Navigating The Human Terrain

Navigating The Human Terrain

In the course of writing The Sniper Mind I talked to active snipers who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan and I was impressed by the way the military takes a problem, breaks it down into a series of individual slices, each of which can be quantified and then proceeds to tackle each slice in turn. This is a modular, focused and very directed approach to problem solving that requires a great deal of discipline and expertise.

It was however, their focus on what they call “the human terrain” that most impressed me in their way of thinking. “Human terrain” is the label ascribed to what the popular press calls winning “hearts and minds” in war campaigns. It is an acknowledgement that no modern force can bring to bear sufficient firepower to completely wipe out an enemy. In addition there are other constraints both legal and practical that argue against the indiscriminate use of force.

The world is not a game and we are irrational beings driven by emotional needs.

When we consider that in a warzone which is the epitome of an adversarial environment combatants need to win over the populace in order to truly secure a region, we have to perhaps consider why we, in marketing and business, are still talking about how to become more customer-centric or whether it is time to develop a social responsibility in order to differentiate a business from its competitors.

War and business, seen by an outsider appear easy: In war you need to get your forces together and then order them to defeat the enemy and deliver you victory. To do this you need manpower and resources and the means to support it all. In business you need a product or a service which addresses a need in the market. You then have to price it aggressively and market it in a way that wins over every competitor and delivers to you a large slice of the market. To do this you need the right product or service and manpower and resources that will deliver the outcome you expect.

This theoretic, conceptual outline might work if humans were machines and the world was a game. In that case we could ascribe perfectly rational behavior to every player and Game Theory logic to every plan. The world is not a game and we are irrational beings driven by emotional needs. This makes everything unpredictable, messy and prone to errors of judgement.

In this reality we need the tacit agreement of our enemies on the battlefield and our competitors in the market place to help us move the needle along to a happy middle ground where, in the worst possible case, we all operate by the same, mutually acknowledged rules. In the best case our efforts, despite being on opposing sides, move the needle forward towards mutual gain.

As an example, consider how no country has ever been conquered without the tacit acceptance of its defeat by the local population. Should the conquering force be so extreme in its approach that it gives no motive whatsoever for cooperation it would leave a conquered nation with no choice but to fight to the very end with everything and everyone at its disposal. A massively armed aggressor might be able to completely wipe out such a nation but then there’s nothing to be gained from that. Similarly, a business that uses every available path to it to overtake its competitor without any regard to legality or morality would soon find itself on the fringe, creating enemies in the least expected places.

There is a moral to this that cuts deep. While the “hard” aspects of an army (or a business) are the ones we bring center stage and promote (the guns, the men, the products, the salesforce) it is the “soft” ones that actually deliver the outcome we seek.

Being seen as law-abiding, fair, moral and kind create unlooked for opportunities that shift the perspective of those whose cooperation and goodwill, we need.

An army, just like a business, doesn’t operate in a vacuum nor is it made up of automatons. People have emotions which lead to feelings which then govern thoughts and beliefs. In that sequence their actions cannot be inconsistent for too long if they want to remain healthy. Consistency requires effort which, in order to sustain, demands values. All of this then builds trust and trust is necessary in order to have any kind of relational exchange take place.

The human terrain is the only one that truly matters. Those who are unable to navigate it, in war or business, are only setting themselves up to fail.

Drawn from material from The Sniper Mind: Eliminate Fear, Deal with Uncertainty, and Make Better Decisions.

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If you'd like to learn more or connect, please do at https://davidamerland.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn, or find my Tweets as well. And goodies and tools are available via https://thesnipermind.com. If you liked this article, you may also like:

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