Podcast: Colonel Jason (TOGA) Trew PhD. United States Airforce
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Conventional Strategic Mindset |
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Playful Strategic Mindset |
Col Trew is the commander, 30th Student Squadron, Squadron Officer School, Maxwell AFB, AL.
Col Trew entered the Air Force in 1999 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in Foreign Area Studies and Legal Studies with minors in Philosophy and Russian language. Following a one-year assignment as a “Gold Bar” recruiter, he completed Undergraduate Pilot Training and then F-15C initial qualification and mission qualification courses.
Col Trew has held various operational and training assignments in the United States and Central Command. While assigned to the 1st Fighter Wing, he was handpicked to fly combat air patrols over the National Capital Region during times of high alert, including the President’s 2004 State of the Union address. During Col Trew’s next assignment as an Air Liaison Officer, he was the Combined Air Operations Center representative to the 10th Mountain Division’s Joint Operating Center. He was responsible for planning and executing the Close Air Support Air Tasking Order for Operation ENDURING FREEDOM and personally delivered a decision brief to the Commander of Air Force Central Command regarding the transition to ISAF. Col Trew then returned to the F-15C and led the largest flight in the 33d Operations Group, which was acknowledged as the best-trained Aircrew Flight Equipment unit in Air Combat Command. In 2009, he deployed to Grenada to fly the first Combat Air Patrol over the President and other heads of state attending the Summit of Americas. He was also selected to deliver an F-15C capabilities briefing to the country’s Prime Minister. Col Trew was the Flight Commander for the first class at the new Combat Systems Officer school and oversaw a complete revision of the syllabus before taking over as the Chief of Standardization and Evaluation for the 479th Flying Training Group. After IDE, he was selected to stay at Air Command and Staff College as a faculty member and then Director of Operations. He then attended the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, where he presented a briefing on “Disruptive Innovation in Air Superiority” to the Commander, Air University. Following SAASS, Col Trew completed a PhD in history, focusing on technology, strategy, and organizational culture.
Col Trew is a senior pilot with over 1200 flying hours in fighter and trainer aircraft.
Read The Transcript:
[ Introduction ]
Welcome to the Strategic Play Podcast. Unlock Your creativity, expand your mind, and have good clean fun with Strategic Play founder and LEGO ® Serious Play® Master Trainer, Jacquie Lloyd Smith, and creative force and curious mind, Mark Millhone.
Mark:
Hello, Jacquie.
Jacquie:
Hello, Mark. How are you doing?
Mark:
I am excellent. I'm really excited for the conversation today, mainly because I think it's going to challenge a lot of beliefs that I have about the role of play in our lives. Colonel Jason Trew works in military strategy. This to me doesn't sound like fun and games. And I think that he will bring some really interesting perspectives to how military strategy is being influenced by playful, strategic design and creative-thinking disciplines.
Jacquie:
That's right, and he is a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator. I've had the pleasure to take LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® down to the Squadron Officer School, where he leads. He definitely has some insight into the work that we do, but I think that we will get some really great insights into how he's using these playful tools in his work. So that makes it really fun.
Mark:
For sure. And just to let you know a little bit more about him, Colonel Jason M. Trew. He is also called TOGA, which is his call sign, which is how you'll hear us refer to him. Colonel Trew entered the Air Force in 1999, after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a bachelor of science degree. After flying trainers and fighter aircraft for the first half of his career, he has spent the last decade focused on innovations in military education, strategy, and leadership. This has included a year studying at the Air Force school for strategists, earning a PhD in the history of technology, coaching innovation teams across the Department of Defense, and most recently leading the design team for Space Force education. He has extensive training in facilitation and design thinking and is also certified as a performance coach, personal trainer, and IRONMAN triathlon coach. Colonel Trew, who goes by the call sign TOGA, is currently the Vice Commandant of Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. The views he expresses here are his personal views and do not reflect the official policy of, or endorsement by, the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Jacquie:
So in order to launch this conversation, we thought it would be fun to use LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. And so we gave TOGA a challenge, and the challenge was to build a small model that explained his mindset to strategy. So he built a model for us, and we'll walk him through the storytelling process so that you can hear what he was thinking as he put the bricks together.
Mark:
Terrific. Let's play that conversation.
[ Interview ]
Mark:
We have the distinct pleasure today to be speaking with Doctor Professor Colonel Jason TOGA Trew. Thank you so much for joining us, sir.
TOGA:
Excited to be here, thanks.
