Imagine. Possibilities.
‘Strategic thinking’ has been overtaken by the ‘quants’.
Those that believe that by generating loads of data, analysing past events, behaviour, and outcomes, you can create a model that will give answers to the key strategic question: How best to deploy limited assets for the best return’?
Aristotle 2,500 years ago observed that in some things the past will always be the same as the future. Think about gravity. We know it will be there tomorrow exactly as it is today.
Your task in this case is to identify and quantify cause and effect.
Aristotle also observed that in other things it is not the case that what happened yesterday will be repeated today. In that case, you must form hypotheses, test them, learn, then rinse and repeat.
In other words, you need to imagine possibilities.
Look at the evolution on the mobile phone for evidence. On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs officially announced the original iPhone. On January 10, 2007, despite luminaries like Steve Ballmer poking fun at it, all preconceptions about what a mobile phone was, were out the window. The past was not representative of what the future would look like.
The world is a messy place, today rarely looks like yesterday. In that messy place our task is not to look at the past and project onto the future, our task is to imagine possibilities.
Strategy development is all about imagining those possibilities, making choices on what appears to be the best bet, and putting your money down, adjusting as necessary as more information and insight are gathered.
Aristotle did not conceive the OODA loop. He left that to John ’40 second’ Boyd 2,500 years later, but it was inherent in the ‘scientific method’ he articulated, and should be required learning for every decision-maker.
Header is a representation of the ‘Johari Window’, made famous by Donald Rumsfeld
