Tag Archives: exploit

How to Defeat Control Strategies

THERE’S a cannon that’s already lobbed a couple of shells at you, creating geysers more nearby than you’d like. The gunner behind that cannon is your mortal adversary.  He knows that if you can get in close enough, your torpedoes will blow his ship to Kingdom Come – and him with it.  His advantage is long-range cannon power, and the stable platform of a battle cruiser to shoot from.  Yours is that you’re driving the fastest, most maneuverable naval boat afloat. Your engines are red-lining and howling.  You’re racing at his ship in your Patrol Torpedo (PT) Boat at maximum … Continue reading

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Strategy in the News: Drones, a New Resource

DRONING THE FARM  Robert Blair’s neighbors have grown accustomed to seeing him launch a small aircraft over his fields in Idaho.  It’s a nice-looking little plane about 4 ft. long, with a wingspan of around 8 feet, that systematically flies back and forth over sections of his land. What’s Blair doing with this thing?  He runs a good-sized operation – 1,500 acres.  It’s hard to know where and how much to be tending the crops on a spread this size.  And the cost of tending them has risen dramatically as the costs of fertilizer, fuel and water have increased. So targeting … Continue reading

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How to Devise a Strategy: Affordable Coffee

We’re all wired to devise strategies. So you just have to put the right info into your head, and it will take care of the rest.  Let it all sit there.  Give your intuition an opportunity to do its work.  You’re objective will create the pull that draws out the strategy.  Your barriers and available resources, and their many possibilities, will shape it.  It will come to you. Here’s an example of devising a strategy This method is easy, and makes sense.  It follows the natural thinking sequence of  problem > opportunity > solution. Situation: You like to drink a … Continue reading

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What Strategies Are

On the 3rd of May each year, the women of Monsanto, Portugal, walk up a stone path from the town to the top of the mountain.  They enter the fortress there and then cast clay jars full of flowers down from its granite walls in commemoration of the villagers’ resistance to the many sieges in the town’s long history.  During a stay in the town, I was told a story about the clay jars and what they represent. They represent cows.  The story goes like this.  Long ago, perhaps in the 1100’s, Monsanto was under siege.  The people of the … Continue reading

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Anatomy of a Strategy

Gotta’ have Anatomy Look at the guys in the Rembrandt painting.  They’re old doctors getting an anatomy lesson from the one wearing a hat.  Troubling.  How can you have been a doctor unless you understood the parts of the body and how they work together?  But here these puzzled-looking doctors are, finally getting an anatomy lesson. Reminds me of where we are with strategy today.  We need a small dose of strategy anatomy. It was quite a lag in time before the Western medical profession adopted what should be considered the most minimal understanding necessary to be a practicing doctor.  But in many … Continue reading

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