We're Getting Operational

-Or The Best Offense is a Good Offensive

Landing map for Operation Overlord

Think.

So far, we have covered Lines of Effort 1-Body, 2-Mind, and 3-Spirit.

To continue our recon patrol metaphor:

It is the job of LOE 1 to ensure we have the strength and stamina to undertake the patrol. We should be spending over 1/3 of our time focused on sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

LOE 2 ensures that we have the smarts and mental resiliency to stay on course and deal with problems that arise along the route. We can do this by being curious, reading, learning, meditating, and taking care of little mental health issues before they become big ones.

LOE 3 gives us our mission, our why. The thing that we believe in that is bigger than ourselves. Once we have a why, we can define our how.

How are we willing to make our way along our route? On a mission, we would be given clear constraints (things we must do), and restraints (things we cannot do).

These are the virtues that determine our left and right limits, or what Aristotle called the golden mean. Once we have identified the virtues we want to live by, we need to understand that every virtue if taken to extremes can become a vice.

The Greek poet Tyrtaeus wrote, “Here is courage, mankind's finest possession…" I expect that we can all agree that physical and moral courage are virtues we want to embody. We all recognize the lack of courage as cowardice, but we must also recognize if taken too far, courage becomes recklessness.

The golden mean suggests that we travel between these two extremes. This becomes how we will travel.

What you accept from yourself becomes your standard.

LOE 3 can be viewed through the lens of the Strategic level of warfare. Joint Pub 3-0, identifies three levels of warfare, Strategic, Operational, and Tactical. Strategy is defined as, the art and science of developing and employing armed forces and other instruments of national power in a synchronized fashion to secure national or multinational objectives. 

During the European theatre in WWII, the Allies’ strategic aim was to defeat the Nazis and achieve victory.

For our purposes, the strategic goal is to arrive at the end of our lives having followed the path we set for ourselves and to be proud of how we lived. Of course, we won’t be perfect, but we can ask the question of ourselves daily, “Does this action support my strategic goal of becoming the person I want to be?”

If it does not, why are you doing it?

The operational level of warfare links the tactical employment of forces to strategic objectives. Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, consisted of deception plans, a massive airborne assault, and naval landing. This is a great example of an operation tied specifically to the strategic end state of defeating the Nazis.

For our purposes, LOE 4 (Passion & Purpose) helps us pinpoint our objectives (Long Range Goals) on the map. I have referred to this as the Sky Anchor, or Massive Transformative Purpose in previous weeks.

I suggest giving your long-range goals cool names like Operation Romulus.

These Operations will be achieved by the synchronization of numerous Tactical actions: habits, plans, and decisions.

Finally, the tactical level. This is the employment of units in combat. The thousand small unit actions that make up an operation.

These are the daily battles we will fight to do the things that will help us win the war.

Each tactical engagement should have a clearly defined purpose and expectation (SMART Goals) that furthers our operational objectives and leads to the ultimate strategic goal.

 We will talk about using Measures of Performance (MOP) and Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) to evaluate how well are meeting our objectives soon, but as Galileo said,

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”

In other words, measure what matters.

The tactical level is the habits that we develop and employ against the enemies of weakness, ignorance, and self-doubt. But these habits must be in service of a larger operational plan. “Tactical success does not automatically lead to strategic success. You can win all of the battles but lose the war.” (MCDP-1-2)

Or as Sun Tzu said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Read. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Joah Waitzkin

By age nine, Josh won his first national chess championship. He later took up Tai Chi Chuan and earned the title of World Champion at that. If you are not a world champion at anything you could probably learn something from him.

This book was recommended to me by my friend Chad from Ronin Sport Performance. Check him out.

Write.

The holiday period was relatively productive for me. I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel in writing my memoir, Tough Rugged Bastards. I am usually not one of the writers that insist that you must write every day, but now that I only have a few chapters to go, I have started using a technique attributed to Jerry Seinfeld, called ‘Don’t Break the Chain.’ This works best if you have a large wall calendar that shows the entire year. Next, define success. For me, it is 30 minutes of writing. I try to write more than that but, I want to keep it achievable. When I write, I mark the day off. After a few days, you have a chain going, and the goal (as you may have surmised) is not to break it.

The best way to improve at anything is to do it every day.

Repeat. Words of wisdom from those who said it best:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ~ Winston Churchill

Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation. ~ Max Euwe

In warfare, there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent will succeed and win. ~ Sun Tzu

Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have. ~ Saul Alinsky

The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do. ~ Gerald Abrahams

Thanks for reading. If you are enjoying T.R.W.R. please share it with a friend.

See you next Thursday!