Certain to Win (Paperback)

~ Chet Richards (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Advance reviews of Certain to Win

Certain to Win [Sun Tzu´s prognosis for generals who follow his advice] develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business. Robert Coram's monumental biography, Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, rekindled interest in this obscure pilot and documented his influence on military matters ranging from the design of the F-15 and F-16 fighters to the planning for Operation Desert Storm to the execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unfortunately Boyd's written legacy, consisting of a single paper and a four-set cycle of briefings, addresses strategy only in war. [All Boyd´s briefings are available on Defense and the National Interest.]

Boyd and Business

Boyd did study business. He read everything he could find on the Toyota Production System and came to consider it as an implementation of ideas similar to his own. He took business into account when he formulated the final version of his "OODA loop" and in his last major briefing, Conceptual Spiral, on science and technology. He read and commented on early versions of this manuscript, but he never wrote on how business could operate more profitably by using his ideas.

Other writers and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd's concepts and suggesting applications to business. Keith Hammonds, in the magazine Fast Company, George Stalk and Tom Hout in Competing Against Time, and Tom Peters most recently in Re-imagine! have described the OODA loop and its effects on competitors.

They made significan

About the Author

Chet Richards was a close associate of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd from the mid-1970s until Boyd’s death in 1997. Boyd had asked him to review the mathematical portions of his first civilian paper, "Destruction and Creation," and this led to a collaboration that eventually included applications to the business world.

Chet Richards’ career began at the Pentagon in 1971, and has included employment with Northrop, the professional services company CACI in Washington DC, and Lockheed. A consultant since 1999, he maintains his practice in strategy for business, marketing, and communications through Tarkenton & Addams, Inc., a public relations firm in Atlanta, GA.

Chet is the author of several publications all involving applications of Boyd’s strategies. His most recent, "A Swift, Elusive Sword," addresses how we can re-fashion the US Defense Department to defend ourselves against the types of non-traditional enemies we will likely face in the 21st Century. It was published by the Centers for Defense Information shortly before 9/11, has been translated into Russian, and is now in its second printing. He has lectured on this subject to commercial organizations in the US and abroad, including the US Army Command and Staff College and the Air War College, and is the only person to have delivered Boyd’s "Patterns of Conflict" since Boyd’s death.

Chet is also a retired colonel in the US Air Force Reserve, where he served for many years as the Reserve Air Attaché to Saudi Arabia. Prior to that, he was a reservist on the Air Staff in Washington, where he built computer models of fighter aircraft effectiveness. He was commissioned in 1969 through the Army ROTC program at the University of Mississippi.

Chet and his wife, Ginger, live in Atlanta, where, in addition to their work with Tarkenton & Addams, they build custom web sites to support the marketing communications needs of their clients. They also own and operate two sites devoted to John Boyd’s strategic legacy, Defense and the National Interest and Belisarius.com. They have two daughters who, as this is written, are both in graduate school in Georgia, and one very overweight cat. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris Corporation (June 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1413453767
• ISBN-13: 978-1413453768
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #415,697 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting inside your competitor's decision cycle, August 10, 2004

By	Lane Desborough (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Certain to Win" is an interpretation of how to apply John Boyd's warfighting principles to business, written by someone who worked with Boyd. If you are a member of a group or team in competition for something, this book is a must-read.

I learned of John Boyd after his death in 1997. At that time all I knew was that as a fighter pilot, Boyd had developed an Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) theory to explain how some pilots and aircraft were more successful than others. I also learned that very little of Boyd's work was captured in written form - he preferred to deliver his message via marathon briefings.

When Robert Coram's biography "Boyd, the Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War" was published in 2002, I immediately snapped it up. Little did I know this would set me on a path which has helped me immeasurably as I grapple with life in corporate America.

Boyd is the modern day analog of Percy Scott and William Sims, two men who revolutionized gunfire at sea in the early part of the twentieth century. Many parallels exist in the methods these three men used to effect change in large bureaucracies - insights which are immediately applicable today in large corporations which struggle with innovation and growth amid the presence of lithe, agile, often unforeseen threats to their very existence.

In Coram's biography of Boyd, he spends a great deal of time describing Boyd's acolytes: Chet Richards, Raymond Leopold, Chuck Spinney, Jim Burton, and Pierre Sprey. These men worked with Boyd. They inspired and drew inspiration from him. Many continue to evangelize and expand on Boyd's ideas. One of the most prolific of Boyd's acolytes is Chet Richards. Chet has extended and reinterpreted Boyd's work in a business rather than military setting. His most recent book, "Certain to Win", demonstrates how organizations can achieve their goals through application of Boyd's concepts.

Coram's book and Richards' book are two important signposts on a journey of exploration which reveals connections amongst contemporary and historical thought leaders as diverse as Clayton Christensen, Sun Tsu, Brian Goodwin, Werner Heisenberg, Eli Goldratt, Mohan Sawhney, Niccolo Machiavelli, Michael Porter, Jaclyn Kostner, Gary Klein, Alistair Cockburn, John Kotter, and Tom Peters. Coram sets the stage, and Richards delivers the prescription for success in achieving fast OODA loops in organizations. "Certain to Win" shows how time can be exploited as a weapon for competitive advantage. Richards debunks the myth that "size matters" when it comes to modern competition. He makes it clear that business strategy is not a "super plan" to be plotted our far in the future and then executed with unfaltering mechanical precision. He shows that bureaucracies are inflexible and rigid at the top, while organisms are agile and adaptive.

