Strategy doesn't need to be complicated.

General Schwarzkopf's successful strategy for the ground invasion during Desert Storm was essentially the age-old, "fake right (Kuwaiti coast), run left (west along the Iraqi-Saudi border)." Subsequent to an intense air campaign to weaken and destroy Iraqi military targets, Schwarzkopf aimed to confuse Iraqi forces and prevent them from anticipating the coalition's actions. He created a fake amphibious assault force to the east (fake right) to distract Iraqi troops and draw their attention away from the real objective (run left).

There are numerous other examples of wildly successful, (relatively) simple deception strategies. Perhaps the best known is the successful infiltration of Troy by the Greeks to win the Trojan War. According to the story, the Greeks built a massive wooden horse as a gift for the Trojans and left it outside the city gates. The Trojans, thinking the horse was a symbol of victory, brought it inside the city walls. However, the horse was filled with Greek soldiers who emerged at night and opened the gates of the city, allowing the rest of the Greek army to enter and defeat the Trojans.

Surprisingly less well known is Operation Bodyguard. Operation Bodyguard was a military deception plan carried out by the Allies during World War II to mislead the Germans about the location and timing of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The operation involved creating a network of fictitious armies and deceptions, including the creation of a phantom army commanded by General George S. Patton, and the use of double agents to feed false information to German intelligence. The goal of Operation Bodyguard was to convince the Germans that the main Allied invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais (fake right!), rather than Normandy (run left!), which would divert German forces and delay their response to the actual invasion.

A big part of the magic of good strategy is simply alignment on an approach. Alignment allows for coordinated, distributed (not top-down) decision-making. No one had to tell the sailors during Desert Storm to reallocate their time from prepping beach landings to increasing radio chatter that signaled activity to the east. This type of concise explication of an overall approach (a … strategy) allows each member of a team to coordinate their actions with the others.

Data Science and analytics in an organization benefit disproportionately from clear strategy. They're intrinsically exploratory—it's hard to prescribe solutions ahead of time. Data experts need to know how the org is aligning on the competitive landscape.

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