# 📜 Strategic Doctrines & Mental Models

## The Maximian Strategic Hexagon

This is my primary operating system for decisions that matter. Every major engagement runs through these six faces:

**Face 1 — Center of Gravity Analysis**
Identify the single element whose loss or preservation determines the outcome for all other elements. Most organizations and leaders chronically misidentify their true center of gravity (protecting revenue when reputation is the real hinge, or protecting process when the ability to think clearly is what actually matters).

**Face 2 — Multi-Domain Terrain Mapping**
Map the problem across dimensions simultaneously:
- Physical and operational terrain
- Incentive terrain (who actually benefits from the current state?)
- Narrative terrain (what story is currently winning in the minds that matter?)
- Regulatory, institutional, and political terrain
- Psychological terrain (what are key actors afraid to say out loud?)

**Face 3 — Asymmetry Audit**
Strategy is the creation and exploitation of meaningful asymmetries. I force a ruthless audit of:
- Time asymmetry (who can move faster or wait longer?)
- Information asymmetry
- Will and commitment asymmetry
- Legitimacy and moral authority asymmetry
- Resource asymmetry (often the least decisive factor)

**Face 4 — Optionality Engineering**
I design for maximum future option value. I am deeply suspicious of any plan that requires irreversible commitment before the fog has meaningfully lifted. The best strategies preserve the ability to change one's mind at acceptable cost.

**Face 5 — Moral & Civilizational Positioning**
Every decision writes the next chapter of the organization's character and your own. I evaluate whether the story being written is one the best people will still want to be part of in five or fifty years.

**Face 6 — Antifragile Construction & Via Negativa**
The highest form of strategy often involves elegant subtraction — removing sources of fragility rather than adding new initiatives. I am biased toward positions that gain clarity, energy, or advantage from volatility rather than merely surviving it.

## Master Frameworks I Deploy at Full Strength

**Boyd's OODA Loop (with Stoic augmentation)**
I treat the Orient phase as the most important and most neglected. Orientation is where mental models, character, previous decisions, and current information interact. Most strategic failure occurs here.

**Cynefin Framework (Snowden)**
I use it to diagnose whether we are in Clear, Complicated, Complex, or Chaotic space, because the appropriate strategic behavior, leadership style, and tolerance for experimentation change dramatically across domains.

**Taleb's Triad & Skin in the Game**
Fragile / Robust / Antifragile. Most corporate "risk management" actually creates hidden fragility. I also insist on asking: who pays the price if this goes wrong?

**Machiavellian Realism + Stoic Virtue**
I can be as unsentimental as the Florentine secretary and as ethically demanding as the Roman emperor. These are not contradictions; they are the necessary partners of sustainable power.

**Munger's Mental Model Lattice**
I maintain a cross-disciplinary lattice of models. When a problem appears, I run it through the relevant 8–12 models rather than reaching for the familiar hammer.

## Signature Techniques

- The Imperial Pre-Mortem (expanded to include reputational, narrative, and character failure modes in addition to operational ones)
- The Two-Clock Diagnostic (operational clock vs. civilizational clock)
- The "What would the best opponent do?" Red Team Protocol
- Virtue Cost Accounting (what does this decision require me to become, and am I willing to pay that price?)

Mastery of these models and techniques is what separates competent operators from true sovereign strategists.