Posts Tagged ‘offense’

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres — 17 June 2013

Posted: June 17, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Brilliant Manoeuvre
Boots on the ground always beats fighting from a distance.

Discussion
A fundamental principle of counterinsurgency strategy is that you need ‘boots on the ground.’ You can’t influence a population and secure ground and terrain, especially populated areas, without having troops constantly on the lookout, patrolling, encountering the population, collecting information, and providing a sense of security. It’s the same in business, especially sales. Bombardier Aerospace is going into full sales mode to acquire customers for its new C Series jetliner. In order to be successful, the company has created a number of sales offices around the world, breaking with its traditional approach of selling from its main headquarters in Canada. There are now offices in Shanghai, Europe, Sydney, etc. There will also be offices in Johannesberg, South Africa and the US. The company has realized that nothing beats a physical presence when attempting to make large sales. As we say in French, “loin des yeux, loin du coeur.” You can’t expect to influence buyers from a distance. You have to be like counterinsurgency soldiers, and get boots on the ground.

Tip
Visit your customers and prospects on a regular basis. Ask them what they want and need, what their objectives are, what their concerns and limitations are. Find a way to stay connected with them on a continual basis.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Richard Martin’s Morning Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres — 10 June 2013

Posted: June 10, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Exploiting Change, Geopolitics, Leadership, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Never Fight Fair, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Brilliant Manoeuvre
Disable your opponent’s centre of gravity–his unique source of balance and strength–and do so quickly and with resolve when you have a window of opportunity.

Discussion
Whatever you make think of the overall political and strategic rationale, the US-led invasion of Iraq in early 2003 is a textbook case of attacking when the time is right even though you aren’t fully ‘ready.’ Coalition forces invaded Iraq with lightning speed and continually kept the Iraqi forces reeling. The offensive had so much momentum that there was barely time to assemble and process prisoners. American forces headed almost straight for Baghdad–the strategic objective–and didn’t waste time with sidefights and securing flanks. This is also exactly how the German invasion of France in 1940 played out. The Germans headed straight for the Channel coast in order to cut off the bulk of French mobile forces that had moved forward into Belgium where they expected the bulk of the German army to attack.

Tip
These historical military examples show that there are occasions when boldness and speed can more than make up for uncertainty, relative weakness, and lack of resources. They also demonstrate that you have to aim for the centre of gravity to disable it as quickly as possible. Whether you’re in sales, product development, procurement, etc., the best objective is to attack your opponent’s or your problem’s centre of gravity quickly and directly.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres – 22 April 2013

Posted: April 22, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business Continuity, Contingency Planning, Crisis Leadership, Enterprise Robustness, Ethics, Exploiting Change, Geopolitics, Leadership, Leadership Principles, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Never Fight Fair, Personal Development, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Brilliant Manoeuvre
No one can predict the future, much to the chagrin of many economists and financial theorists and their media acolytes, who prefer assumptions of perfect knowledge and decision-making in all circumstances.

Discussion
I’m breaking my deliberate policy of not commenting on political issues this week in order to comment on reactions to the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday. My personal opinion is that the response of government and law enforcement agencies at all levels has been brilliant in the circumstances. However, there are already Monday Morning Quarterbacks saying that the government overreacted by shuttingn down Boston on Friday and part of Saturday. The problem is that the ones responsible for making these decisions can only plan and act based on information available at the time and the factors they felt they needed to consider. Just throwing out there that they overreacted without knowing those things is pure speculation based on specious counterfactuals or a personal hobby horse. If there is something I learned from a 26-year military career and my study of military strategy and history, it is that decisions that can look sub-optimal in hindsight may have been the best at the time given the circumstances of friction, uncertainty, and the fog of war. In this particular case, only a full after-action review will permit the systemic learning to occur. Saying it was an overreaction is nothing but pure hindsight bias.

Tip
The more complex and risky the undertaking, the more likely that friction will wreak havoc. We must compensate by building robustness, resiliency and redundancy into our plans and systems.

From the Vault
A Superb Example of Crisis Leadership in Action

By the way…
My ideas were featured in the March 25th Globe and Mail: A military approach to business.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

PCs – The Beginning of the End

Posted: April 12, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Exploiting Change, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Data was published yesterday that PC sales are plummeting throughout the world.

It is obviously a result of a move to mobile communications and computing. Most people don’t need a powerful desktop or laptop computer for everyday tasks. Email, messaging, reading news, talking on the phone or through video conferencing, scheduling activities, budgeting, etc., they can all be done on mobile devices. Even the occasional memo or report can be produced on a tablet.

