Certain to Win : The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business

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.

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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.