The Chinese wisdom that has devoted so much time and effort to the study of the Strategy describes five fundamental factors to guarantee its success. STRATEGOS must know them perfectly:
1.- The one who knows when to fight and when not will win.
STRATEGOS must have a highly developed sense of Opportunity, and fortunately this is not a matter of chance or magic. The calculation of opportunities is the product of the analysis of information.
The Intelligence system (which constitutes a key strategic resource in the Organization), must provide STRATEGOS with the precise information to take advantage of all the opportunities that the development of the Conflict presents. It all depends on the way in which STRATEGOS orients its Intelligence systems; some privilege market information over others, others competitor information or, finally, information related to environment variables. It is advisable for STRATEGOS to order the information produced by the system according to the natural priorities of the Strategy; a) fulfillment of objectives; b) status of own resources; c) status and preparation of the competition; d) identification of threats; e) identification of opportunities.
If this information is of quality, STRATEGOS has the necessary elements to know when and how to act.
2.- He who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces will win
History grants a privileged place to STRATEGOS who have achieved victory despite having the scarcest resources.
All the conceptual scaffolding of the Strategy aims to ensure that an event like this is not only possible but also becomes a constant.
If in the treatment of the Conflict the solution were only a question of magnitude, mass or inertia, then arithmetic would replace the Strategy. For strategic thinking, the Result is determined by the size of the resources that exist and the relationship of these with their capacity for action. There is the possibility of achieving a positive result for own interests proportionally equal to or greater than the size of the resources available. Equal or greater! Below this line, the Strategy has failed, the greater it is, the better it has been elaborated, planned and executed.
The relationship between the size of the resources and the result has, of course, specific limits; The possibilities of achieving greater objectives will always demand the existence of more resources, but the optimization of what exists will never be greater than from the application of the Strategy.
The Strategic Principles that demand the use of relative advantages, the concentration of efforts, the administration of critical mass, etc., constitute the way to act effectively beyond what arithmetically allows the size of the resources.
Something different and more complex emerges when STRATEGOS manages superior forces or resources over its opponent. In this case it is important to know how to work with the additional pressure that this fact represents and to avoid that it becomes precisely the most important risk. More than a few affirm that it is more difficult to handle superior forces than inferior ones. To manage pressure, STRATEGOS needs to gather certain personal qualities that complement its knowledge and skills; Among them a very valuable ability is Self-control and the ability to govern your emotions. If clear, cold thinking or reasoning does not have the ability to preempt emotion at certain times, then all knowledge is of no use for profit.This is the case of the additional pressure that superior force management represents, because if in essence strategic knowledge and ability are accompanied by many good resources, defeat can only be the effect of mental dispositions.
The comprehensive knowledge that STRATEGOS may have of itself is as important as that acquired from its competitors. Sun Tzu says about it:
"He must know the enemy and know himself and in this way he will be able to fight a hundred battles without risk of defeat.
If you don't know the enemy but you know yourself, your chances of winning and losing will be equal.
If you don't know both the enemy and yourself, you can be sure of being defeated in every battle. ”
3.- He will win whose men are united by the same purpose
If STRATEGOS fully knows the nature and mechanics of the Organization, it has all the elements to take advantage of what it can provide, especially in terms of the energy needed to apply it to action.
The most important risks of success lie within the Organization, not necessarily outside it; Internal problems are significantly more sensitive than external ones, because by nature there is more predisposition to face external problems than those that come from within.
It is therefore essential to guarantee the harmonious operation of the Organization's energies, in order to avoid risks and to increase competitive possibilities.
An erroneous interpretation of "men united in pursuit of the same purpose" is the need for a well-defined leadership within the Organization, as an obvious way to guarantee it.
STRATEGOS is of course demanded Leadership and of the best quality possible (although the mere fact of defining what it means can be difficult), but that leadership is focused on the result and not necessarily on the media. In other words, the effectiveness of STRATEGOS cannot be based exclusively or fundamentally on its capacity as leader. Its knowledge of the nature of the Organization and the Mission that supports it, that is, the Business, is worth as much or more than this.