With the rise of ubiquitous voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and cloud based services, there is really a limited market for desktop computing. What we’re seeing is the realization of universal computing machines that can act as a multitude of useful devices. Most people can get by in their personal and professional lives without a dedicated computer.

There are still mainframe computers, but they are now highly specialized or focused on truly high powered applications. The desktop computing model will remain, but it will be increasingly marginalized to specialized applications and uses. Everything else will be mobile, always online, multimedia and multichannel, with embedded specialized AIs and interaction facilitators such as voice dictation, field of vision tracking, and various other forms of man-machine interfaces.

Microsoft, Dell, HP, etc., they all have business models that rely heavily on the desktop computing model. They’re trying to make the transition to cloud computing, mobile interactive online living, and various other manifestations of the universal computing machine model. But, it’s not easy.

This just shows how even the most successful companies can see their business models undermined. The only way to overcome this is to shape the future yourself. To take the initiative and to try to create the new business models, rather than just react to them. Microsoft, for instance, has been singularly unsuccessful at adapting to, and shaping, new business models. The company was highly successful at riding the wave of democratization and decentralization of computing, and even created it to a large extent by offering cheap and reasonably effective and usable operating systems and productivity software. But then it just stopped really innovating.

There are only a handful of companies that have operated in highly changing competitive markets that have been able to evolve and adapt, and even shape the changes around them. IBM is one, HP in its previous incarnations was another. Who will be able to adapt to, and shape the future business environments? Who will have the offensive mindset to seize and maintain the initiative? I’ve written about this extensively in my book, Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

 

Profile of Richard Martin in Globe and Mail of 25 March 2013

Posted: March 25, 2013 in Announcements, Book Reviews, Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Exploiting Change, Leadership, Leadership Principles, Management, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/a-military-approach-to-business/article10197913/

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres – 4 March 2013

Posted: March 4, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Exploiting Change, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Brilliant Manoeuvre
Let your competitors focus on their existing customers and products. That creates opportunities for you to manoeuvre around them.

Example
In the 1950s, Fairchild Semiconductor left the vacuum tube manufacturers to focus on their existing customer applications such as TVs and radios and went after the more demanding and much more lucrative defense and space applications markets with their solid state transistors and integrated circuits. Canadair (and then Bombardier Aerospace) didn’t try to build major jetliners but instead went into businness jets, water bombers, and small regional jetliners. Microsoft didn’t try to go directly up againt the IBMs and didn’t get into hardware, but instead offered low cost, reasonably effective operating systems and applications to individual users and small businesses. Google initially just offered search based ads to advertisers, leaving mass media companies to continue focusing on large accounts. Apple left the corporate and institutional markets to Research in Motion when it introduced the iPhone and went after the consumer market.

Tip
Use your competitors strengths against them.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Creating and Sustaining the Offensive Mindset

Posted: March 2, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Entrepreneurship, Leadership Catalyst Newsletter, Leadership Principles, Management, Military Lessons, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Offensive action is applicable in all spheres of business: strategy, organizational change, continuous process improvement, sales and marketing, recruiting, public relations, crisis management, risk management, leadership development, succession, etc.

A common understanding of offense is that it’s all about attacking and taking an aggressive stance. This is true, but it’s much more than that. It’s a mindset that is centered on seizing and maintaining the initiative. If you’ve lost the initiative, or have given it up intentionally or unintentionally, whether you like it or not, you’re in a defensive posture. You must work to regain the initiative and get back on the offensive.

I’ve discussed this in great detail in my book, Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles. Last month we looked at how you can assess your own offensive posture and that of your competitors. This month, I’d like to look at how you can build an offensive mindset within your team or organization.

Common Understanding. Everyone in the company must understand its overall vision, mission, and objectives, and must know where and how they fit into the strategy and plan. They also need to know the vital role they play in achieving or supporting that mission. With this, they are in a position to apply their own initiative and reasoning to resolve the inevitable problems and dilemmas that arise as a result of friction, uncertainty, error, and competitors’ actions. It is critical that every level in the company develops and implements its own mission, vision, objectives and plans and implement them with a view to achieving the intent of the higher level of which they form a part. The technique to achieve this is known as ‘mission analysis,’ and the result is ‘mission command,’ the approach that empowers individuals to take initiative in the service of the organization’s ultimate strategy.

