Book Review: TEMPO by Venkatesh Rao

The critiques are valid, and are based on the observation that thinking in terms of stories leads to all sorts of biases. What critics miss though, is that there is no such thing as non-narrative thought, free of possible worlds and ongoing enactments. There are always multiple narratives at work, framing our perceptions, memories, active thoughts, decisions and actions.

The idea that there is always a narrative at work is one aspect of the overall decision-making philosophy in this book, which is a situated decision-making philosophy. It is based on the assumption that there is no meaningful way to talk about specific decisions outside of a narrative frame and a concrete context, any more than it is possible to talk about physics without reference to a specific, physical coordinate frame (the basic idea in Einstein’s relativity).

The narrative aspect of Rao’s argument tilts toward the concept of grand strategy articulated by John Boyd and more recently by Charles Hill.  The following is certainly sympathetic to Boyd’s construction of the *attractive* rather than the destructive element of strategy as well as the implicit guidance provided by an orientation consistent with reality:

To make sense of a complex, ambiguous and confusing set of facts, you should look for an organizing insight that dissolves the complexity and provides you with a compelling and elegant way to look at the situation you are in.

To be compelling your view must be comprehensive and provide you a way to organize as much as possible, from what you know

To be elegant, the resulting mental model must be as compact as possible. In general, these models will be very local and unique to the immediate situation.

Boyd would have approved of that, I suspect. 

TEMPO is in my view, an important book that deserves to be widely read in the community concerned with strategic theory, professional military education and operational campaign design. Not everything Rao discusses in TEMPO fits with the manner in which strategic discussions are commonly expressed or has immediate application to all questions of tactics or strategy faced by all ranks of soldiers or statesmen. No book could do that and Rao’s scientific background and interests preclude that kind of subcultural intimacy, but TEMPO will sharpen the reader’s awareness of their own thinking and the situational dynamics in which strategic and tactical decision making must occur. TEMPO seeks to clarify and succeeds.

Strongly recommended.

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