The basic nature of the Strategy as a management element is closely and inseparably associated with the Conflict.
The Conflict is the cause that justifies the raison d'être of the Strategy as a model of thought and action. Without the existence of the Conflict, the Strategy would never have been born between the molds of human reasoning, and if the Conflict itself did not evolve and transform in a dramatic way as it does every moment, then the Strategy would have been only a careful thought to solve problems.
The Value that the Strategy has as an element of organizational governance is owed to the Value that the Conflict has between men and the organizations that they have created. Conflict and Strategy nurture each other, one evolves as a result of the other's evolution.
The only vital difference between the dynamics of the Conflict and the dynamics of the Strategy lies in the fact that the Conflict may have many parents, but the Strategy in essence only has one. The driving elements of the Conflict are innumerable, both impersonal and personal, without any distinction of time (because the Conflict transcends the physical boundaries of time) or of space.
The Conflict is omnipresent and independent of individual driving forces. No one can assume paternity over the Conflict because he is a child of a thousand fathers.
Instead the Strategy does have a father, the Strategos, an individual, a person.
The essence of the difficulty (and of course of the Value itself) that Strategy has, stems from this unbalanced relationship between a man and an absolutely impersonal, timeless and, of course, amoral phenomenon.
Whoever does not know the nature and character of the Conflict succumbs to it. That is why the Strategos must base his knowledge of Strategy on the specific knowledge of the Conflict. In this lies the guarantee of the effectiveness of the results, beyond the plan and beyond the program.
Definition of Conflict.
A common dictionary says of Conflict the following: “The toughest thing in a fight. Point at which the outcome of the fight appears uncertain. Fig. Combat and anguish of mind. Fig. Trouble, unfortunate situation and difficult exit. Psicol. unpleasant emotional situation, caused by the tension between opposing desires… "
Conflict is therefore a "determined state of affairs", one that is also characterized by presenting difficulties and which clearly explains the existence of a combat, a "fight". A state that causes anguish of mind and haste, which represents an unfortunate situation with a difficult exit.
The definition also implies that this "situation of things" arises as an effect of "tension between opposing desires." This clearly means that the Conflict does not have an emergent character detached from a causal relationship.
There is a specific reason for the emergence of the Conflict, and this is related to the existence of "opposing desires." In a combat, in a fight, opposing desires are faced and the effect of this provokes the character of the elements that qualify a Conflict.
"Desires", on the other hand, are a product of interest. Nobody wants anything that is not involved between their interests or between perceptions of utility and benefit. When the desire to fulfill these interests is faced with opposing interests, the Conflict arises.
On the other hand, for the Conflict to exist, the interests will have to “mobilize”, that is, they will have to emerge from a passive state to an active one that seeks its concrete realization.
When two or more interests are in an active state, seeking their fulfillment and improvement, the strongest degree of Conflict occurs. Self-interests confront opposing interests and each seeks to prevail over the other. The foreseeable effect of this action (because in its active state interests lead precisely to action), can only lead to one result: one interest prevails over the other, one interest prevails and the other does not. In this logic it is very difficult to understand intermediate states or partial results. To establish that a particular Conflict has ended, it is also necessary to establish which interest has prevailed and which interest has disappeared.
This is the nature of the components of a Conflict and with it the Strategos must interact from his humble condition as a human being.
Conceptually the Conflict never disappears. Among the group, some disappear, others change and new ones appear, but it is irrational to suppose that the social dynamic lives free of Conflict at any given moment. The very nature of the human being prepares him to face the Conflict, the human species has proven to be the most evolved to overcome setbacks.
It is not, therefore, about learning to live with the Conflict or assuming a perpetual interaction with it, these two elements are discounted because they do not represent anything new. It is about man knowing how to act with Advantage over the Conflict, that he can anticipate its development and its negative consequences, that he can handle the Conflict better than others, so that in this way he achieves a second advantage, one of a strictly competitive.
There are two very important starting points to learn more about the nature of the Conflict:
- In the first place, the Conflict is not alien to anyone. All human beings and all the Organizations that it has formed, live perpetually between conflicts of the most diverse nature. There is not a single person in the world who can claim otherwise.
