These strategic principles exist from the experience that man has had throughout thousands of years of history and from tens of thousands of conflicts in which he has become involved and with which he has had to interact.
Tip No. 1: Estimate Conditions.
The dynamics and intensity of the Conflict in the Market do not allow, in all cases, to make detailed evaluations. Among the efforts of a precise calculation the Strategy can lose a lot of advantage and opportunity, the Conflict does not always present time frames that cooperate with the precision, therefore the participation of the Strategos and its estimation efforts is necessary.
The factors that must be constantly estimated are:
- Mission commitment spirit that prevails among the contending organizations. External Forces.- Here are all the variables of the supra-system: macroeconomic conditions, social, labor, legal factors, etc. The Foreign Forces are not in control of the Strategos. Operations Theater (Market). - Especially everything related to the Client and the Competition. Heads - Management. - The quality of the management structures of the contenders is a very important factor. important for the development of the Strategy and to determine the outcome of the Conflict. Doctrina - Guiding Principles.- The Strategos must know “what the competitor will and will not do” subject to its doctrinal codes.Ultimately the doctrine determines the nature of the action in the same way that the will promotes it; And if rival guiding principles are properly estimated, a pattern of behavior can also be established in action.
Tip No. 2: Compare Attributes (strong and weak competitive points).
Comparison with the competitor allows establishing a "state of affairs" that is essential to know. The first guidelines for action emerge from the conclusions that this comparative mechanics gives.
The Chinese SunTzu proposed this illustrative comparative mechanic:
- "Which sovereign has greater moral influence? Which military chief is better trained? Which side enjoys more favorable conditions in terms of weather and terrain? On which side are orders better executed? Which side is superior? in arms? In which are the officers and soldiers better trained? Which side is more strict and impartial in the application of prizes and punishments? "
After considering this comparative criterion, Sun Tzu categorically affirmed: "through these seven elements, I can foresee victory or defeat".
Tip No. 3: The Strategy conditions the Allocation of Resources.
Always remember the following: The Organization must allocate resources according to the needs of the Strategy. If, on the other hand, the Strategy is determined based on the existence of resources, the Organization is clearly at a competitive disadvantage.
This is probably one of the most difficult Strategic Principles to understand and adhere to. A huge number of organizations attribute their strategic incompetence to the scarcity of resources.
Tip No. 4: Make Time an ally.
The way to turn time into an ally is for the Strategos between the two extremes involved: making one's actions unfold in the shortest possible time and making the actions of the adversary last over time without achieving results. In both situations, time becomes a precious ally.
Tip No. 5: Everyone should benefit from Victories.-
Business organizations must understand that Victory is the most important motivational factor that exists. The Organization's Human Resources must have a deep, personal and vivid experience of the victories that have been achieved.
Depending on the degree of development that the Organization has achieved in this area, there is much that it can ask of its human resources in adverse situations, but there is nothing to ask of them in victory, absolutely nothing. Herein lies a vital part of the strategic wisdom that must be learned: in victory, in moments of success, it is not asked for, it is given, it is not claimed, it is granted. In the premise there is no desire to establish additional differences to those that are otherwise obvious, it is simply a matter of recognizing that people NEED to experience, in an almost intimate way, this transcendental difference between the states of success and those that are not.. If this experience does not occur forcefully,The sense of commitment to the Organization and its objectives gradually disappears.
Tip No. 6: Know Your Job! (know the Business).
The Business, as a fundamental purpose, is perfected through the Production and Sales functions supported by the Organization. Therefore, it is essential to know deeply what is produced and what you want to sell. This is where the FOCUS on the Business emerges and this is the competitive advantage par excellence.
The great Strategos has a deep respect for the whole of what particularizes and characterizes a Business, does not formulate criteria or take action before knowing it better than anyone. Any different attitude will sin of arrogance.
Napoleon said: "War is only learned by going where the shots are." The only way to get to know a Business down to its smallest and most important detail is to approach the process from “bottom to top”, from the deepest part of the Organization to the levels where the most important decisions are made, in that order.
Tip No. 7: Apply Stratagems.
The Stratagem is based on pretense and deception, disinformation or its manipulation. The Stratagem is a small, concrete plan of action that is only clear and makes sense in the Strategos mind. Probably no one else, not even his closest collaborators, know him in full.
The Stratagem consists in pretending that something is being done, when in fact something else is being done, it consists in pretending that one thing is being thought, when in fact another is being thought. The Stratagem seeks to make the opponent see what one wants him to see and not necessarily what he should see. By means of a Stratagem the information that one wants to be evident is made evident, the rest is not, until the moment in which the reality cannot be reversed by the adversary.
The Strategos who is adept at handling stratagems tends to be unpredictable, his movements are difficult to predict, his responses can rarely be calculated, his methods become orthodox only because they are supported in permanent heterodoxy.
Tip No. 8: Strength vs. Weakness, always.
