12. The Inca - Cities in the Cloud

“Atahualpa quickly determined the Spaniards' weakness, that is, their obsession with gold above all else, and he would play on it to buy time and attempt to tip the scales back in his favor. He knew that filling a room with gold would take weeks and months, and would give him the time to dispose of his imprisoned brother and any other nobles who could still oppose him. Under the guise of sending out messengers to gather gold, he could get word out to all corners of his empire.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Use enemy greed to fund own goals

“The people of the Andes cultivated more than 1,000 varieties of potato, and over 150 varieties of maize. They would sometimes plant as many as 200 varieties of potato in a single field, each with different levels of frost resistance, different levels of drought resilience, and immune to different blights. These foods could be naturally freeze-dried in the cold, dry mountain air, allowing them to be stored for years on end.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution · Biology, Ecology & Systems

DUR_ENDURING

1000 varieties: resilience through diversity

“The capacity of this storage system was staggering. In just one region known as the Mantaro Basin, there were nearly 3,000 of these storehouses with a capacity of 170,000 cubic meters, or around 70 Olympic swimming pools. These colca storehouses were always placed in ostentatious positions on top of hills or on the side of cliffs so that everyone in the valley below could see them. The message they were designed to convey was clear: you are now part of the Inca Empire.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Visible abundance: psychological control tool

“Pachacuti relied on an intricate intelligence network of spies and informants who would infiltrate neighboring states and bring back reports on their power and wealth. He would then send messages to the rulers of these kingdoms and send them luxurious gifts such as high-quality textiles and coca leaves. They always arranged matters in the commencement of their negotiations so that things should be pleasantly and not harshly ordered.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Intelligence first, gifts second, violence last

“Sacsayhuaman was the largest megalithic structure ever built in the Western Hemisphere. Its walls are built of vast interlocking stones carved so perfectly that they fit together without mortar, so closely that it is impossible to fit even a pin between them. The estimated volume of stone used in its construction is over 6,000 cubic meters.”

Technology & Engineering · Operations & Execution

DUR_ENDURING

Irregular fit allows earthquake flex

“The Inca practiced an incredibly inclusive attitude to religion. Like everything else, religious belief in this region was incredibly diverse. In territories they conquered, local religions and cults were allowed to continue, and where possible, were actually folded into the existing mythos of the Inca. When they conquered the people of Huarochiri Province, they happily took on their god named Pachacamac.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Culture & Society

DUR_ENDURING

Absorb local beliefs: reduce friction

“One remarkable site known as Moray is thought to be a kind of laboratory where the Andean people could develop new strains and hybrids of crops for growing at high altitudes. Moray is a breathtaking series of circular terraces looking at first glance something like a Roman amphitheater, about 30 meters deep.”

Creativity & Innovation · Technology & Engineering · Biology, Ecology & Systems

DUR_ENDURING

Terraced lab: test climate zones

“Each terrace was a remarkable feat of engineering and displayed an intimate knowledge of the soil and the plants that grew in it. The walls were sloped backwards, angled to hold in the earth and resist earthquake damage. They were floored with broken stones for drainage, which were then covered by gravel and sand. Finally, the Wari would gather rich topsoil, digging it up from the lower elevations and the river valleys and carrying it up the mountain paths, laying it out to form the top layer.”

Operations & Execution · Technology & Engineering · Biology, Ecology & Systems

DUR_ENDURING

Layered system: each component serves purpose

“The Inca tamed the desert, building aqueducts up to 40 kilometers long to divert the sparse waters towards their cities. The Wari were experts at water control and marshaled enormous work gangs to build vast reservoirs that cut through the dry coastal plains and transformed the landscape. They were never ornate or showy builders. Their buildings were rough constructions, pulled together out of uncarved fieldstones and locked together with mud for mortar. But they still liked to build big.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution · Business & Entrepreneurship

DUR_ENDURING

Functionality over beauty: rough but big

“The Spanish were now a weapon that Atahualpa could aim at will, with just a few words in the right ears. His great rivals, the lords of Cusco, would soon become more confident in speaking to Pizarro and his men, and they happily began to spread rumors among the Spanish. They passed on news that Atahualpa was planning to attack Pizarro. That an army of 200,000 of his frontier warriors were marching their way. This is one outlandish rumor that Pizarro seems to have believed.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior

DUR_ENDURING

Third party rumors exploited paranoia

“The Inca had no iron or steel and had no real technological advantage over other cultures in the Andes, so they often relied simply on their sheer force of numbers to overwhelm their opponents. The logistical network that supported the army was no less impressive. Inca soldiers marched along immaculately maintained highways through the mountains, over bridges across the towering gorges.”

