Fog of War – Part 2

::: nBlog :::

With today’s business and technology we have unprecedented capabilities to gain intelligence information and to achieve situational awareness, even globally. Why are we then still bogged down by the Fog of War? I see that this stems mostly from sticking to old ways of doing things and not adapting to new possibilities. Part of human nature is to resist change, even when it obviously is the most dangerous strategy.

Furthermore, businesses tend to be quite centralized what comes to authority, so a few people become bottlenecks when decision making is not sufficiently decentralized on operational issues. People wait for decisions while a changing issue is at hand, and Fog of War increases. Unlike war, business has no concept of casualties, or at least their nature is less fatal, so we witness projects and endeavors sometimes restarted due to having been fully consumed by the fog.

Another Clausewitz doctrine that I find highly relevant in business is the rapid concentration of forces. In war this means gaining local superiority on key battlefields to achieve breakthroughs, which further destabilize even a numerically superior enemy. I have adapted this for business by picking a few key areas (of our Full Stack layers) where we can always attain commercial or technical superiority in a competitive situation. The key is to always identify and adapt to these opportunities at customers.

Clausewitz also strongly emphasizes the ‘Genius of War’, which I have translated as the ever increasing creative skill and intellect of the commander. As a master strategist himself, he makes it sound so.. easy.

//Pasi