Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Should we Practice Narrative Led Operations?


An article at SWJ asks an obvious question. Rather than deducing the operations first, and then trying to build a campaign around them, hasn't group perception of success (goals) vs actual achievement of success (methods, operations) always followed parallel paths, displaying hysteresis? We make goals, make presumptions about how to get there, but ALWAYS arrive by paths that differ unpredictably from those we imagined.  Build a narrative bridging from present situation to desired situation, and let people rediscover the obvious operations on their own?
 
That way they feel like they discovered, and own, their own solutions. People are recruited by potential, sensed through narrative. Operations & tools are always incidentally adopted while pursuing potential.

There are obvious implications regarding currency operations. "It's the narrative, stupid!"

People don't like the attributes of the situation they're in. So elicit a list of the attributes of the situation they'd LIKE to be in, then simply insist on getting from here to there. Currency & other operations will be incidental ... as always. That's how Marriner Eccles & FDR took us off the gold-std, incidentally. Lord knows Richard Nixon & John Connally acted for the same reasons, in 1971-1973.

Campaigns which manipulate narratives can always stay inside the social OODA loop of campaigns that try to propagate operations sans narrative.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hasn't group perception vs achievement of success always followed parallel paths, displaying hysteresis?

Could you break this phrase down a bit for me please? I know what the words mean but I'm not following the logic.

It would be appreciated, thank you.

Roger Erickson said...

Altered the text above to answer your response. Hope that helps.