The Warrior Class Blog

Strategy starts with the idea that every single person on earth has a unique position and a unique set of goals. It teaches that we can work together when we share a mission, but it is our individual uniqueness and our individual human creativity that makes progress possible in an infinite number of predictable directions. This is the most magical aspect of Sun Tzu’s classical strategy and the deep, vibrant heart of its power. It is also why those who believe in classical strategy must reject the idea that any elite can know what is best for other people. The world is billions of individual positions and billions of individual missions and billions of creative mind. Social engineers “fixing” the flaws of individuals through social programs, are, at their core misguided. This article that describes population control as a “war against babies” says it all. People who don’t recognize both the uniqueness and power of each individual think that they are saving the world by controlling population, but they are actually destroying it. This is why social movements such as communism (mostly via starvation) and environmentalism (via malaria from bans against DDT and via starvation via fears of genetic engineering and energy development) end up killing tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of people in their clumsy, wrong-headed search for the common good through social control rather than individual empowerment. In the end, progress demands faith: both in our fellow individual humans and in the guiding hand of the universe (and its God) while destruction comes from fear of others and doubt in the universe.

The value of thinking in terms of advancing positions is that it allows you to easily clarify complicated question . For example, Sun Tzu taught that every meeting between opponents (even meetings that didn’t result in conflict) changed their relative positions. So you avoid meetings that will damage your position and encourage meeting that will help your position. Simple. Right?

For example, take Obama’s pledge that, if he is president, he will meet with America’s opponents like Iran’s Ahmadinejad unconditionally. While this sounds noble and civilized, it looks very different if you ask how such a meeting will change positions.

It would automatically give Ahmadinejad more credibility as a leader of Islamic extremism. It would give him a very public platform to attack America and Israel. It would give him an opportunity to demonstrate his “firmness” regarding terror or nuclear weapons in the face of a US president which could only further enhance his reputation in the region.

Okay, so how would such a meeting help America’s position? At least Neville Chamberlain returned from his meeting with Hitler with a worthless promise. We wouldn’t even get that much from Ahmadinejad because he is ONLY rewarded for “standing up to America.” So what is the point of Obama’s promise to do meet other than giving an enemy the opportunity to humiliate us. Anyone?

UPDATE: Jack Kelly offers this history lesson for Obama about talking to enemies.

UPDATE: Obama’s people are now denying that he said that he would meet with Iran despite, you know, saying that he would.

There is a difference between the controlled spaces within organizations and the chaotic regions between them. For both businesses and states, systems that work within do not work without. Living within a society of laws, we mistakenly think that people can always come to agreements without the use of force. But classical strategy teaches that agreement is impossible outside of a framework of shared values and goals. At the very least, opponents must share our fear of loss. This is why Fredrick the Great said, “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”

When it comes, for example, to Iran, all the presidential candidate understand that they must make the threat of war believable if they are to avoid war over Iran getting nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, it is difficult for Democratic candidates to say this clearly because a part of the Democratic base has cast America into the role of the “aggressor” rather than as an historic “defender.” Countries such as Iran are reflexively portray as victims of American “aggression,” because too many think that the space between countries is somehow controlled. The truth is that countries such as Palestine, Israel (both via Hamas), Lebanon (via Hezbullah), and Iraq are being attacked by Iran on a regular basis using their terrorist proxies. Expect those attacks to continue and spread until Iran comes to believe they will pay a price.

Strategic positions exist both in space and time. Positions are not a point on the map but a path that evolves or degrades over time. The single most common strategic mistake is making judgments based on “snap shot” that doesn’t show the relative changes and the speed of those changes. This brings me to a topic I lasted visited in this post, the problem that the Democratic Party has picking successful presidential candidates. A primary system could capture position dynamics if it gave the later state primaries, when the candidates are better known, more delegates than primaries early in the process. The influence of states like Iowa and New Hampshire who pick delegates early would trade that influence for fewer delegates. Those who waited to see more of the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses would get more delegates to reflect their more informed viewpoints. This system would also provide an automatic disincentive for states wanting to go early in the process. It would also give good candidates more of an incentive to stay in the race, which right now tends to pick candidates too quickly before they are thoroughly vetted.

