How to Lead With Creative Courage - Lessons From John Boyd

It’s 1964 in the USA, and the Cold War is in mid-flight. General Walter Campbell Sweeney Jnr, head of the US Tactical Air Command, is enraged after hearing a rumour about his precious new fleet of aircraft.

A foul-mouthed upstart, Mad Major John Boyd has made the outrageous claim that new American F-111 aircraft are inferior to the soviet planes that they are fighting over the skies of Vietnam.

Boyd has been called to present his findings to the General and he knows he risks a court-martial if his data is wrong, but he's quadruple-checked it and he’s confident.

Experts line up to shoot down Boyd's theory, but as the 20-minute allocated slot grows into a two-day emergency meeting, it's not looking good for the General.

Boyd presents his controversial theory and wins the battle. He proves that the planes are inferior to the enemy. Defeated and convinced, the general finally asks him what he should do with his expensive new fleet.?

General, I’d pull the wings off, install benches in the bomb bay, paint the goddam thing yellow and turn it into a high-speed line taxi.

Owch.?

This is an article about John Boyd - fighter pilot, designer, a hero to the US marines, creator of the OODA loop strategy, leader to his followers, an enemy to authority and a huge source of inspiration to me.

John Boyd — Fighter Pilot

John Boyd was born into a middle-class family in 1927 in Erie, Pennsylvania, but the household finances were hit when his father died. He was three years old, and it was the Great Depression. With no income to support the 5-member household, his mother launched herself into action. She baked cakes, made cards and pursued any other form of monetised craft?to keep her family fed. She drove into her children a philosophy of endurance and not letting other people define your value.

During his 30-year career, John Boyd made huge contributions to the Air Force, the Marines and business strategy. Some of his ideas were welcome; others fiercely fought over. Robert Coram's Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War?is a brilliant read that thoroughly covers his achievements.

Below are a few of my favourite insights from his biography.?

Weaponising Doubt

Many people in the world will line up to tell you what you're good at and what you're not. Some teachers, doctors, relatives, and friends are trying to help out, others not, but it takes an exceptional level of confidence to ignore it all. I was reminded of Michael Jordan in The Last Dance in Boyd's habit of weaponising doubt and limitations others tried to put on him. Coram's book gives two early incidents that inspired Boyd to prove them wrong through his achievements.

Both occurred at high school. The first involved a teacher telling him that he would never amount to anything more than becoming a salesman. Affronting on two counts — firstly, who was this teacher to decide Boyd’s future? And secondly, Boyd’s absent father was a salesman and his early death related to this role. To be condemned to this fate was not conceivable to Boyd.

The other was an IQ test when he was fifteen, scoring a scathingly low result. The school offered the chance to retake the test, but he refused; instead, he used it as a defensive shield in places like the Pentagon. He would pull out the IQ card to make people relax and then knock them out with his ground-breaking theories.

The next time someone tries to make you doubt your capabilities think of John Boyd's approach - own your knowledge of what you can do and be unaffected by other people's labels.

Smashing Assumptions Apart

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.”

Fighter Weapons School Tactics Manual

After finishing his training at the renowned Fighter Weapon School (FWS), Boyd was asked to stay on as an instructor, a privilege the school gave only to a few star pupils.

He agreed on the promise that he be allowed to tweak the school’s training manuals which were sorely lacking in air-to-air combat theory.

Because the period focused on nuclear rather than aerial warfare, no one paid much attention to the fighter pilots. Bombers were the reigning fashion. When Boyd requested time off from instructing duties to finish the manual, an FWS colonel denied him.

But instead of shelving his mission to improve the fighter pilot experience, he dedicated evenings and weekends to the manual. He had already realised that his degree in economics could not help him with the strategy, and enrolled in an Industrial Engineering degree.

When he finished his manual, it came in at 150 pages and was the labour of blood, sweat and sleepless nights. However, when Boyd proudly presented it to the Colonel, he waved it away, rejecting it in favour of a hastily constructed 15-page manual created internally.

Risking a severe dose of retribution, Boyd went over the Colonel's head. He sent copies of the two manuals to the head of the tactical air command, who saw that the in-house training document was severely inferior to the new manual. At first, the Colonel shouted, screamed and threatened Boyd over the telephone. Then he stopped to read it and issued a prompt apology.