Operations & Execution · Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Logistics superiority beat technology

“To survive in this tough environment, people needed to pull together. A group of farmers worked much faster than one on his own, and the dry, cold valleys needed irrigation canals dug through stone and rock, enormous labors that required large work gangs. This reciprocal economy formed the basis of the highly controlled and centralized empires that would follow, and would form the hallmark of Andean society right through its history.”

Leadership & Management · Culture & Society · History & Geopolitics

DUR_ENDURING

Harsh environment forced centralization

“Along this complex and sophisticated trade route, coca leaves, tobacco, and bright feathers passed west out of the jungle, while maize, seashells, and dried fish passed east from the coast. This system saw seashells decorating the clothes of people who lived 1,000 miles from the sea, and bright tropical feathers decorating the hair of people who had never laid eyes on the jungle.”

Operations & Execution · Business & Entrepreneurship

DUR_ENDURING

Self-feeding pack animals cut costs

“During his long reign, the Inca army was constantly on the move, and the empire expanded further into present-day Chile and Argentina. He soon became hell-bent on subjugating the tropical northern territory of what is now Ecuador and Colombia. These wars in the jungle were bitter and difficult, a quagmire that must have sapped the energy and strength of the empire. The terrain here was difficult, covered in dense forest and mangrove swamps, and the Inca soldiers were not used to the climate.”

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

DUR_ENDURING

10-year jungle quagmire drained empire

“Pachacuti stood up on the walls and rallied the Inca soldiers behind him. When the Chanka fell on the city walls, he led them in a bitter defense and against all the odds managed to repel the invaders. It is said that Pachacuti fought so fiercely that even the stones of the mountains rose up to fight the Chanca invaders. Pachacuti's victory was so celebrated that his father had little choice but to name him his successor around the year 1438.”

Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

DUR_ENDURING

Crisis defense earned succession rights

“Pizarro achieved his conquest of an empire 10 times the size of the Aztec Empire with about a third of the manpower, at an enormous distance from the nearest friendly port in Panama. But Pizarro's days of glory would be short-lived. In the 10 years that he ruled over Peru, he presided over the steady collapse and disintegration of the entire society. Much of the local population was reduced to the level of serfs serving European lords.”

Leadership & Management · Culture & Society · History & Geopolitics

DUR_ENDURING

Conquest without governance led collapse

“When an Inca couple got married, they were given a house and a plot of land by the state, which they would use to produce enough food to support themselves. The state provided them with seeds and tools, and whenever the couple had a child, they were given another bit of land to help feed it. Each family was also provided with 2 llamas. In return, the family would give over all the food they did not eat into the common storehouse.”

Economics & Markets · Leadership & Management

DUR_CONTEXTUAL

Labor tax system: state provides basics

“Within a year, the Inca realm would be torn by a civil war that would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of its people and the sacking of many of its cities. Before the Inca had even set eyes on a single European, the contact of the two worlds had unleashed chaos. Atahualpa was a fierce and tenacious battlefield commander who led the battle-hardened troops that had been fighting in the jungle war in the north. His campaign of destruction continued into the south.”

History & Geopolitics · Leadership & Management

DUR_ENDURING

Civil war while plague raged

“Cusco was not a city in the way we think of one, as a center of trade. There were no markets or squares, no workshops or places of business. It was forbidden for foreigners and commoners to stay in the city overnight, and it was home purely to the temples and priests, as well as the king in his palace and the officials of the empire. At its heart was the Coricancha, or the Golden Enclosure, the Temple of the Sun.”

Culture & Society · Leadership & Management

DUR_CONTEXTUAL

No commerce: pure ceremonial capital

“The Inca economy operated without a single word ever being written down. All the information on how many taxpayers there were, the number of men available for military service, the quantities of cloth and food produced and required, the numbers of children and elderly people, all of this was recorded on the khipus, those systems of knots that could only be interpreted by a learned khipu kamayoc.”

Economics & Markets · Leadership & Management

DUR_CONTEXTUAL

Centralized economy, no writing required