And as curious as this may seem, here lies precisely the most appropriate way to treat the Conflict. When people and organizations encounter conflict lose focus, the dynamics of the Conflict immediately prevail over everything else, to a point where most of the effort goes into working on the Conflict.
There is a very emotional response to Conflict, very personal, often excessively subjective, almost always conditioned by pressure, even by anxiety.
Although it is not always recognized, Conflict causes Despair and this is the worst state in which decisions can be made and answers can be established.
The perception of the Conflict can be very different from the understanding that it is absolutely not alien to anyone. As long as a person or an Organization is facing a Conflict, everything else is doing it simultaneously, only the forms and degrees of difficulty change.
It is likely that this argument lacks the necessary forcefulness in the case of people in particular, since it does not help much in treating one's own Conflict to understand that all other people are also facing theirs, but in the case of organizations subject to important dynamics of competition, the fact has transcendental relevance.
The Strategos must fully understand that the Competitor is also facing conflict permanently. Therefore, the Conflict itself does not represent a differentiating element, it does not in itself constitute an advantage or a disadvantage, it is a variable that ultimately acquires a completely neutral value.
If the Conflict as such is a neutral factor for the purposes of competitive dynamics, given that it has a similar and simultaneous presence among all the competing agents, the difference can only be defined by the way in which conflicts are faced and treated by each of the agents. Herein lies the only and exclusive difference and from here emerges the possibility of obtaining an advantage. The non-existence of the Conflict is not an advantage, because it is a state that in turn does not exist. The way you deal with the Conflict is the advantage.
And advantage, of course, is closely associated with opportunity. Where there is a chance to find an advantage, there is an opportunity.
On the other hand, opportunities are sought, not expected, therefore it is important to seek the advantage and in this process find the Conflict itself.
The statement that there is an Opportunity behind every Conflict is much more than a comforting phrase, it is a powerfully logical summary of reality.
Now, it is a logic that is reserved for those who have been able to develop the necessary skills to face the Conflict with advantage. When the Strategos is at the precise point of those who have the knowledge and the ability to extract advantages from Conflict, then he will easily become someone who Seeks conflicts because he understands that among them, precisely, are the most important opportunities.
And it is very difficult to compete against someone who specifically finds his main opportunities and advantages in the Conflict, because this essentially goes against human nature itself, that which conditions man in a negative way with respect to the Conflict.
- Second, every Conflict has a structure and a mechanics. This of course takes him away from any "twilight zone."
The structure and mechanics of a Conflict are astonishingly simple:
Conflict Structure
a) Conflicts have no Order, they appear in very different ways and in multiple ways.
b) Conflicts are not presented with any consideration of Time or Moment, they are absolutely timeless.
c) There are Conflict Generating Elements, which can be identified and specified. In an Organization, the elements that generate conflict can be found inside or outside of it. Both differ exclusively by the capacity and degree of control that can exist over them, the internal elements have a more controllable nature, the external elements are always more uncontrollable.
Each conflict-generating element has a certain level of energy, depending on its character. Since this energy comes from a Conflict it is necessarily energy of a negative nature.
Paradoxically, the conflicts that occur within organizations are those that usually have the most energy and are the most dangerous factors of all. In most cases, they occur less frequently but deserve the greatest care.
Internal conflicts are very different from those that emerge from competitive dynamics and in many cases Strategos detracts from them or is technically diminished to understand and deal with them. In any case, it cannot be forgotten that internal conflicts take away enormous competitive capacity from the Organization and make it, of course, much more vulnerable to external conflicts.
On the other hand, the sum of energies that is produced by the simultaneous existence of internal and external conflicts can end the Organization much more easily than in the case of the exclusive existence of external conflicts.
History presents other illustrative cases of large organizations that ended up essentially destroyed by the effect of their internal conflicts: the Roman Empire, for example.
Organizations must act with the greatest pressure on the elements that generate internal Conflict. They are under the highest level of control and should be, on the other hand, the least presented.
The most important element that generates external Conflict for organizations is Competition. She is not only particularly interested in generating Conflict, but it is also inevitable due to the confrontation of opposing interests.
d) Conflicts do not differ from one another only by the nature of their own nature, they differ essentially by the effect they can cause between their own interests. This effect can be measured based on the Risk or Danger that the existence of this Conflict represents.
