The following essay was written for a business audience in 1997 as an introduction for a symposium on business and competition.
Gary I. Wilson, Colonel, USMCR
Business, like war, is the art of out-doing the competition. Businesses like armies need to understand the nature of competitive conflict and the benefit of strategic thinking. CEOs devise business plans to win in the market place; generals use strategic thinking to win wars.
Strategic thinking is both an art and a science. The essence of strategic thinking is found in the philosophy of maneuver warfare. This philosophy of maneuver warfare won the Gulf War. It is codified in the U.S. Marine Corps publication Warfighting.
During the Boyd symposium we seek to offer an overall philosophy of winning for business based upon the military concept of maneuver warfare. However, readers from many backgrounds and disciplines will find something of value here.
A common mechanism for winning applicable to both business and military conflict runs throughout. Just as executives relate the Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu’s, Art of War to the market place, our ìBusiness is War” philosophy introduces maneuver warfare to business and public administration.
The Nature of Conflict
The essence of conflict is timeless and ever changing. While the basic nature of conflict is constant, the means and methods we use to cope with conflict unfold continuously. Changes in a conflict may be gradual in some cases and radical in others.
Any change eventually results in the upset of the status quo or equilibrium; for example, dominance in technology has led to Japan’s becoming a global economic power. Japan’s advances in technology have destabilized world technology markets.
Advances in technology create opportunity for change. Technology often improves our chances to quickly capitalize on our own resources. By changing faster we can out pace our competitors.
It is vital to stay ahead in this process of change. We drive change rather than being driven by it. Those who are first to take advantage of change gain a significant if not decisive advantage. On the other hand, if we ignore the change component of conflict, we will find ourselves unequal to its challenges.
Friction
Conflict often appears deceptively simple. In practice any enterprise, be it a business, a military campaign, a boxing match, or a stockholder’s meeting, becomes extremely difficult because of friction. Friction is a force that adversely influences a course of action or plan.
Clausewitz, a revered 19th century military theorist, described friction as, “the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.” Friction is the force that resists all action–it makes the simple difficult and the difficult seemingly impossible.
The very essence of conflict is a clash between opposing wills and this creates friction. It is critical to keep in mind that our competitors are not inanimate objects but are independent and animate forces. The competition seeks to resist our will and impose their own will on us. The give and take between their will and ours makes business difficult and complex. In this environment, friction abounds.
1. What is friction?
Friction may be mental, as in indecision over a course of action or marketing effort. Friction may be physical, as when competitors capture buy need real-estate to expand. Friction may be external, imposed by a competitor’s actions, the state of the economy, or mere chance. Friction may be self-induced, caused by such factors as lack of a clearly defined market objects or poor service to customer.
Whatever form it takes, because business like war is a human enterprise, friction will always have a mental as well as a physical impact.
2. Overcoming friction
We should minimize our friction while increasing that or our rivals. Thus while striving to adapt to friction ourselves, we must attempt at the same time to raise our rival’s friction to a level that destroys their ability to cope. Our greatest need then is to learn to compete while coping with friction. The means we use to handle friction is the will. We prevail over friction through persistent strength of mind and spirit.
We can readily identify countless examples of friction. In business, for example, friction arises through production delays, rapid changes in technology, drops in sales, defective parts, and external competition. But until we have experienced friction ourselves, we cannot hope to appreciate it fully.
Only through experience can we come to appreciate the force of will needed to overcome friction and to develop a realistic appreciation for what is possible in business and what is not. While training should attempt to approximate the conditions of conflict, we must realize it can never fully duplicate the level of friction of the real business world.
Uncertainty
Another characteristic of conflict is uncertainty. We might argue that uncertainty is just one of many sources of friction, but because it is such an important aspect of business or war we will treat it separately.
1. What is uncertainty?
Uncertainty is always found in a conflict. This is similar to what in the military has been called the “fog of war.” Uncertainty may be found in the unknowns about our competition, about the economic environment, and even about our own corporate situation. While we try to reduce these unknowns by gathering information, we must realize we cannot eliminate them. The very nature of conflict makes absolute certainty impossible. Thus, all actions in a conflict will be based on incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information.
At best, we can only hope to determine probabilities and intentions. This implies a certain standard of judgment and insight: what is probable and what is not? With this insight we make an estimate of our rival’s designs and act accordingly. But we also realize that it is precisely those actions which fall outside the realm of probability that often have the greatest impact on the outcome of a conflict.
