and context specific gameplay. But we still have doctrine, decision and action ...
... the current list of doctrine is attached. NB, we learn doctrine through maps i.e. we find new patterns, those which we have no choice over are climatic (rules of the game), the remaining split into gameplay (context specific) and doctrine (universally useful) ...
... when you compare companies, you'll quickly find there can be a huge difference in doctrine i.e. ...
... and just examining two aspects of doctrine (situational awareness and bias to action) shows differences in performance ...
... however, to examine them all and find out what matters most will take anywhere upto 20 years. The best we can say is they appear to be universally useful, we don't know what matters more but you should do all of them ...
... to which the question becomes "which should we do first" ... for which the answer is, we don't know. The best guess for implementation is currently ...
... so can we just implement doctrine and ignore maps?
Well, some of the doctrine needs maps but here's the gotcha. One of the climatic patterns is co-evolution which means new practices (and universally useful doctrine) is appearing. So, the list is always expanding ...
Well, some of the doctrine needs maps but here's the gotcha. One of the climatic patterns is co-evolution which means new practices (and universally useful doctrine) is appearing. So, the list is always expanding ...
... and if you can't map the space, then you can't discover that new doctrine. You'll eventually end back in the old world of guessing if such a principle matters (and many are context specific) ...
... so in short, you can gain some advantage by simply implementing better doctrine but eventually you'll have to use maps.
