Boyd’s Climate

Boyd developed the approach described in the previous section into an “Organizational Climate for Operational Success.” One way to visualize Boyd’s climate is to start with the individual and work upwards (Richards, 2004), which also underlines that we as human beings are nested in teams, and teams are nested in organization. It is not teams that behave, it is people, and in so doing, they create team-level and organizational phenomena.

Individuals cultivate and polish their Fingerspitzengefühl, intuitive competence, for the jobs they hold. This comes through years of experience and self-discipline. It provides its owner an uncanny insight into confusing and chaotic situations often described as the “ability to feel the battle”²¹. Einheit or “unity” or “mutual trust” can be thought of as a super-Fingerspitzengefühl—and it suggests the competence of the group, working together to accomplish some purpose. As such, the Einheit aligns the individuals, although not rigidly.

The Schwerpunkt provides focus and direction to aim the entire organization towards that goal or purpose. “Focus and direction” is how Boyd usually translated Schwerpunkt which:

… represents a unifying concept that provides a way to rapidly shape focus and direction of effort as well as harmonize support activities with combat operations, thereby permit a true decentralization of tactical command within centralized strategic guidance—without losing cohesion of overall effort.

or put another way

Schwerpunkt represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time in order to generate a favorable mismatch in time/ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances (Boyd, 1986, p.78).

As mentioned, the Schwerpunkt is also the ch’i (see Boyd, 1986, p. 147, 151, 153, and 157), and so it requires that all other organizational activities support it. To do so, it has to provide

21 See especially Klein (1998) to get an impression of the importance of this ability)

real and actionable guidance in those situations, such as an abrupt change in battlefield or market conditions, where there has not been time to issue new formal directions. People who find themselves in such circumstances must understand what the main effort is and how they can support it. Then they can use their initiatives to accomplish the organization’s mission until they receive further orders. People don’t wait around for the commander to make a

“decision” before taking action. They show initiative, and they gain the confidence to do so through experience and trust—Einheit—among people throughout the organizations. The effect of many people within a unit taking the initiative (harmonized by the commander’s intent) is that the unit can rapidly change direction. This rapidity or quickness is critical, because a gap in the enemy’s position—or in a competitor’s product line—will only be an opportunity for a brief period, until the adversaries or competitors reorient.

The concept of Schwerpunkt, focus-and-direction, satisfies a necessary condition for the successful employment of mission orders, or Auftrag. According to Boyd²², the Auftrag or mission can be thought of as a virtual contract between superior and subordinate. The subordinate agrees to undertake actions that will serve the superior’s intent in terms of what is to be accomplished, while the superior agrees to give the subordinate wide freedom to exercise imagination and initiative in terms of how intent is to be realized. As part of this concept, the subordinate is given the right to challenge or question the feasibility of the mission if the subordinate feels the superior’s ideas on what can be achieved are not in accordance with the existing situation or if the superior has not provided adequate resources to carry it out. Likewise, the superior has every right to expect the subordinate to fulfill the mission contract when agreement is reached on what can be achieved consistent with the existing situation and resources provided (Boyd, 1986, p. 76).

One way to understand the Auftrag is to apply Weick’s (1983) streamlined, but different version of it, here known as the commander’s intent statement. Weick’s version contains five facets:

1. Here’s what I think we face.

2. Here’s what I think we should do.

22 Boyd never uses the word Auftragstaktik in his presentations but used “mission” instead.

3. Here’s why.

4. Here’s what we should keep our eye on.

5. Now, talk to me.

However, there are limitations with the mission concept that need to be dealt with because:

“…it does not suggest ways to coordinate or harmonize activities among many superiors and subordinates as a collective group” (Boyd, 1986, p. 76). This was solved by joining the Auftrag to the Schwerpunk. The Auftrag,which is personal, between a superior and a subordinate, is designed to allow maximum room for individual initiative, while still accomplishing the unit’s mission (either directly assigned or inferred from the Schwerpunkt) during the chaos and complexity of conflict and war. It can be thought of as “fine-tuning”

the orientations of individuals. It is the Schwerpunkt, on the other hand, that provides harmony for the entire group, providing guidance for the infinity of circumstances that neither can be enumerated nor foretold. Without both Schwerpunkt and Auftrag (mission) there can be no orientation to deal with both present and future because the Schwerpunkt is the harmonizing agent, a medium to realize superior’s intent without impeding initiative in order to produce vigorous effort in the organization and is thus a key element in harmonizing the orientations of all members of the group.

Because the future is the future—uncertain, ambiguous, and at least partially under the control of others who do not wish us well—we will from time to time have to shift our focus.

There cannot be a formula for this process, although in general, the Schwerpunkt aims the organization while the Auftrag (mission), provides the energy, the motive force to encourage the members of the group toward accomplishment of the common goal.

The German approach produced organizations with leaders who were able to build stable relationships with individual members, which is largely a function of their integrity and social skill. Leaders with social skill and integrity are able to recruit individuals, in a psychological sense, to group participation. Those who lack social skills or integrity can only form a group by demanding the obedience of their staff, and such groups generally do not hold together well under pressure. Conversely, it tended to eliminate poor officers, who often lacked social skills or integrity, were unable to build relationships, and were therefore unable to build and maintain effective fighting units. Another important way the Germans

were able to bind people to a team was by providing participants with a creditable rationale for their membership (van Creveld, 1981).

They were able to project a vision that the individuals found attractive²³, a vision consistent with their own identities and that gave meaning and purpose to their participation in the team task, which is what results from applying Auftragstaktik and employing the Schwerpunkt, see Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1 A Graphical Representation of Boyd’s Organizational Climate for Operational Success (Richards, 2004, p. 129-130)

Leaders with imagination can project a vision (which requires the ability to synthesize) and a Schwerpunkt that participants find attractive, morally compelling, and worthy of allegiance,

23 According to van Creveld “the average German soldier in World War II was not psychotically inclined. He did not fight to gain social prestige, at any rate after the winter of 1941. He did not as rule fight out of a belief in Nazi ideology – indeed; the opposite may have been nearer the truth in many cases. Instead he fought for the reasons that men have always fought: because he felt himself a member of a well-integrated, well-led team whose structure, administration, and functioning were perceived to be, on the whole and spite of the inevitable existence of Drückengerger (shrikers) and

“Golden Pheasants” (party hacks in gorgeous uniforms), equitable and just” (1982, p. 163-154 ).

whereas incompetent leaders unwittingly project visions that are distasteful, incongruent with identity of status motivations) to people.

In summary, people were linked to groups by virtue of the personality of the officer. It is this

“climate” that offsets the tendency of a team or an organization to lose effectiveness as a result of the transfer of entropy across organizational boundaries, resulting in increased entropy—manifest as disorganization and wasted energy—within the group itself.