When conflicts are viewed as a whole, without any discrimination between them, they can seem truly scary. In fact, the synergy that can occur between them comes to present a picture of this nature. However, the mere fact of discriminating conflicts between more or less risky, more or less dangerous for one's own interests, defines the situation in a more practical way, because it allows prioritizing and focusing action.
In no case can it be intended to work on conflicts as a whole. They must be attacked one by one, with concentrated focus and resources (this is a basic strategic principle). And the most effective way to do this is to work first on the conflicts that pose the greatest degree of risk or danger. Many of the other conflicts can have their supporting element in these others and can therefore disappear simultaneously.
The thousand-year-old Eastern philosophy, which pays a wise cult to patience, has always expressed that the best way to solve problems is by acting on them "one by one", with method, with focus, with concentration. From then on it is easier to understand that everything in life can have a solution, or what is the same, to understand that at the end of everything: "if there is no solution… there is no problem!"
e) Conflicts have a Support Structure, which is obviously made up of a set of the conflicts themselves and the effects they have caused. When a Conflict takes root in the Organization and is firmly “embedded” in it, it constitutes a supporting structure for many additional and subsequent conflicts. From this structure the Conflict takes “body” in the Organization.
There comes a time when the observer is unable to appreciate the Conflict beyond the "body" it has taken; its structural elements have been mimicked with the character of the Organization itself. In this situation every possible effort can be made to attack the Conflict, but as long as its support structure is not affected, no result will be satisfactory. On the other hand, when working on the Conflict support structure, the entire “body” easily falls apart.
Not only the Strategos for the case of the Organization, also all people must make a thorough review of the nature of the conflicts they face, to direct efforts towards their support structures. This is achieved with the methodical analysis of causal relationships, to the point of finding the origin, the essential cause of the existence of the main Conflict. Doing this is much more difficult than it sounds, because it can actually be very expensive, uncomfortable, and probably painful. People and organizations face this process with the same fear that a patient faces the need to “remove the tumor” to attack the disease. The patient prefers to avoid this extreme and trusts the treatment that attacks the "effects", until the "cause" is remedied.
In many cases this is not possible, and in all of them the method is ineffective.
In the case of competitive dynamics, any action that lacks effectiveness weakens the Strategy and complicates the general picture.
f) Conflicts have an important multiplier effect. Conflict creates more conflict in a progressive relationship that can be endless. The existence of a Conflict causes weakness between the basic structures of development of people and organizations, and this weakness constitutes an element that facilitates the multiplication of the Conflict.
This situation becomes much more complex and dangerous when it is also “built” on the weakness that the Conflict has caused. Without necessarily realizing it, people and organizations continue to build their platforms of life and work on structures that are weakened by the presence of a Conflict. This not only completes a general state of weakness, but also adds strength to the Conflict itself.
For this reason it is very difficult to calculate the scope of a Conflict. It feeds on its own effects with ease and speed unmatched by the ability of individuals and organizations to generate responses.
In addition, the very fact of wanting to calculate the effects of a Conflict can be an idle procedure that only contributes to increasing the problem, because its multiplier effects are not only violent, they are also completely unpredictable.
The faster you act on a Conflict, the less likely it is that its multiplying dynamics will occur.
g) Finally, one of the most important structural factors of the Conflict is that both people and organizations learn with relative ease to "live" with it. These situations reach such degrees of normality that their very character moves. And this last term is not chosen here by chance, because the reality of this final characteristic of the structure of the Conflict is at the same time the saddest of all.
Probably as an unconscious demonstration of helplessness (which in many cases is disguised as pragmatism), people and organizations demonstrate an astonishing ability to coexist with Conflict. But not in the sense of recognizing that the Conflict is omnipresent and perpetual, but in the sense of not necessarily acting on it and rather elaborating complex structures of "coexistence" with it. People and organizations learn to live with Conflict much more easily than learning the very nature of Conflict and how to attack it can represent them.
