On Grand Strategy

On Grand Strategy

Author John Lewis Gaddis

Summary

A Leader must have the enduring strategic focus of a hedgehog while retaining the tactical flexibility like a fox to adapt to changing environments that unfold over time, space and scale.

Align potentially unlimited aspirations (hedgehog) with necessarily limited capabilities (fox).

This means matching capabilities with expectations in the context of the campaign.

The worst leaders neglect situational awareness and seek to force events to fit their preconceived designs and worldview (hedgehog).

The best leaders acknowledge and capitalize on the paradoxes as they unfold over time, space and scale.  They continuously adjust plans and constantly look for new opportunities by reviewing experiences and feedback from past actions.  They use self-reflection and self-criticism to improve their plans over time, space and scale.  The best leaders become strategic learners: they learn about learning.

Hedgehog and Fox

Item	Hedghog	Fox
Summary	Central vision	Pursuit of contradictory ends
Contrast	Balanced worldview	Chase scatter ideas
Knowledge	Knows one big thing	Knows many things
Movement	Moves forward in a straight path	Ability to adapt quickly
Plan	Simple idea, simple plan, push relentlessly forward	Set their budgets and plans, and promptly start adjusting course
Voice	Loud, lots of mistakes	Meek soft warnings
Strategy	Big Theory, overgeneralizing, ignoring reality	Multiple details, warning about uncertainties
Tactics	New Direction	Swiss army knife approach
Future	Rely on predictions	Probabilities
Practice	Theory	Observations
Search for	Defends well, Fair	unrelated or even contradictory pursuits
Organization	Vision and mission	Operations and maintenance
Weakness	doesn’t bother with complications, caveats, and uncertainties	Worries too much about details, uncertainty, failure, mistakes, uncontrollable weather.