Mark:
Jacquie, what is the prompt that we have given TOGA for today's podcast?
Jacquie:
Not to say that he followed it, but we asked him to build a model that would explain his strategy. And you built us a couple of models.
TOGA:
Yes. Yes, I did. Sorry if I didn't follow the rules exactly. Although that's actually part of what I built in the model. So do you want me to explain what I did in the models?
Mark:
Typically what we do is I just give a basic paint brush so that people can have a picture in their mind. So TOGA has flipped the script on us from the start. He's given us not one, but two models. The first model is of a figure carrying a flag. There is a bridge shape. And then on the other side of that bridge shape, we're looking at something that looks somewhat like a flower. There's rich pink pieces and a green leafy structure on top. That is model number one.
And then model number two is a variation on that. There's two figures on one side. Neither one of them holds a flag. And then there is sort of a bridge shape which goes over. But instead of it just going to a piece of land, it opens up to pieces of translucent plastic. And the flower that we had before is kind of in different pieces with more colors and is on a horizontal plane.
TOGA:
Nailed it.
Jacquie:
TOGA, tell us about, we'll call it model number one, with the bridge. Tell us the story there with that Minifigure with the flag in his hand.
TOGA:
This is the model of the way we wish strategy actually was. And sometimes we treat it this way, and it's not true. But that's the model of a single person with a flag: follow me. There's a bridge between where they are to where they want to go. They have something desirable on the other end of the bridge.
They've constructed this way they get from here to there, and they know what they want. They've sort of reverse-engineered the path to get there. That's the way—that's the story we like to tell. And when strategy doesn't go well, I think we beat ourselves up that we just didn't do it correctly. And we don't question whether we even chose the right process to begin with. That’s model one.
Jacquie:
Alright. Okay. Let's now go to model two, which as Mark described, the two people are—there's two people, not one. And there's no flag. Let's go to that one.
TOGA:
Yes. So right there is one difference. Instead of a single person in some sort of kind of myth of the master strategist, it's more than one. It's obviously—it’s usually even more than two. And one is sort of looking up and one is sort of looking down, and it just requires this diverse team of everyone bringing their full freaky self.
Because everyone's got all these different perspectives and together, yes, they have an idea that they want to go forward. They've constructed the same exact bridge. But the translucent pieces are sort of the fog and they can't exactly tell what's in front of them, but they're going to wander through toward something that they think is what they want.
And as they approach, as it is in fog, you'll get a little bit more clarity and then maybe alter the direction they go in or update their plan and this sort of emergent strategy, I think it's the way strategy actually plays out in real life. Not to say that you don't do the planning, but you just have this sort of enlightened position where you have a plan and then you're willing to dis-confirm your own biases towards your plan and come up with a new plan right in the middle of it.
Jacquie:
Right. Okay. So let me ask you a couple of questions. What are the translucent pieces? What do they mean? What are they representing or symbolic of?
TOGA:
The fact that we live in a world where there's no data on the future. So we don't know what's going to come in before us. But we have to still—I think we can't let that paralyze us. We still kind of have to trudge through the swamp and walk through the fog and get clarity as we stumble upon things.
And as we go through that process, we'll see a little bit more but we still won't see everything. So there's a certain amount of humility that, yes there's a plan; but as we find our way through the wilderness, we're going to have to update the plan.
Jacquie:
Aha. Okay. We're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to dive into that, because I think there's a lot of goodies and richness in that part of the story. Okay. Maybe I'll just start with a question, which is this idea of playful strategy. Because that's what you titled your model here. It’s Playful Strategy.
And when I first met you, we had quite a conversation about the interception between strategy and play. Do you want to maybe tell us a little bit about that and the work that you were doing around play and strategy?
TOGA:
Yes. Sure. In fact, I love this because it demonstrates what's in the model, or the model number two, in the sense that there's a lot of serendipity and unplanned excursions as I was going through this journey in a history PhD that the Air Force had sponsored me for. So I'm studying specifically the history of technology and innovation and those types of things. And at the same time, I was doing some work as learning how to be a personal trainer and an IRONMAN triathlon coach and sort of the health and fitness world, and studying strategy because I had just left the school for strategists and I was still doing some work for the Air Force, as you know, with strategic theory. And play kept popping up in unexpected places. So much so that I almost forgot where I would read a quote, and I would think that's just like a quote I just read somewhere else. But I thought it said strategy instead of play. And these things were almost interchangeable in a way that surprised me.