The science of strategy teaches that all problems are secretly opportunities in disguise. Converting a problem to an opportunity requires the process of “reversal,” which means turning a situation upside down and backwards, looking for the opportunity. This is a confusing idea for most people, but we have a good example. Let us look at Obama’s problem with Rev. Wright. Since the problem is about Obama’s past beliefs and associations, Obama needs to reverse it and make it about his future actions and associations. The common mistakes are either trying to avoid the topic (which just arouses more interest), rewriting the past (which invites more exposures), or getting vague about the past (which makes Obama seem either foolish or disingenuous). Instead of avoiding talking about this issue, he must talk about it intensely. Instead of rewriting the past, he must write the future. Instead of being vague about the past, he must get very clear and detailed about the future.

What does this mean? Obama must talk about what the Wright situation has taught him and how he will act differently in the future. He must talk about how Wright’s ideas are wrong for the future. He should use contradicting Wright’s specific statements to return to his main mission of moving on from partisan and racial divisions of the past. He should look at all of Wright’s statements and reverse them to connect to his mission. He should talk about how spreading government-created-AIDs undermines the idea of an transparent government. He should talk about how confusing even wrong-headed American military action with terrorism plays into the hands of terrorists and makes it harder to protect America. He should talk about how the kind of racial stereotypes the Rev. Wright offers destroys our ability to get past racial and political divisions and work together to solve common problems. He needs to turn every conversation about Wright into a conversation about how his experience with Rev. Wright has taught him lessons that few other politicians understand. Instead of trying to change the subject to talk about issues, he should

use the subject to talk about issues

. If this is done well and honestly, it gives Obama a way to use Wright instead of running from him for the many months remaining in the election.

Classical strategy teaches that progress is always possible and that we are more likely to have to adapt to change from progress than from failure. On the radio and at public events, I hear from people who are certain that things have never been so bad. As a response, I plan to memorize this paragraph from a recent George Will column:

Since 1960, real per capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor’s degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2 percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled …

Each step in the listen-aim-move-claim cycle connects the four external factors of a position. Listening, specifically, connects conditions on the ground to leadership. We have to rely upon the ground to tell us whether or not reality is what we think it should be or not. This makes the most interesting message from the ground are those that don’t fit our preconceptions.

For example, recently local Republican committees first in N. Carolina and most recently in Mississippi have been running ads opposing Democratic candidates. Their secret weapon? The fact that their local candidates support Obama and, specifically, those candidates haven’t made any statements denouncing Obama’s minister Rev. Wright various negative statements about America, an attack that the local candidate cannot defend themselves against without dividing their own constituents. Having this occur once in interesting, but having it happen twice is a trendline. If this is happening already, before Obama is the official nominee, what does it tell us about the election in November? In terms of supporting Hillary’s argument to the super-delegates about being the best candidates, this is a persuasive argument. Sun Tzu teaches us that self-interest is the most certain motivation. As elected officials, nothing is more likely to convince the super-delegates that Obama is a problem than thought about how his associations might be used against them when they run for re-election.

In my last post, I discussed the need to get internal methods in sync with external competition. However, this comes from leadership. In classically strategy, the job of a leader is to make the tough decisions about winning by judging the nature of the ground and the changes in the climate. Someone who makes popular or easy decisions while ignoring the ground and climate is a no leader at all. For example, the Democratic super delegates consist theoretically of party “leaders,” meaning that they are charged with these decisions, but Obama wants to absolve them of that role by saying that they should merely confirm whoever is ahead at the end of the primaries. If their job is to pick the best candidate, they have to examine not just the votes but what the votes mean in terms of competitive position. They must look at the ground and climate. In terms of the ground, Hillary has proven to be stronger than Obama in the large battleground states that have decided the last four elections and will decide the next one. But even more important is climate because situations are dynamic. Pennsylvania’s vote indicates that Obama’s appeal is fading due to his statements about guns, religion, Rev. Wright, Ayers, and so on. Indiana is pivotal in confirming that the political climate has indeed changed. If the super delegates have an ounce of leadership skill, they will realize that any Obama’s losses after these revelations say much, much more about what will happen in November than his wins before them.

