Strategy in the sun, strategy in the shadows

Faith in strategy depends on circumstance

Arthur John (AJ) Gossip was a Scottish minister born in 1873 and who preached during the First World War. He later wrote about his experience in the trenches, “Never have I found it so easy to preach as at the front: never have I known men so ready to listen. It was always the deep things that they wanted, not knowing what a day or an hour might bring forth.”

He lost his wife very suddenly in 1927, and thereafter gave a sermon titled, “But when life tumbles, what then?” He observed, “You people in the sunshine may believe the faith,” he said, “but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else.”

I think that’s a good place to start.

Our faith in a given strategy is directly linked to our circumstances.

If we are riding high, confident, unbothered by threats or a hostile environment, then it’s likely that we won’t feel much compulsion to think too hard about strategy. Sure, we might feel the need to “have one on the books,” but we won’t work too hard to keep it razor sharp, at-a-knife’s-edge.

But if we’re beaten down by the world, taken a few hits, and worry about staying afloat—then heck yes, we’ll be laser-focused on a strategy that gets us up off the mat and back in the game.

AJ Gossip felt that, could know that, through hard circumstance. Faith in a higher power isn’t all that dissimilar from faith in strategy. In at least one way—both are beyond sight—strategy demands a faith that can surpass reason.

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In 1979, two scientists proposed the “life-dinner” principle. In the arms race between the fox and the rabbit, if the fox loses the chase he loses dinner, while if the rabbit loses the chase he loses his life. That asymmetry of cost, in turn, means the rabbit (or any prey) is more motivated to find a successful strategy than the fox (or any predator) to survive.

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Of course, to some, pairing a preacher’s thought about faith with a theory pertaining to evolution may seem far apart. But I see them as related. When we are down, or being hunted down—that’s when strategy matters the most and so our faith in strategy shoots way up.

That’s both fortunate and unfortunate. We should care about strategy consistently, in the sun and in the shadows, but we don’t. And if we can recognize that pattern, we can be better prepared when we suffer our next loss, or the next predator comes around—and focus our attention when we’re so very near the end of the line.