If punishment comes because we have made the wrong moral choices, then what are we to do about an agent who continues to be immoral despite recognizing the folly of his ways? It was not that God wanted an excuse to destroy the Egyptians – witness his rebuke to the Jews when they rejoiced at the destruction of the Egyptian army… Strategy as well as morality depended on choice, and if the players in this drama were merely acting out of a preordined script from which no deviation was permitted, then the only strategist at work here was God. STRATEGY, A HISTORY
Advantages Creation
- Guiding policy – anticipating actions and reactions of others
- Draw power from focused minds, energy and action – channelled at the right moment into pivotal objective
- Inertias and constraints for change
- Reducing complexity and ambiguity in situations
- Primarily deciding what is truly important and focusing resources and actions on that objective
- Exploiting leverage inherent in concentrating effort on pivotal or decisive aspects of the situation
- Concentration points – The gains flow from a combination of constraints and threshold effect
- Threshold effect: Critical level of effort necessary to affect the system
- Efforts below have little to no payoffs
- Threshold effect: Critical level of effort necessary to affect the system
- Concentration points – The gains flow from a combination of constraints and threshold effect
- Coherent Action-build on one another – rather than cancel each other
- Strategy is about action – about doing something
A Coercive Reputation – One act of success facilitates future acts. God’s threats now had credibility. The reputation of his extraordinary power made it far easier to coerce the inhabitants of the land of Israel, which had been promised to the Jews. Just before entering this land, Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the Israelites. The first obstacle to occupying the new land was the old walled city of Jericho, at the centre of fertile land and in control of the water source. Joshua sent two spies to discover the lay of the land. They lodged with Rahab, who is normally described as a prostitute but who may have been more of an innkeeper(an inn was always a good place to pick up gossip).STRATEGY, A HISTORY
When the king of Jericho demanded that the spies be handed over, Rahab hid them instead. Having heard what had happened to the Egyptians, she explained ” All the inhabitants of the land are quaking before you”. They had all lost heart, and “no man had any spirit left because of you” she made a deal. In return for her family being spared whatever was going to befall the rest of the city, she agreed not to disclose the spies’ mission. This deal was not based on the moral worthiness of the Hebrew God – just his superior power. STRATEGY, A HISTORY
Good Strategy
- Grows out of an independent and careful assessment of the situation – must have an entrepreneurial component
- Coordinates policies across activities to focus the competitive punch
- Healthy growth is not engineered – it is an outcome of growing demand for special capabilities or expanded/extended capabilities
- The outcome of a firm – having superior products and skills
- A leader’s job is to provide insights/skill/inventiveness to harness that power to a purpose
- Mental Guide posts to help clear the fog of change – fixed costs, predictable biases in forecasting, deregulation, incumbent response, attractor state
- Godel proved, that sufficiently complex logical systems are “incomplete”, and can be true or false
- To judge truth one must look beyond the system
When it came to actually taking Jericho, there was no need for a prolonged siege. Around the walls, the Israelites marched for six days until it became such a routine that the guardians of the city took little notice, and then they struck as God brought the walls ( weakened through a recent earthquake) tumbling down. As the invasion progressed, those on its line of advance had every reason to be afraid. There was no mercy shown to those occupying the land God had promised to the Israelites, although mercy could be shown to people who lived far away. STRATEGY, A HISTORY