Winning fighter pilots have a watch and learn code phrase that creates winners who learn to twist, turn, speed away and then brake quickly or loop up and around until they could watch their enemy combatant shoot past them in horror.
They must get him in line, fire massively, then spin away quickly just as the enemy brothers are getting a bead on you.
If there are many, twist and swing wildly in their midst; then climb, circle and began again.
This sounds like heroic actions of ancient Greek warriors, defending a mountain pass, greatly outnumbered and having to use every skillful trick and maneuver to kill or be killed If you die in failure, it is your wife and children back in Athens depending on not being caught, mishandled, and sold into slavery.
Now the air dog fight has rather gone out of fashion at the present, more our side with space age jets being fired on by their ground to air missiles from isolated retreats.
At any rate, you might want to remember their mental agility as well as their physically perfectly shaped bodies make them men among men, our chosen best, and they have a plan code.
Ancient warriors had to be agile and alert in the mountain passes of historical Greece to hold off the ever threatening armies of Persia.
Alexander used his ten thousand to defeat one hundred thousand in this way, and more than 300 years before Caesar claimed this as his own master strategy: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
Observe: their rapid watch and into action behaviors have been described in corporate terms, as some of these pilots have applied their successful life saving, and killing, activities from the cockpit to the boardroom.
So, I first have us listen to their talk, and then my comments will follow each of their technical talk; which makes me feel as if we are all computer chips.
As studies show, across most businesses, time spent to complete a service or fight a battle, and deliver to the customer is only a fraction of time spent in less productive ways to make this happen.
During the 95 percent of the time a product or service is not receiving value while in the value system, the product or service is waiting.
The Observation: companies that attack the consumption of time in their value-delivery system experience remarkable performance improvements.
To me that says that most systems, and most of us, could be way more efficient.
Orient: the experts say that the waiting time has three components, the "3/3 Rule".
Time is lost waiting for for: 1.
completion of the batch a product is part of: 2.
completion of the batch ahead of the batch; 3.
management to get around to making and executing the decision to send the batch to the next step of the value adding process.
Growth rates of three times the industry average with two times the industry profit margins are achievable".
Again, we do see it, chaos in the process of getting us widgets all in formation, bosses making decisions way too late, excuses, over runs.
Decide: I prefer when these studies look at a specific subject such as efficient Finnish forestry companies that can deliver computer paper to stores in America with the vast forests of Canada next door.
Several recent articles deal with several manufacturers of wood products from the relatively small forests of Finland to refined products, and yet Finland delivers bargain printer paper to us in Canada and America.
How they can do this and make huge profits, we discuss in a series of articles coming.
Act: Again, these studies watch the inspiring case of self survival by Finland; forests once long ago depleted, the vast forests of Russia nearby closed to them.
This quick response time to specific orders from customers, and their streamlined systems that had the unions cooperate with the forest giants to shut small, isolated, unproductive mills, with government and corporate cooperation helped re educate and find new jobs for those affected.
With cooperation of industry, unions and all levels of government, all were re trained and found better jobs in a more central town where the most up to date mills, or cell phone factories keep a northern people living a high standard of living, and adjusting, as change happen, forests regrow, Finland adapts.
We could learn from people who long ago chopped down all their trees, have learned to nurture them back for a life for all.
Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act loop them back to trees and better communications between us all.
it works.
From Greek and Roman times, to make the land most efficient and the people with it required all be flexible, till the field but have your sword nearby in case of an attack from strangers against you.
You learned quickly how to duck, fake, take their swing but deliver your blows, or your better product.
Strategy and survival have been with us since we learned who was not our friend, wished us harm, and we had to prepare.
And so it remains today.
The challenges are enormous, and the risks.
But the opportunities to see east meeting west in ways that complement rather than attack is such a better way.
If we apply the mental skills of a leading fighter pilot to the broader issues; we might not rush in somewherelike Custer, move farther from our base, claim we have got them cornered now.
Oh? My great ancestor on my maternal side was Captain Miles Keogh, second in command to General Custer on that fateful day: we all have a proud photo of this handsome Irishman, now American, and buried at Little Big Horn.
It was not Custer who applied these winning tactics,.
American history shows, but Sitting Bull and his warriors, who set up a bait and fake trap between hidden warriors in the many small folds in the sloping hill.
Our boys died but not so much on hilltops as every which way, native gun bullets and skeletal remains show.
It is ongoing, each generation, each day, each moment, that we must see all that we can see, take the time to orient ourselves to what our gut says, make a decision, and act.
Custer had that all out of order that day, and we finally realize the golden haired Wonder was Not.
But many are, and not just fighter pilots.
Admiral Bull Halsey had more battle ships shot out from under him than any, and would attack first and request permission later.
The greater the odds, the more he attacked.
And he listened to the expert in each officer or man.
On learning one officer had played poker with the top Admiral of Japan during their diplomatic days in Washington, Halsey learned this Admiral was very aggressive, but would often overplay his hand, and in bluffing, would often win.
He admired America but once war was declared it was his masterful mind that planned Pearl Harbor, and all the victories Japan had enjoyed since.
By 1942 and 1943, Guadalcanal was the only Allied bastion stopping Japan from invading Australia, cutting America off for perhaps many long years.
America still had not had the ability to ramp up war production but it was beginning.
The only aircraft carrier afloat in the Pacific was the damaged.
Enterprise Halsey order it into the small American attack against the much greater might of Japan coming down the tube.
Heavily outnumbered, the American and Allied soldiers held Guadalcanal.
They broke the code of Japan, found, we now know, that Japanese Admiral noticed every time Halsey visited a forward base, that base fought with enormous courage and would not give in when it was hopeless.
The diplomatic poker player thought their Admiral would follow the lead of Halsey, and soon he did.
And Halsey, who planes of Japan had tried to kill more than once, sent a dozen long range fighter pilots who shot the Admiral out of the air.
The genius of Japan joined the fishes in the deep blue sea.
Like Stalingrad to Germany in Russia, this was the great breakthrough for America as Japan tried to regroup their top staff and plans.
After this, it was men and pilots like Halsey who fought them all the way to the welcome parade in Tokyo.
Good prevailed, but it took a careful mind, the over view, the decisions, and - quick attack before they can pull their pants on.
That was Bull.
And you and I may need a bit more bull in us in this quickness to observe, orient ourselves, decide, and act.
Break out of your pasture and take your life by the horns.
Happy hunting.
Derek Dashwood