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Maneuver Warfare: Can Modern Military Strategy Lead You to Victory?


Business has gone through a dramatic transformation in recent years. So has warfare.
Every executive knows firsthand the daunting challenges of the twenty-first-century business environment: rapid and disruptive change, fleeting opportunities, incomplete information, an overall sense of uncertainty and disorder. While military commanders have long faced such challenges on the battlefield, meeting them has be come even more difficult in today’s world of electronic weaponry, blurred battle lines, and amorphous enemies.
Military strategy, like business strategy, has had to evolve in response to the changing environment. This has led to the growing focus on an approach to armed conflict called maneuver warfare. Recognized as a viable combat philosophy for the past 65 years, maneuver warfare risen to prominence in the past decade because it is so well suited to today’s combat environment. Although designed for the battlefield, the approach offers a novel and useful way to think about business strategy, allowing executives to capitalize on—rather than succumb to—the formidable challenges they now face.
Maneuver warfare represents—in the words of the United States Marine Corps doctrinal manual, Warfighting—“a state of mind bent on shattering the enemy morally and physically by paralyzing and confounding him, by avoiding his strength, by quickly and aggressively ploiting his vulnerabilities, and by striking him in a way that will hurt him most.” Its ultimate aim is not to destroy the adversary’s forces but to render them unable to fight as an effective, coordinated whole. For example, instead of attacking enemy defense positions, maneuver warfare practitioners bypass those positions, capture the enemy’s command-and-control center in the rear, and cut off supply lines. Moreover, maneuver warfare doesn’t aim to avoid or resist the uncertainty and disorder that inevitably shape armed conflict; it embraces them as keys to vanquishing the foe.
Despite the oft-cited analogy between warfare and business, military principles clearly can’t be applied wholesale in a business environment. The marketplace is not, after all, a battlefield, if only because lives aren’t at stake. That said, companies do compete aggressively even viciously—for strategic advantage in a chaotic arena that is increasingly similar to the modern theater of war.
Consequently, while the battle metaphor in some settings may seem facile or ill considered, we believe concept of maneuver warfare is directly relevant to business strategy, precisely because it has been developed address conditions that in many ways mirror those faced by modern executives. Furthermore, the approach—with its focus not on overpowering a rival but on outflanking him, targeting his weaknesses, and rendering him unable to analyze the situation—can help a company to achieve a decisive advantage with a minimal deployment of resources. This is of particular interest in today’s business environment, when many companies are hesitant to over-commit their resources.
The Nature of War
Warfare, in general, takes place on multiple levels. On the physical level, it is a test of firepower, weapons technology, troop strength, and logistics. At the psychological level, it involves intangibles such as morale, leadership, and courage. At the analytical level, it challenges the ability of commanders to assess complex battlefield situations, make effective decisions, and formulate tactically superior plans to carry out those decisions.
If these dimensions seem familiar to most business executives, so too will the four human and environmental factors that, according to Warfighting, shape military conflict. Friction is the phenomenon that, in the words of the manual, “makes the simple difficult and the difficult seemingly impossible.” The most obvious source of friction is the enemy, but it can also result from natural forces such as the terrain or the weather, internal forces such a lack of planning or coordination, or even mere chance.
 by Eric K. Clemons and Jason A. Santamaria
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Napoleon Strategy works

 

Napoleon Speaks on Increasing Market Share.

Napoleon Bonaparte is still studied for his military axioms and tactics. Most marketers realize that marketing is a form of warfare — albeit without the national imperative or the mortal risks. At Stealing Share, we look for clues anywhere we can find them and we study success (as well as failure) to learn both the lessons and pratfalls. Napoleon has always held a special place in our mythology because his pithy military quips provide an innate understanding of human nature and the nature of struggle. Sun Tzu, the revered author of the Art of War has been studied by marketers for more than two decades — as you will see, Napoleon deserves the same treatment.

”One bad general is worth two good ones”

Napoleon was referring to the importance of being single-minded in both process and purpose. What is interesting about the statement is that he did not compare one good general to two good ones — he compared a bad one to two good ones. In marketing, focus and single-minded intent is the best predictor of success. When you build a brand to steal market share, deciding on a single mission is often your biggest hurdle. Human nature tells us that all too often we are too close to the situation and this subjective vantage point makes it difficult to see the situation dispassionately. Find and then stick to a single focus. Where might Miller Lite be today if they had decided between “great taste” and “less filling.” Trying to be all things to everyone is a recipe for disaster. A great market position not only informs the target audience whom you are for, it proclaims as emphatically whom you are NOT for.

“Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.”

Napoleon might well be referring to the struggle all businesses have in managing scarce resources. For example, resources like time and money. When planning a successful campaign Mr. Bonaparte realized that time, was his scarcest commodity and that hesitation often preceded disaster. In building a brand strategy to increase market share, timing is everything and victory often belongs to the swiftest. Speed is rarely the ally of the market leader. Often the market leader is encumbered by entrenched process and expensive infrastructure. They are wedded to the status quo. When opportunity peaks its head above the entrenchment… it is time to strike.

“It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.”

Once again, Napoleon was referring to focus and intent. We find, as we evaluate business strategies for our clients, that often as not, they once possessed a single-minded brand strategy that would have led to market leadership had they seen it through to the end. Instead, they second guessed themselves and “marched back in the wrong direction.” Entrepreneurial companies are strongly at risk for this error in strategy. Often as not, their verve and early success came as the result of the individual force of presence of a creative founder or president. Harnessing this energy and not allowing it to loses focus is a great challenge. More often than not, patience, focus, and absolute commitment lead to success. This axiom has as a prerequisite careful planning and measured risk.

“If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur.”