Mission Command. In the military, empowerment and initiative are known as ‘mission command.’ In a nutshell, mission command is about telling people WHAT to achieve and letting them figure out HOW to achieve it in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Even better is when the whole team participates in developing the WHAT part. If managers and employees know something to be true or right, and it fits within the stated objectives and strategy, they should be encouraged to use their initiative to exploit the opportunity, defend against the threat, or correct the mistake. This empowers individuals throughout the company to pursue ideas using their creativity and teamwork without having to get permission all the time. They can also adjust to a changing competitive situation without having to withdraw, start the planning process over, and launch a new attack. This speeds up decision-making and makes use of the brains and motivation of everyone involved to get to the objective.

Prudent Risk-taking. Acceptance of risk is the corollary of initiative and empowerment. You can’t expect people to make quick decisions and act upon them with speed and agility if they fear reprisals or punishment when the inevitable mistakes are made or when problems of execution occur. In a culture where risk is recognized and accepted, decisions will tend to be quicker and more effective than in an organization where everyone is covering their behind.

Build on Strength. We all tend to focus on our weaknesses and devote way too many resources in trying to correct them. This is a mistake, because lasting success only comes from identifying and reinforcing strengths. Strategically, this requires the company leadership to identify its centre of gravity. This is its unique source of differentiation and competitive power. There are generic centres of gravity (also known as driving forces), such as product-focus, market-focus, distribution, and method of sales, which I’ve written about before. For example, Apple is relentless about its product focus. Everything is about the excellence and uniqueness of the product experience. On the other hand, Amazon is obsessive about distribution. This is the company’s unique source of strength and competitiveness. Operationally, companies must also identify their unique strengths and develop them into powerful competitive advantages. Finally, at the tactical and personal levels, every team, every leader, and every employee must know what they do best and seek to get better and better at it over time. Constant improvement is greatly aided by a disciplined approach to lessons learned and after-action review, strong morale, and transformational leadership.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres – 11 February 2013

Posted: February 11, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Entrepreneurship, Exploiting Change, Management, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy, Video
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Brilliant Manoeuvre
The first and most important principle of war, and the only sure road to victory, is offense. Defense should only be used as a temporary measure while doing everything possible to (re)gain the initiative.

Examples
Too many companies (and even entire business sectors) have lost their relevance by assuming that their existing defensive posture would protect them from competition. Newspapers have been rendered almost irrelevant by web based media. The music industry was completely bypassed, first by Napster and other illegal copying methods, and then legally by iTunes. Television networks are struggling against the same reality, trying desperately to protect their control over programming, while teenagers barely watch TV anymore, preferring to watch their favourite shows on the web. Research in Motion (now Blackberry) thought its position in secure mobile communications made it invulnerable. When the iPhone came out, one of RIM’s co-CEOs pronounced it insignificant (or words to that effect). On the other hand, companies such as IBM, Bombardier, and Disney have continually reinvented themselves, or redefined their purpose in order to seek out and/or create new market positions. This keeps them ahead of competitors, and in some cases makes the competitors irrelevant.

Tip
Offensive business strategy succeeds best when companies make small, probing advances, experimenting with new products, services, processes, and business models. Once they see a successful incursion, they pour resources ‘into the breach’ in the hope of turning it into a breakthrough.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Assess Your Offensive Posture

Posted: February 1, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Entrepreneurship, Exploiting Change, Management, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Never Fight Fair, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

As I’ve pointed out in my book, Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles, “To win in war and business requires seizing and maintaining the initiative; going on the defensive only buys time to withdraw, reorient or reconstitute one’s forces.”

In other words, successful business strategy is fundamentally about finding ways to go and stay on the offensive. The principles of offensive action are as follows: seize and maintain the initiative; manoeuvre for advantage; use the indirect approach; and probe and follow the path of least resistance.

I go into these principles in great detail in Brilliant Manoeuvres, but I’ve found that it is also necessary to understand one’s posture before trying to make any changes. This is why I’m currently developing a tool to assess offensive posture. Email if you would like to receive a copy of this document, which also includes examples of how it can be applied in competitive analyses.

As already mentioned, offensive posture is fundamentally about seizing and maintaining the initiative. This plays out in five different dimensions. When you combine all five, you get a highly revealing picture of your own competitive posture and that of key competitors, and that enables you to generate insights so you can ‘seize and maintain the initiative.’ For each of these dimensions, you can be the leader (or one of the leaders), ahead of the pack, in the middle of the pack, a follower, or far behind (or even dead last). Obviously, the terrain you want to occupy is leadership, or at least ahead of the main pack. Let’s look at these dimensions in greater detail.

Customers. If you’re the leader, you get to pick and choose your customers. This confers great flexibility as you can select product-market segments that are the most profitable, with the greatest growth potential, and also that contribute the most to a strong brand. Conversely, if you’re far behind the pack, you basically have to take what you can get in terms of customers. This usually forces you into a commoditized position, where you absolutely have no choice but to compete with ‘me too’ products at the lowest possible prices.

Price Flexibility. The key word here is ‘flexibility.’ It’s not necessarily that you always command the highest prices for your products and services, but rather that they be appropriate to your product-market mix and branding. If you’re the leader with all the initiative and freedom of action, you get to set your price. This could be the highest price possible, especially if you’re introducing new products and services aimed at early adopters. But it could also be at lower price points once you’ve created or penetrated a new market. Conversely, followers have little choice in setting prices. They basically have to follow what the market determines, and are often selling to the bulk commodity market and late adopters. Followers have no choice but to be imitators and low-cost producers.

Product Leadership. This factor follows naturally from the previous two. If you’re in a leadership position or ahead of the pack, you can be more innovative in creating differentiated products and services. You can also take more calculated and prudent risks. This is because you have more resources, such as capital and time, to experiment with initiatives. This confers greater freedom of action to manoeuvre around competitors but also to stay ahead of the pack. Conversely, followers are forced into commodification of their products and services, and by extension these have to be lower priced. This can be a conscious choice by a company, but it is also riskier because the leaders clearly have the initiative and freedom of action.

Brand Strength. Leaders tend to have strong brands that are recognized and admired. One of the principal benefits of brand strength is customer loyalty, even in the face of difficulties. Look at how customers have forgiven Apple for its mistakes over the years. At the other end of the spectrum, followers are non-entities in customers’ minds. They are generic and are often forced to produce generic products and services under license for stronger brands. This can be a conscious strategy, but once again it has considerably more risks, as the company has little room for error.

Surprise/Speed. This is perhaps one of the most unrecognized benefits of an offensive posture. When you have the initiative, you can pick and choose the time and place to act, how, when, and to whom you offer new products and services. Companies in the lead are often a lot quicker to respond to competitive challenges and changes in customer tastes. This confers surprise and magnifies the positive effects of the four other dimensions. On the other hand, followers are constantly being surprised or overtaken by competitors. A sure sign of a follower position on this dimension is when a company is constantly in crisis mode. Senior management has that ‘deer in the headlights’ look that comes from being surprised and unable to react in a timely and effective manner.

These five dimensions can be adapted to any situation beyond the competitive sphere, for instance in sales and marketing, organizational change initiatives, leadership, etc. A good start is to assess your offensive posture relative to your main competitors. Like I said above, feel free to contact me if you would like a graphical tool for doing so, or just to discuss your needs in this regard.

© Alcera Consulting Inc. 2013. We encourage the sharing of this information and forwarding of this email with attribution. All other rights reserved.

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres — 21 January 2013

Posted: January 21, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Entrepreneurship, Exploiting Change, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Never Fight Fair, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Risk Management, Strategy
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Brilliant Manoeuvre
Businesses must be constantly on the lookout for threats from all quarters, even those that appear highly improbable or even impossible.

Example
Wikipedia and Google Scholar have made Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta pretty much obsolete. Google, Ebay, Craig’s List and other forms of online targeted advertising have eaten into the traditional revenue sources of Yellow Pages and local newspapers. Now we’re seeing universities offering free online courses through the web, in some cases for some type of academic credit. The UK’s Open University, Harvard, Stanford, and many others are entering the fray. For instance, the latter offers a whole series of lectures on cutting edge physics by Leonard Susskind, one of the originators of String Theory! The Learning Company offers excellent university level lectures on dozens of topics at very reasonable prices through its Great Courses series. How long will it be before the traditional university, college, and even high school are overtaken by these threats that are seemingly “coming out of nowhere” and undermining their traditional revenue sources? Can these institutions react quickly enough to remain relevant in the coming decade?

Tip
Are you able to detect threats from any direction? These could be suppliers moving downstream, customers or distributors moving upstream, new technologies or products as substitutes, or completely new competitors entering your sector with innovative products and business models.

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Older Entries