Good Observation Skills: the Basics of Military Strategies and Improvements in a Small Business I Part 3

Observing accurately an environment and a small business implicitly is at the core of identifying hidden resources, assets and opportunities that can lead to improvements and progress in general.

This identification is also part of a military process for decision making which is called Destruction – Creation. This process aims at improving the capacity for independent action and belongs to John Boyd who was a great military strategist that highly influenced the military world.

About making independent decisions by observing accurately, Boyd says in his “Destruction – Creation” essay:

To make these timely decisions implies that we must be able to form mental concepts of observed reality, as we perceive it, and be able to change these concepts as reality itself appears to change.

There are two ways in which we can develop and manipulate mental concepts to represent observed reality:

We can go from specific to general and from general to specific.

In this article I approach the 1st way and develop it bellow.

Observing the world from “specific to general” means that first we start observing the INDIVIDUAL parts in a system or environment and start building towards a NEW whole.

The relevance of the military process for decision making in business

The Destruction – Creation process is relevant because in a way or another Boyd’s strategy is based on the NATURAL ability of our mind to LEARN since we were CHILDREN and that we still use even if it is in a shallow way. So, at its core children and soldier have the same behaviour mechanism for survival and for growing, which is playing with the OBVIOUS.

The same mechanism applies also to average people and business. They use it too. The difference is that average people and business owners are stuck in the mindset I describe in part 2 of the article which makes it difficult for them to OBSERVE the obvious and also to see its RELEVANCE.

For instance, when a business owner SIMPLIFIES reality in order to take action, she totally misses the INDIVIDUAL parts of the business that can lead to improvements.

Or when a business owner deals with problems as INDIVIDUAL components by improvising, she misses their relevance for the business as a WHOLE.

A small business doesn’t have a direction, a vision, a strategy, a plan and no priorities. A small business operates at a CHAOTIC and DISORGANIZED level. This means its environment is already in the “destruction” mode, meaning it is BROKEN DOWN to its INDIVIDUAL (specific) components.

You can see in part 2 of the article that a CHAOTIC activity has NO ORDER. Hence its individual activities are handled with multitasking and diverted attention. In addition, every problem is seen INDIVIDUALLY, disconnected from the rest of the business which is handled with IMPROVISATIONS. Improvising is the last proof that what you do is right because it shows a sort of RESULT from your action. This creates attachment for IMMEDIATE results which makes a business owner to EASILY overlook the OBVIOUS.

This proofs that a small business is already broken apart which makes it EASIER to observe the OBVIOUS. And what it needs is just to put ALL the pieces together for a strong, stable and efficient business.

But first you have to SEE them.

Let’s look 1st how observation skills are already in our senses, in our mind, in our learning mechanism and why they are important for our progress.

Children PLAY with the obvious and soldiers are trained to SEE with the obvious

Just like comedians, children also emphasis the obvious that makes us laugh.

Here is something funny coming from a child asking:

“why don’t we also have hair on our foreheads?”

Did you also know that part of the hard training and discipline of soldiers is actually for SEEING the OBVIOUS? All that hard training is for them to get back to the INNOCENCE of a CHILD, meaning seeing the OBVIOUS, being an excellent observer.

I know it sounds extreme, but at the core of a soldier training is the fact that they must stay ALERT in an UNPREDICTABLE environment and be able to ACT properly and find the RIGHT solution.

Being alert in a dangerous environment is similar with the state of a child: the beginner in an UNKNOWN and new world.

The difference between a soldier and a business owner is that business owners don’t have ORIENTATION (no direction, no vision, no focus). As a result, they dont know what is relevant and what is not from their business. They dont know where to start, they dont know what to look for. So they have the state of beginner just like a child: they are surrounded by a big mess at 360 degrees and they have to deal with it.

Unlike children, business owners have personal experiences which gives them a SMALL degree of orientation in their business, even if it produces small results with a lot of effort. This is possible, as they dont live in a highly RISKY environment like soldiers who MUST have specific goals and direction.

Let’s zoom it a bit and see how the observation ability manifest in the 2 different worlds:

CHILDREN: see the obvious naturally as they are in a constant state of WONDER.

SOLDIERS: are TRAINED to see the obvious. They have a very CLEAR mind and SHARP FOCUS for picking up details as their life depend on them.

The state of their mind is totally different, but the OUTCOME is the same: they MUST see the OBVIOUS that we, the average people totally miss on a daily basis.

CHILDREN: reduce everything to CHAOS around them because they must learn how our world is built. This happens until 2 years old or something.

SOLDIERS: operate in a CHAOTIC environment where there is no order, no rules, but only high risks. So, they BREAK DOWN the surrounding reality into its individual components.