And so I thought, well this is interesting. Play, I get it as a part of human development. Yes. Play even as sort of a modality for health and fitness. Play as strategy; that was the one that really surprised me. And so I sort of indulged in that and meandered off the path I was on to find something that I think has been really fruitful for my development as a strategist and as a leader in the Air Force.
Jacquie:
Great. Yes. Mark, what do you think when you hear all that?
Mark:
Well, it's fascinating. I mean, one thing which just kind of comes to mind is just let us know a little bit more about the culture of strategy and play in the military and the conversations that you have. Like I'm guessing that you don't show up with a bag full of LEGO, or do you? What's been the response that you've gotten from your colleagues with the playful approaches that you have been pursuing?
TOGA:
That's a great question. And I’m still working on my craft. And sometimes I pitch it at just the right level or just the—I hit the audience in a way that it resonates. But more often than not, I'm still trying to hone how to breech or how to broach that subject. I'll say that I think on the surface it seems antithetical to what we do. To talk about play or being playful in the context of very serious things, such as national security or even in the dealing with the day-to-day life of individuals that you are trying to be a steward of as a leader, play doesn't always seem appropriate. But I think that's a really narrow understanding of play.
And I do distinguish often between play as an activity and playfulness as an attitude. And that playfulness as an attitude, I think you can bring to a wide range of contexts because it doesn't always look like fun and games. I think playfulness is also about the exploring possibilities, exploring potential coming out of the normal bounds of how you think.
So it's highly aligned with creativity and innovation and everything we do is obviously related to that. I think it's also about empathy, playing with different perspectives, playing well with others because innovation design, leadership strategy, it's all for and with other humans. So all of these things about playfulness, I feel like it contributes to almost like this stance that's like conditioning to a position where you have that humility and yes, you have a plan, but you are prepared to be surprised, like James Carse talks about. So in that context, I think it fits very well with what the military does or aspires to do at different points, right? There's sort of different tendencies among strategists, whether it's civilian, military business strategists, that there's a tendency to want to reverse-engineer things like I showed in model one.
I think the more enlightened strategists realize that as Dwight Eisenhower said that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable because it conditions you. And when I talk about it in those terms with military leaders, they get that. That's something I think today where we commonly refer to the world as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. They get the necessity for that sort of stance, even if they wouldn't call it playful themselves.
Jacquie:
And actually that makes me wonder, because I think what you’re—it seems to me anyway, what you're trying to do and what you are doing, because I know that we've done some work together and I've met a few of your colleagues that are also thinking along this way, which I believe your leadership is really kind of bringing these ideas forward.
I'm just wondering in the generations before you, when you think about the strategists that have gone first and sort of maybe what the industry looks at as leaders. What would you say is the same or different? Can you compare and contrast to perhaps the thinking now to the thinking before? Are there lessons from previous leaders that you could say there's an example, or is this a completely new way of thinking?
TOGA:
I don't think it's new. In fact, I think it's ancient. It's something that we are appreciating more. So one of the reasons I was named TOGA, I think, is because I have this sort of penchant for Greek mythology and old Greek philosophers. And so when you talk about previous generations, I'll go all the way back to Athens, even before Plato, right?
And young Athenian aristocrats studied Homer's epics. And there's two, right? There's the Iliad and the Odyssey. And both of them essentially revolve around events leading up to, during, and after the Trojan War. And the protagonist of the Iliad is Achilles, and Achilles is generally associated with force. He is the ultimate warrior. He's going to get things through strength and brute force. And the Odyssey is about Odysseus and his travels home. But Odysseus is known in the Greek world as the one with the most cunning. So he's crafty. He's crafty in the sense both that he knows how to create technical innovations like the Trojan Horse, but he also knows how to use those technical innovations in a very clever way to realize an advantage. And that's how I would define strategy: realizing an advantage.
And so this dichotomy between force and cunning is, according to—there's a great book called Strategy, by Lawrence Freedman. For him, and I agree with him, that this is the biggest distinction in strategy. Are you going to get something because you're just going to take it or are you going to think your way through it? And thinking doesn't preclude force, but it's sort of an executive skill on my mind to say, okay, what amount of force or what amount of cleverness is the right combination to gain an advantage in a whitewater world that's complex and complicated?
And so that whole mindset of sort of strategic sense that even like what—we can intuit some things and there's some things that aren't just in the realm of my own mind. I need to work with others. I need to have sort of non-rational, not irrational, but non-rational factors that help me imagine how to gain an advantage. That is becoming, I think, more accepted.