The tactics manual was an enormous hit with the senior leadership at the FWS. It was also well received by the fighter pilots who had never been able to engage with the overly academic existing aerial theory.

E-M Theory

When Boyd wrote the tactics manual, he hadn't finished his second degree, but armed with a new qualification in industrial engineering, he set his sights on something entirely more ambitious. His quest was to understand the performance and capabilities of all US aircraft.

The first obstacle to this was access to computers. Experimenting with equations by hand took too long, and the only computer on the airbase was controlled by a civilian who was indignant at the thought of spending valuable computer resources on a Major.

Not deterred by the civilian at the base, Boyd searched for backup by telling his theory to anyone who would give him the time. The implications were huge to those who understood the art of air-to-air combat he promised.

Finally, grit and persistence led him to a collaborator, Tom Christie who not only passionately believed in Boyd but also had unlimited access to the base computer because of his rank.?

With data at his disposal, he developed the Energy Manoeuvrability (E-M) theory, a new way of measuring the capability of an aircraft using specific energy rather than speed alone. When he proved the hypothesis, they realised it worked for the entire fleet of US planes and on enemy craft.

It was this theory that led him to prove to General Sweeney that the F111 fleet was inferior aircraft to the planes the Soviets were flying.??

It was a long time coming from Boyd’s presentation to Sweeney in 1964 to using EM theory to design a fighter plane, but it was the beginning of a brand-new way of looking at the art of war.

Creative Leadership

Boyd's ability to think creatively also helped his students and followers. For example, Ron Catton, a plucky first lieutenant with a burning desire to be a fighter pilot, the best fighter pilot. He had dreamed about this for his entire life, but a silly incident threatened to destroy this desire.

Enrolled at the FWS, he wanted to follow in Boyd's footsteps and be invited back as an instructor after graduation. But, after only two days at the Nellis base, he went on a bender with some buddies. After erratic driving on his way into Las Vegas in his red corvette, he was pulled over by a police officer. Down at the station, they may have bought his story about not being drunk if he hadn't vomited all over the station floor.

Back on the base, disgraced and threatened with a court-martial if he were to have one more screwup, he was feeling very sorry for himself. His dreams of graduating from the FWS and being called back as an instructor flew out the window.

He turned to Boyd for advice, delivering his predicament with an air of melancholy that must have stirred something within the old warrior. Boyd gave the situation some deep thought.

No one has ever gone through this school with a perfect academic record. But if you do, you will get their attention. If you don’t, you can forget your dream.

This was no small feat; the FWS course was one of the toughest in the Airforce. There was a good reason no one had ever graduated with the perfect academic record.

This quest and advice transformed Catton. He stopped drinking and visiting the bar and focused only on pursuing academic perfection. Boyd and Catton forged a bond; the master and his student.

Catton's effort was superhuman, and the entire base was rocking with stories of the screwup Catton acing every single exam. Boyd watched with pride and admiration; Catton's quest was a secret between them. Catton's final test drew a crowd of students and instructors who watched painstakingly as the Captain gave his grading. A perfect academic record, and the room erupted with celebratory cheers.

With Boyd’s encouragement, Catton had achieved what no other fighter pilot had ever done. Coram’s book describes an emotional scene when Catton drops in to give Boyd the news.

A fighter pilot doesn’t’ cry, especially if he has just become the first fighter pilot in history to ace every academic course at the Fighter Weapons School.

To-Do Or To Be

In life, there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be, or to do. Which way will you go?

Do you want to do something, or do you want to be someone was the line would use, dismissing the second option to toe the line or bow to an authority figure. Boyd lived up to the speech he often gave to his colleagues at a crossroads. But unfortunately, the cost of pursuing his ideas was promotion, recognition and hot air from a growing crowd of enemies.

I leave you with that question for whatever exciting venture you are working on. To do, or to be?

I highly recommend you read the complete biography by Robert Coram. But for now, I hope you take inspiration to use creative courage in your own life.

·??????Boldly own your capabilities; don’t let others define you

·??????Always challenge assumptions

·??????Lead through creativity

·??????Do you want to do something or be someone?

Thanks for reading.