2. Overcoming uncertainty
We must learn to compete in an environment of uncertainty, which we can do by:
Developing simple, adaptable business and marketing strategies. Planning for the unexpected. Nurturing initiative. Accepting and taking risks.
3. What is the nature of risk?
Risk is inherent in everything we do. Risk is also related to gain–greater risk, greater gain. Risk is common to both action and inaction.
We should concentrate our fighting power in business like war at critical junctures or points. But this means we must be willing to accept prudent risk. There is a difference between calculated risk and a foolhardy gamble.
Risk and Chance
With risk comes the wild card of chance. Chance is a universal and ungovernable characteristic of conflict and is a continuous source of friction. Chance consists of turns of events that cannot be reasonably foreseen and over which we and our competitors have no control. As chance influences unfolding situations, it can unravel us as well as our competitors.
The uncontrollable potential for chance alone creates mental friction. We should remember that chance favors neither us or the competition exclusively. Consequently, we must view chance not only as a threat but also as on opportunity, which we must be ever ready to exploit.
Fluidity
Like friction and uncertainty, fluidity or the need for agility is always part of conflict. The father of maneuver warfare, Col. John Boyd, defines agility as “the ability to shift from one unfolding pattern of ideas and actions to another by being able to transition from one orientation to another.”
The implications for business are clear: to the extent that old corporate ways of doing business lock in certain orientations which hinder the ability to discard the old ways and form new ones. As a result of this rigidity you become less competitive. For example, a manufacturer might use expensive packaging materials such as cardboard or wood instead of styrofoam.
Spontaneous Flow
Events in a conflict are fluid spontaneously flow in and out of each other. This dictates that we creatively seek original solutions. But no event should be seen in isolation. Rather, each merges with those that come before and follow it–shaped by the former and shaping the conditions of the latter–creating a continuous, fluctuating fabric of activity replete with fleeting opportunities and unforeseen events. Success depends in large part on our ability to adapt to a constantly changing situation.
It is physically impossible to sustain a high tempo of activity indefinitely, although clearly there will be times when it is advantageous to push our resources to the limit. In other words, “in high tempo environments, the shorter the timeframe in which strategic decisions are made, the better the firm.” Thus, the tempo of conflict will fluctuate–from periods of intense activity to periods in which activity is limited to information gathering, replenishment, or reorganization. For example, economic conditions–international, national, and local–can influence the tempo of business but need not halt it.
Rivals will try developing an independent competitive rhythm. Each competitor will try to influence and exploit tempo and the continuous flow of events to suit their purposes. Each will try to improve their situation; in business with better profits or greater market shares, and in war by gaining a tactical advantage or developing local superiority.
Disorder
When friction, uncertainty, and fluidity converge, conflict is certain to gravitate toward disorder. Like other characteristics of conflict disorder can never be eliminated.
1. What is disorder?
In the heat of battle between rivals, plans go awry, instructions and information will be unclear and misinterpreted, communications will fail, and mistakes followed by unforeseen events will be commonplace. It is precisely this natural disorder which creates the conditions ripe for exploitation by an opportunistic will. Each encounter in conflict will usually tend to grow increasingly disordered over time. As the situation changes continuously, we are forced to improvise again and again until finally our actions have little, if any, resemblance to our original schemes. For example, could Alexander Graham Bell have envisioned the modern FAX machine?
In any competitive situation, events will not unfold like clockwork. Thus we cannot hope to impose precise, positive control over those events. The best we can hope for is to impose a general framework of order, to prescribe the general flow of action rather than to try to control each event.
If we are to win, we must be able to operate in a disorderly environment. In fact, we must not only be able to compete effectively in the face of disorder, we should seek to generate disorder for our opponent and use it as a weapon against him. For example, because Saddam Hussein tried to defend the entire Kuwaiti border during the Gulf War, he ended up losing all of it. We generated disorder by giving the impress we would attack in force at one place but in reality we attack at another thus disorientating the enemy as to the true focus of the campaign.
The Human Dimension
Because conflict is a clash between opposing human wills, the human dimension is central. The human dimension gives conflict its intangible moral factors.
1. What is the human dimension?
Conflict is shaped by human nature. Conflict is subject to the complexities, inconsistencies, and peculiarities which characterize human behavior. Conflict will invariably be inflamed and shaped by human emotions. Conflict is a trial of moral strength and stamina.