The ability to analyze risk, uncover opportunity, and plan to exploit the breech are the skills that every marketing department needs to foster. Can you look dispassionately at the situation? Are you able to see opportunities even if the path seems to lead in a different direction than your processes currently lead? Do you see your brand mission as a servant to customer beliefs of business process? Can you see opportunity when it may, at times, look like adversity? Napoleon asks us all to do our due diligence and homework. At Stealing Share® we have a simple process. 1) What are the goals? You must have specific goals and know, precisely what it is you wish to accomplish. How will you measure your success? 2) What are the problems and obstacles? Can you look with an objective eye and be willing to see the problems? What if the “problems” are part of your process? What if the obstacles are an investment in an equity of no importance in the mind of the target? What if the problem is a foundation upon which your business model is built? Seeing them enables you to fix them. 3) What are the solutions? This is often the easy part. The challenge is in identifying the issues and problems. Asking the right question lead to the right answers. Socrates promised us that you would never solve a problem by asking the wrong question.

“The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.”

 Here Napoleon speaks to the heart of marketing and brand strategy. It is the melding of the left and right brain. The ability to understand with logical clarity and to interpret the logic with a creative brush. The same skill that creates a brand strategy or market strategy to increase market share excites the target audience to prefer your brand. It must appeal to both their right and left-brain. All too often we settle for the logical argument because it is the easiest to quantify, but our past success promises us that the emotional values are possibly more important than the cognitive assessment. Most of your customers do not really know why they chose your brand. Likewise, your adversary’s customers do not know why they prefer the competition’s brand. If you ask, they will give you an answer, but often as not, it is far from the truth. Understanding the emotional cues is the difference between winning and losing. Napoleon said it best… “Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires.”

http://www.stealingshare.com/pages/Napoleon%20Strategy%20works.htm

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Underestimation

“Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.” Sun Tzu

It is good to be underestimated in business.
Most entrepreneurs want to be a media darling, land venture capital and star in their own movies. But arguably, it is even better to be the underdog — deemed inferior and not worth watching.
In recent months, “Google’s Bradley Horowitz fired back at Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that the company is “building its own little Facebook” saying that Google is “delighted to be underestimated” by its rival.” Why, because Horowitz and others who have been vastly underestimated realize the depth and breadth of competitive advantages that await them.
If you’ve ever been underestimated in business remember that “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards (Steve Jobs).”
Never give up, because:
1. Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded.
2. Beethoven’s teacher called him “hopeless as a composer.” He then went on to write five of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf.
3. R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York City caught on.
4. Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7 … teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.”
5. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
6. After his first audition, actor Sidney Poitier was told by the casting director, “Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?
The underlying theme is simple; underestimation is a distinct competitive advantage.
If you’re developing a new technology (and you’re underestimated) you can be first to market. As a startup you can virtually fly under the radar and solidify your position, as Pinterest did — going unrecognized for four years and suddenly being coined an “overnight success.”
Last year, “the creators of Angry Birds (Rovio studios) announced that they had taken $42 Million in funding. They currently hold the record for the best selling iOS game ever. There is talks of a movie being produced featuring Angry Birds.” But most don’t know that the guys over at Rovio spent eight years working on other games before they finally caught a huge break.
There is tremendous power in being underestimated – leverage it.
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Erica Nicole is the Founder and CEO of YFS Magazine
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Unpredictability From Chance

“How are we to understand “chance,” which Clausewitz finds pervasive? It is one of the three points of attraction in his definition of war as a remarkable trinity, and he emphasizes that “no other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance” as is war.  It is associated also with the fog of uncertainty in war, which obscures or distorts most of the factors on which action is based. Yet he nowhere provides a succinct definition of chance. “

The connection between chance and uncertainty provides a means of understanding both, if we draw on the insights of the late nineteenth-century mathematician Henri Poincaré, whose understanding of the matter was powerful enough that he is a frequently cited source in nonlinear science today. Poincaré argued that chance comes in three guises: a statistically random phenomenon; the amplification of a microcause; or a function of our analytical blindness. He described the first as the familiar form of chance that can arise where permutations of small causes are extremely numerous or where the number of variables is quite large. This form of chance can be calculated by statistical methods. The very large number of interactions produces a disorganization sufficient to result in a symmetrical (i.e., Gaussian or bell curve) probability distribution. Nothing significant is left of the initial conditions, and the history of the system no longer matters. It is possible that Clausewitz was aware of this general line of reasoning. As with magnetism and friction, important developments in probability theory were occurring in Clausewitz’s time, and we know that he read intensely in mathematical treatises.

Of course On War does not present this statistically tractable form of chance in exactly the way Poincaré explained it later, although commentators have noted that Clausewitz often refers to the role of probability in a commander’s calculations. In Chapter 1, Book One, he notes that “absolute, so-called mathematical factors” are not sound bases for such calculations due to the “interplay of possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad” that are endemic in war. The “games of chance” most amenable to statistical treatment are those like dice and coin tossing, but when Clausewitz compares war to a gamble, he does not use either. For him, “in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.” This analogy suggests not only the ability to calculate probabilities, but knowledge of human psychology in “reading” the other players, sensing when to take risks, and so on. Clausewitz certainly understands that the number of variables in war can be enormous, and that a rather special aptitude is needed to cope with the chance and complexity involved:


Circumstances vary so enormously in war, and are so indefinable, that a vast array of factors has to be appreciated — mostly in the light of probabilities [Wahrscheinlichkeitsgesetze] alone. The man responsible for evaluating the whole must bring to his task the quality of intuition that perceives the truth at every point. Otherwise a chaos of opinions and considerations would arise, and fatally entangle judgment. Bonaparte rightly said in this connection that many of the decisions faced by the commander-in-chief resemble mathematical problems worthy of the gifts of a Newton or an Euler. 

Since a mathematician of the likes of Newton or Euler is unlikely to be making military decisions, those in command have to rely on judgment rooted in intuition, common sense, and experience. Statistical laws of probability alone will never suffice, because moral factors always enter into real war, and it is possible for the results of any given action to defy the odds. This is one of the most important facts that experience indeed provides. 
 

