Using military strategy to compete with large companies

I’m currently doing a lot of reading of some of the military strategy books and pieces I’ve encountered over the past year or so. A lot of the ideas they preach can be directly translated to the business as world as well. I’m going to apply most of this to poker websites, but it really can be applied to any type of business situation.

Only idiots fight a battle head on

• Competing with a larger company is very hard. It’s even harder if you try to mimic the larger companies moves and fight the battle on their turf. If a large poker website has the capital to buy thousands of links every month, trying to keep up with them by purchasing links will be a losing battle. Instead the optimal strategy is to go where the big company isn’t. This can be something similar to a blue ocean strategy, where you create a new market instead of battling in a crowded sector. Sharkscope.com does very well for a poker site because they are competing in their own niche. They didn’t try to take PokerListings head on in a link buying competition.
• If you want to try to compete in a similar sector as a heavyweight website, you’re going to need to be very creative in your content and link building quests. This means pulling out all of the stops with web 2.0 sites, article writing, guest posts, bartering, link trades and even blackhat. The good thing about website strategy as opposed to military battles is that even if you don’t win and make it to the top with your site, you’ll still be making a large chunk of money. In warfare, there’s really no middle ground. You either win the battle, or you’re dead.

Use the OODA loop to gain the upper hand

• The OODA loop was originated by John Boyd, a fighter pilot who’s intent was to be a better decision maker than his opponents in a dog fight. The main components of the OODA loop are Observe, Orient, Decide and Act . The idea behind it is to react to events and circumstances quicker than your opponent therefore allowing you to get inside of your opponents cycle and giving you an advantage. In a business environment where things change very quickly, understanding what you need to do and what your opponents are thinking are the most important aspects of battle. Conceal your intentions and work under the radar, while throwing out mixed signals to your opponents. In the OODA loop, acting quickly is more important than taking time and making the perfect decision. As long as you can rethink your decisions, making a quick decision and acting upon it is the most vital concept. Napoleon himself even said “strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.”

Take chances

• Smaller units in military history have always been at a disadvantage. One thing you can learn from their triumphs is the fact that they take many more chances than larger armies. Large armies stick to a precise strategic and tactical plan, which doesn’t give them as much room to adjust to situations. Smaller units have the ability to be flexible and make riskier decisions. Whereas a large army’s success depends on precision…. a smaller unit’s success depends on being creative and thinking outside the box.

Overall

• Conflict and military strategy have been widely published for the past half century. Many of the same situations people faced hundreds of years ago, continue to surface everyday in our lives. Here’s a few books, that I think are of great importance to building a strategy for your company…
• 33 strategies of war – Robert Greene
• The Art of War – Sun Tzu
• Boyd : The fighter pilot who changed the art of war – Robert Coram
• The Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi