Back to Our Roots

Much of our public work has focused on women’s football, so it is reasonable for readers to associate us primarily with the women’s game. We have examined recruitment, player development, coaching, leadership, organizational capability, and the decisions that connect those functions. Football has provided a setting in which to explain how we think, how we diagnose problems, and how we evaluate whether an investment produces the capability an organization actually needs.

The foundations of that work, however, reach beyond football. They come from strategy, national security, geopolitics, finance, and the practical demands of helping organizations make decisions under constraints. As our focus returns more directly to those areas, the connection should be familiar to anyone who has followed the substance of our work. The questions that shaped our analysis of a football club are the same questions we bring to a strategic problem, an institutional requirement, or an investment decision.

That is what we mean by going back to our roots. We are redirecting our attention toward the requirements we are being asked to address and the areas in which our experience can contribute. Women’s football remains part of our work, while strategy, national security, geopolitics, and finance will receive greater attention in what we examine and publish. The change concerns where we apply our effort; the principles governing that effort remain consistent.

In the previous essay, I described the methodology behind our work through three words: Make, Manage, Measure. An organization makes an investment to acquire or develop a capability, manages that investment so the capability can function within the wider system, and measures whether it improves the organization’s ability to accomplish its mission. The investment might involve a player, a training program, a technology, an organizational structure, or a financial commitment. Its form varies, but its purpose must be understood before its value can be assessed.

That process gives us a practical reason to reconsider our own allocation of effort. If we expect organizations to begin with their objectives and requirements, we should apply the same discipline to ourselves. Where are the requirements now? What are we being asked to help accomplish? What effects are needed, and which of our capabilities can produce them? Those questions should influence our direction more than the subject with which readers have most recently associated us.

Following a requirement also involves understanding the request behind it. Organizations often know that something is wrong before they can explain precisely what is missing. They may ask for a product, a person, a report, or a new process because that is the solution they can readily identify. Our contribution begins with examining what that solution is expected to achieve, whether it addresses the underlying problem, and what would demonstrate that it had worked. That responsibility remains the same regardless of the domain.

In strategy, it means establishing a credible connection between an objective and the means available to achieve it. An ambition has to survive contact with resources, time, competing priorities, and the actions of others. A strategy should explain how the organization expects its decisions to produce the required effects, which assumptions make that expectation plausible, and what it will do if those assumptions fail. Without that connection, an organization can remain busy and committed while moving no closer to its objective.

Our interest in strategy therefore extends beyond the statement of a desired destination. We want to understand the choices that make progress possible, the dependencies that could interrupt it, and the capabilities that must be developed or preserved along the way. We also want to understand what an organization is choosing to leave uncovered. Every allocation of resources carries that consequence, whether the decision is made explicitly or allowed to emerge through habit.

National security brings those questions into an environment where objectives, authority, readiness, institutions, resources, and risk interact. A requirement cannot be assessed solely by examining the equipment or personnel associated with it. The surrounding organization has to be capable of preparing, supporting, integrating, and sustaining whatever it acquires. An investment can appear impressive in isolation while contributing far less than expected because the conditions necessary for its use were never adequately addressed.

This is where a framework such as DOTMLPF remains useful. Doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities provide a structure for examining how capability is produced across a system. The framework helps identify whether a gap requires acquisition, development, reorganization, or a different combination of existing resources. It also encourages a distinction between possessing an asset and possessing a dependable ability to accomplish something with it.

Geopolitics adds the external environment to that examination. Organizations make decisions within conditions they influence only partially, and those conditions can change the value of their assumptions, relationships, and investments. Understanding that environment requires looking beyond an event to examine what it changes: the incentives of relevant actors, the constraints on their choices, the dependencies between them, and the consequences for the organization making the decision.

Our approach to geopolitical analysis will follow that requirement. We are interested in what developments mean for decisions, which judgments the evidence supports, and where uncertainty remains material. A useful assessment should help a reader understand why a development matters to a particular objective and what might require reconsideration as a result. The same event can create different requirements for different organizations, which is why context must remain part of the analysis.

Finance brings the allocation of resources into direct view. Capital is committed in the expectation that it will produce a result, but that expectation depends on an objective, a timeframe, acceptable exposure, and assumptions about the environment. Evaluating the investment requires understanding how those elements fit together and how a change in one could affect the others. The central question is whether the commitment serves its intended purpose within the constraints of the person or organization making it.

Across these areas, we return to a common concern: how decisions create capability, how that capability produces effects, and how those effects contribute to an objective. The domain determines what we need to know, which evidence is relevant, and how the consequences should be assessed. The method provides discipline, while the substance of each field demands its own knowledge and judgment. Applying the same principles does not remove the responsibility to understand the environment in which they are being used.

Women’s football will continue to have a place within that work. Its clubs and institutions face requirements involving strategy, investment, development, leadership, resilience, and organizational performance. Our contribution to the game has been to examine those requirements and the relationships between them. That contribution remains available as our attention expands toward the other areas we are being asked to address.

There is also continuity in how we will evaluate performance. In football, we have argued that a player should be assessed by how her actions contribute to the team’s defined objectives and intended effects. Elsewhere, the same discipline applies to a program, a department, a policy, or an investment. Activity must be connected to purpose, and evidence of performance must feed back into the decision. Otherwise, an organization can mistake the production of outputs for progress toward the outcome it needs.

The questions remain straightforward, even when answering them is difficult. We begin by asking what we are trying to accomplish, then establish what effects are required and what capabilities produce those effects. We examine what capabilities we actually possess and how resilient they would be if an asset disappeared. From there, we consider what we can develop, redistribute, or combine, identify what remains uncovered, and only then determine what additional resource, if any, we need.

Those questions explain both our work and this change in emphasis. We are looking at the requirements in front of us, the work we are being asked to do, and the capabilities we can bring to it. Returning to strategy, national security, geopolitics, and finance follows from that assessment. It reconnects our public focus with the foundations from which our approach developed.

Readers will therefore see a broader range of subjects in our future work, with the same attention to objectives, evidence, constraints, capability, and results. Women’s football remains within that range, connected to the other domains by a consistent way of examining decisions. Going back to our roots means applying that method where the requirements take us and judging the value of our contribution by what it helps people and organizations accomplish.

Disclaimer

This publication provides independent, apolitical analysis of historical developments, current events, geopolitics, national security, and strategic challenges. We maintain strict political neutrality, aligning with neither the left nor the right. Examining or criticizing political actors, institutions, or policies does not constitute political advocacy, opposition, or endorsement.

Our assessments are grounded in historical facts, available evidence, established analytical methodologies, and evaluations of probability, consequence, and uncertainty. Hypothetical scenarios are illustrative and do not imply actual or planned events, intentions, or operations.

Our purpose is to identify, define, and understand problems—not to prescribe solutions or advocate outcomes. Conclusions reflect the available evidence, not political preferences. Decisions and actions remain the responsibility of others.