A second form of chance described by Poincaré is deeply embedded in On War, but commentators have not usually distinguished its nature from that of the first. In contrast to the statistical form characterized above, this type of chance—amplification of a microcause—is inherent in the system itself. It arises from the fact that in certain deterministic systems small causes can have disproportionately large effects at some later time. Because the history of the system matters, the initial conditions remain significant. In a passage often cited by researchers working on nonlinear dynamics, Poincaré explained:


A very slight cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we can not help seeing, and then we say this effect is due to chance. If we could know exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial instant, we should be able to predict exactly the situation of this same universe at a subsequent instant. But even when the natural laws should have no further secret for us, we could know the initial situation only approximately. If that permits us to foresee the subsequent situation with the same degree of approximation, this is all we require, [and] we say the phenomenon has been predicted, that is ruled by laws. But this is not always the case; it may happen that slight differences in the initial conditions produce very great differences in the final phenomenon; a slight error in the former would make an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.

Poincaré thus linked the crucial importance of the initial conditions to the idea that in the real world the precision of our information concerning causes is always limited. This is a root explanation for unpredictability in those nonlinear phenomena that exhibit chaotic regimes of behavior.

This is exactly how Clausewitz perceives the role of chance in relation to friction in real war. Unnoticeably small causes can be disproportionately amplified. Decisive results can often rest on particular factors that are “details known only to those who were on the spot.” Attempts to reconstruct cause and effect always face the lack of precise information:

Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so. They may be intentionally concealed by those in command, or, if they happen to be transitory and accidental, history may not have recorded them at all.

We can never recover the precise initial conditions even of known developments in past wars, much less developments in current wars distorted by the fog of uncertainty. Interactions at every scale within armies and between adversaries amplify microcauses and produce unexpected macroeffects. Since interaction is intrinsic to the nature of war, it cannot be eliminated. The precise knowledge needed to anticipate the effects of interaction is unattainable. Unpredictability in war due to this second form of chance is thus unavoidable.

There is yet a third type of chance discussed by Poincaré that is prominently displayed in Clausewitz’s work. Poincaré argued that this kind is a result of our inability to see the universe as an interconnected whole:

Our weakness forbids our considering the entire universe and makes us cut it up into slices. We try to do this as little artificially as possible. And yet it happens from time to time that two of these slices react upon each other. The effects of this mutual action then seem to us to be due to chance.

Thus the drive to comprehend the world through analysis, the effort to partition off pieces of the universe to make them amenable to study, opens the possibility of being blind-sided by the very artificiality of the partitioning practice. This form of chance is a particularly acute problem when our intuition is guided by linear concepts.

Clausewitz has a profound sense of how our understanding of phenomena around us is truncated by the bounds we place on them for our analytical convenience. The assertion from On War quoted above, that “circumstances vary so enormously in war, and are so indefinable,” makes this point explicitly in the German original. A literal translation refers to the “diversity and indistinct boundary of all relationships” (“die Mannigfaltigkeit und die unbestimmte Grenze aller Beziehungen”) with which a commander must cope. Clausewitz repeatedly stresses the failure of theorists, such as his contemporaries Jomini and Bulow, to obtain effective principles because they insist on isolating individual factors or aspects of the problems presented in war. One indictment is particularly well known:

Efforts were therefore made to equip the conduct of war with principles, rules, or even systems. This did present a positive goal, but people failed to take an adequate account of the endless complexities involved. As we have seen, the conduct of war branches out in almost all directions and has no definite limits; while any system, any model, has the finite nature of a synthesis [in the sense of synthetic or man-made]. An irreconcilable conflict exists between this type of theory and actual practice…. [These attempts] aim at fixed values; but in war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities. They direct the inquiry exclusively toward physical quantities, whereas all military action is entwined with psychological forces and effects. They consider only unilateral action, whereas war consists of continuous interaction of opposites.

For Clausewitz, the generation of any system of principles for the conduct of war is a desirable goal but an unattainable one. Such an act of synthesis is indeed attractive, because it becomes so easy to forget the filters we have imposed on our view of the phenomenon.

But his concerns, like those of many scientists wrestling with nonlinear phenomena today, are open systems which cannot be isolated from their environments even in theory, which are characterized by numerous levels of feedback effects, and which need to be grasped realistically as an interactive whole. Traditional analysis that aimed at breaking the system into simpler parts fails now just as surely as it did in Clausewitz’s time, and for the same reasons. As Clausewitz writes of critical analysis and proof:

It is bound to be easy if one restricts oneself to the most immediate aims and effects. This may be done quite arbitrarily if one isolates the matter from its setting and studies it only under those conditions. But in war, as in life generally, all parts of the whole are interconnected and thus the effects produced, however small their cause, must influence all subsequent military operations and modify their final outcome to some degree, however slight. In the same way, every means must influence even the ultimate purpose. 

Interconnectedness and context, interaction, chance, complexity, indistinct boundaries, feedback effects and so on, all leading to analytical unpredictability—it is no wonder that On War has confused and disappointed those looking for a theory of war modeled on the success of Newtonian mechanics.
  
Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War,”
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Unpredictability From Friction

“A key element of reality for Clausewitz is the ubiquity of “friction,” the “only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.” This concept is usually interpreted as a form of “Murphy’s Law”: whatever can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment. That interpretation is not bad as far as it goes, but its presentation is usually skewed. The implication is that things go right until some exogenous factor ruins the situation. But for Clausewitz friction is neither extrinsic nor abnormal:”

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war….Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal…. The military machine—the army and everything related to it—is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals,… the least important of whom may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong…. This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.


The concept of friction is not just a statement that in war things always deviate from plan, but a sophisticated sense of why they do so. The analytical world, epitomized by the “frictionless pendulum” or the “perfectly spherical billiard ball on a frictionless surface” or “low-amplitude vibrations” so common in elementary physics, is one of linear rules and predictable effects. The real world and real war are characterized by the unforeseeable effects generated through the nonlinearity of interaction. 

“Friction” as used by Clausewitz entails two different but related notions that demonstrate the depth of his powers of observation and intuition. One meaning is the physical sense of resistance embodied in the word itself, which in Clausewitz’s time was being related to heat in ways that would lead ultimately to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of entropy. Friction is a nonlinear feedback effect that leads to the heat dissipation of energy in a system. The dissipation is a form of increasing degradation toward randomness, the essence of entropy. Even in peacetime, the degradation of performance in an army is a continual problem. In war, the difficulties are amplified. Military friction is counteracted by training, discipline, inspections, regulations, orders, and other means, not the least of which, according to Clausewitz, is the “iron will” of the commander. New energy and effort are sucked into the open system, yet things still never go as planned; dissipation is endemic due to the interactive nature of the parts of the system.