Every organization should reward the internal behavior the generates external competitive results, but many organizations create internal reward systems that are at add with winning external rewards. Classical front-line strategy teaches that every competitive arena (ground) has its own rules. The rules of making a profit in business are different from the rules from winning a baseball game and both are different from the rules that winning an election. While classical strategy teaches the “meta-rules” that apply to all human competition, one of those rules is that decision-makers (leaders) have to develop reward systems (methods) that take into account the rules of the ground. Unfortunately, this rule is often ignored. For example, not every compensation system in business rewards business profitability or growth. But the best example of this is one of my favorite topics, the failure of the Democrats to win presidential elections. As pointed out in this blog post, if the Democratic primaries were designed to emulate the electoral college system that determines the selection of the president, Hillary, not Obama would have the nomination wrapped up. Because their nomination process is out of synch with the election system, the Democrats create a disadvantage for themselves where none is needed.

Stephen Pierce, one of our Institute trainers, writes:

If you watched the debate last night, I’d be interested in your take on it. Heck, what’s you take on Hillary’s attack campaign that seems to be bringing everyone day… EXCEPT for McCain.

Hillary missed her opportunity to position her attacks as a “vetting” process to test Obama’s metal, so her attacks hurt her as much as Obama. However, Hillary is in a desperate situation so she has very little to lose. As always, Hillary’s attacks are less important than Obama’s reaction and he didn’t react well. He should have gone into last night knowing Stephanopoulis would be playing for team Hillary and that Gibson is always tough, but Obama clearly wasn’t emotionally prepared for the rather relentless attacks from them as well as Hillary. In those situations, you can only disarm your opponents by playing against type: with easy humor and self-deprecation. Obama can do that as well as any politician but he couldn’t get in the state of mind last night. Better for him to learn these lessons now rather than in the months leading up to the general election when the pressure will get much greater.

Though the debate focused on the “gotcha” issues, the real problem for the Democrats is still the deep division between the two halves of the party: the urban profession/young and the blue collar worker/elderly. Obama’s real problem is not understanding the blue-collar/elderly state of mind and this is where he keeps getting into trouble. The urban professional wing of the party keeps nominating candidates that appeal to them but who, at the same time, alienate too much of the blue collar/elderly vote. Obama is a bright guy with such an appealing personality that he can win over anyone, but he has to understand how this crtical part of his party thinks before he can win the presidency.

I agree, right now, McCain is the only benefactor from both the conflict between Hillary and Obama and the split in the party.

We all know the old adage, “Look before you leap.” When looking at new potential strategic positions, classical strategy evaluates three dimensions called distances, obstacles, and dangers. The “dangers” dimension consists of positions that get you stuck. This means that getting out of them is difficult or dangerous. The only time to avoid a dangerous position is before you get into it, but danger is often difficult to foresee. In this recent article billionaire businessman Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, comments on the Obama campaign pointing out how dangerous it has become, saying:

“Geraldine Ferraro said it right. The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial … it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything.”

In trying to get beyond race with the Obama candidacy, we are in danger of getting embroiled in it. If Obama loses the nomination, there will unquestionably be charges of racism, but the Democratic Party’s position as the party of the black community may give it a degree of insulation. However, if Obama loses the general election, especially in the type of close elections we have seen now for decades, the charges of racism could turn uglier that the “election stealing” charges we heard after Bush’s elections. And, if Obama was elected, the problem doesn’t go away either, unfortunately. If as Johnson says now, “it is almost impossible for anyone to say anything,” what does this mean for political opposition after the election? Is anyone who opposing a black president automatically a racist?

This is a dangerous situation for Obama and he would be wise to defuse it rather than play to it. Making race a non-issue is the philosophical core of his campaign. Instead of attacking Ferraro, he should have sympathized with her point of view and defended her against attacks of racism, making it clear that race is an issue but that he will work to make it a non-issue.

Strangely enough, this problem has less to do with Obama’s race than the potent combination of party and philosophy. Obama can control that philosophy. If a black, conservative candidate ran as a Republican and lost or won, race would almost certainly not be an issue. As Clarence Thomas can attest, conservative blacks are not defended in the same way by charges of racism. Instead they are attacked as somehow insufficiently racial.

