Imagination versus Imaginaction

In the late 16th century, Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “ipsa scientia potestas est”—or, “knowledge itself is power.” Today this phrase is often attributed to Bacon and shorthanded as “knowledge is power.”

To that, I, and many others reply—No, Sir Francis, it is not.

Knowledge is, at best, potential power. Everyone from Tony Robbins to Dale Carnegie has pointed this out. Famed American Civil War general William T. Sherman once wrote to a friend, “mere knowledge is not power, it is simply possibility. Action is power, and its highest manifestation is action with knowledge.”

But that minor point is not the point. The point here is to understand how this fact relates to the strategist’s mind and practice.

I like to think of this issue in the interplay between the imagination (what’s blue-sky desirable) and action (what’s real-world possible).

Cynical readers won’t love this turn-of-phrase, but a portmanteau—the literary device of blending two words—is useful here.

Imaginaction—the mental practice that first employs the mind’s eye to spot the entire range of possibilities in a given scenario, then balancing those against the smaller set of realistic, actionable options that’re shovel-ready right now. It’s seeing the forest first, then selecting the target tree.

Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz referred to this gift with the French phrase “coup d’oeil,” and described it as “an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth.” Clausewitz equated it with military genius.

I tend to think of it more broadly than in just a military context. It’s for strategists no matter the discipline or competition. A football head coach that calls timeout at just the right moment, a politician that provides a perfect policy response for a particular age, just as a strategist might define the contours and actions for a long-term challenge or a general that spots and presses an adversary’s relative disadvantage in an important part of an ongoing war.

The key to all these examples above is they transcend analysis and ideas and knowledge—and lead us to the realm of decision and activity and action.

For the strategist, knowledge is never power but instead a precursor to power.

First imagine, then act.