What happened historically is that Athens loses the Peloponnesian War to Sparta at the same time that Plato is coming of age. And he thinks this would have all been fixed if we just had—if we didn't have any democracy and we had just a philosopher king who was so rational that he would understand everything. And that sort of became a model, and I know I'm smoothing over lots and lots of history. That becomes a model for the Western mind for centuries. And we get this whole idea of the scientific revolution. And if it works for machines, it should work for humans and let's just plan these things out. And it takes us into a realm of strategy that looks very explicit, objective, quantifiable.
And I think in the late 20th century, all that kind of crashes or we all realize that it’s really only effective for certain complicated problems, lots of different parts, but not really appropriate for the complex, wicked social messes that really matter. So you see things like General Electric under Jack Welch, just kind of walk away from rigorous planning. You see management, even Peter Drucker say, “Yes, Taylorism, the one best way.” It was great, but we still need to respect intuition. And you see military strategists starting to follow and, in some cases, lead in that direction as well. So I think we're still in this atmosphere where these things are sort of spreading out, generation by generation. And I'm hopeful that in the next decade or so this will mature even more.
Jacquie:
Yes, it's interesting. I love the way that you folded in like business examples, military examples, leadership examples. And I know I agree with you. I think that in organizations for a long time, we would go in and leaders really felt like they were the ones that should have all the answers and that—and I think that workers, or we'll say team members, kind of looked to the leader like, well, aren't you going to tell us what to do? Don't you know? And I think that now what we're recognizing, and I think it's two-part. I think that it's we have to have good followers that are also willing to share and pass information so that leaders have all the information to make the decisions.
So we're kind of seeing this change where people are realizing that collaborating, working together, going up and down the silo, going vertically and horizontally within the organization is a way to get the information. And that leaders, they don't always know the answer. And I think that there's a lot of pressure on leaders to have all the answers. And I think that, that's starting to change.
TOGA:
And you know who I blame for that? Not for the change, but for the fact that we kind of inherited this hierarchy between head and hands? I blame Plato. Because in Homer this is sort of acknowledged and honored as a valid sense of practical—what they call practical intelligence. That you could know things, even if you couldn't put words to them, there was wisdom in what you did with your hands. And that, in his rejection of kind of everything that he saw around him, Plato says, “No, it's all up in the mind and we need to separate the thinkers from the doers.” And we inherited that and we’re, again, that's one of the things I think we're coming back to, something ancient, and it plays out not only in organizational culture, but it plays out in strategy as well, pushing power to the edge, decentralizing till it hurts. And having leaders that are prepared to be surprised and are learners. They're in a stance where they're ready to learn, not just have the flag and say follow me over the bridge, like I have depicted in model one.
Jacquie:
Right. I was just going to say that whole idea of, and you've said it a couple of times, plan to be surprised. I remember when I called you once, because I wanted your—in the beginning of the pandemic, I wanted to get some insight from you. And you said we can prepare to be surprised, but we can't be prepared for the surprise. I think that is just so wise. I’ve pondered on that a lot.
Mark:
No, that's a great insight. One thing which was coming forward for me in just hearing you talk about this is the way in which the tools that we have for thinking end up shaping the thoughts that we have. There was one anecdote that I had heard that the military had outlawed PowerPoint, which I thought was a great thing. The idea being that on a PowerPoint slide, there can be such a visual leveraging of information that you can feel like the solution is sounder than it may be. And in terms of what little experience I've had with military culture, and this goes back a bunch of years. I had a job working on a project for a military group, and the person that I was working with had the most authoritative use of spreadsheets that I had ever seen.
They were stunning, they were compelling, they were daunting. And I once said to him, “Colonel Steele, it really seems like you know your way around a PowerPoint. I might even say, forgive me if this is disrespectful, it's a little bit anal retentive. I'm just going to say.” And he looked at me with a completely straight face and he said, “Oh, hell yes. I was potty trained at gunpoint.” And it was just like that's kind of like the picture that I had of like how information was shared and presented and used in the military. And you're sharing with me like a very different vision. I'm just wondering, in terms of the tools, you could comment on PowerPoint or you could comment on spreadsheets, but I’m also curious in terms of the different conversation that you're trying to have around these topics. How has the technology or the tools that you're using for thinking, helping to shape the thinking.
