Finding Your Point B--Strategic Intuition to the Rescue

In America, we know him mainly for his short stature, but Europeans have a much more profound understand of how Napoleon shaped history. They recognize him as the perhaps the single best implementer of military strategy of all time. Napoleon was a star of epic proportions—a Lebron James-style prodigy—and post-Napoleonic Europe was filled with academics, historians and military theorists, all trying to explain his genius, his successes, and his ultimate failure.

If you are a leader and you have used any sort of formal method of strategic planning beyond darts or a Magic Eight Ball (I’m not knocking the Magic Eight Ball!), then you stand in a long tradition that goes back to those military theorists and historians who first tried to make sense of Napoleon, the master strategist. Even if your means and your ends stand diametrically opposed to that of Napoleon, if you have used SWOT analysis, environmental scanning, five forces modeling, the LOGIC model, Six Sigma, or just simple business planning, you are indebted to Napoleon, or, to be more exact, Napoleon’s interpreters.

Getting From Point A to Point B

Baron Antoine Jomini served on Napoleon’s staff from 1804 to 1813. In 1838, Jomini published Summary of the Art of War. Jomini’s influence is still felt today as he established strategy, tactics, and logistics as the three subjects of modern military science. He also laid the groundwork for strategic planning for an army in the field. Jomini says there are three basic steps to strategic planning (and this will look very basic to you, the gentle reader):

• Step 1: First figure out where you are (this is your Point A).
• Step 2: Decide where you want to be (this is your Point B).
• Step 3: Then you make a plan to get from Point A to Point B.

Think of the money Jomini could make as a modern consultant! His is a very linear approach that is the basis for most forms of strategic planning used in the nonprofit world (I should note that all of this comes from William Duggan’s book, Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement, 2007, p. 60).

Figuring Out Your B
But how do you determine your Point B? Sometimes that is the real problem for us. The challenge is not in analysis, the planning or in the implementation. The problem is in the second step…the step that involves innovation and insight. How do know where you want to go? Where does that idea come from? How do you determine your Point B?

Think of where your best ideas hit you? I know when I was attending William Duggan’s Strategic Intuition course at Columbia U, class participants were universal in their response: The Shower. This was followed by: Driving a Car; Waking Up in the Middle of the Night; Walking the Dog; and Cooking Supper. No one answered Strategic Planning Sessions or Brainstorming Meetings. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, including my cat, Felix. Innovative ideas come at a point when we often least expect them.

Where did Napoleon get his Point B’s from? This is what separated him from his contemporaries on the field of battle. It wasn’t that he was a better planner or had a better army or a bigger army. He was better than his opponent at picking his Point B. This was true in just about every battle, time after time. He was a Point B kind of guy. It wasn’t a matter of planning, it was a matter of intuition (or as William Duggan calls it, Strategic Intuition).

And here we are helped again by another post-Napoleonic military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, whose classic treatise, On War, was published in 1832. Unlike Jomini, von Clausewitz casts Napoleon’s methodology in a very different light, a four-step process that is nonlinear and more akin to that ah-ha moment in the shower. Von Clausewitz uses the French term “coup d’oeil” (literally: strike of the eye), which is indicative that he understands that Napoleon’s genius was based on a flash of insight. Here are von Clausewitz’s four steps (as presented by William Duggan, Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement, 2007, pp. 53-64):

• Step 1: The Examples of History—Napoleon did not rely on his own experience but was a student of military history. In his study and in his mind, he searched history for examples to solutions to problems that he faced in the field. He could mix and match examples of successes and failures as the starting point for his battlefield innovations.
• Step 2: Presence of Mind—The second step involves freeing the mind of preconceptions, previous ideas, and expectations. Even the concept of an objective or a goal is let go of by Napoleon. There is no Point B in the mind at this stage.
• Step 3: The Flash of Insight—A mind that has been freed of preconceptions and filled with examples of history is fertile ground for the best elements of those historical examples to come together in surprising and innovative combinations. The actual “flash” may actually be a much longer process but, in the end, something new is created in the mind that did not exist there before. Napoleon now has a Point B.
• Step 4: Resolution—Once Point B has been decided upon, Napoleon is now determined to act with resolve.

William Duggan, the author of Strategic Intuition: The Key to Human Achievement, uses von Clausewitz’s four steps as his foundation for understanding the process of strategic intuition. You can read an excellent summary of Duggan’s ideas here.