Riffing on yesterday’s theme of ‘Complex vs. Simple Process,’ take a look at the COIN (Counter-Insurgency) Plan drawn up by the U.S. Military command for its Afghanistan campaign…

Looks like the narrative for Prince Harry’s outfit at the Royal Wedding, doesn’t it?

Now take a look at the plan Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, drew up for how Southwest was going to enter the airline business 40 years ago, in 1971…Looks like the design for Pippa Middleton’s outfit at the Royal Wedding. Simple. Elegant. Easy to understand. Ultimately, appreciated by all. Beneath this design, of course, was a lot of complexity–but the business problem, as Herb Kelleher saw it, was as simple as how to build a triangle.

Kelleher continued this tradition of drawing up Southwest’s year-to-year strategies on a napkin over a lunch with his key executives. This structure allowed the company’s employees to improvise solutions to every problem they encountered.

The U.S. Military command, by comparison, finds itself in the business of trying to tie a bow–or create any recognizable design for that matter–out of all those threads.