TOGA:
I completely agree the medium, the modality that you're using has in parts, something good or bad, right? There's no one perfect way, which is probably why we should have a diverse tool kit to use with really important issues. So when we, for instance, address a really important issue, but we're still sitting down at our table and the boss is at the head of the table and pitches a question that doesn't necessarily lend itself to the type of dialogue that we would need to really create an interesting solution. Kind of like we’re physically in a closed position that we're kind of sort of bounded off or separated where we're being passive. Usually these sort of meetings here, there's someone at the head of the table that, that says something about who has the power in the room. And so you're going to get one kind of answer. If you say, “Everyone, just write your ideas on a Post-it Note. We're just taking a minute.” Then you get a different set of ideas, right? You get maybe someone who wasn't the first to speak or the loudest to speak, or the person who had the most official power getting to be the one whose idea is brought forth.
So PowerPoint specifically, I think there's some interesting scholarship on how this has been really deleterious for things like the Challenger disaster with the shuttle. The engineers were thinking through PowerPoint and the limits that that medium has for representing data. And it skewed the information in a way that they then ultimately made bad decisions. So while I have heard people say, “No PowerPoint. Do not give me PowerPoint,” I'd say that's the exception, unfortunately.
I have seen, thankfully, a lot of more artful use of a PowerPoint. And we've invested a lot with our instructors at Squadron Officer School, trying to send them through Nancy Duarte's courses on—she wrote the book Slide:ology and also Resonate, which is great because it also talks about storytelling that's more persuasive for your audience. And we try to really draw a distinction between the slide someone uses to tell their story to be a tool for the speaker and then what you might hand to someone afterwards that they could just look through on their own, what they call a slide doc. But this is even why we do LEGO, right? Because when we get our hands involved, as opposed to just the things that we could put voice to, we get a whole other interesting set of ideas that come out of those kind of conversations.
Jacquie:
Yes. First of all, I just want to say, I have Slide:ology. I love that book. I went to one of her workshops and it changed how I do presentations because it just makes so much more sense.
Jumping into LEGO. I think it's really cool for people to know that we have come and trained quite a few of the folks at the school in the use of LEGO. And I think though, the interesting thing that I discovered, is that when we brought LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY to SOS, the mindset was already there. So we brought in a tool and an application of play and showed the approach to 3D thinking. But people were already ready because they were already like looking at design thinking and thinking about approaching strategy differently.
And so it was sort of like just a really warm welcome as we walked in. One of the things I'd love you to talk about, because I'm conscious of time, and I really would love for you to speak a bit about Space Command and designing space.
TOGA:
Oh, I would love to. And a lot of the same people that you first met when you were here were also in that effort with Space Command. And I'll say the people I get to work with are amazing. We have a lot of young, energetic, excited Air Force and Space Force officers and civilians and enlisted members on our team here. So I think these are the people that are right—like when we pull out LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, they just sort of get it. And sometimes senior leaders do too. But someone said, I don't remember who it was, John Boyd Thomas Khun, whoever, that sometimes paradigms change one retirement at a time. So it's a slow transition.
But I feel really hopeful given the kind of energy that we have at our school, seeing all the Air Force and Space Force captains, so about 4,000 students a year for a few weeks to focus on leadership and design and joint warfare. But again, some of these same people, we were able to do this really interesting effort for Space Command. Space Command is what we call a combatant command, and they have the responsibility for all the joint forces in the United States having to do with space. And they had decided that they needed more people that were familiar with design and design thinking. And Joint Special Operations University provides similar training for their community of special operators and Space Command, or SpaceCom, wanting something similar.
And so there was some initial conversation whether I could go do that. And while the three stars sort of debated my fate, whatever, I got a little—honestly, I got a little like frustrated and nervous and I was like, oh man, like I really want this job. I don't know what's going to happen. I was kind of a little mildly depressed. And I thought—I was on a run, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to pretend like I have the job, and what would I do? I need to do something here. I'm trying to have like a bias to action, right? Trying to be a good designer. And I was like, well, I'd probably do like a workshop or something. And I just thought, let's just do something. I'll put something on the calendar. And then I thought, well now—I put something on the calendar and I just blasted it out. So now I'm committed because I just told people I'm going to do something.
And at the same time I’m, again, trying to be a good designer. I know this is not something I can do alone. So I started reaching out to smart, good humans, and I’d say, “Anyone want to help with this in depth?” There was such a good response by so many talented people. I thought, oh my gosh, this can't be just like a half a day. There's no way we're going to get through this. Let's make it this month-long thing where we meet every now and then for a couple of hours at a time.
