The Warrior Class Blog » Little Picture, Big Picture

Posted by Gary Gagliardi under Strategy Institute , Parody or Prophecy? , Personal Wars , Sun Tzu


The science of strategy requires seeing beyond the immediate situation into the big picture. Planning is reductive, reducing each process to a series of smaller, discrete steps. Strategy is additive, adding each discrete situation to a bigger picture that, ideally, others do not see. I offer the following joke as an illustration.

A boy enters a barber shop. The barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch! I’ll prove it to you.”
The barber pulls out a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other. He calls the boy over, shows him what is in his hands and asks, “Which do you want, son?”
The boy, says, “Ooh, shiny!” and takes the quarters and leaves.
“What did ! I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”
Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store.
“Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why do you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”
The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game’s over!”"