The second meaning of “friction” is the information theory sense of what we have recently come to call “noise” in the system. Entropy and information have some interesting formal similarities, because both can be thought of as measuring the possibilities for the behavior of systems. According to information theory, the more possibilities a system embodies, the more “information” it contains. Constraints on those possibilities are needed to extract signals from the noise. Clausewitz understands that plans and commands are signals that inevitably get garbled amid noise in the process of communicating them down and through the ranks even in peacetime, much less under the effects of physical exertion and danger in combat. His well-known discussion of the difficulty in obtaining accurate intelligence presents the problem from the inverse perspective, as noise permeates the generation and transmission of information rising upward through the ranks. From this perspective, his famous metaphor of the “fog” of war is not so much about a dearth of information as how distortion and overload of information produce uncertainty as to the actual state of affairs.

Clausewitz’s basic intuition here is that organizations are always slower and more inflexible than the natural events they are intended to control. Seen in this light, training, regulations, procedures, and so on are redundancies that enhance the probability of signal recognition through the noise. On the basis of linear assumptions, one expects major obstacles to produce proportionately serious errors in responding to the message. Clausewitz emphasizes, however, the disproportionately large role of the least important of individuals and of minor, unforeseeable incidents. “Friction” conveys Clausewitz’s sense of how unnoticeably small causes can become amplified in war until they produce macroeffects, and that one can never anticipate those effects. The issue is not just that “for want of a nail the shoe was lost….,” but that one can never calculate in advance which nail on which shoe will turn out to be critical. Due to our ignorance of the exact initial conditions, the cause of a given effect must, for all intents and purposes, often be treated as unavoidable chance.
 
Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War,”
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Terrain that matters


IN WAR AND BUSINESS, IT’S THE TERRAIN THAT MATTERS – Ivey Business Journal

Add the dictum, “Know the terrain” to “Know your customer” and you’ve got the two most important principles that a manager needs to follow to compete successfully. At first, and perhaps even later on, the playing field may not be level, but managers who consider the observations of this Ivey Business Journal regular contributor will surely be able to compete with any player, under any conditions.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (300 BC.–500 BC), Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War (1832) have become popular with executives seeking leadership and management insights that might improve the performance and competitiveness of their enterprises and, along the way, advance their own careers. I use Tzu and Machiavelli in a capstone course for MBA students called “The CEO,” and have found them very useful in bringing out key executive principles. I am going to add von Clausewitz in the future.
The CEO course involves 10 separate, two-hour, question-and-answer sessions with 10 different CEOs, as well as considerable additional classroom time to discuss what the CEOs had to say. Tzu, Machiavelli and von Clausewitz make a point that the CEOs continually reference and reinforce. In competitive activities like war, sport and business, knowing the terrain can make all the difference between winning and losing, success and failure.

For executives, substitute the expression “business conditions” for the word “terrain” and you have the concept. If you are the one calling the shots, it is critical you know and understand the world around you that everyone must take as the same given. The terrain is the playing field on which you and everyone else competes, over which no one has control, but on which outcomes often totally depend. Decision makers who do not know and understand the terrain better be lucky.

Listen to Machiavelli on terrain. “He [the prince] should, therefore, never take his mind from this exercise of war, and in peacetime he must train himself more than in time of war.…He must also learn the nature of the terrain, and know how mountains slope, how valleys open, how plains lie, and understand the nature of rivers and swamps; and he should devote much attention to such activities. Such knowledge is useful in two ways: first, one learns to know one’s own country and can better understand how to defend it; second, with the knowledge and experience of the terrain, one can easily comprehend the characteristics of any other terrain that it is necessary to explore for the first time.…A prince who lacks this ability lacks the most important quality in a leader; because this skill teaches you to find the enemy, choose a campsite, lead troops, organize them for battle, and besiege towns to your advantage.” Terrific advice for executives: never take your mind off defending market you have and taking market from others; know the terrain you defend and the terrain over which you will advance.

Sun Tzu devotes a chapter to terrain and the appropriate, associated tactics and strategies. “We may distinguish six kinds of terrain: accessible ground, entangling ground, temporizing ground, narrow passes, precipitous heights, positions at a great distance from the enemy.” Von Clausewitz offers: “There are certain constant factors in any engagement that will affect it to some extent…[one of] these factors [is] the locality or terrain…which can be resolved into a combination of the geographical surroundings and nature of the ground.” Notice the use of the expression “constant factors.” That is the notion of those things that cannot be controlled in a competitive environment; hence, they must be taken as a given by all competitors. Von Clausewitz also devotes a chapter to terrain, which he argues “bears a close and ever-present relation to warfare.”

Tzu, Machiavelli and von Clausewitz were in the war business when war was mainly hand-to-hand-style infantry fighting. Not surprisingly, terrain to them was things like the geography of the land, mountains, lakes and rivers, the weather, the fullness of the moon and the length of the day. Each must clearly be taken as is by the warring parties and exploited through tactics and strategies. For warring executives fighting over the same market, the terrain that must be grasped and then exploited includes demographics, politics, the economy and technology. That is the playing field on which enterprises succeed or fail but over which they have very little say.

First, demographics. Auguste Comte, the French positivist philosopher and coiner of the term “sociology,” famously said, “demographics is destiny.” Every dollar of business revenue involves either directly or indirectly selling something to someone. That makes it important to know who the someones are, how old they are, what sex they are, where they are and so on; the stuff of demographics. It is not possible to run a good business and at the same time ignore its demographics.

Second, politics. Politics is the machinery through which societies determine what the laws and penalties will be. Von Clausewitz’s most famous line links politics and war: “War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means.”