And so on the low, low budget of essentially $0, with all volunteers, we put together an introduction into design thinking for officers—not just officers, but different people associated with SpaceCom. And we did all sorts of things, but then the thing that I think I'm most proud of is that we really tried to be deliberate about the experience, designing the experience, and we thought, well how do we—we'd all done workshops, right? We’d all done physical workshops and it’s in the middle of COVID and now I'm going through workshop withdrawal. How do we take the best of that, bring it to them? And we thought there needs to be tangible, physical things they can hold in their hand, because that's a good way of thinking. It also gives it something different than just your average Zoom call.
So we pre-packaged all this stuff and unbeknownst to them, some of it involves LEGO. And we did different codes, and they opened the package and it was just a QR code and they snapped it and it took them to an animation. And we said at different points, we'll open different envelopes. And at one point we said, all right, find envelope marked B, or whatever it was. And reach in there and you’ll notice there’s these six pieces of LEGO. And right there, we did build a duck right there with people spread out really all over the world. And they loved it, and it was great and it was different. And the whole experience was wonderful.
We did a report on it so we can put a link to that out there, because it was definitely a lot of learning. We definitely didn't get everything right, but I think it showed, one, the power of collaboration, that you can go really far, really fast with the right people. And again, that if you sort of condition yourself to be in the stance that when something comes along, there's an opportunity, you're like, oh, let's jump on this and do something and not be paralyzed by like, oh man, we have to start this whole effort from scratch. It's I know, like we know some things, let's try it out. If we fail, we'll fail in a way that's interesting and we'll learn something from it. So those are the things I took from designing space.
Jacquie:
Well I think the interesting thing is what you just described is how you created something and we prototyped it and we tested it. And we—there was lots of wayfinding along the wayfinding, to quote you with the wayfinding.
TOGA:
Yes.
Jacquie:
So one of the things that was really cool that we did was this future casting. It was not necessarily—it was kind of like scenario testing. Do you want to talk a little bit about the big challenge? Because that was kind of at the end of the designing space program, about using science fiction.
TOGA:
Yes. So in the last few years, I had an opportunity to study innovation and design and strategy for a number of years. And really, I've been afforded opportunities in the last few years to sort of really dive into this. And one of the things I've learned is that if—you can go out and ask lots of people for help on all sorts of things, and you'll find so many interesting people that are willing to help. And it's a really interesting use of science fiction. Again, it's just another tool kit to have where you see some trends, but you really put yourself out way into the future and you imagine, how do we—if this is a good future, how do we pave the path to it? Or if it's unfavorable, how do we keep on the lookout for things that might lead us down that path?
And it's all kind of resonating and using, I think, our natural abilities as storytellers, right? We're going to make sense of this world. So if you take—and we do this with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. We do it with brainstorming. We'll like take ourselves out and throw ourselves somewhere in crazy land and we find our way back. And we find interesting things along the way, as opposed to sort of a linear getting from here to there. And I think fiction is a great way to do it.
I love that we are homo sapiens. Yes, we are the thinking animal, but we're also homo faber. We’re the making animal, right? And I think it’s what we unlock with our cognitive powers, with our hands. We're also homo ludens. We’re the playful animal. And we're also homo narrans. We’re this storytelling animal. And so I think we make sense of the world through stories. I think that's a—and I would even say that a story can be defined as a set of characters struggling to prevail in a given context. And I would say that, that's exactly how you define strategy: a set of characters struggling to prevail in a given context. And so in that case, the storytelling and strategy are really closely aligned. And story itself can be defined as cognitive play with patterns, which is a quote from a book called Origin Story. So there we go, we have play and strategy back together.
Jacquie:
With storytelling. I like it.
TOGA:
Yes.
Jacquie:
Well, I think it wraps all the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® goody goodness together. Because you've got making, creating, storytelling, and then all of that kind of coming into this idea of prototyping, testing, trying, sharing information, collaborating while you are perhaps considering different possibilities or different future stories.
I wrote down at the very beginning you said, which I loved: We live in a world that has no data for the future. And I think that's what you said, something like that. That's scribbled down anyway. Just the whole idea that we don't have any data on the future. Like the future is like in this moment right now, that's really all we know. We can predict and we can guess and we can use our imagination, which the more we can imagine different scenarios of what the future could be, which allow us to come back into the present day to think about what actions we might take to prepare or to plan for what the possibilities are. All of that, I think, is really interesting when we start looking at all the creative tools that we have available. I'm thinking about Mark who—when I first met you Mark, we talked a lot about the hero's journey. And I know that Jason also loves the hero's journey, as well. And just how that kind of story framework can come into strategy.
