<Thread> Following up on the Ends-Ways-Means chat yesterday, here’s a counter-model.

I developed the main parts in the shower & I’ll make the rest up now, but here goes:

Strategy (not just war) is a process of developing priorities & a theory of influence, & choosing risk. 1/ https://twitter.com/jimgolby/status/1249048401007841288

Prioritization is critical for strategy. What is that we want to achieve? What are national security interests, economic interests, and values? What goals do we want to achieve and what are we willing to forgo when we have to make tradeoffs? WHY are we willing to choose? 2/

This is ultimately a political challenge. Although we often talk about our interests as if they are unitary and immutable, they are socially and politically constructed — by leaders — through our political institutions. And the can change based on conditions and new info. 3/

This is why political leadership and continuous civ-mil dialogues are so critical. Since there are ALWAYS scarcities—of resources, time, attention, etc.—and people interpret situations differently as things change, there must be constant dialogue about what we will prioritize. 4/

Prioritization is central because strategy is about choices between competing interests, values, and ideas — and those things can be contested or unevenly distributed throughout society. What are we willing to give up when we have to choose — because we usually do. 5/

At its core, strategy is a theory of INFLUENCE. How do you do things that will increase the likelihood of changing the behavior or thinking of other actors, or how can you reshape the environment, so that you can achieve your priorities? 6/

Since it is a theory, it is unproven. It has probabilistic relationships and subordinate hypotheses about how you influence other actors or change the environment to advance your priorities. 7/

Although a theory or hypothesis of influence can be adversarial, it is not inherently so. If you can influence others in a way that benefits you both more than competition would, you’d like to take advantage of those opportunities. 8/

But it is realistic — and recognizes you have to understand other actors & try to INFLUENCE them in ways to advance your priorities. You can use a number of tools to do so, and that is the art of developing the theory — the HOW of strategy. 9/

I’ve tweeted a little about WHO you might need to influence before — though I had included environmental factors.

I could also talk a lot about understanding adversary pyschology, behavior, and strategy — but won’t now. 10/ https://twitter.com/jimgolby/status/1195862758979448832

Since it is a THEORY, it is also iterative and falsifiable. And you should do your best to understand what data, evidence, or information you need to collect to disprove your hypothesis. As you collect more, you either refute your theory/hypotheses or you refine them. 11/

Or, you move forward as long as your theory remains consistent with the evidence you collect—as long as another theory doesn’t fit the evidence better.

In either case, you need to think about how you will evaluate and test IN ADVANCE—and integrate assessment & reassessment. 12/

Your measures and hypotheses need to account for a number of factors—time, costs, resources, casualties, etc.

And although relationships are probablistic, Strategy is still rational in the sense that you are trying to take actions that increase the odds of certain outcomes. 13/

Finally, you think about where you are going to accept risk. Since you have limited resources and you have prioritized them, this part is a synthesis of the other two. 14/

But determining where to accept risk is not identical to prioritization. It isn’t just ordering your goals; it involves allocating resources, time, and leader attention to different priorities. And your most important priority MAY NOT require the MOST resources... 15/

...but it should have the smallest gap between the resources you believe you need to achieve the priority aim & what you allocate.

It also recognizes the relationship between goal accomplishment & resources isn’t linear—too many resources can create problems, as can too few. 16/

The goal for the strategist then is to optimize the allocation of resources so that you maximize the probability of accomplishing your priorities, while accounting for uncertainty. 17/

Risk decisions have to be updated based on the civ-mil dialogue about priorities—eg is achieving the top priority more critical than achieving all others or would you sacrifice your top priority if you accomplished all others—& based on evidence you collect about your theory. 18/

This isn’t perfect—I made it up in the shower & while writing this thread. But I think it has a lot of advantages over the EWM model while still subsuming any parts of the EWM that add value. So I’d love to hear any thoughts or feedback before I write up something formal. 19/19