What is the best way for us to advance our positions? Should we make our moves when our rivals are not moving? Or is it better to move when opponents are seeking alliances with others? Or is it better to move in order to stop a competitor’s advance? Or is it best to move when we have enough resources (“ammunition”) to try to win an opponent’s established position?
These questions raise of more basic issue. How much of our strategy should be based on what our rivals do? We talk about “competitive” strategy, but that doesn’t mean that we should focus on our rivals. Strategy is competitive in the sense that it makes comparisons between alternatives. Our position in people’s minds may be how we are ranked in comparison with our rivals, but do we advance by focusing on those rivals?
Our primary concern should be, not our rivals, but how we are judged by those who can reward us for successful moves. In economic competition, those judges are our customers and all those that help us get our product to them, from our suppliers to our distribution channels. In political competition, those judges are the voters and those who influence the vote. In military competition, those judges are our potential opponents and potential allies.
Destructive Role Playing
One problem with a focus on competitors is that we can get “locked into” enemy roles. Playing the role of “enemy” is usually destructive. Whether we like it our not, that role becomes part of our mission, at least psychologically. We may or may not have incomparable goals with these “enemies,” but assigning these roles blocks us off from other more productive methods such as being a middleman, negotiator, and peacemaker.
Most “conflicts” are conflicts about Methods, how we work with others, not Mission, what provides our direction. Very few rivals, especially in business, have missions focused on destroying each other’s positions. The existential threats in business aren’t from existing rivals but from new technologies that are not recognize as real rivals until it is too late. Elon Musk with his reusable rockets is offering a new Method. His success is spawning a whole new industry of startups. The established corporate-government alliance of building expensive “cost-plus” rockets is doomed because the private companies are better a fulfilling the shared mission: reaching into outer space affordably.
Other competitors, especially the ones in zero-sum games, do clash over goals. Both want to win the competition, but only one can. This is true in sports contests, political election, and military wars. Only one rival can win the game, the election, or win control over a territory. It is important to note, however, that these missions are only temporary, stepping stones to a larger goal. Sports opponents change every week. Even military opponents, such as Japan and Germany, can become allies. The problem is when actors get locked into roles. Russia should have stopped being an enemy when they dropped communism and asked to join NATO in the nineties, but the West wanted to keep them locked into the “enemy” role. This thinking is extremely costly, as we are seeing in the Ukraine today.
Successful Advances
Back to our original question about picking the best moves. Our moves should be indifferent to what competitor’s are doing. We should be focused on advancing our own position, not hampering or threatening their moves or positions. Those moves are best when they are fast, low-risk, low-cost, and non-threatening to the positions of others. Understanding why is important.
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