If you want go run a good business, you better be on top of the terrain that is determined by the political process: taxes; rules, regulations and standards; corporate, trade and securities law; subsidies and grants. And, as well, do not overlook that government plays a huge rule in economic growth, employment, inflation, exports, imports, exchange rates and interest rates.
Third, the economy. The economy is that vast space where goods and services are produced, sold and consumed, jobs are created and destroyed, prices are set and funds flow from savers to investors in stock, bond and money markets. For executives, the key components of the economic terrain are aggregate demand, growth, employment, labour availability, inflation, exchange rates, interest rates, credit, savings and investment. Decision-makers who constantly misjudge the economy will not keep their businesses out of trouble. Time spent on the economic terrain is time well spent.

Fourth, technology. Technology is simply the way we get things done that need to be done. Knowing and properly reacting to where the technology relevant to a business is headed is essential to survival and prosperity.
If you were in the watch business and you did not make the shift from mechanical movement to quartz crystal in a timely fashion (no pun intended), you probably did not make it. The same if you were in the music business and you did not make the transition from pressed vinyl records to tape to disc, or the computation business and you did not make the transition from the slide rule to electronics.
Executives should spend a lot of time thinking about how they make and do the things customers pay them for and how those ways will change in the future. This is one train no business can afford to miss.

One of the great business books of all time is My Years with General Motorsby Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Bill Gates said, “My Years with General Motors is probably the best book to read if you want to read only one book about business.” High praise!
Sloan nails the importance of business conditions. “[Executives make business judgements.] The big work behind business judgement is in finding and acknowledging the facts and circumstances concerning technology, the market, and the like in their continuously changing forms.… The field was open to all; technical knowledge flows from a common storehouse of scientific progress; the techniques of production are an open book, and the related instruments of production are available to all. The market is world-wide and there are no favorites except those chosen by the customer.” And he knew why General Motors was in business: “General Motors is an engineering organization. Our operation is to cut metal and in so doing to add value to it.” A goal everyone could get their mind around. No wonder GM came to dominate the business world. How they lost their way is another story.

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Sun Tzu: the art of business