TOGA:
Yes. I almost mentioned that too, because that's a part of what drew me to Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate. It had been something that I had studied earlier, walking out the door to Afghanistan in 2006. A friend of my wife and I from high school, she said, “Oh, you might want to read this book while you're out there.”
And it was Joseph Campbell's book. It was great. And it's sort of one of the lenses that I think helps me understand the world, because heroes are those who take risks on behalf of others. And so when you're an innovator, you're a designer, you're a strategist. You are taking a risk, hopefully to support others, so that they can get to some sort of advantage.
But at the same time, you have a certain big dose of humility that you're like, I'm not exactly sure, but I think this is the best way and I am prepared to give it my all to try to find the right path forward for everyone. I do have to say, I have to give credit to Dr. Digraph from Michigan and the Innovatrium. He's the one who says there's no data on the future.
But that, I think, sets us up for that hero's journey where you accept the challenge, and you're facing the trials as a strategist. You're going to learn some things. And you're going to come back out of that mythic cycle, the monomyth. And you're going to need to share what you learned about your specific journey, but also about the process that others who are following you can then take that with them into the future.
Mark:
I think that's such a fruitful perspective to bring to the hero's journey. In teaching writing, I try to get students to look at the possibility that everything which they think they know about stories actually comes from looking at story making in a retrospective sense. We look back upon the accomplishments of someone, we look back upon the end of the story where the hero did finally find the answer. And we lose track of the fact that storytelling is actually just software for the human condition, wherein whatever solution we had went sideways.
That's what happens in every good story is that the hero is up against what they thought was going to be the case and it all falls apart. And in some ways, I think that's what I see you contrasting in these two images of strategic thinking that you brought forward in your models.
One was of the single person who has the vision and is waving the flag. And the much more truthful story is we're all trying to do something which has never been done before, because we're all leading into the future based only on what we know from the past. And I think the models, then the creativity that you're bringing to this are really inspiring.
And I think that, of course, a playful engagement with the challenges of military strategy makes sense. Life was always a life and death proposition, always. And play is our natural, organic response to the challenges of life. And it's maybe less the process of inventing a new take, but remembering our true origins and embodying that knowledge when it most counts. There’s just so much richness in which you're brought forward. I think it's really fascinating.
TOGA:
Without tension, there is no story. Right? And so that expectation of surprise that we have in a story should inoculate us, you would think, for what we face in the real world, right? That’s the fog that I had represented with the translucent blocks in model two, or the friction. It’s not to be –we like to quote Clausewitz a lot in the military. We talk about the fog and friction of war. And so friction, I think sometimes people think, oh, there's a way that we're going to lift the fog of war, or we're going to reduce friction, but friction can also be traction, right? And we need that sort of creative abrasion, whether it's at the very micro level of like the people we have on our team and the diversity and divergent ideas.
But we also need that sort of surprise element that ambiguity—we don't just tolerate ambiguity as strategists. We need to somehow leverage it. Like that is, again, it's traction for us to realize an advantage. And I say realize in both senses of the word, to become aware of and to actualize to make it real. And I think that gets us back to the heart of strategy.
Mark:
Terrific.
Jacquie:
So many quotable quotes in there. I'm like not writing them all down because this is a podcast and I can listen to them later. But think that it's just so refreshing to talk to you and to hear you talk about these things. I remember when we had our very first phone call and I hung up the phone thinking, oh my—I just couldn't even believe it. That I'd met somebody who was putting this kind of playful approach into strategy in such an interesting way that really illustrated basically just a fresh approach. Because when you think about it, defense and security and all the things that you're doing are incredibly important.
And so therefore, it is also incredibly important to have every single tool available to you in order to be successful in the work that you're doing. And so the fact that SOS, and I know that lots of other people that you're collaborating with, are really using sort of this more creative approach, I guess we'll call it, to thinking about wayfinding and thinking about recognizing that life is—part of strategy now is really a series of very small experiments which we test. I loved your: Fail in interesting ways and learn and fail off-Broadway. I love that because sometimes we do fail and it is on Broadway.
But no one sees all the small failures that happen behind the scenes and all the things that were worked out along the way. And that is all part of that hero's journey. So thank you so much for illuminating into the world that you are working in, because I just think it gives in many ways—you talk about the military maybe doing things that businesses do. I think that business listening to this kind of a story, or even small communities and nonprofits who are listening to you speak are going to be able to draw so many metaphors for the work that they're doing.
