For me, I actually found the business strategy more interested. I have read volumes on military strategy, but after reading Freedman's description of strategy evolution in business I found myself seeing how it impacts military strategy, normally in a negative way.

He started off by discussing Taylorism, who focused on identifying how workers could be used more efficiently. In his view, a doer would not be able to understand the principles of management science either because of a lack of education or insufficient mental capacity, so they would have to be guided by the educated. It required people to work smarter but not by being smart themselves. I equated this to robotics before we had robots. The more the worker could be treated as an unthinking machine the better because without the complication of independent thought it would be possible to calculate how best to extract optimal performance. I can see the logic in that, but people are not robots, and one can see how this mentality led to significant labor unrest.

Lenin pronounced Taylorism as exploitive, yet he adapted the methodology. It was easier to push this form of management in the USSR where opposition could be crushed than the U.S.

He discussed McNamara at sufficient length. He was brought into to the SECDEF from Ford Motor Co. by JFK. He strengthened OSD, challenging the services to justify their budgets and programs in the face of intensive questioning by the whiz kids, mostly from RAND. It had a major impact on the management of the military programs and the conduct of operations, especially Vietnam. By the time he left OSD in 1968, his approach was derided for its relentless focus on what could be measured rather than what actually needed to be understood. (We still suffer the curse of measuring, and only having SMART objectives so they can be measuring, and still managing to lose, because as stated above we ignore what can't be measured).

Then a great discussion on planning that is very applicable to the military. Planning cycles came to dominate corporate life, with everybody waiting for a formal document that would tell them how to behave. Politically, the result was to strengthen the center at the expense of alienating those responsible for implementation, who were apt to become cynical in the face of meaningless targets.

The long-range forecasts upon which they depended were inherently unreliable, and the organizational inform was often dated, collected haphazardly into inappropriate categories and taking little account of cultural factors. These structures risked paralyzing decision-making and came at the expense of flexibility.

The success of planning depended on the ability to control the future consequences of present actions. This meant controlling the decisions of many people, with different interests and purposes, so as to secure a premeditated effect. Some causal theory must connect the planned actions with the desired future results, and then the ability to act on this theory.
By the 1980s, strategic planning was losing its luster. The planning departments became large and expensive, the next cycle began as soon as the previous one finished, and the outputs were ever more complicated. .

As in the military, the business world lost confidence in models based on centralized control, quantification, and rational analysis left an opening for alternative approaches to strategy (design?). Whether a superpower corporation or country, as the environment became less manageable, the cumbersome processes the model demanded became less dysfunctional and unresponsive.

In the 1980s, Harvard business professors complained managers abdicated their strategic responsibilities. They sought short term gains rather than long term innovation. The problem’s root was managers increasingly relying principles that prize analytical detachment and methodology over insight.

This part was enlightening to me, he described the folly of confusing rank with expertise. The idea that any General, regardless of background, would be capable of leading a combat or stability operation, based on management or military principles is dangerous.

Freedman wrote, "A false and shallow concept of the professional manager had developed. Such people were pseudoprofessionals who had no expertise in a any particular industry or technology but were believed to be able to step into an unfamiliar company and run it successfully thru strict application of financial controls, portfolio concepts, and a market-driven strategy."

The good news is the military seems to be increasingly recognizing these problems. Next thoughts on hyper competitiveness.