“Order or disorder depends on organization; courage or cowardice on circumstances; strength or weakness on dispositions.”
Who Was Sun Tsu?
Sun Tzu, also known as Sun Tze or Sun Wu in other translations, was a military general serving under King Helü of Wu but his life is placed somewhere in the period of 722–481 BC. He is a historical figure whose authenticity is questioned by historians. Modern scholars accept his existence and place the completion of The Art of War in the Warring States Period (476–221 BC), based on the descriptions of warfare in the text, and on the similarity of text’s prose to other works completed in the early Warring States period.
Whatever you may want to believe, the book is not only standard reading for military theorists and many great generals throughout history but has also become increasingly popular among political leaders and those in business management. Despite its title, The Art of War addresses strategy in a broad fashion, touching upon public administration and planning. Although the text outlines theories of battle, it also advocates diplomacy and cultivating relationships with other nations as essential to the health of a state.
How It Relates To Business
Are the principles of war really different from business? Planning, negotiation, outflanking, victory and restoration are key to both war and business. How often do you hear, “I’m fighting the client on these points,” “it’ll be a real battle when it comes to getting paid for all of the changes they ordered,” “we need to negotiate a few points with the client before all hell breaks out,” “that ended up as a victory instead of a bloody defeat” and other statements you’ll witness or speak during and after a project?
Maybe we’re just too familiar with militaristic sayings that abound in our society. Could it be the popularity of war movies? Certainly the fondness for Schwartzenegger movies have their effect on sayings bandied about offices, such as when something goes horribly wrong and someone calls out, “get to da choppa!”
One of Tsu’s quotes, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” encompasses the ultimate goal of a business negotiation. While Tsu also covers the use of deception in war, business should be absolutely transparent. The approach and process should be the utmost between client and vendor or worker and boss, but does that truly happen in reality? More often interpersonal relationships in business is more of a chess game. Some say it’s greed and fear that drives all business relationships. A sad view on business, indeed.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle,” wrote Tsu. Does this point to the need for transparency in all dealings or just that every consideration and angle must be understood before acting?
Acts Of War!
When a client makes an outrageous request, perhaps for free work, it’s an attack on your livelihood. When scope creep begins in a project, he is invading your agreement. When milestones are not met with the required payments, your treaties have been broken. Acts of aggression!
“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack,”according to Tsu.
When asked for free work, remind the client that you have hard costs that must be covered or even the “free” job costs you money. When scope creep enrages you, confront the client with costs associated with such creep. Communicate to the “enemy” the costs of aggressive intrusion and breaking the treaty (or contract, so to speak).
“Order or disorder depends on organization; courage or cowardice on circumstances; strength or weakness on dispositions.”
All negotiations start with your confidence in not only your ability to complete a project with superior results but in being paid for those results and the efforts behind them. When being asked to work for free, whether upfront for whatever reasons, or increasing your work output for no extra fee, which lowers your final tally, you must find your courage and strength and control the dispositions or you will lose. In war you lose your life. In business, you lose your livelihood, although what is it really all that different except one ends your suffering quickly.
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
Simply, know your business before negotiating. Go into talks having won because you know your bottom line! There will be pushing and taking and giving and meeting half way here and there. Unless you have a posted price list for your services, you are in the business of negotiating. Even with that, you are in the business to survive and make a profit.
“Tsu” Your Company!
“A leader leads by example, not by force,” Tsu advises future generals. Having been in a position of leadership and in positions of being led, I agree wholeheartedly as I’m sure you do, too!
Likewise, “when one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders,” Tsu also wrote.
This deals with employee engagement. Who will work harder and with more loyalty? An employee who is at odds with the company because they feel threatened or because they feel they are part of the team and valued? At one large corporation for which I worked, they posted manifestos through the hallways and departments stating how the employees were “number one.” Unfortunately, employees were treated like “number two,” if you know what I mean. Engagement was almost non-existent and despite yearly surveys where employees rated treatment and confidence very low, the company refused to address the concerns. Profits sunk, layoffs increased, engagement continued to sink and eventually the company will lose the battle against competitors.
Can you count on your employer for fair treatment? Tsu obviously has a unique view: “All warfare is based on deception.”
Unfortunately, you may, if without fear of termination, want to go into the company cafeteria and shout your displeasure with how employees are treated. That’s not good advice and you won’t find it in The Art of War. However, along those lines, my uncle, as I entered my first corporate job, advised me to, “keep every piece of paper.”
I followed his advice and found that the deception of having the backup of information, although some might label it as evidence and Tsu would call it weaponry, was vital in conflicts that arise in the workplace. The deception is doing one’s work with a happy smile and still locking the door behind you. A famous passage from some Sinbad movie is, “trust in Allah but tie up your camel.” Good advice.
As for the time when you must use such paperwork (i.e., emails, notes, post-its, corporate memos, etc.), my favored advice from Tsu is, “let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” Let them know you mean business by feeling the tip of your spear.
Tough times force businesses to adapt but it is HOW they do it that promotes their future sustainability. To quote Sun Tsu, “anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”
Are Coworkers “Frenemies?”
In “office politics,” there are odd interpersonal relationships between people with different personality types. As sad as it is, you have to agree that in many office situations, large and small, there are clashes between coworkers that eventually spiral out of control and someone has to win while someone has to lose. It is not always the one who is right who prevails. As with warring nations, there are allies one must seek and with who you must bond for strength and protection. The employee who stands alone is vulnerable.
Think about your present or past situation in the office. Tsu has several thoughts that will help reign in dealing with that on a daily basis.
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Discourse in an office is met not with siding with the party that may be right but with the quickest and easiest way of ending such discourse. It is often the person who is easiest to replace who is sacrificed.
In many office situations, especially in hard economic times, those who you deal with on a daily basis and share close quarters, you will call your “friends.” Too often I hear people ask me why their “friends” have abandoned them once they have left their former company. We all experience it. Is it out of fear for one’s own existence or just proximity that creates bonds so easily broken? There is no easy explanation; only the realization that it exists and must be a consideration in all dealings in the ugly world of office politics and the allies one has to collect.
Some say the best way to stay out of trouble is to stay below the radar. In fact, it is, in my experience, those who kept their heads low in the trenches and stayed silent that survived. It was those who charged the guns of challenge and rose to champion causes of change and innovation that fell.
Tsu advises, “engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”
If you press a coworker or supervisor too hard, even in a situation where you are in the right, you will be viewed as “combative” or “confrontational.” While it is true that you should protect your career in situations where you are accused of wrongdoing but know you are innocent of any charges, cornering your accuser, especially if they are in a management position. Part of the battle is to overcome and succeed but you must leave your foe an out and let them save face.
I had a boss who liked to call people into her office and accuse them of some wrongdoing, make them breakdown into tears and then build them up again. Yes, it was sick and disturbed and her self-affirmation game was against corporate rules but no one would dare turn her in to human resources for doing so. When my turn came, she spoke about “perceptions about me.”
I argued that reality and actions were not perception and perceptions were groundless. I’ve always been a skilled debater and she was no match for me. By the time I left her office, she would be in tears. The only thing that was accomplished was she set her sights on destroying me and it made my future workdays miserable. Had I just accepted her little game, she would have been satisfied and there would be no win or loss as far as the battle was concerned.
“Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”
“To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
If I had just let her have her odd psychological win, resulting emails about the incident would have provided the ammunition for a greater battle. In essence, she would have handed me the bullets on a silver platter.
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
There were incidents over my career where I knew I had to use my enemies to tie their own nooses. After heinous meetings, I found I could either use their own confused emails against them or send an email that lured them forward into a trap. In one instance, I wrote about the disbelief of an action on the part of one enemy and sent it to another in a “divide and conquer” move. The email was returned with enough input as to act as a piece of evidence against the other person. Sometimes you must form an alliance with your enemies against a common foe. The old saying is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That wasn’t Sun Tsu, as far as I know but it fits into his teachings.
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
Everyone eventually gets what’s coming to them. I’ve seen horrid managers who seem to cruise through their careers. I’ve cursed the powers for letting good people leave or be fired due to these wastes of human flesh but, I have also seen these people eventually fall and they fall hard, never to regain the same position, money or power and to them, that is worse then death.
“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.”
Sometimes, you just have to let things go. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Even small battle have a winner and a loser. Any general will tell you that small skirmishes will only drag out a war and be too costly. Actually, Tsu has another apt quote on that (as if you couldn’t guess): “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
Be A Leader By Example
“When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders.”
“Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame and withdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation’s treasure. Because he fusses over his men as if they were infants, they will accompany him into the deepest valleys; because he fusses over his men as if they were his own beloved sons, they will die by his side. If he is generous with them and yet they do not do as he tells them, if he loves them and yet they do not obey his commands, if he is so undisciplined with them that he cannot bring them into proper order, the will be like spoiled children who can be put to no good use at all.”
There was a general, although I don’t remember who, that insisted he live like his soldiers, eating the same food, living in the same tent, wearing the same clothing and suffering the same hours and elements. He said it was so he would know how far they could be pushed. Aside from that knowledge, he had the side effect of having his army admire and respect him and so, they fought harder and followed all of his orders without question.
Think about when difficult assignments come your way. Are you given a task that is impossible and your manager walks away, expecting it to be done without question? How much grumbling do you do? How many shortcuts do you take? Do you truly care about winning?
“The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.”
As a leader, it is important to play to people’s strengths. Whether a large department or small, dividing numbers and assigning jobs based on people’s strengths will create a strong and effective force.
Is one designer great at type but terrible at color? Pair them with someone who is the opposite and the team will create top level work. Create “squads” of people to work as a team, based on individual strengths and the whole will be stronger and more productive then just the individuals.
When The Battle Is Over
So, is war truly like business? In war we see the best and worst of humanity. There is cruelty, barbarism, sadism, heroism and self-sacrifice in both. Wars eventually end and the rebuilding begins. Every conqueror in history has always kept an eye towards what happens when the enemy is vanquished. How trade and commerce and normalcy will be restored under changed territorial lines. Over the past couple of millennium, leaders have realized the truth of an aforementioned quote, “… a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.”
In business there are liars, backstabbers, thieves, scammers, ruthless people, sadists, heroes, mentors and those who seek to innovate for the good of the company and coworkers.
“The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace,” as Tsu wrote, “whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”
It was said after ten years of the Vietnam War, that battlefield medical actions and innovation helped evolve the treatments and knowledge of the medical field by over 100 years due to the forced need to keep the wounded alive. When dealing with bullet and shrapnel wounds, front line doctors and nurses had to rely on quick innovative methods to save lives. Experimentation was the only avenue available when a soldier teetered on the edge of death and traditional methods of medicine just wouldn’t work. War, in this case, pushed innovation out of necessity. In business, survival should also drive innovation.
Unfortunately, there are those who stop at nothing to suppress innovation, control power and destroy others merely for self-satisfaction. The “enemy,” so to speak. If you wish to survive their declaration of war upon you and emerge victorious from their attacks and campaign of battles, I suggest you pick up a copy of Sun Tsu: The Art of War. There are numerous books and articles available on becoming a better businessperson. You’ll find most are based on the man who said, “Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. (4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. (5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.”

