The Fox Trilogy. Chantell Ilbury
Bruce Scott, invited Pierre Wack and the said author to his weekend retreat in the hills some miles outside the city. The countryside was covered in snow, which had been falling all week. In the evening, after a splendid meal, the host decided this was a good moment to go tobogganing down the local country lane. It was a long thin toboggan which at a pinch could accommodate three people, in this case three scenario planners. So, in the pitch dark with Bruce lighting our way with a torch, we walked to the top of the lane dragging the toboggan. Bruce sat down on it at the front, with Pierre in the middle and the said author in the rear position. Bruce pointed the torch down the lane and we set off.
Now the first rule of the game for tobogganing is that on a steep slope, when the snow is beginning to turn to ice, the toboggan will gather speed extremely quickly. Friction to retard the motion is not a factor. The second rule of tobogganing is that the route that you intend taking should be visible to the naked eye. The third rule is that at speed a torch is not effective to light up the way at night. The key uncertainty in this situation is not whether or not you are going to arrive at the bottom, but at which corner you are going to part company with the road. The options were simple: embark on this risky venture or sensibly stay at home in front of a blazing log fire nestling a nice glass of brandy. The decision was never at issue, given that male bravado rises by the power of the number of males present (in this situation it was cubed) and the quantity of wine imbibed (substantial).
The result was a sudden exit from the lane, but later than expected by the rear member of the toboggan since we made it miraculously through the early curves. None of us sustained critical injuries, as we had plunged deeply into a soft snowdrift. After dusting the snow off our clothes, we tramped back to the house with the toboggan in tow. There our spirits were revived by the log fire and brandy associated with the second option. The moral of this tale: even scenario planners have their comeuppance!
Rules of the game
Apollo 13, Plato and chess
If you want to see how the rules of the game are applied with fox-like energy, you need do no more than microwave some popcorn, kick off your shoes, take the phone off the hook and watch Apollo 13 on video. Your ambition to pursue the merger with another company or beat your family doctor over eighteen holes at golf will shrivel against the challenge of bringing home three astronauts hurtling out of control through space. The rules of their game include some of the most powerful and unchangeable rules in the universe – the rules of gravity, time and distance. Separated by thousands of kilometres from the Earth and faced with an unanticipated problem in their capsule, the only thing of which they are certain is a lonely, slow and horrible death if they make a mistake. They work through the matrix by starting with an examination of the astrophysical rules of the game. There’ll be more on the fate of our astronauts later.
Plato said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In business, you might say that the unexamined game is not worth playing. Consider sending a team of rugby players on to a hockey field without sticks and expecting them to play hockey. They couldn’t. They would neither know the rules of the game nor would they be properly equipped. Yet in business we do it all the time. We enter a game without examining the rules and the resources required to play. Worse, you will find some companies that, even in this day and age of emphasising corporate communication, keep their employees in the dark as to the nature of the game itself. Consequently, some employees pitch up wearing white flannels expecting cricket; others have studded boots on for football; the third bunch have donned headgear in anticipation of scrumming down for rugby and so on. And then the directors expect to mould an effective team out of their workforce! Whew!
But how do foxes and hedgehogs view the rules of the game? On the one hand, we believe that foxes embrace the rules and use them to gain advantage. They understand the boundaries of the game and that there are games within a game. They are like chess players who are thinking several moves ahead. On the other hand, hedgehogs can’t see beyond the present. They are constantly breaking the rules of the game either through ignorance or through the misbegotten belief that while the rules apply to others, they can wilfully break them. And if they don’t break them, they can bend them to suit themselves.
Snakes, bombs and Scottish caddies
The R&A (Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) is the governing authority for the Rules of Golf outside the United States of America and its territories. One of the most unusual judgements the R&A Rules Committee has been asked to make in recent years concerned the dramatic experience of a golfer in Africa. As he was approaching the top of his back swing for a shot from the light rough, a dangerous snake slithered between his feet. With a fine adjustment to his downswing he delivered a fatal blow to the snake’s head. Should it be counted as a stroke? After much deliberation the golfer was given a “not guilty” verdict. It was thought that the intention to strike the ball ceased at the moment he spotted the snake.
During the Second World War, many people clung to normality by continuing to play golf, and a special set of wartime rules was drawn up by Major G.L. Edsell. He generously allowed players to take shelter without penalty during gunfire or while bombs were falling. The positions of known delayed-action bombs were marked by red and white flags, which the small print added were “placed at reasonably, but not guaranteed, safe distances from the bombs”. A ball moved by enemy action could be replaced. If lost or destroyed another ball could be dropped without penalty. But a player whose stroke was affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb or shell, or by the sound of machine-gun fire, could play another ball only under penalty of one shot.
Although we may shake our heads and chuckle at the idiosyncrasies of the game of golf that sees the rules respected and adhered to in such extremes, the fact is that in golf, as indeed in life, there are rules that are certain, cannot be broken, are out of our control and therefore should be respected. As we have already intimated, the rules of any game cannot be changed unless the relevant and recognised authority has agreed that they should. Moreover, rules are necessary: otherwise games, which are just one manifestation of organised human behaviour, would not be possible. The rules of golf will no doubt be cursed by the frustrated hacker who has had a spectacularly “off” day and single handedly redesigned the course with his six-iron – but they are necessary. There was an occasion when an American tourist, playing extraordinarily bad golf at St Andrews, remarked to his caddie that this was not his usual game. With the customary dry wit of a Scot, the caddie replied: “What then, sir, is your usual game? Tennis, baseball, ten-pin bowling ...?”
The last story does raise an important pair of guidelines for budding entrepreneurs. First, study the rules of the game of the industry you intend going into very carefully. Does it provide a real opportunity of making money? Or could you be condemned to a life of slogging your guts out trying to get blood out of a stone? So many people do this, it’s not funny. Second, ask yourself whether you have a natural ability to succeed in that sector. The last thing you want to do is stumble in because you, or your parents or your friends, thought it was a good idea at the time. It’s no good being a gunslinger with a slow hand in a game where you’re quick or you’re dead. It may sound very obvious but at the outset the question is: “Am I in the right game – for me?”
Narrowing the cone of uncertainty
Far from being prescriptive, the rules of the game should be viewed as descriptive, as they shape the parameters within which we can operate. They show how the system ticks. Imagine the future opening up like a cone of uncertainty, as illustrated in the accompanying diagram. What the rules of the game do is to reduce that cone within reason and limit the number of outcomes. Hence, the inner cone with the three little discs on the rim (indicating possible scenarios). For instance, given the rules of soccer, you will hardly ever have a score at the final whistle as high as in a rugby game. Pierre Wack once said that, in making a good decision, it is as informative to know which futures are excluded by the rules of the game as it is to know which ones lie within the rules. In fact, a facilitator in a scenario workshop should squeeze the cone to as narrow a funnel as possible so that his group can concentrate their energy on handling the range of futures they plausibly face. Remember, business