When this situation occurs, the Conflict has triumphed, and the competitive nature of the Organization (and of the people themselves) has an intrinsic weakness that reduces the time until a final and conclusive negative outcome occurs.
The enormous problem with this last feature of the Conflict is that its origin is linked to some of the darkest features of human nature.
For some reason (which, on the other hand, is very difficult to assess calmly), man is a being incredibly drawn to tragedy. The human being develops with the idea that life is difficult and that you must have the necessary character to endure and accept difficulties, setbacks and failure. The closest cultural environment prepares man to be strong enough to bear the setbacks that he will necessarily encounter on his way through life. And it prepares you very effectively for this, to the point that you forget to develop the basic skills that allow you to face and overcome problems, beyond your ability to bear them.
Traditional culture teaches that the "strong man" endures suffering with nobility and does not complain. Male children are taught in the mother's home that they "should not cry" for any reason (as if the child were able to discriminate easily). Many pseudo-religious precepts warn man that each one has, by force, "a cross to carry in life," etc.
This school of life ends up forming men with an admirable capacity for resistance, with a natural disposition to "endure" the character of setbacks and, ultimately, with an emotional disposition to "coexist" with this setback. Even with the idea that this process strengthens and qualifies manhood, differentiating the brave from the coward, the strong from the weak.
The approach is, of course, completely wrong. There is no reason to think that man cannot be formed precisely to avoid and overcome Conflict, annoyance, and suffering. First of all (and after all), life is a set of practical events, of short and unrepeatable experiences, with narrow margins for error and wasted opportunities. The processes in life are designed for agility, for the precise combination of force and movement. This requires people with an open and positive mind, people who have the almost cultural conviction that the challenge lies in finding the solution and not necessarily in having the ability to bear the problem. All the great men who have lived among us have shown it,each of them is a remarkable example of victories over setbacks, solving problems, eliminating conflicts. No one lived with the problem, because if it had been like that we would not have left the caverns.
Mechanics of Conflict.
a) Conflicts have driving elements that make them dynamic, at least this is the case in their initial stage, before they acquire dynamics of an inertial nature as an effect of their own magnitude and strength.
The driving elements can be individuals, concrete situations or particular phenomena and all of them can be easily identified by the specific function they fulfill as “driving agents” of the development and evolution of the Conflict. These driving elements are, in many cases, part of the opposing interests called by force to generate conflict. In other cases, they appear randomly, as an inescapable part of the general dynamic in which all individuals and organizations are registered.
Without the existence of the driving element, the emergence of the Conflict is a mere matter of chance and its development does not occur beyond what the energy of inertia allows.
On the other hand, and given that the driving elements can be perfectly identified, the Conflict itself can be properly controlled by acting on the elements that provide it with mobility, strength and vitality.
One of the driving elements of Conflict in organizations is the Competition. She is naturally interested in creating conflicts to make her own interests prevail.
This reality presents the necessary space to make a substantive consideration of some theories that propose different orientations on how to understand and work on competitive aspects.
The strategic logic proposes that the priority of the organizational work should be aimed at fighting the competitor, in order to affect their strength, neutralize their movements and leave them behind in the results of the competitive fight. The strategic logic is oriented to the competitor before the client himself, who is the final recipient of these efforts.
Other thinkers argue that the main focus of organizational attention should be represented, in any case, by the client, since the effects of this attention directly provide the competitive advantage that is needed. The main concern of those who hold this orientation is eminently teleological in nature, because they argue (with good reason) that the raison d'être or the ultimate goal of organizational efforts is customer satisfaction. As long as this situation occurs, the Business is perfected and with it the organizational well-being.
In this spectrum of analysis the differences are very subtle but at the same time very important. No one can, in any case, deny the definitive importance of the client for the reason of being and the daily work of the Organization. The problem arises when the Organization's efforts to meet customer expectations are affected, altered, and compromised by the action of a competitor who is working with exactly the same orientation and to achieve the same objectives. This necessarily disturbs one's action, distorts it and takes away its vitality.
When the Organization begins to feel the effects of the “interference”, it realizes that there are unfulfilled objectives, affected resources, delays and postponements. All this immediately becomes a direct Conflict for the Business and for the organizational well-being.
