tl;dr: the power of fast communications in strategy.

There’s really nothing mind-blowing in this post, but sometimes, it’s just good practice to document the obvious in order to improve the learning of the lesson.

As I shared in “Mastering the Oblique”, I’m a fan of the book Great Commanders and Their Battles and this past week, I read about Genghis Khan and the Battle of the Indus.

Khan crushed his opponent there with a few head fakes and an enveloping move, but the story of the battle wasn’t what made an impression on me.

Apparently Khan was, perhaps, more importantly a master of Sun Tzu’s dictum:

On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough: hence the institution of gongs and drums. Nor can ordinary objects be seen clearly enough: hence the institution of banners and flags.

Khan had a “brand,” which was a standard of 9 white yak tails, but that’s not uncommon.

Khan, apparently, viewed his entire empire as a “field of battle” and essentially instituted a “pony express” whereby his messengers (or more importantly, his messages) could traverse huge distances quickly.

Again, there’s nothing revolutionary about knowing that fast information can yield to disproportionate advantages, I mean, that is what high-frequency traders do.

What I think the takeaway for me is to think about:

“How am I building the best, most optimal infrastructure for fast, reliable information?”

Making it practical…

• I rely on Twitter for information, so I relentlessly curate those who I am following for the ones that provide the highest signal:noise ratio
• I relentlessly unsubscribe/spam list newsletters that don’t provide good insights or I don’t read.
• I don’t even bother with LinkedIn or Faceboook anymore.

In this way, I can increase the odds that I am getting the info from the “far reaches of the empire” quickly.

Today, the problem isn’t how fast you get it, the problem is whether the signal gets above the noise.

That’s where, I believe, Genghis Khan would focus if he were on Twitter.