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Advantages and Disadvantages

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  • Richard Martin
  • August 26, 2016
  • 2:23 pm
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Richard Martin

Richard Martin empowers leaders to outmaneuver uncertainty and drive change through strategic insight and transformative thinking.
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Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and no amount of hype and fashion-mania can eliminate that basic law of nature.

I’ve been reading (and rereading) books by Vaclav Smil. He’s a professor at University of Manitoba who is a world renowned expert on energy, energy flows, and modern industrial society. He analyzes claims about various industrial processes and energy conversions and uses in terms of their technicalities. More important, though, is that he highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options and practices. There is no “perfect” energy conversion or industrial process. All we have are positive effects and negative effects, cost and benefits, opportunities and risks.

This resembles the way I was trained to develop and assess tactical, operational, and strategic plans and manoeuvres in the Army. You first must know what your realistic options are. Then you develop them sufficiently to identify key advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits, and opportunities and risks. There is no free lunch, much less a perfect option or plan.

If someone comes along telling you they’ve got the perfect solution or a cost-free alternative, you’re better to treat them as a snake oil salesman, because what they’re selling is akin to a perpetual motion machine.

© 2016 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.


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Richard Martin, President of Alcera Consulting Inc.

Richard Martin

Richard Martin is the President of Alcera Consulting Inc., a strategic advisory firm collaborating with top-level leaders to provide strategic insight, navigate uncertainty, and drive transformative change, ensuring market dominance and excellence in public governance. He is the author of Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles and the creator of the blog ExploitingChange.com. Richard is also the developer of Strategic Epistemology, a groundbreaking theory that focuses on winning the battle for minds in a world of conflict by dismantling opposing worldviews and ideologies through strategic narrative and archetypal awareness.

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