 Meet the Author:
Speider Schneider
by

Adapt or die


ADAPT OR DIE – Ivey Business Journal

Dinosaurs are an apt and widely used metaphor today. After all, if a firm can’t or won’t adapt, it’s straight to the dustbin of business oblivion. A business enterprise is not totally dissimilar from a dinosaur, ignore rapidly changing circumstances, and a leader authors his or her company’s demise. Adapt to rapid changes better than your competitors and you’ll make great strides. Outlining suggestions that will help managers adapt to today’s volatile, fast-paced environment, the author quotes no less a change authority than Charles Darwin to illustrate what the real imperative is for a business leader today. “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”

Enterprises that do not adapt are in for a lot of trouble. The problem is change: The more rapid the pace of change, the more dire the consequences of stubbornly sticking to old ways.
Today’s pace of change in business conditions may or may not be unprecedented, but it is surely spectacular. Executives should expect that it will accelerate from here. But like most things in business, rapid change is a two-edged sword—a threat but also an opportunity. Adapt to rapid change better than competitors and you can make great strides; ignore rapidly changing circumstances and expect to go the way of the dinosaur. Adapting may be difficult, but it is not impossible.
The dinosaur metaphor is apt. Sixty million years ago, dinosaurs suddenly disappeared after more than 100 million years on the planet. Paleontologists hotly debate the cause of the dinosaur’s extinction, but high on the list of hypotheses is their failure to adapt to rapidly changing climatic—particularly temperature—conditions.
If a failure to adapt was the dinosaur’s Achilles heel, then the dinosaur is not alone in the history of evolution. In his landmark 1859 book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin showed that those species that adapt best to their changing environment have the best chance of surviving, while those who do not adapt do not make it. Since heredity makes children resemble parents, in time, a surviving species will have the characteristics of its most adaptable members. To quote Darwin: “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” If executives ever wondered if there was a quote worth framing, this is it.
Substitute a business enterprise for the species and you have powerful advice for executives facing changing business conditions. The Origin of Species revolutionized not only biology, but in time, how we think about every form of organization and change. Religion, for example, would never be the same again. The Origin of Species is justly regarded as the epitome of influential scholarly achievement of the last 200 years. Executives should turn its pages. Darwin, like so many of the great thinkers, has much to tell those responsible for running business enterprises. (Darwin’s story is inspirational for would-be executives off to a slow start. As a young man, Darwin’s father deemed him doomed to a life of disgrace to himself and his family. That we should all be such a disgrace!)
The business/biology reference is useful, as there are many similarities. A business enterprise and a living organism both house complex systems whose myriad parts must work together for the good of the whole. Both can be brought down by the failure of a single part; both are critically dependent on the timely communication of accurate information between the parts; both are vulnerable to stress, overwork, aging, neglect and disease; both must defend against an often hostile and capricious environment; both perform well only when they get the proper inputs, and both evolve over time. Finally, for both, failure to adapt can be lethal.
Change puts a premium on adapting; the faster the pace of change, the greater the premium. Take away change and there is no need to adapt; if it worked yesterday, there is every reason to believe it will work today. Alas, that is not remotely what executives are now facing. Today’s business conditions give new meaning to the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “All is flux, nothing stays still—there is nothing permanent except change.”
Driving the pace of change in business conditions is a revolution in technology that leaves no aspect of an enterprise—from the workplace to marketing—unaffected. We are living in our very own industrial revolution that is every bit a match for what Great Britain went through in the late 18th century. Innovation then gave rise to steam engines, power looms, spinning jennies, flying shuttles, canals, the factory system, mass production, paper money, stock and bond markets, and the corporation as the modern business organization. Today, innovation drives developments in microelectronics, optical fibre, the Internet, wireless communication, genetic engineering, space-age materials, lasers, electronic money and payments, empowerment, just-in-time inventory systems and joint venturing. The way in which business is done is turning upside down overnight; wise executives will run their enterprises as if the real excitement is still to come. Stay put too long and watch your enterprise become a horse and buggy, slide rule, vinyl record or mechanical watch. Each in its day dominated; each was abruptly done in by technology.
Technologies that change businesses are a big part of the great change locomotive hurtling towards every enterprise, but they are not the end of it. So rapidly is the economy itself changing that it has acquired a moniker: the New Economy. In the New Economy, everything changes faster: demand, supply, product prices, employment, production, investment, inventories, interest rates and exchange rates. In one quarter the economy is booming; the next quarter it is on the brink of recession and requiring massive Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. Sound familiar! The frequency with which economists adjust their forecasts attests to just how fast things are changing and how difficult it is to be right.
Finance, trade, politics and society complete the change whirlwind. A blizzard of new securities and portfolio strategies have combined with 24-hour-a day, worldwide trading and instantaneous information to make financial markets more efficient and much quicker to adjust, but also more volatile and more focused on the short term. Global trade growth is breathtaking, trade rules are steadily easing, countries are opening up in exchange for reciprocal access, international alliances abound, transportation costs are coming down, and everyone in a global industry is everyone else’s competitor. In politics, anything is possible: Free market/private ownership principles are increasingly popular; the Soviet Union no longer exists; 11 European countries that have often been on opposite sides in major wars now use the same money, and the European Union is poised to push east for new members. Societal change leaves nothing sacred; Customs, rules, standards and habits—from wearing a tie at work to the traditional marriage—are being broken.
Change and adapting to it should clearly be on every executive’s front burner. There is no litmus test for adaptability problems, but there are certainly signs that an enterprise is having trouble responding to its changing environment. A “Yes” answer to a number of the following questions suggests adapting to change should be more prominent on an enterprise’s agenda: Is the enterprise a follower rather than a leader? Is the enterprise continually surprised by events and developments that materially affect its capacity to compete and perform? Relative to competitors, is the enterprise usually late to embrace helpful new technologies, procedures and systems? Do the enterprise’s products usually lag the competition and the market? Is the enterprise’s market share in decline? Are competitors faster to exploit changing business conditions? Does the enterprise lack distinctive competencies, areas of excellence and market niches? Is the enterprise’s image tired and dated? Is adapting to change something that is rarely talked about? Do executives give the ability to adapt short shrift? Does the enterprise have trouble hiring and/or keeping strong, well-trained, highly motivated executives? Do office politics and processes take precedence over performance in promotion and other personnel decisions? Does the enterprise feel that everything is just fine, thank you very much?
Effectively adapting to rapid change must be a relentless, day-to-day activity. Searching for the magic bullet that will make all well immediately is a distracting waste of resources. Adapting is a game of singles, not home runs. Executives should move on a number of fronts.

