THE ART OF STRATEGY
THE ART OF STRATEGY
Steps Towards Business Agility. On Situational Awareness, OODA "Loops" and Wardley Mapping.
About the Book
What is strategy?
Why do you need it?
How do you do it?
And, how can you be more certain to succeed?
THE ART OF STRATEGY provides timeless answers to these eternal questions. It is a short introduction to strategy through the insights of three successful strategists: Sun Tzu, John Boyd and Simon Wardley. It is a modern reading of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War — the strategy classic written in China around 500 BCE — using the lenses of Boyd (OODA "loop" inventor) and Wardley (Wardley Map inventor) who were both influenced by Sun Tzu.
Each chapter gently transforms The Art of War into a modern business setting and includes material from Boyd and Wardley in separate sections to complement and clarify Sun Tzu’s terse, poetic text. In this way, strategy is served in 13 short chapters requiring 5–10 minutes of reading time each. An extensive glossary is included since many Chinese concepts are purposefully abstract and ambiguous.
You will discover new thinking patterns, e.g. OODA "loops" and situational awareness, as well as visualisation tools like Wardley Maps that will help you and your organisation succeed with your stakeholders. You will also improve your understanding of the — sometimes evil — gameplays (and countermeasures!) of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xí Jìnpíng, who are all inspired by Sun Tzu, in some cases indirectly via Boyd.
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Reader Testimonials
Simon Wardley
Inventor of Wardley Mapping
The Art of Strategy is a great little book with loads of maps in there.
Chet Richards
Author of Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business
Erik Schön has created a great example of Boyd’s 'snowmobile' — a synthesis across a variety of domains leading to new insights and capabilities. I’m sure every strategist, business leader, and entrepreneur will find valuable ideas for making their own enterprises more competitive.
Staffan Nöteberg
Author of Guiding Star OKRs, Monotasking and Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
The Art of Strategy is condensed knowledge that all managers, agile coaches and other leaders should have. These are three thinkers from very different contexts. But as Erik has put it, with similarities and differences topic by topic, a fourth voice appears. That voice belongs to the interaction between the three narrators and it gives as much value to me as a reader as the other three voices do.
Table of Contents
- Introduction What is strategy and why do you need it? 9
- Acknowledgements Standing on the shoulders of giants 13
- 1. Assessments How to assess, prepare and shape 17
- 2. Challenges How to use and reduce inertia, entropy and friction 31
- 3. Success How to succeed together with stakeholders 41
- 4. Setup How to create resilience 49
- 5. Momentum How to use creativity, focus and timing 59
- 6. Shaping How to shape and avoid being shaped 69
- 7. Engagement How to engage using surprise 75
- 8. Adaptations How to adapt to shifting situations 85
- 9. Movements How to move to optimize momentum 97
- 10. Landscape How to approach difficult areas 109
- 11. Situations How to handle difficult situations 117
- 12. Disruption How to disrupt and avoid being disrupted 131
- 13. Intelligence How to use intelligence to create foreknowledge 143
- Sources 147
- Glossary 155
- Index 185
- List of Figures 191
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