Spotting unexpected leverage points can give people a key edge, though it requires perspective-taking.

Drills can produce efficiency but also increase predictability.

Adaptability and improvisation can create a winning mindset.

With all of the sophisticated weapon systems in today’s military arsenal, we would not expect that toilet paper might be added to this list.

Yet, at least one time, it was.

This is a story I heard from Dave Hannaman, who worked at an Army human resources organization when I met with him many years ago. (Dave died in 2021.) Dave had been in the Army, including a stint as a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam. He was one of the brave soldiers who would go down into the tunnels the Viet Cong had constructed and booby-trapped. He was that kind of guy.

During a rotation back to the U.S., Hannaman was helping train a group of noncommissioned officers (NCOs). There were four squads, and Hannaman was put in charge of the dregs—the NCOs that nobody else wanted. The higher-ups had gotten tired of listening to Hannaman mouth off about the shortcomings of the conventional Army’s small unit leadership. “Let’s see how he does with these losers,” was the plan. They wanted to teach him a lesson.

In this case, the mission was simple. These dregs, call them Delta Squad, were to take the field and then get hunted down and destroyed by one of the........

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