The difference between the 2 is that children do it PHYSICALLY, meaning they literally break things down and turn your closet upside down. Soldiers do it MENTALLY, meaning they must stay alert and observe every SMALL, RANDOM, INDIVIDUAL thing that is moving around.

CHILDREN: when they are about 2 years old, they rebuild the created chaos by putting together the OBVIOUS pieces, individual elements they observe. This is the point when they start building that lego game.

SOLDIERS: recombine the obvious elements in a chaotic, unpredictable environment in order to create NEW, SPONTANEOUS solutions.

Conclusion:

1 we are born to learn from and in a CHAOTIC matter

2 surviving in extreme conditions require us (adults) to go back to our INNATE learning process,

3 most of us are caught in the already BUILT, ORGANIZED, PREDICTABLE, SECURE life, job or relationships, habits and we AVOID at all cost the UNPREDICTABLE and CHAOS which is exactly the STARTING point for OBSERVING individual components and creating SPONTANEOUS solutions. As a result, the process for overcoming challenging situations becomes very LOOOONG, tedious with a lot of cost in terms of money, effort, stress, time.

In our REAL and average life, we do EXACTLY the same thing: we observe different obvious facts, stay alert and produce solutions. But they look spontaneous because we are UNAWARE of the rebuilding process which is a NEW combination of observations, facts, information that initially seemed to be totally DISCONNECTED and UNRELATED.

This means producing spontaneous solutions and ideas happens by rebuilding a new world, a new ORDER after we break down the current order at the level of CHAOS, RANDOM information that loops around us. In order to rebuild our world and create new solutions, we must first OBSERVE the individual components of the current world (in a job, business or life in general).

This happens in our mind of course, not physically. Because we are not aware of this process, we use it very SELDOM. It happens rarely because we are forced by our difficult situation which is just a PATTERN that has no categories, no label like 90% of our daily life. A difficult situation just doesnt fit any BOX that we know in our life and that keeps us safe. This makes us avoid UNCERTAINTY. We are able to create spontaneous solution when we break the LABELS, CATEGORIES that we know everything should fit in and eventually see (thank God!) their INDIVIDUAL components. As a result, we can recombine them and create something NEW that doesn’t fit any RULE, LABEL, CATEGORY you know about.

The difference between average people and the 2 extremes (children and soldiers) is that we try to CONSERVE reality, to keep order and rules so that we can be SAFE. We dont want to disturb the safety of the world we live in: try to keep our jobs, our homes, relationships, we keep the same habits, we spend endless minutes to decide between 2 ketchup brands. We dont want to do anything out of common, out of our ROUTINE, out what we are used to do.

So, in time this becomes a mindset. As a result, when we get in DIFFICULT situations or problems, our mind tries to go for the SECURE option, it struggles between a DANGEROUS, risky situation (the problem) and a SECURITY mindset that tries to always keep things TOGETHER, that always solves problems in the same way, it doesn want to break down the security of your comfort zone. At this moment you feel stuck, stressed out, maybe panic and you know for sure life is serious and it is not a children game.

It might seem an analogy between the 2, but at their core, all 3 examples (children, soldiers, business owners) have exactly the same LEARNING process. It is only the contexts that make the difference. What it also means is that in children behaviour we can see our NATURAL way of learning that we ALL use to make progress in life even in our adulthood life, but we are not aware of it.

In the soldier example, they understood that in order to survive in extreme and severe conditions one MUST be brought back to the NATURAL process of learning which is the children way: breaking things down to its individual components (create chaos) and rebuild them, recombine them in order to create a NEW solution on the spot (be spontaneous) to survive a dangerous, unsafe, risky, life threading environment.

That is why a soldier type of training is tough because one’s mind must UNLEARN all their adulthood MINDSET and be reduced to the child innocence: be able to observe the OBVIOUS in a chaotic environment.

Our challenge is that we lost our sense of WONDER from childhood and we are not TRAINED like soldiers to survive in very CHAOTIC, life threatening situations. We have no sense of wonder because we know the RULES of our real world.

We dont live in a chaotic world because everything has structure and a system behind it which makes our life very predictable and comfortable: we know where to buy our food from (we dont need to actually work the land to provide it), we have fast moving machines (cars, airplanes, ships) that transport us in no time wherever we need to, internet, running water etc. So, we dont need to stay ALERT because everything runs smoothly, in a predictable routine.

Even if the business is already chaotic, the rules that a business owner follows are those from PERSONAL experiences with the mindset described in part 2 of the article.

So, the difference is that we, the average RESIST change, meaning we resist breaking things down, recombine them, doing it in NEW ways that we are used to, doing it by following our NATURAL way of learning.

In the next part, we will see my “Destruction – Creation” approach for observing relevant information that leads to improvements.

Mihaela Dragan