Comparing: Conflict vs. Competition

The Art of War, Chapter 7.2.1-4 You can build up an army to fight for an advantage.

This post continues our project explaining each stanza of Sun Tzu’s work. The English and Chinese are from my award-winning translation, The Art of War and The Ancient Chinese Revealed. Start here for the book’s opening lines.

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Many may initially disagree with the ideas in this article, but if you read to the end, you will recognize how true they are. The lines discussed here begin Section Two of Chapter 7 of The Art of War. The general topic of this chapter is Armed Conflict. The topic of this section is winning conflicts to lose in competition.

Competition is a comparison. It is wrong to confuse it with conflict, as many do today. Conflict is trying to improve our positions by tearing down the positions of others. We all want to improve our positions. We can only do this in comparison to others, but tearing each other down makes us and the world poorer. Conflict is based on a zero-sum view of the world. In such a world, to improve our positions, we must take away the positions held by others. Fortunately, this is not the world which God gave us.

There are as many potential positions in the world are there are people. Creating valuable positions is no different than creating value for others. Others have an infinite number of needs. If we invest in conflict, we do not have the resources to invest in creating the unique forms of value that allow us to win rewards.

Winning

In a sense, “winning without conflict” is an unnatural view of the world. In the natural world, we must hunt down and take our prey in order to survive. It is only in the social world that we can succeed by serving instead of attacking others.

Even if we pursue the strategy of “winning without conflict” we still have to worry about defending ourselves. People’s “natural” reflexes are winning by conquering. This means we must build an army, if only for defense. In our modern world of non-military competition, the fighters and weapons in our army are often the number of our supporters and the depth of our competitive resources.

• In the indented sections below from The Art of War, we summarize each Chinese character with a single English word shown in < > brackets.

<Raise> <army> <and> <yet> <conflict> <advantage>
You can build up an army to fight for an advantage.

Does building a powerful competitive force improve our competitive position over the long term? Does our ability to win competitive conflicts, improve our positions in the minds of others? In business, for example, does having the large sales force or the most expensive marketing campaign necessarily guarantee us success? It will certainly win away business from competitors over the short term, but is winning those battles effective over time?

Whether we are talking about military or business conflict, initial success can be misleading. Winning the ground is less important than making it pay. Completing a move is only valuable if a productive claim can be made and maintained. Army building and taking territory tends to focus us on success in conflict rather than success in competition. We lose site of our goal of making victory pay.

Economics

If we think in terms of conflict rather than competition, we want the biggest armies and the most powerful sales forces. An initial increase in territory of sales, if these forces succeed, can confuse us into thinking that we are “winning.” However, making successful moves is not the same as establishing successful positions.

<Then> <not> <reach>
Then you won’t catch the enemy.

What is it that we won’t reach? If we think in terms of conflict, a large army cannot catch a smaller one. By definition, large forces have strength but smaller forces have speed. A large army can chase away a smaller competitor, securing the ground, but what does that win over the long term?

The goal must always be economic. Competition in any form is costly, and conflict is the most costly of all. And those economics must work over months and years, not just weeks and days. The point of securing positions, which is really a place in the minds of others, is to make our positions pay. We can secure the external competitive ground, but that doesn’t necessarily secure a valuable position in the minds of others.

In business, the economics are well established. It costs about ten times more to win a new customer than it does to make sales to repeat customers. The secret to all business success is having customers who come back on their own. When we see the long lines at a Chick-fil-A drive-through, we aren’t seeing the effects of their huge marketing campaigns. We are seeing customers come back because the product is worth it.

This is the type of position we want. The positions in people’s minds where they come back because what they find what we offer valuable. We can spend our efforts creating value or creating powerful forces for competition. Winning a sale is much less valuable than winning a mind.

<Entrust> <army> <and> <yet> <conflict> <advantage>
You can force your army to go fight for an advantage.

In my experience, powerful competitive forces force us to focus on winning in conflict instead of making our positions pay. Based on their initial success, if any, they will want more and more of our resources. The problem is that our resources are limited. By pouring them into our competitive forces, we are growing a monster that demands to be fed.

To keep the system working, we will feel like we have to trust the army, sales force, or marketing to keep those expensive, new customers coming in. What we are building is not a sustainable position but something more like a Ponzi scheme that depends upon growth to keep us alive.

Military campaigns down through history have made this mistake. "Pyrrhic victories" is the term that we give these “successes.” The name comes from King Pyrrhus of Epirus. He defeated the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BC and again at the Battle of Asculum a year later. In looking at what he had won, he famously said, “Another such victory will ruin me.” King Pyrrhus’s story illustrates another problem with conflict: conflicts tend to continue past all reason.

What is the result?

<Then> <wagon> <heavy> <discard>
Then you abandon your heavy supply wagons.

King Pyrrhus was complaining about the loss of lives, but, for most of us, the problem is the loss of limited resources. Making successful claims is more valuable than winning a hundred battles because holding ground that pays is more profitable than winning ground that we must continue to fight over.