Mission is the core of a strategic position and defines the other four elements: climate, ground, leadership, and methods. The connection between mission and ground is especially important. Recently, we discussed how unity from a shared mission creates strength and how spread-out ground positions are inherently weak. There is a strong connection between these two issues. This is illustrated by the Obama statements about small-town PA people to contributors in San Francisco. This is less about Obama’s elitism than it is about the deep division in the Democratic Party between the blue-collar, union older Democrats who are Hillary supporters and the younger, urban professionals who are Obama supporters. In talking to his supporters using their world view, he cannot help but alienate the other half of the party. Obama’s urban sensibilities are not a problem with his core supporters who share the same feelings. Their wealth is what allows Obama to run a constant stream of television commercials in places like Pennsylvania. In talking to his supporters using their world view, Obama cannot help but alienate the other half of the party. Hillary has the same problem of alienating the young, urban professional by catering to blue-collar sentiments. Unfortunately for Hillary, they are not as wealthy as Obama’s half of the party.
Update: Love this article about Obama’s cultural disconnect. The money quotes:

Speaking to small-town voters in Iowa last year, he [Obama] asked, “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?”

While Republicans tend to nominate their best-known candidate from previous nomination battles (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and now John McCain), Democrats often fall in love during a first date. They are then surprised when all the relatives don’t think he’s splendid.

The mist common strategic mistake is confusing dynamic positioning with planning. Classical strategy is the fluid response to the immediate situation, not the execution of predetermined steps. The unpredictability of the environment is the real enemy. Military leaders have to be the first to understand this. For example, the Iraqi military is becoming effective today primarily for one reason: they are learning to respond to the situation instead of fearfully following orders. In the words of INSTAPUNDIT’S IRAQ CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes:

What I have seen in the area of Iraq I have been working is an Iraqi Army that is showing that it can adapt and improve. This is a major step forward for them, if you consider their previous Army’s showings against the Iranians and us. They were inflexible, repeated mistakes and feared reprisals for even suggesting a change.

Our Master Trainer, Alan Elder, critiques this article in Harvard Business Review about strategy. It is well worth sharing with readers of this blog.

The premise is if you can’t articulate your strategy in less than 35 words and have others articulate it in basically the same way then execution will not happen. In addition, the emphasis is on ONE strategy only. If you have the ONE strategy, and tell everyone about it then you can execute.

First of all, I disagree with the premise. I don’t think it’s about having a short “Strategy” that everyone knows that is killing execution. I think it’s one part of strategy; mission. I don’t think most people know the grand strategy of the Boy Scouts and they seem to be doing fine. But, they do know the “spiritual” level mission. The conversation we have to start when we are positioned to own it is the concept of many strategies supporting each other. But, this is impossible as long as we continue to preach that strategy is only for a select group of executives. This is no different than the TQM movement. It started out with the concept that quality is the job of quality professionals. It never worked. Today, more and more, organizations realize quality is everyone’s job. So is strategy.

This is the last sentence of the article that means the most for us:
“The strategy will really have traction only when executives can be confident that the actions of empowered frontline employees will be guided by the same principles that they themselves follow.”
However, the entire article denies any of these people from developing their own strategies.

Here is another interesting quote:
“In an astonishing number of organizations, executives, frontline employees, and all those in between are frustrated because no clear strategy exists for the company or its lines of business. The kinds of complaints that abound in such firms include:
• “I try for months to get an initiative off the ground, and then it is shut down because ‘it doesn’t fit the strategy.’ Why didn’t anyone tell me that at the beginning?”
• “I don’ know whether I should be pursuing this market opportunity. I get mixed signals from the powers that be.”
• “Why are we bidding on this customer’s business again? We lost it last year, and I thought we agreed then not to waste our time chasing the contract!”
• “Should I cut the price for this customer? I don’ know if we would be better off winning the deal at a lower price or just losing the business.”