This is an essential Strategic Principle because it is closely linked to risk control and effectiveness. Strength always works in your favor and reduces risk, weakness plays in the opposite direction. And it is easy to understand that the higher the risk that an operation is subjected to, the greater the chances of failing.
Napoleon said: "The art of war is only the art of increasing one's chances." And in this simple recipe, nothing weighs more than the precept of concentrating your own strengths on your opponent's weaknesses. This helps magnificently when unforeseen situations arise, because the inertia of the mass plays in your favor and constitutes a neutralizing element of imponderables.
Tip No. 9: Beware of the General-Sovereign relationship!.-
The Strategos must never forget that the “golden rule” has not changed: “whoever has the gold makes the rules”. The responsibility to "manage" the General-Sovereign relationship within the basic margins of rationality rests with the Strategos.
The Strategic Principle in this regard determines that there is a very clear division of responsibilities. The functions of the Sovereign are very different from those of the General, those of the Senior Management different from those of the Strategos.
While Strategos is responsible for managing the interests of the Strategy, Senior Management is responsible for managing the interests of the entire Organization.
Probably the most practical way to establish the difference lies in specifying that the responsibility of the Senior Management regarding the Strategy is mainly explained in the establishment of objectives. In this case, the responsibility of the Strategos is to propose and execute a Strategy that enables them to be achieved.
Tip No. 10: Know When to Fight and When No.
Strategos must have a highly developed sense of Opportunity, and fortunately this is not a matter of chance, magic, or fourth dimension. Opportunity calculation is a product of information analysis.
Tip No. 11: You must know how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
History grants a place of privilege to Strategos who have achieved victory despite having the scarcest resources. In general, these are feats that have very good popular regard, but effectively respond to the natural benefits of the Strategy, nothing more. All the conceptual scaffolding of the Strategy aims to ensure that an event such as this is not only possible but also becomes a constant. If in the treatment of the Conflict the solution were only a consideration of magnitude, mass or inertia, then arithmetic would replace Strategy.
Tip No. 12: The one whose men are united for the same purpose will win.
The risks that most threaten success lie within the Organization, not necessarily outside it; Internal problems are significantly more sensitive than external ones, because by nature we feel predisposed and prepared to face external problems, but the problem that comes from within causes more pain. The opposite sense of things has the same character, because the internal energy gives more power to acts that focus outward.
It is therefore essential to guarantee the harmonious operation of the Organization's energies, in order to avoid risks and to increase competitive possibilities.
Tip No. 13: Be Invincible.
Invincibility refers to the need for strong defensive positions, the same ones that are far from the inevitable compromise that offensive actions or positions in dispute represent.
If an Organization fails in its offensive provisions, this can only be considered a failure, whereas if the Organization has compromised its own positions, the failure can represent chaos and compromise the existence of the Organization itself. There is a very big difference in how the competitor can win in a specific fight, to the fact that he gets a victory over the entire Organization. This happens when defensive actions are compromised.
Tomas Cleary said: “Invincibility is a matter of defense, vulnerability is a matter of attack. The defense is sometimes due to insufficiency, the attack is sometimes due to too much ”.
Invincibility lies in defense, the possibility of victory in attack.
Tip No. 14: Use the normal to distract and the extraordinary to overcome.
The "extraordinary" is a direct allusion to the character of the Strategy being used. The ordinary (or normal) is what hides the particularities of the strategic intention. By nature, no Strategy is absolutely obvious to the competitor, because in this way it is completely harmless.
The Strategic Principle demands that “what the Strategy is not” be established in an orderly and methodical manner in the eyes of the competitor; Herein lies the requirement to "distract him." It is not enough to be clear about everything that the Strategy will represent, it is necessary to build a “package” that will be “sold” to the competitor and that will automatically constitute direct protection for the true intentions of the Strategy.
When this process of presenting the normal and doing the extraordinary is launched, it gives a wealth of incomparable character to the effectiveness of the Strategy, because it forms a complex structure of formats and presentations that little option gives the competitor to identify the column central to strategic intentions. The process generates an endless set of combinations and the only code to decipher them is in the hands of the Strategos.
Tip No. 15: Plan the Surprise.
The maximum expression of what is not evident is the Surprise. And with it, Strategy finds the most precious product, the one it seeks from the process of most of its Strategic Principles.
And it is worth bearing in mind that Surprise is not only the apex of the non-evident, it is also a phenomenon that has effects of magnitude. The results obtained from the Surprise are not small, on the contrary, they are absolutely great in proportion to what is expected. And very damaging to the interests of the person affected, because they are not expected, and because answers that can counteract all its effects are not easily found.
Having achieved the Surprise, the skillful Strategos tips the scales to his own advantage as he can do with very few things; it is approaching with power the ultimate objective of the Strategy: to settle the Conflict in its favor.
Tip No. 16: Be Flexible.
They say that all plans are simply the basis for change.
How much of this will the Strategy understand if it is precisely the instrument we use to deal with change and to produce it.
