Of Hedgehogs and Foxes: Gaddis' "On Grand Strategy"
"Strategy isn't always a rational enterprise" because those who develop abstractions are emotional beings. A strategist must reflect on every situation, thinking at scale at the edge of chaos in time.
A grand strategist — one with aspirations and high goals in mind — should know how to maneuver in face of constraints or hard choices or adversity with artful dexterity.
But what characterizes a grand strategist or, for simplicity, what is a grand strategy?
In this edition:
What I Think You Need To Know: What does a grand strategy boil down to?
This Should Make You Smarter: Think of strategy in terms of scale, space, and time — the three irreducible ingredients that guide grand strategy.
Through The Systems Thinker’s Lens: How thinking like a grand strategist leads one to make decisions on the various parts of the whole.
What I Think You Need To Know
Gaddis, whose courses at Yale reportedly produce strategic thinkers, tells us of two seemingly irreconcilable ways of thinking, which he Aesopically encodes into two animals:
the hedgehog, which has “a single central vision,” or a clear, grand end in mind. These can be grouped under the term “aspirations”.
the fox, which pursues many ends in versatile ways, often adapting to circumstances as they arise. These can be grouped under the term “capabilities”, which includes “resources” available to pursue aspirations.
They key, argues Gaddis, is to be both a hedgehog and a fox, since “some are neither and some are both” (p. 15). Given that being both might induce some sort of cognitive dissonance, one should strive to do so “while retaining the ability to function” (p. 17).
To be both a hedgehog and a fox, one must be able to find a way to connect ends and means, or what Rumelt calls “guided policy with coherent actions” in his kernel of good strategy. Then, any cognitive dissonance that may result from being both a grand visionary (hedgehog) and a results-driven fluid person (fox), can be resolved not by stark alternatives, but “between good things we can’t have simultaneously” (p. 15).
“Grand strategy” — which prevents dumb actions — “is the alignment of potentially unlimited aspirations with necessarily limited capabilities” (p. 21). History, then, becomes useful in matters of grand strategy, for it helps align ends to means: “capabilities restrict aspirations to what circumstances will allow” (p. 32).
That said, we should pursue a fluid, non-static view of the past, given the spatio-temporal shifts in scale that civilizations go through across the ages. One such example of the past that shouldn’t be viewed statically is what Graham Allison has termed “Thucydides’ Trap” and what Thucydides himself asserted in that “the growth of the power in Athens … made war inevitable” with Sparta (p. 43), which became alarmed by the rise of Athens as a competing power.
These dynamics require one to exercise “first-rate intelligence”, that is, holding opposites in mind (e.g., being both a hedgehog and a fox) while functioning (p. 107).
This Should Make You Smarter
Both panoramic and analytical views are required for grand strategic thinking — that’s an implication of first-rate intelligence. Argues Gaddis (p. 23):
The relationship between the general and the particular — between universal and local knowledge — nurture strategic thinking.
This alludes to a gap that strategy bridges between the study of history (as received knowledge) and the construction of theory, which generalizes knowledge.
Training, therefore, is the best protection we have against “strategies getting stupider as they become grander, a recurring problem in peace as well as war”. Training also helps “teach the common sense from knowing when to be a hedgehog and when a fox” (p. 25). (Training here is loosely defined as the the navigation between history and theory, but can be generalized to any form of edification.)
Because “strategy isn’t always a rational enterprise,” the grand strategist can only strive to balance emotions and abstractions, reflecting carefully before reacting to any situation that “surprises” whatever strategy may have been developed. After all, “strategy requires a sense of the whole that reveals the significance of respective parts” (p. 58). This is also why strategies are never really developed and then executed or implemented. The grand strategist must be prepared to allow the strategy to emerge, among other possibilities, because no matter how well we craft a strategy, “circumstances will change” (p. 109).
Given the core contrast in strategy — that of capabilities constraining aspirations in scale, space, and time — compromise becomes a necessity. Thus, a grand strategist with aspirations and high goals in mind should know how to maneuver with artful dexterity when faced with constraints, hard choices, or adversity as they sail toward aspirations.
Through The Systems Thinker's Lens
“The logic of strategy undergird cultures over vast stretches of scale, space, and time,” argues Gaddis (p. 91). Scale “sets the ranges of expectations”. It includes adaptations to new circumstances, which is the space where they intersect. What gives them their dynamic nature is time. Time demands choice in face of scale and space. Thus, the grand strategist should also know how to “transform the unexpected into the predetermined”, thinking at scale at the edge of chaos in time (p. 276).
These unexpected events that often accompany an emergent strategy (which is almost always the case for any strategy) requires the strategist possess skills spanning “imitation, adaptation, and approximation” (p. 108).
As a systems thinker, the grand strategist can be better prepared to adapt their strategy and course toward aspirations. It’s thus important to have a few principles that guide the many “practices bound by time and space” (p. 63). Principles help us reflect duly in face of hard choice. As in scenario analysis, a favorite exercise of many systems thinkers, we consider possibilities by mapping “principles, which are few, to practices, which are many (p. 66). We should consider how our decisions form causal chains, while holding on to the strategic objectives.
When the capabilities (and resources) we wield fall short, we ought to maneuver. This “requires planning, but also improvisation” (p. 83). There is also a likely need “to grasp interconnections” (p. 83) and also to “manage the unknowns” (p. 99) — two features that characterize systems thinking for strategic purposes.
Happy Strategizing!