Central to the value of "Certain to Win" is a detailed description of how to institute Boyd's organizational climate, a climate exhibited in elite organizations such as the US Marine Corps, Southwest Airlines, and Toyota. Consider the following:
1) Focus and direction
2) Mission responsibilities
3) Intuitive competence
4) Mutual trust
Like most of Boyd's concepts - OODA loops, energy maneuverability theory, destruction and creation - the simplicity of these four concepts belies the complexity and profound insight in creating them and the challenges in instituting them. Easily shrugged off as platitudes, they cry out for the detailed insight on how to apply them within a complex organization. With these four elements in place, organizations are able to operate at higher tempo than their competitors in the face of a rapidly changing set of environmental and competitive circumstances.

If you can get inside your competitor's OODA loop - whether you're a fighter pilot, a member of a sports team, or a business person - you will win every time. The key factors which enable this higher organizational tempo are focus and direction, mission responsibilities, intuitive competence, and mutual trust.

Boyd will one day be remembered as a man who not only changed the art of war, but through extension of his acolytes such as Chet Richards, the art of business and even the art of team sports. If you haven't read Coram's book, do so. Next, pick up "Certain to Win", which describes the steps individuals and organizations can take to move closer to their goal.

Basically, "Certain to Win" demonstrates how Boyd's principles can be applied wherever humans band together to improve their capacity for independent action. Highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Content lacks focus and organization, July 30, 2008

By	Lichung Liu "Will" (MD, USA) - See all my reviews

I write reviews rarely, and only on occasion when I feel strongly enough about something and want to make sure others are aware of it. Despite the high ratings and raving reviews, this book disappoints. I bought this book because I want to learn how to apply OODA model to high stress situations where decision must be made. This is frequently the case in the business world. I expected the author to at least dive into each of the O-O-D-A step, draw its application in business terms, and provide case studies on when OODA was applies correctly and incorrectly. Unfortunately, that is not how the book is structured.

The book lacks organization, or word differently, it does not "start with the end in mind". Instead of start the book with OODA, the book dives straight into historical events, most of which are military based. Of the time when business organization are mentioned (e.g, Southwest, Dell), the author never draw the parallel or explain how the strategic concept applies. If this is a book about business, then at least explain how Southwest or Dell adopted the strategy correctly, or how Chrysler or Enron did otherwise. As of page 100, there isn't a single business case study.

The first 100 pages of the book, out of 187 pages, is used to convince you the validity of Boyd's principles, with the first paragraph on page 100 stating "In the previous chapters, I tried to convince you that the physical characteristics, such as....... do not guarantee victory in any highly competitive situation...". Unfortunately, I do not need to be convinced. This is not a common book shelved in bookstores. If the audience has to actively seek out of the book, then they have already been convinced the validity of the OODA loop, and is seeking for real world application. This means more than 50% of the book could have been better used.

Another distracting characteristic of the book is the author's writing style. The content flows more like a dictation as if someone recorded a free flow lecture and typed it up. The writing style is verbose. Paragraphs do not start or end with a point and often goes off on a tangent, and does a poor job, if at all, tie back to the original thought. The author often seems to be talking to himself. An example:

"Chapter III described four qualities, with roots down through history, that help an organization run at fast OODA tempo. The first of these is unity, cohesion, oneness, or, as I shall use in the rest of this book, mutual trust between the members of the organization. The German word Einheit conveys all these meanings, and I'll use it occasionally as well...".

The problem is, if the goal is to convey the importance of "mutual trust", then I already got it. I do not need to know it's also known as unity, cohesion or oneness. It's also unclear on why the German word "Einheit" is important enough to be introduced only to be used "occasionally" when it's already been explained as "mutual trust" - does English not have an equivalent word or something close enough that we much introduce a foreign word? This writing style is consistent through out the book, making it difficult to identify the key points and stay on track.

To be objective, different people respond to different writing style. My intent of writing this review is to provide some warning to those with similar learning approach. The raving reviews and high praises did not reflect this aspect of the book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Stuff - Boyd on Business, February 12, 2007

By	Steve Dietrich (Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Monica CA, United States) - See all my reviews

Sadly it is only after his death that we have come to have widespread appreciation of Boyd's great intellect. This book is another great step in finding broader application of some of what Boyd taught.Chet Richards has done a great job of bringing Boyd's message to the business world.

Some have questioned whether a view of decision making in combat was applicable to business. The answer is yes, sometimes and perhaps more often than you think. Boyd is probably even more applicable to political campaigns.

Were I still teaching MBA students, some of the material from the book would be in the classroom, replacing more traditional materials.

I would read Boyd first as a foundation for this book.

Highly recommended.