Among all the techniques or mechanics of governance, there is not a single one that is essentially more flexible in concept than the Strategy. From its coexistence with the Conflict, the Strategy emerges above ideologies, doctrines and philosophies, as the pure essence of pragmatism and eclecticism. The very structure of the Conflict is a lesson in metamorphosis.
Strategos mental processes must have the capacity to submit to this reality because it does not admit different positions. The truth is being built in the moment, to the point that it ceases to be and requires a new approach.
Mental flexibility starts from considering that everything is possible, because if this is not the case, it is subject to the rigidity of some parameter that at a certain moment will break and with it the entire structure built around it. The Strategos must develop its mental processes under the premise that there is a possible solution for every probable circumstance, that there are actually many possible solutions for a probable circumstance! This "elasticity" in thinking allows actions to adapt to reality more easily, since each answer has the possibility of being based on a set of possible answers.
The Flexibility in the Strategy is above all a matter of attitude of the Strategos, since in it the strategic orientation is developed and through it its course is administered. In reality, there are no approaches aimed at defining what a Flexible Strategy is or how it can be developed, because this is a state that must qualify strategic action at all times; therefore the phenomenon is understood and explained only from the mental process that the Strategos can apply.
Tip No. 17: Achieve Critical Mass.
Critical Mass is achieved by printing Speed to the Strategic Resources available. The power of a specific “mass” is multiplied remarkably by the effect of the Speed that is imprinted on its movement.
Napoleon said: "The strength of an army, like the amount of movement in mechanics, is calculated by the mass multiplied by the speed."
The business organization that works under the logic of Critical Mass must learn to work with Speed. When this is achieved efficiently, the "volume" of the Resources available is "increased", "multiplied". This is also much more important for the competitor who DOES NOT HAVE the greatest Resources since reaching Critical Mass can neutralize the opponent's advantage.
Tip No. 18: Discipline.
Imposing Discipline among the human resources that make up the Organization and who have the main responsibility for executing the Strategy, is an indispensable task of the Strategos. This is a state that must be built before taking any action of importance. It is a state that must progressively become an Organizational Identity Trait, so that it is an emergent condition and not necessarily imposed, so that at some point it is the product of the process of Self-organization and not necessarily of constant organizational efforts. To achieve this, the Strategos must generate the appropriate stimuli in the organizational framework, it must print clearly recognizable principles and styles of leadership.
A disciplined Organization reduces many of the harmful effects that characterize the energies constituted within it.
Colonel Ardant du Picq wrote: “What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction in action is the sense of discipline. This includes: respect and trust in their bosses; security in his comrades and fear of his reproaches if he leaves them in danger; his desire will be to go where the others go without trembling more than they; in a word, true esprit de corps. Only organizations can give rise to these characteristics. Four men equal a lion. "
Tip No. 19: Make Victory the only option.
The criterion of relative results does not constitute a qualification of the Strategy. The results represent, in essence, success or failure, there are no "half successes" or "half failures". All the conceptual scaffolding of the Strategy is placed at risk from the mere consideration of the relative criteria.
Considering that the alternatives of the results of the Strategy can only be measured between victory and failure and understanding that the Option represents precisely the freedom or the power to choose, the Strategos can only work with one premise: victory.
The Strategic Principle of Making Victory the Only Option is not only intended to highlight the obvious. Above all, it seeks to achieve and take advantage of the energy underlying people's actions and reactions at this crossroads. And those actions and reactions are originally a mental picture with very representative situations of the difference between the states. When people have this picture very much in mind, they ignite (even without knowing it) the spark of desire and determination, before which limits are not easily recognized. Achieving this is a responsibility of the Strategos.
Samuel B. Griffith said: “Thus a victorious army achieves its triumphs before seeking battle; an army destined for defeat fights in the hope of winning ”.
For the Strategos in particular, who in any case has the responsibility not only to make the Organization a successful entity, but also the responsibility to be an example of this himself, probably the best conduct guideline has been commented by Napoleon, more than 200 years ago: “There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I prepare a military plan; I increase all the dangers and all the possible evils according to the circumstances. I sink into painful agitation. I am like a young woman who gives birth. However, this does not deprive me of appearing quite serene to the people around me. When I have made my decision, everything is forgotten, except what can make it succeed. ”
Tip No. 20: Invest in Information Resources.
Sun Tzu said: “The reason that the enlightened sovereign and the expert general defeat the enemy whenever they set out and that their achievements exceed ordinary individuals is that they possess prior knowledge. Such prior knowledge does not come from spirits, nor from gods, nor from an analogy with past events, nor from deductive calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the situation of the enemy ”
Never again should information be recognized as an expense, it is definitely the best investment that can be made in terms of organizational interests. Information educates, trains, helps in every training process and ends up forming a capacity for analysis and interpretation of things that can not be achieved in any other way.
Strategos probably has to accept this moral: "It is important to recognize, that you must know." From then on, uncertainty becomes an ally, because it is simultaneously the adversary's greatest enemy.