In many ways the Organization can be compared to a land full of mines; Two things are necessary to avoid the disaster: a) know where the mines are and not step on them, b) prevent the mines from continuing to be planted. When STRATEGOS knows the organizational nature in depth, the knowledge of many implicit factors falls in addition to it, both in the form of what should be taken advantage of and what should be avoided; Learn where the mines are located and how to prevent them from continuing to be planted. If the problem of the well-being of people in the Organization were only a spring of the warm leadership that STRATEGOS may have, then great generals in history would never have been prominent. From George S. Patton,that at some point he slapped one of his soldiers because he was in a field hospital affected by “combat nerves”, he is said to be “quite a character” and that “he was traveling surrounded by command cars and a series of police officers impeccably uniformed staff. His own vehicle was cheerfully decorated with huge stars and his command insignia. But those displays did not dazzle the troops, as perhaps he believed. On the contrary, it offended them having to walk painfully through the cloud of dust raised by that procession ”. But few of those men hesitated to make life available to their ability and talent to direct operations.he was said to be "quite a character" and "to be traveling surrounded by command cars and a series of impeccably uniformed staff officers. His own vehicle was cheerfully decorated with huge stars and his command insignia. But those displays did not dazzle the troops, as perhaps he believed. On the contrary, it offended them having to walk painfully through the cloud of dust raised by that procession ”. But few of those men hesitated to make life available to their ability and talent to direct operations.he was said to be "quite a character" and "to be traveling surrounded by command cars and a series of impeccably uniformed staff officers. His own vehicle was cheerfully decorated with huge stars and his command insignia. But those displays did not dazzle the troops, as perhaps he believed. On the contrary, it offended them having to walk painfully through the cloud of dust raised by that procession ”. But few of those men hesitated to make life available to their ability and talent to direct operations.it offended them to have to walk painfully through the cloud of dust raised by that procession ”. But few of those men hesitated to make life available to their ability and talent to direct operations.it offended them to have to walk painfully through the cloud of dust raised by that procession ”. But few of those men hesitated to make life available to their ability and talent to direct operations.
More is known about Napoleon's military genius than about his qualities as a leader. Julio Cesar is known for his great achievements and shortly for his leadership characteristics.
Military writers often agree that the ideal leader is a specialist in his task with a similar aptitude when it comes to the human aspects of command.
This is a time plagued with apologies for leadership, but this is not only achieved with character, it is achieved above all from deep knowledge of things.
4.- He who is well prepared will win and stalks an enemy who is not
There is little left to say about the necessary “state of readiness” in which the Organization must always be subject to competitive dynamics in the Market.
Perhaps at this point it is more important to refer to the state of preparation of the competitor.
Under the logic of understanding that every Organization is an open system, permanently conditioned by the influence of the variables of its environment, the state of preparation in which a competitor finds himself depends largely on the "pressure" at which is subject by the own Organization. The procedures that make it possible to achieve and sustain a permanent state of "readiness" must constantly fight with the character of variables found within (many represented by the constituted energies of the Organization) and simultaneously with all those that make up the environment. Among the internal and external variables, however, there are few whose nature specifically seeks to cause an imbalance.The behavior of most of them responds to natural phenomenologies linked to the organizational supra-system: economic trends, market behavior, socio-political variables, cultural aspects, etc. Only the variable represented by the Competition is one that is developed with the sole purpose of causing imbalance in the Organization.
If this variable is managed “under pressure”, that is, with the aim of causing a greater imbalance than that caused naturally, the “ready” state that the competitor sustains will demand so much energy that in fact it will make it more vulnerable. In other words, in the desire to always be prepared and ready due to the pressure to which he feels subjected, the competitor will apply such a level of demand to his strategic resources that he will end up weakening them. This is called "stalking" the enemy. And it is a simple process that seeks to weaken it, taking advantage of its concern to be "always ready". The term "stalking" has nothing to do with having "watched" or "monitor" the competitor, the term refers to the need to intelligently press it,forcing him to sustain high levels of preparation to face "the unknown", wearing out his resources and his psychological state.
The nature of this particular issue has sometimes served to address the issue of "Situation Control", that is to say, to definitively answer the question: which competitor has control of the situation and who does not?
It must be assumed that all actors in the competitive arena pursue similar objectives and execute (or try to do so) strategic premises of the same nature. Each competitive agent is likely to be, theoretically, involved in an effort to "put pressure" on the competitor's readiness states, but in fact most of them are in the victim's position and not the opposite, hardly knowing it. Only one, or a few, depending on the size of the competitive set, are effectively achieving the objective. That competitor is the one who has Control of the Situation. The problem is, again, that all competitors can assume that they are in Situation Control, this being false for most.
In most cases, only the outcome of the actions allows an effective diagnosis to be made of who actually had Situation Control from the start. However, many thinkers of strategic dynamics argue that given the important value and power that security of knowing oneself in Situation Control represents, reaching a verdict on this reality “after” the outcome of the Conflict is an unacceptable cost. Therefore there must be forms that allow establishing “before” and not after which competitive agent has Control of things.
