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Chapter 4Make Every Shot Count: Why agile decision making is essential to making progress

“Consider everything an experiment.”

– Corita Kent

We're transporting you to the late seventeenth century. The white sand palm-fringed beaches of the Caribbean might look idyllic, but to make a journey across the turquoise waters offshore you had to run the gauntlet of pirate ships as you transported cargo from one island to another.

Battles on the high seas were brutal and challenging. Unlike land battles, both your ship and the one you were fighting were constantly moving. Holding steady to let off a volley of cannon fire was no mean feat. Sometimes you had to fire one cannon to check the trajectory of your shot and course correct as necessary. Other times you could learn from the shots your enemy fired over your bow.

These battles required both pirates and merchants to adapt their strategies, learn, and evolve. There might be days where your boat was smaller and lighter than your opponent's, in which case you might decide to run and live to fight another day. On other occasions, you may be low on ammunition and therefore it becomes imperative to make every shot count.

To outsiders, it might even have looked as though you were firing in the wrong direction if you started firing before your enemy's boat had come around. However, your knowledge of the seas and how your enemy's ship was moving might mean that you hit your mark despite outward appearances.

As Sun Tzu said, “No battle plan ...