Sunday, January 23, 2011

Obliquity

The ideas in this book is slightly different from all the conventional knowledge about strategy and planning. I agree to some extent what is given in the book with some exceptions.  The success of the oblique ways tend to increase or decrease according to a single feature of the problem or situation. This is how chaotic the situation is; i.e. if the problem is of a chaotic nature, containing many unknowns, with unexpected risks or opportunities,  the solution method should be containing at least as much complexity as the problem, i.e. obliquity works, but I would propose a slight modification of the overall strategy. Let's call oblique method as the initial aproach to the problems of all sorts, my opinion is that as the level of knowledge about the problem increases then at some point (in some problems) we can make a transition from obliquity to direct approach which result in increase of efficiency in usage of resources. I would like to give example of football. The oblique method would suggest passing the ball many times to approach to the goal and overcome the opponent teams defences, plus giving the ball as much swirl as possible to surprise the goal keeper, but during this process, a moment may give the striker an opportunity, i.e. an easy shot or a weakness such as caused by the goal keeper changing position. At that moment the direct method should be chosen meaning no swirl or surprise except for the sheer power of the shot. This improvement in the problem solving strategy can be called obliqo-direct method.

1 comment:

  1. Hello Mehmet
    The example that you have shown with the football players gives a better view in what you wanted to express with obliqo-direct method. (which you have said is only an improvement)
    At the end everybody wants to score it does not matter by passing or by shooting so I think we still on the same basis.
    Regards
    Florian Shushku

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