Learning from military strategies

Most basic business strategy books, point out the origins of the subject as military, including the Greek derivation of the word 'strategy' (leading an army).

In fact many strategy books refer to military leaders and their attributes as it could be adopted in business. These origins have hung like a millstone around the neck of the discipline of business strategy ever since the emergence of modern day business management and you and I have used it too.

Locally there was so much hype about the military victories over the past few years fuelled by elimination of terrorism in Sri Lanka and many wrote articles and some others conducted workshops about using military strategies in business.

Much of our business parlance uses military terminology as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Marketing Officer. 'Officers' come through the ranks and earn their stripes or stars.

Corporate Headquarters, market intelligence, before mobilising our resources or deploying our tactics and launching a media campaign as a pre-emptive strike against the competition have got into management vocabulary. 'Competition' and 'Challenges' are two of the commonly used terms even in boardrooms. Aggressively pursuing opportunity seems to be the solution.

Who is the enemy?

While there are some helpful uses of military analogy, I believe that it is generally more destructive than constructive. In business, who is our enemy? The competition. So should all our strategies be focused on defeating the competitor ? Obviously not? Companies whose primary focus is the competitor rather than the customer may have a short life expectancy.

Is beating the competition our only objective? Does that help us achieve our primary goals in business?

Business is different from war. The business objectives are more multi-faceted. It's not about defeating an enemy but instead to create competitive advantage, develop unique value proposition, penetrate markets and increase share, make profits and making it sustainable.

Our motives are more complex than merely defeating a single enemy. We have long abandoned the simplistic myths of profit maximisation or shareholder value maximisation to embrace the realisation of executives satisfying the multiple desires of the shareholders, employees, customers and governments.

Beating competition

The multi-million dollar directors' tie-in clauses, executive share schemes, executive pensions, high levels of bonus payments and golden handshakes which are frequently in the news elevating the desires of the executives above all other stakeholders. No further proof is needed for the absence of profit or value maximisation motives. Even if it were, consider the extravagant palatial offices our executives inhibit - fish and fountains in the atria.

A business, largely tolerates such practices provided that share price growth meets their expectations.

Beating the competition can provide the platform for achieving the business objectives but that in itself does not make you successful in business.

Fight hard, challenge, attack, penetrate, convert and ambush are all good parlance for employee motivation but the distinction between war and business should be well understood for continuous growth and sustainable business results.

It is not just the focus on the customer and the multi-faceted nature of business which make the military analogy virtually redundant. Business is about gaining and maintaining an edge in the market.

There is not always an end-game as in war or chess. An aim that is continuity rather than a victory or an end.