1. FORCE THE PACE OF ADAPTING

Firms must be proactive in adapting; it will not happen if executives do not make it happen. Snoozing your way to complacency is not a recipe for a competitive, high-performance enterprise. Adapting involves change, and most people resist change as if it were a plague. Put adapting at the top of the agenda. Harp on it. The need to adapt is one message that can and should become a broken record.

2. RESIST DENIAL

Denial is a psychological state where the afflicted refuse to accept a harsh reality. The belief that all will be well in the enterprise if you just give it time is a sure sign of denial. Another sure sign is the belief that business conditions have not changed, or at least have not changed enough to matter. Denial is recognized as a necessary stage in grieving the loss of a loved one. It has no place in the running of an enterprise.

3. UNDERSTAND BUSINESS CONDITIONS

Only luck will save those whose efforts to adapt are based on a misread of the business environment. Adapting to conditions that do not exist is not much different than sticking to the status quo in the face of obvious change. Adapting effectively always begins with a sound reading of where business conditions are headed. Time that executives spend understanding trends in demographics, technology, economics, finance, trade, politics and society is time well spent. Since not all enterprises are affected by the same business conditions in the same way, it is also important to know just what business conditions matter most to your enterprise. Future business conditions are never certain, but study and good advice can increase the odds of getting the future right.

4. MANAGE FINANCES PRUDENTLY

Adapting effectively to rapid change takes serious money. Enterprises with weak balance sheets and/or a bad profile in the investment community will find money both expensive and difficult to get. Adapting is unlikely to work if it is built on a foundation of excessive debt and poorly matched assets and liabilities with respect to maturities and currencies. Those who consider adapting effectively costly should consider the cost of adapting poorly.

5. BENCHMARK RELENTLESSLY

If your enterprise is losing ground in product, quality, service, image, customer satisfaction, unit cost and profitability comparisons with competitors, it may mean that they are adapting better. Benchmarking can be hard on the ego, but it is one of the best and earliest indicators of trouble in adapting.

6. WATCH FOR AND DEAL WITH EXECUTIVE BURNOUT

The best antidote for rapid change is competence, focus and energy in the executive suite; the tired, cynical and stubborn can do huge damage fast. Dealing fairly with spent executives is expensive, but those costs pale beside the costs of letting burned-out executives pilot the ship through rapid change. Executives approaching the 10-year period in the same job especially should be monitored. Signs that an executive may not be far from the end include defensiveness, irritability, bitterness, inflexibility, listlessness, boredom, procrastination and fatigue.

7. RESTRUCTURE TO ADAPT

Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary architect of General Motors, argued that strategy followed structure. Sound strategy, and by extension sound execution and performance, is unlikely to flow from a badly designed organization. The faster the pace of change, the more important it is to continually monitor and upgrade structure. In times of rapid change, be especially sensitive to structures that stifle initiative and innovation, frustrate communication and reward process over performance and output. Enterprises ignore structure at their peril; the trouble is, structure is easy to ignore because a poor structure is not as obvious in an immediate crisis.

8. MANAGE THE ENTERPRISE’S RISK AGENDA

The faster the pace of change, the more important it is to manage risk. Change increases risk, often exponentially. Managing risk begins with understanding the exposures. You cannot mitigate risks that you do not understand.

9. ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE ALWAYS MATTER

Rapid change exposes dubious ethics and poor governance. Rapid change creates urgency and pressure; enterprises that are not properly grounded struggle accordingly.

10. DO NOT MINIMIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF A SMALL STEP

There is an adage in baseball that says that when rebuilding or reorganizing, a step in the right direction is far more important than one big step. The adage applies equally to business during periods of rapid change. It does not take many small steps to leave an enterprise substantially better adapted if the steps are all in the right direction. Over time, a small step in the wrong direction will be magnified many times.

11. LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITY

For the organization that is well managed, well financed, responsive and nimble, rapid change is just what the doctor ordered. Opportunities abound. The status quo makes it tough for the new or the small to take on the established. Rapid change puts everything up for grabs.
When the business history of this era is written many decades hence, there is a good chance that adaptability will be the characteristic that ultimately most distinguishes successful from unsuccessful enterprises. Enterprises should assess their capacity to adapt; where it is wanting, they should take immediate and aggressive action. A leisurely approach to change will not work in this business environment. The edge lies with those who see change more as an opportunity and challenge than a threat. When the psychologist Carl Gustaf Jung talked about the “thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence,” he was talking about humanity. However, he could have been talking about business. If you do not adapt, you will cease to exist. The only question is when. It is that simple!
The last word on this important subject goes to the great poet, Robert Service:
This is the law of the Yukon;


The last word on this important subject goes to the great poet, Robert Service:
This is the law of the Yukon;
That only the strong shall thrive;
That surely the weak shall perish;
And only the fit survive.
(The Law of the Yukon)