TOGA:
Yes. And obviously, metaphorical thinking is very playful itself, right? It's very at the heart of what we do. And as you alluded to, this is definitely a defense entrepreneur forum. I love it. They talk about having a virtuous insurgency. And so it's—there's so many people that I get to collaborate with that are inspirational for me. I've already mentioned Jeff DeGraff , who is the one I stole the “fail off-Broadway” from. There's people you know that I collaborate with all over, and it's a wonderful community. So while the hero's journey, as it's usually represented as sort of a singular individual, really the truth of it is that we're all on our journeys and we can all do different things to support each other on our individual journeys as we learn to be whatever it is that we want to be, right? Ultimately, we're strategists in our own life, trying to realize an advantage with and through others to make the world a better place and become better together.
Jacquie:
Yes. Reach our own—that whole idea of being who we're supposed to be. Our life on the planet is our gift from God. And what we do with it is our gift back.
TOGA:
Ahh, I like that. Hey, I have a question for you. Can I ask you a question?
Mark:
Sure
Jacquie:
I guess so. How tricky is it?
TOGA:
Okay. Ooh. I'm not trying to be tricky. I just—I've been wanting to ask you this. So when you came up with the name, Strategic Play, did you realize how brilliant that was? Or did you just stumble upon it?
Jacquie:
I didn't realize how brilliant it was until I met you.
TOGA:
Okay, good. All right. Well, I think it's brilliant.
Jacquie:
Well LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is the name that LEGO named the methodology that it created. And I always—I was never really too keen on the word serious. I always thought serious, it just sounds, um, I don't know. It never really fit. So strategic fit so much better, because you can listen to sports analogies and we use the word play all the time. If you start—when you start tuning into how often we say play, and then people do use strategic play together, like say, well, that was a real strategic play. So whether they're talking about sports or they're talking about business or they're talking about even games or things that we're doing along with political analogies. I think it's a pretty good name, but I didn't like it as much as I do now, before I met you. And I heard your presentation on the interception between play and strategy, then I was like, yes, winning.
TOGA:
There we go. Good. Okay. Thank you.
Jacquie:
Oh, you're welcome.
Mark:
You've really brought forward so many great insights that I think have got application across just so many different domains. And for me, that's the real fun of this work is that if you can be playful and strategic, that is a skill that will serve you wherever you go. So thanks for sharing some of the wisdom that you've created on your journey,
TOGA:
Thanks for having me. I'm sure most people by now have seen the LEGO movie, the original one. And there's the guy with the spaceship, who's always like, “Can I build a spaceship? Can I build a spaceship?” And I feel like that's me with play. I’m like, “Can I talk about play? Can I talk about play?” And then finally someone's like, “Let's talk about play,” and I'm like, “We're talking about play!” So I get really excited about it and I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation with smart people.
Jacquie:
Thank you so much for your time. It's just wonderful that you were able to join us.
[Conclusion]
Mark:
That was just such a fascinating conversation. He just flips the script on a lot of things that I thought were separate and integrates them in just fascinating ways that can be really fruitful to think about.
Jacquie:
Yes. I think he is a natural born connector. I think he's one of those people that take abstract concepts, link them together, and bring them into the world in a way that's really practical. And I think that the combination of being super wicked smart, and also being humble at the same time, just make him so approachable and so likable. There was a lot of information in this podcast, so I'm going to have to listen to it probably more than once to absorb all the pieces. I'm really happy that he was able to join us.
We have a challenge for our listeners. Should I tell them what it is?
Mark:
Bring it.
Jacquie:
All right. So we would like you to build a small model that represents your approach to strategy, however strategy lands for you. If you could build a small model. If you're listening to this podcast in our community site, you can go ahead and just post a picture right in the community. You know how to do it. If you are listening to this on our website and you would like to take a picture and send us some notes or your story, we'd love to hear from you. And you would send that to hello@strategicplay.com.
Mark:
Wonderful. Thank you again so much for another amazing conversation. I look forward to the next one.
Jacquie:
Great. We'll try it again real soon. Thanks for this, Mark.
Mark:
Thank you.
[ Outtakes ]
Mark:
Is everyone situated and ready?
TOGA:
I hear the zipper.
Mark:
I feel much more comfortable broadcasting in the nude. That's just a thing for me.