Any view of the nature of conflict would hardly be accurate or complete without consideration of the effects of risk and fear of the unknown on those who make up the corporate or military force. However, these effects vary greatly from case to case. People react differently to the stress of conflict; an act that may break the will of one competitor may only serve to stiffen the resolve of another.
No degree of technological development or scientific calculation will overcome the human dimension in conflict. Any business plan which attempts to reduce business to ratios of sales projections neglects the impact of the human will on the conduct of business and is therefore inherently flawed.
Brinkmanship: Overcoming Fear and Risk
Since business and war are competitive enterprises, brinkmanship is a fundamental characteristic of both. And since competition is a human phenomenon, fear–the human reaction to risk–has a significant impact on the conduct of both enterprises.
All people feel fear. Leadership must foster the courage to overcome fear, both individually and within the corporation. Courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it is the strength to overcome fear.
Leaders and managers must study risk and fear, understand them, and be prepared to cope with them. Like fear, courage takes many forms, from a stoic courage born of reasoned calculation to a fierce courage born of heightened emotion.
Experience generally increases courage. Realistic training can be used to lessen the mystique of the unexpected. Strong leadership which earns the respect and trust of the corporate workforce can limit the effects of fear, risk, and uncertainty. Leaders should develop corporate cohesion, esprit and morale.
In this environment, a person’s unwillingness to violate the respect and trust of their cohorts will overcome personal fear.
Moral and Physical Forces
The interaction of mental, moral, and physical characterize conflict forces.
1. What are physical forces?
The physical characteristics of competition are generally easily seen, understood, and measured. In business these some of these might be costs of raw materials, hardware, technology; sales profits and losses; markets lost or gained; or a rise in the number of your competitors.
2. What are moral forces?
Moral characteristics are less tangible. The term moral as used here is not restricted to ethics–although ethics are certainly included–but pertains to those forces of mental rather than tangible nature, to include the mental aspects of business. Moral forces deal with aspects of people’s mental well-being, such as ample health insurance provisions, workman’s compensation, and maternity leave.
Moral forces are difficult to grasp and impossible to quantify. An idea is meaningless until it is conceptualized and actualized. We cannot easily show people a pound of job security, a cup of mental wellness, or a milliliter of good attitude. Moral forces exert a greater influence on the nature and outcome of conflict than do physical.
The impact of physical forces in conflict can have a significant impact on the moral. Because the moral forces of business are difficult to come to grips with, it is tempting to exclude them from our study of competition. However, any business plan, doctrine, or theory that neglects these factors ignores the greater part of the nature of conflict. For example, our English word “sabotage” comes from the Dutch word for wooden shoe, “sabot.” Centuries ago, disgruntled Dutch workers would throw their sabots into the wheel running the windmills, thus disrupting the work and profits of an unpopular employer.
The Art and Science of Conflict
From the discussion to this point, we can conclude that conflict demonstrates characteristics of both art and science. Various aspects of conflict, particularly its technical aspects, fall principally in the realm of science, which we will describe as the methodological application of the empirical laws of nature. Conflict then becomes “an over and over again continuing whirl of reorientation, mismatches, analysis, and synthesis which enables us to comprehend, cope, and shape, as well as be shaped, by the novelty that flows around us and over us.”
What is the science of business?
The science of business includes those activities directly subject to the laws of physics, chemistry, and like disciplines. However, these do not describe the whole phenomenon. What is the art of business? Owing to the vagaries of human behavior and the countless other intangible factors which contribute to it, there is far more to the conduct of business than can be explained by science. The science of business stops short of the need for judgment, the impact of moral forces, the influence of chance, and other similar factors. We thus conclude that the conduct of business is ultimately an art, an activity of human creativity and intuition powered by the strength of the human will. The art of business requires the intuitive ability to grasp the essence of a unique situation, the creative ability to devise a practical solution, and the strength of purpose to execute the act.
Illumination
At first glance, conflict seems a rather simple clash of interests. But at closer examination, it takes shape as one of the most demanding and trying of man’s endeavors. Fog, friction, and chaos are its natural habitat. Each episode is the unique product of the dynamic interaction of myriad moral and physical forces. While founded on the laws of science, business demands, ultimately, the intuition and creativity of art.
G.I. Wilson was a member of the team, including John Boyd and Mike Wyly, that created Warfighting (1989), which established the Marine Corps as the leading practitioner of maneuver warfare in the US defense establishment. He is also a co-author of several papers on fourth generation warfare, most of which appear on Defense and the National Interest.