John Boyd – Misunderstood Genius of Warfighting

Posted on March 30, 2017April 20, 2018 by Adrian Farrell

How does one begin to pay homage to a warrior like John Boyd? He was a towering intellect who made unsurpassed contributions to the American art of war.
– General Charles C. Krulak, Commandant U.S. Marine Corps

Col John R. Boyd U.S. Air Force (Ret)
23 Jan 1927 – 9 Mar 1997
The UN-dictated rules of engagement for the allied forces operating against North Korea were quite specific. No pilot was to go across the Yalu River into Manchuria (China) under any circumstances. But this didn’t stop Lieutenant John Boyd and his flight leader, RAF exchange officer Jock Maitland, and others from breaking the rules from time to time.
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Transforming the Rational Decision Making Process – Part 3

Posted on April 30, 2016May 25, 2016 by Adrian Farrell

Part 3 – The Relational Domain
The Relational Domain has the accumulation of millions of years of relationship experience from the first multicellular organisms to the sophisticated human society of today. Each generation builds on the prior generation.

The Bible even goes back further in saying Wisdom was present from the beginning of Creation: “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the Earth.” (Proverbs 8:23)

Figure 4 – Relational Domain
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Transforming the Rational Decision Making Process – Part 2

Posted on April 30, 2016May 25, 2016 by Adrian Farrell

Part 2 – Rational Domain Bottlenecks
But things don’t always go smoothly in achieving results. Bottlenecks are blockages or distortions that occur in the in the transitions between the external world and the internal world. These can delay or block the achievement of desired results.

Figure 3 – Rational Decision Making Process – Bottlenecks

As shown in Figure 3, there are four locations where bottlenecks can occur:
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Transforming the Rational Decision Making Process – Part 1

Posted on April 30, 2016May 25, 2016 by Adrian Farrell

Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they’re made for you, but you can’t avoid them.
― Mhairi McFarlane

The intent of this blog post is to highlight the usefulness or utility of both the rational decision making process in time display mode and its transformation into the relational domain. Both are needed for wise decision making. In the rational domain I want to show that the four bottlenecks shown along the time axis, when transformed into the relational domain explain all the issues that numerous decision theorists have exposed as to what goes wrong with the normative (classical) model of decision making.

Part 1 – The Rational Domain
The rational decision-making process describes an idealised approach for solving problems and making changes for the better.

How do we go about making decisions, solving problems or doing scientific research?

Over the last three hundred years an approach called rational thinking has been the mainstay behind the decision-making process.

We’ll start with a simple example of the classical decision making process in action.

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