This is relevant to all of us. Notice the wording.
Obviously this is a matter of communicating strategy at different levels. The mistake I see (and it could be due to my crack pipe) is assuming there is ONE strategy everyone has to learn. The CEO has a strategy. Marketing has its own strategy. The sales team has their own strategy. It’s not about having one strategy everyone knows. It’s about everyone having a strategy that fits together. I can’t begin to imagine the difficulty of decision-making if everyone has the same strategy.

This article also seems to mix campaigns with strategy.

Throughout the entire article it talks about the ONE strategy and in the last paragraph is states:
“Cascading the statement throughout the organization, so that each level of management will be the teacher for the level below, becomes the starting point for incorporating strategy into everyone’s behavior.”

The concept of “winning without conflict” is based on creating positions that attract supporters while being difficult to attack. One problem with large organizations is that, though their growth is always fueled by attracting supporters, as they get larger, they start to think that they don’t need these supporters. Again, Apple offers us a good example in their relationship with Adobe as explained in this article.

In our training programs, we show people how to develop a simple competitive map of their industry using a tool that we call the Strategy Analysis Matrix. This matrix condenses the five competitive dimensions of classical front-line strategy into a two-dimensional representation. The purpose of this tool is to identify the market openings that represent opportunity. One of the companies we use to illustrate the use of this map is Apple. Apple is particularly good at finding the open spaces in the market that others are missing. From the business media, we constantly hear about “the rules” for success, but as this article about Apple explains, reversing the “rules” is an important element of successful front-line strategy.

This article in wired.com discusses the issue of security and the difference between being securing and feeling secure. The article touches on many issues that we study in front-line strategy including the limits on information, the way in which objective and subjective perceptions feed each other and the pivotal role of mission or philosophy, what the author calls the “agenda,” in helping us understand the picture. However, he also doesn’t realize that there is the methods of classical strategy can improve our decisions based on limited information despite the fact that information is always flawed.

Competitive survival begins with the recognition that you cannot control the competitive environment no matter how much of that environment you control. The illusion of control is the most deadly for the biggest companies who lack active competitors. As a book publisher, I have been trying to tell people in this retail book channel how their slow cycle times and costly outdated practices were deadly. But, because the business is dominated by a few large retailers, large wholesalers, large distributors and large publishers, they all felt safe and in control of their markets. They have stuck with planning practices designed to suit their internal organizations rather than the external market. The predictable result is that every large organization in the industry is now failing, even though the book business itself is bigger than ever. From the large retail chains like Barnes and Noble to the large publishers like HarperCollins , it is an industry of aging dinosaurs.

Sun Tzu defined a shared mission as the source of all competitive strength. While conventional wisdom tells us that size is power, the science of strategy teaches the competitive strength is based on unity never size. Strategic positions are not points on the political spectrum. They are path with direction and momentum that is difficult to change. This means that winning internal battles that divide an organization are often Pyhrric victories because the organization itself then dies in external competition. For example, the Democrats are currently much more popular than Republicans. They are getting almost twice as many people to their primaries. However, they are also much closer to losing November’s election. That Democrats current path is leading the party toward such deep divisions that they cannot win in November. The Obama-Clinton split is demographically deep and growing deeper. It will soon, maybe within days not months, no longer matter who wins the nomination. For the last eight years, Democratic unity has been based on oppositions to President Bush. Unless that unifying force is replaced soon, the current split dooms not only their Presidential hopes but their chances to maintain the control of Congress.

The most common strategic mistake is thinking of positions as fixed rather than dynamic. All positions are path, not a point, and that path is affected by everything that happens. Thinking of positions as fixed is most common mistake among politicians. Right now, for example, many are calling the race between Hillary and Obama decided. But, under the surface, positions are changing, first from Obama’s pastor scandal then from Hillary’s sniper blunder. However, as more and more Democrats see videos like this and this , more will realize Obama’s position in the general election is untenable not matter what Hillary’s problems. Expect Hillary to win big in remaining primaries and get her fight over Michigan and Florida. However, as Hillary herself is suffering from self-inflicted wounds, it becomes easier and easier to predict a McCain victory, but, of course, being a politician, he can alway manage his own self-inflicted wound. Less government makes more and more sense in light of the people who we choose to run it.