It is important to differentiate a couple of things: the customer is not always a source of Conflict for the Organization, instead the competition always is. Therefore and essentially to avoid the effects of the Conflict, the Organization is obliged to maintain its orientation based on the competitor even before the client, assuming rather that the final effect of this process will necessarily present the best option for the client.
In a perfect world (without competition), the client is the guiding element of all organizational work. In the imperfect world in which we operate, the client is a Judge who establishes determinations on the arguments made by the different organizations that try to obtain his favor.
On the other hand, this is the best thing that can happen to the client (it would be enough to ask him!), Because here the genuine Power that he has is clearly perfected: the Power to choose what is best for him. The ability to choose occurs only in competitive scenarios.
The Americans would like to classify the Business Game among the "big leagues", because obviously that is the magnitude and character it has. In the "big leagues" of Business, good intentions are only part of the "desire to do something", from then on an Organization can only do what the competition allows it to do, or seen in another way it can only do what you want once you have taken care to neutralize the competitor that prevents you.
Conflict theory is therefore an important factor to determine that the orientation of an Organization passes mainly through respect for the nature of the Strategy and its action on the competitor, the same as being the main driving force behind its own conflicts., at least, this simple consideration.
b) The second important consideration in the mechanics of conflicts is that these are, in general, small, weak and vulnerable the moment they arise or the moment they arise, affecting the interests of individuals or organizations. Conflicts are never bigger the moment they appear, than they can become later, once the necessary margin has been given for them to develop.
The opportunity to attack a Conflict with greater advantage is presented exclusively at the moment of its initial appearance.
c) On the other hand, conflicts grow because people and organizations let them grow, conflicts are fueled by the lack of will to end them. And when this happens to a significant extent, one's own will may be insufficient to favorably end a Conflict.
At this point, it is good to take again that definition of Strategy that Beaufre so aptly puts forward: "… dialectic of wills, using force to resolve conflicts". The will is absolutely necessary, not only to reach a favorable solution for the Conflict, but also so that the Conflict itself does not reach us.
Now, an important precision is found specifically in the plural that Beaufre assigns to the term: “wills”. With this he implies that the will does not correspond only to one of the agents of the conflict equation, rather to more than one, probably to many. From this it only remains to imagine the proportion that a Conflict can reach when one of the agents lacks the will to tackle it and the others also have this will.
The dialectical process requires repeated interaction, Approach and rethinking of positions based on the effects established by the interaction, each approach must have higher quality from the results obtained by the previous one and in this way the evolution of a state and other. Of course, none of this exists if the specific will of the parties to take action with respect to the Conflict has not been expressed.
Few things have more value to favorably resolve conflicts and to develop successful strategies than a powerful Force of Will. These struggles are not reserved for genius. An adage of great wisdom states that success is a formula in which a drop of genius and many liters of sweat must be mixed. Can not it be a different way!
d) Conflicts always present symptoms that anticipate their arrival. This is a factor in the mechanics of Conflict that cannot be ignored because it is probably the one that represents the greatest benefit for efforts aimed at working on it.
As people and organizations acquire the necessary skill to identify the symptoms that precede Conflict, they will have found the shortest way to reach and have Advantage over it.
A latent Conflict is not the same as an open Conflict. Between the two there is a long stretch of cost and opportunity. The possibility of actively working on the former notably optimizes all the effort, because it allows the person, or the Organization, to focus their efforts on tasks of a pro-active nature. It should not be forgotten at any time that no matter how much the nature of the Conflict is known and that in essence it is considered to have the necessary skills to act on it to advantage, the task always demands a significant investment of resources and time. When working on a Conflict, personal and organizational energies tend to focus significantly on it, consequently subtracting energy for the rest of the tasks.As much as the Conflict may represent a set of opportunities (at least that is what the strategic logic pretends), its treatment places the Organization's resources and time in a “reactive” state. And in the competitive world this must always be interpreted as an opportunity cost.
The most practical and skillful way to avoid opportunity cost is to work on Conflict when it shows its first symptoms. At this stage, the savings in time and effort that can be achieved are evident, in addition to the fact of obtaining greater control over the unpredictable consequences that a manifest Conflict may have.
