Fog and Friction - The limitations of strategy when dealing with uncertainty

This blog post is a work-in-progress…

Military history and grand strategy have long offered sources of inspiration to business leaders. In a previous blog on the subject, I touched on how the insights of historical figures such as Sun Tzu remain relevant to those navigating the fast-moving tech space. In that blog I made no mention of Carl von Clausewitz, one of the most pre-eminent and well-known military theorists. Here I try to make up for that omission.

The Fog of War

Von Clausewitz [1] fought in the Prussian army early in the 19th century against Napoleon, taking part in the Battle of Borodino, which led to Napoleon’s ultimate failure to defeat Russia. His magnum opus On War brings together several complementary ideas and interpretations about the theory and practice of war. The best remembered of these concerns the relationship between military aims and political objectives (the former being subservient to the latter), known to day by the phrase “war is the continuation of policy by other means”.

In this blog, I will hone down on two concepts which I feel are as relevant to the tech space as they are to armies in the field. The first is what von Clausewitz called “fog”, or uncertainty. Popularised by the term “fog of war”, this describes the confusion and uncertainty caused by imperfect information. Von Clausewitz noted that commanders on a battlefield are simultaneously burdened with information overload as well as information scarcity. This makes it difficult to discern the essential from the irrelevant. This uncertainty is made more difficult by fast-changing events and the limitations of human judgement under conditions of stress, fear and fatigue. Von Clausewitz argued that successful commanders are those who act confidently despite this uncertainty.

The Fog of War as witnessed by Clausewitz who fought at the Battle of Borodino. *Battle of Moscow, 7 September, 1812, Louis-Francois Lejeune, 1822*

If fog impedes decision-making, then friction hampers the efficient execution of commands. Von Clausewitz states that “everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” These difficulties, which he calls “friction,” accumulate in a way that is difficult to model in a carefully constructed plan. Sources of friction include weather, terrain, human responses, logistics, equipment failure and communications problems. Indeed, uncertainty itself is also a source of friction.

The expression “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, therefore really means that “no plan survives contact with the reality of the battlefield.” Like fog, friction affects all aspects of military operations, contributing both uncertainty and unpredictability. Taken together, fog and friction give lie to the belief that war can be conducted through the use of well-crafted plans. Instead, successful commanders need to rely on a combination of well-honed judgement “in the moment” and well-trained and disciplined troops that are better able to handle the unexpected.

Dealing with Friction

So let’s look at these two concepts as they apply to anyone leading or managing a team in uncertain times. No-one who reads this blog will have managed to avoid friction at work. Friction is not limited to the battlefield. It appears in our everyday lives. It may take the form of an unnecessarily cumbersome approval process, of requests for information that exceed what is needed for the decision at hand, of interminable meetings at which you are unable to add much value, the duplication of functions in different organisational siloes, endless reporting cycles and so on. Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao, organisational psychologists at Stanford University attribute much friction to this to “addition sickness” [6]. The root of this, they argue, is the human bias to solve problems or create new things by adding things, rather than subtracting them. This is further compounded by reward systems that recognise larger teams or new initiatives.

Wading through treacle, as imagined by ChatGPT 4o

Often, new initiatives are incremental rather than replacing pre-existing tasks. Whilst a process or initiative may have made sense when they were introduced, their relevance and usefulness often diminish with time. The net effect is that people find they are spending a disproportionate time on what I call “gunk”. We all have a word or expression for it, whether it is grit, “wading through treacle”, “making water flow up a hill,” and so on. These all convey a sense of the frustration and wasted effort experienced at spending much of your time doing stuff that is either not important, of low value, or simply more difficult than it needs to.

Sutton and Rao propose simple remedies in the form of “Subtraction Rules”. They describe how Google halved the number of interview stages in their interview process, challenging people to cut stuff by 50%, whether it is the length of an email, the number of emails, the duration of meetings or the length of topics in a meeting. Although people rarely manage to reduce the burden by 50%, it sets an aspiration and a trend. Above all, they recommend that the regular cadence and operational systems of the business must accommodate and reward subtraction activities.

Seeing through the fog

What Clausewitz called fog, we now call uncertainty. Most strategic decisions a tech company makes are riddled with uncertainty. When launching a new product or feature, you may not know in advance how well it will work, whether customers will like it, or how competitors will react. Whenever you are faced with a decision about what technology to use, be it a software stack, tech provider or so on, you are not only assessing whether it meets your needs, but you are also making a bet on its longevity. Will it evolve to continue meeting your needs for as long as you need it to?

Added to all the above are so-called Black Swan events that are rare and unpredictable, but can have a massive impact on your business or operations. The COVID-19 pandemic and the recent disruption of traffic in the Suez Canal are two of the most obvious recent examples of black swan events that have had large-scale impact across many countries. A quick scan of the UK’s National Risk Register [7] considers the likelihood and impact of a wide range of malicious and non-malicious events, including a broad range of cyber and terrorist attacks and catastrophic accidents.

Given this tapestry of uncertainty, what’s the best approach to be taken?

