Strategy and Tactics Matter

Brand power does not rest with your company or it's image makers or communicators. Your customers own your 'brand perception' and thanks to social media and the web they have a previously unimaginable power to exact a price when you screw with their values by using unacceptable tactics or fail to acknowledge your mistakes.

It's time for businesses to rethink the wisdom of traditional strategy and tactics. Check out spin sucks for some fantastic advice and tips!

http://spinsucks.com/communication/united-airlines-crisis-communications/

The trouble is we've grown up in world were being straight forward and direct is not always considered the wise option. For example type in the title of Sun Tzu's ancient treatise on military strategy and google comes up with about 70 million results. 'The Art of War' is clearly a popular text and still revered by many aspiring leaders despite the extraordinary changes that have transformed our understanding of business and it's modern 'theatre of operations'.  

Around Sun Tzu's time the biggest technological advance was the forging of iron, a major achievement to be sure, but utterly remote and disconnected from our modern world experience, were convergence, digital technology and the prospect of artificial intelligence, have cast traditional assumptions about communication and commerce to the wind. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not about dispute to Sun Tzu's wisdom around ancient warfare or strategy, what I do dispute is 'The Art of Wars' utility as a guide for ethical behaviour or wise decision making in business. You may wish to argue its just an allegory for business strategy, fine but if you see Sun Tzu on a business leader's book shelf my advice is run! or if you can't run, get a good lawyer and be prepared to do battle. 

Quotes from 'The Art of War' - Sun Tzu  

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.

Such expressions of wise military strategy simply don't translate to a modern business or boardroom, where governance and corporate values are more likely to linked to transparency, integrity and brand authenticity, not subterfuge and secrecy. Nor does Sun Tzu's wisdom form the basis of any trustworthy dealings in political, social or economic spheres where truth is held to be a virtue; dare I suggest a democracy.

‘In war, truth is the first casualty,’ words attributed to the fifth century B.C. Greek dramatist and poet Aeschylus. The corollary might be that when we apply battlefield tactics to modern business or politics we risk validating falsehood and dishonesty by accepting them as part of normal strategy and tactics.

Business is of course highly competitive, and yes winning does matter, but that does not mean we should adopt a war footing and apply battle tactics to commerce. Business leaders and politicians do not have to live in a post truth world, unless of course, they choose to do so.

Perhaps, if the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a more widely read as a business author, things would be different? 

Quotes from 'Meditations' - Marcus Aurelius 

If it is not right, don't do it: if it is not true, don't say it. 

Your impulse on every occasion should be to a complete survey of what exactly this thing is which is making an impression on your mind - to open it out by analysis into cause, material, reference and the time-span within which it must cease to be.

What is directing the mind of of these people? What are they set on, what governs their likes and values? Train yourself to look at their souls naked. When they think their blame will hurt or their praise advantage, what conceit that is. 

No one is perfect, we have all at sometime lied or misled by omission, but that does not mean dishonesty is a sound strategy. Even if you put virtue to one side, the lessons of consequential ethics alone, should be more than enough to convince anyone in business, that deception is not worth the risk. Think Volkswagen and the emissions-fixing scandal, nothing against VW they're just one of the latest examples of a large corporation that has discovered the 'means do not justify the ends'. 

Now you can add United Airlines to the list, by initially trying to blame the passenger, they again failed to find a real position of strength. Mea Culpa - is an acknowledgement that forgiveness is required, sometimes it is no one else's fault but your own. We need more Marcus Aurelius and Less Sun Tzu.