Achieving this knowledge is difficult. And the recommendations to achieve this are inconclusive. Some specialists prefer to concentrate the recommendation on the appropriate administration of the information coming from the intelligence systems and others, those who reflect on a greater strategic depth, suggest that each competitor act as if he was NOT in Control of the Situation and consciously avoided, and therefore the same, the negative effects produced by the requirement to maintain a state of readiness. None of the recommendations exclude the need to always be well prepared and stalk the enemy, they only emphasize the need not to fall into the trap that this represents if there is a competitor who is clearly in control of the situation and therefore conditioning all situations and responses.
The concept of “Situation Control” is too ambitious to become an efficient strategic resource, since the cost involved in reaching the determination is often higher than the uncertain benefit it provides. Control of the Situation is rather a perception that the Organization must have as the Conflict develops. It is the only way to safely approach the issue and act accordingly, without becoming the victim of a ruse by the competitor.
5.- He will win who has capable generals and in whose actions the sovereign does not intervene
The General - Sovereign relationship is so important that of course it is not exempt from the determining conclusion of winning or losing.
The present point rather helps to address the issue of the capacity of STRATEGOS to carry out the strategic interests of the Organization.
STRATEGOS is not a single man. STRATEGOS works as a team, and is in charge of itself, according to the organizational magnitude, a group of Strategos that supports it and is responsible for the fulfillment of specific programs of the Strategy. This determines that the professional capacity of the team is homogeneous, that criteria, values and mechanics are shared in it. All this is even more important than the capacity of the main STRATEGOS.
The way that has been found as appropriate to guarantee the capacity of a team of Strategos working the Strategy, is to get them to share a Doctrine of thought and action. This not only includes technical solvency, it incorporates above all a common vision of the way things should be understood and done. If the Strategos team shares Doctrine, then it is sufficiently trained to guarantee results that come from homogeneous developments. These results will not be optimal exclusively due to the quality of Education, Training or Training they have, they will be, above all, based on a shared Doctrine. When a state of "indoctrination" is reached, all people think and understand things as others do,they are rational replicas of a model, a concept and a work philosophy. This reduces the need to direct and control actions every moment and in every situation. Thus, the necessary tactical freedom required by the team that develops the Strategy is achieved, simultaneously guaranteeing the adoption of shared motives for conduct.
Now, this Doctrine is not necessarily the one that the Organization itself sets out for the understanding of its own reality. This is a Doctrine that is shared among Strategos beyond organizational margins; It is a Doctrine that is specifically linked to the strategic theme, to the way it is understood among team members, to the way it is lived as it interacts closely with the Conflict. This Doctrine is the heritage of the Strategos team and not necessarily of the Organization, it is linked to the hierarchy and professional capacity of the team members, it exists before and after the organizational interests, although in essence it is developed and for them it is perfect.
It is true that this statement directly confronts the established understanding and the conceptual conventions that exist on the subject, but it cannot be otherwise if it is understood that the Strategy is essentially a practical orientation towards Action. If the understanding of Strategy does not go beyond the set of ethereal interpretations in which it is usually inserted, that is, the understanding that it constitutes a Plan, an Orientation, a Perspective, a Position, etc., then it may seem appropriate to assume that the Strategy constitutes a patrimony of the Organization. If, on the other hand, it is understood (finally!) That the Strategy is just trying to put the Plan into practice, to put into effect an Orientation, to work with a Perspective or to execute the precepts of a Position,then it will be understood that the heritage corresponds to those people who know how to get it. In the same way that the knowledge of carpentry that a man who works for the Organization has does not correspond to it, in the same way the Strategy does not correspond to him as long as it is understood as a function of STRATEGOS.
The Organization can establish “property rights” on the strategic resources, the results of the Strategy and even, if it finds it pertinent, on the Strategos, but in no case on the Strategy, because it constitutes a process of ordered actions that respond to the professional knowledge of persons circumstantially linked to the Organization.
If it is necessary to resort to elements that further exemplify the idea, then it will be said that the Strategy is a "software", not a "hardware"; its attributes have no physical character, on the contrary, they are found in the depths of the mental structure.
If the Organization wishes to refer to the "heritage" of what the actions to come represent, then it can consider itself the owner of the Vision, the Objectives, Plans, Perspectives, etc. All this has its own name, it is not necessary to resort to the concept of Strategy. On the other hand, and at the end of the road, STRATEGOS only owns what it knows, and this also has its own name, it is called Strategy.
Excerpt from the book: STRATEGOS and 23 Strategic Principles for the fight in the Market. Indispensable clarifications of the concepts of Strategy, Business and Competition
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AUTHOR'S DATA.-
Carlos Eduardo Nava Condarco, a native of Bolivia, lives in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, is a Business Administrator and Entrepreneur. He currently works as Manager of his Company, Business Strategy and Personal Development Consultant, writer and Entrepreneur Coach. Author of several books on Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy and Personal Development, including:
“Entrepreneurship is a way of life. Development of Entrepreneurial Awareness ”
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