Thread by @TaylorPearsonMe

1/ A thread on what theories of guerilla warfare, college football, and running a company have in common.

2/ Let’s start with football (of the American variety). Generally, the way that the game is played is that there is a head coach along with an offensive and defensive coordinator.

3/ Generally, the coordinators are watching the games from the sidelines (or the box) and will call in specific plays to the offense and defense respectively.

These plays are generally “fixed.”

4/ That is, every player has a specific role and they would do the same time every time it was called.

One play might look something like this.

5/ When the ball is snapped, the play starts and each of the receivers on the outside (these are the ones that catch the ball) would be told to run a specific route, indicated by the line with an arrow.

6/ This style of football kind of reminds me of chess. The coordinators are the chess masters and the players are the pieces on the board, each with a specific and circumscribed role.

7/ Over the last ten or twenty years, there’s been a bit of a shift in how the game has been played by some teams. One of the biggest changes is that it is increasingly common for the players to make more of their own decisions on the field

8/ Take this play as an example.

You can see that all the receivers have what is usually called “option routes.”

There are multiple arrows branching off of each receiver and the receiver has the option to choose which route they want to run.

9/ They are choosing that option based on what the defense is giving them.

This strategy devolves a lot of decision making from the coaches to the players. The players are no longer like chess pieces that only move in one direction, they have a fair amount of autonomy.

10/ The downside to this approach is that it relies on receivers and quarterbacks to “read” the defense the same.

If the quarterback and the receiver are in sync and make the same read of the defense, then this approach is incredibly effective.

11/ The essential shift here is that decision making is devolved further down the chain of command. When done well, this gives the offense a huge advantage.

If you are playing chess and all your players can move like queens then it’s an enormous advantage.

12/ You have a much larger degree of freedom and can beat a much better opponent. I call this The Farthest Down the Chain Principle. You want to push the decision making as far down the chain as is reasonable.

13/ This realization is at the heart of John Boyd’s OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide Act) Loop strategy which studied how insurgent guerilla forces could triumph over large enemies.

14/ The Vietnam/American War was much different from the World Wars earlier in the 20th century, because the Vietnamese applied this same technique of devolving decision-making down the chain and as a result were able to fight successfully against a much larger force.

15/ This same principle is true in running a company.

Startups rely on getting inside the OODA loop (taylorpearson.me/ooda-loop/)of their competitors.

If you can observe, orient, decide and act in an hour and BigCo requires a year, that’s a big competitive advantage.

16/ Sometimes big enough to unseat massive incumbents.

However, many CEOs and managers try to behave like the offensive coordinators of yesteryear.

They want to have complete control over what each of their team members is doing.

17/ Often this is an ego thing where they want to “be the boss.”

The traditional approach to football, management and investing could be described in as high modernist.

taylorpearson.me/illegible/

18/ The logic behind pushing decisions down the chain to the individual closest to the problem is that the person closest to the problems understands the problem and its many details the best.

19/ John Boyd referred to this as Fingerspitzengefuhl, a German word that translates to fingertip feeling. taylorpearson.me/fingerspitzeng…

Fingerspitzengefuhl works in concert with another key principle: Schwerpunkt.

20/ Schwerpunkt literally translates as the center of gravity or emphasis but is best understood as focus or the main priority.

In military terms, it is usually the geographic point of attack.

21/ In business terms, it is having a clear focus and empowering your team to make decisions for themselves in an uncertain environment.

22/ There are lots of ways to do this, but it generally looks something like quarterly goals taylorpearson.me/planning/), having a mission statement (taylorpearson.me/core-values-li…), and referencing guiding principles in your calls.

23/ The Farthest Down the Chain Principle means always asking the question “What is the farthest down the chain that I can push this decision?”

You want to maximize the autonomy of people. This also has the nice benefit that you tend to attract the best people.

24/ The best people believe they are good and they want more control. It’s also the case that autonomy increases job satisfaction.

25/ So pushing decision-making down the chain, when done well, means you end up with better people that are happy at their job and are more competitive against others. That’s a pretty big advantage.