“Read Sun Tsu’s the Art of War. Every battle is won before it’s ever fought. Think about it.” Gordon Gekko quoted in ‘Wall Street’ (Kenneth Lipper, 1988).
The very idea of business strategy may well have had its origins in military strategy, but since the 1980’s it’s been more-or-less expected that up-and-coming fat cats will be able to quote the Art of War, On War and/or the Book of Five Rings, with some even veering off into the Hagakure (‘hidden in the leaves’). The topic came up again recently in a LinkedIn discussion.
War and business strategy may be based on the same principles, in the sense that they are both about deploying available resources, alliances and supply chains in a given (and thoroughly understood) environment to achieve a decisive competitive advantage, but applying Clausewitz, Sun Tsu and Musashi to modern business strategy is, at best, applying a simplistic metaphor.
Even when the translation is more solid, we are usually dealing with concepts which are very specific in their intention (often involving the termination of human life), and certainly were never intended to apply to commerce. When we in business talk about market conditions as being ‘brutal’, this is not literally true.
Some of the principles of strategic warfare may have analogies in business and corporate strategy. Some emphatically don’t. Others provide metaphors which may or may not be useful, and which may or may not fit your business culture (Wall Street, anyone?). My question would be, given that we have classic works which are specific to commercial strategy (Ansoff, Porter, Christensen, etc), then why spend your time re-interpreting principles which were never intended to apply to commerce in the first place?
Unless, of course, it gives you a competitive advantage…
4 thoughts on “Blue Ocean Clausewitz – On War and Business”
Another thought provoking post Chris.
I share your scepticism about applying strategic warfare principles to commercial strategy without independent thought.
Competition can be a great motivating force in an organisation. However, the urge to win and out-compete everyone can create a form of silo thinking that can become dysfunctional.
When the leadership focuses on competitors how much attention is left for the customer?
Adrian
It is always dangerous to make fundamentalist interpretations of ancient texts, whether sacred or secular, and seek to apply them to contemporary situations. Whilst there may sometimes be useful insight to be gained from analysing the parallels and distinctions between warfare in medieval Japan and modern competitive advantage, the two are not synonymous and the contexts (social, political and military), which shape and give meaning to both are very different.
On a rather less ethnographic point, the world of business has moved on considerably from that narrow ‘Gordon Gecko’ world view that said the only way to be successful was to stomp all over as many people as possible. Co-operative and socially responsible models of business have emerged and gained credibility over the past twenty years (although it will be interesting to see how many of those have sufficient traction to survive the hard times and down-turns in the global economy). These days employers are more likely to hire potential managers who are team-players with an ability to build lasting relationships internally and externally than ruthless every-man-for-himself types.
And I agree with Adrian: we always taught business students that the primary focus of any organization has to be satisfying its customers – the successful business will ultimately be the one that does that best, not the one trying to run its operations like a feudal warlord!
Well, I think we’re in violent agreement.
The crux to me is that the entire context for business strategy and competitive advantage is the customer. As Peter Drucker famously said, “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer”. I can see nothing in military strategy which has an analog of this.
Now I’m all for using different paradigms as tools for creativity (see Business as Technology, an earlier piece on this site) – and if Sun Tzu helps us to think out of the box then, okay. But the idea that military texts ranging from hundreds to thousands of years old have more validity than business research just a few decades old for the purpose of corporate and business strategy analysis is, well, daft.
Amanda, I hope you’re right when you say “These days employers are more likely to hire potential managers who are team-players with an ability to build lasting relationships internally and externally than ruthless every-man-for-himself types”, and to be fair that has largely been my experience, but… http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/01/psychopath-workplace-jobs-study
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