1. Don’t try to predict the future

The 2008 financial crisis took governments, financial institutions and much of society by surprise. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “the Black Swan” [8] was highly critical of the false sense of assurance that sophisticated financial and econometric models provided. A model is only as good as how faithful it reflects the real world, including all the non-linearities, biases, emotiveness and herd dispositions of human behaviour. In the case of the 2008 financial crisis, the models used by financial institutions not only failed to characterise the inherent risk of their financial products but also completely omitted to take into account how markets and institutions would react to crashes [9]. Similarly, many machine learning models that underpin retail supply chains, misjudged the wild swings in customer demand and supply both during and after the COVID19 pandemic, causing many industries to yo-yo violently from over (and under) supply to the opposite. Learning models are only as good as the data they are trained on.

In an article called “6 Strategies for Leading through Uncertainty”, Rebecca Zucker and Darin Rowell encourage leaders to “embrace the discomfort of not knowing.” [12] They say it is physiologically normal to feel stress when faced with uncertainty, as our brains see it as a risk. Decision-makers should embrace the discomfort and make it part of their mindset, acknowledging that it is ok not to know what the future looks like.

2. Recognise Complexity

In a previous blog on Systems Thinking, I explored the tools and techniques for dealing with complex systems. A company operating in the tech space exists within complex and chaotic environments, meaning that it is constantly dealing with unknown unknowns. Many tried and tested structured planning techniques (e.g. applying a Gantt Chart, or breaking down into smaller components) are not of much use in these situations. Instead, a more “sensing mode” of decision-making, involving iterative approaches of trial and error are more effective. This requires a willingness to get things wrong (which is why it is called ‘trial and error’) allowing you to understand the impact of the decisions you are making and to adjust course accordingly

*Adapted from Snowden and Boone, A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, 2007*

3. Alternate between Zooming Out and Zooming In

In their book “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership”, Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linksy and Alex Grashow talk about “zooming out” from the operational challenges to gain a different perspective. They argue that this helps leaders see the context and patterns that occur over a longer timescale than can be identified while dealing with day-to-day challenges. For example, the practice of Wardley Mapping, where a company’s product offering can be mapped against trends in its ecosystem is an exercise in zooming out. Zooming out also facilitates systems thinking, understanding how things are connected to each other and applying different perspectives.

4. Be Bold and Focus on Execution

Uncertain times not only bring risks, they also bring opportunities. A paper by Michael Birshan, Ishaan Seth and Bob Sternfels in McKinsey’s digital journal [11] quotes Aryton Senna saying, “You cannot overtake 15 cars in sunny weather, but you can when it’s raining.” The authors argue that successful leaders are ambidextrous – they are not cowed by uncertainty. Instead, they are prudent about managing the downside while also thinking about the upside, often over a long-term horizon. Being bold, however, requires the ability to move fast and execute at pace. Where the environment is uncertain, the ability to spin on a dime in response to changing conditions makes the difference between success and failure. Pfizer, Moderna and Astra Zeneca were all able to create novel vaccines for COVID-19, a previously unknown disease at an unprecedented speed. This required a combination of technological rigour (i.e. execution excellence), technological advances that allowed them to scale their product, as well as cooperation with governments and health organisations to speed up approvals.

5. Lean on your values and purpose

In uncertain times, business-focused objectives, such as market dominance in given segments, don’t provide the clarity of purpose to act as a guiding North Star when navigating the shifting sands of tech change, geopolitical uncertainty and disruptive competition. When Satya Nadella took the helm of Microsoft, he realised that the existing strategy built on proprietary Windows PC software was not sustainable in a world built on ecosystems of partners built on open technology. He guided through change by not only shifting investments into Cloud and AI but by fostering a culture of humility and learning. He said, “from ancient Greece to modern Silicon Valley, the only thing that gets in the way of continued success, relevance and impact is hubris.” [12] Here he was making a marked shift from the Microsoft that bullied away competitors and anti-trust regulators. Instead, he fostered a culture where, in his words, “the best work happens when you know that it’s not just work, but something that will improve other people’s lives.” By emphasising the values he wanted to bring to Microsoft’s soul – a growth mindset, empath, inclusivity, collaboration and customer-centricity, Nadella has created a culture that leans on its sense of mission, providing the steadying influence of a keel in rough seas, whilst relying on a sense of humility and learning to keep adapting along the journey.

Conclusion – It’s all about execution

Coming back to where we started this post, it seems pretty clear to me that the dual challenges of friction and fog are as relevant to tech leaders as they were to field commanders in the 19th century. Now as much as then, having the correct strategy is essential to ensure that you compete on terms that give you the best relative advantage. However, leaders need to embrace the contradictions, confusion and sheer hard graft required while executing the strategy. The thought that there is a grand plan out there which you can stick to, is one for the birds. Instead, embrace the uncertainty, adopt a learning mindset, and be prepared to change directions many times along the way. Above all, make sure that your teams are as match-fit as possible. Just as a car’s build quality is only really tested when it’s driven the most demanding of terrain, it is only the best-drilled and most effective organisations that find they have the agility they need to thrive in uncertain times.

Fog and Friction – The limitations of strategy when dealing with uncertainty