Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Anticipating Your Rivals’ Strategies

The best form of attack defended by Sun Tzu is to anticipate the strategies of your rivals.

The ability to subdue the enemy without a battle is a reflection of ultimate ultimate strategy. The supreme is to attack the strategies and plans of the enemies, launching them. The next thing is to attack the strategic alliances of the enemies with other nations. The next option is to attack the enemy troops. The worst option is to attack the cities. (Chapter 3, Sun Tzu’s Art of War)

So how do we get ahead of our rival’s strategies? In the context of war, first of all, you must be able to anticipate the movements of your enemy. Second, the reason behind all of these moves, and third, coming up with a strategy to counter these moves with the least amount of resources. All this generally needs a lot of intelligence to be carried out.

1) Anticipate the movements of your enemy.

Just looking at step one gives us an idea of ​​how difficult this is going to be. You need to have immense first-hand knowledge of your enemy’s advisory group and also the dynamics of the group. Each strategist has his specialty and specific taste when employing a certain strategy, some will always seek to use fire and others will always prefer to destroy everything and so on. The reason why you need to understand group dynamics is that each ruler or general has their favorite tactician and it could change over time. Just like Liu Bei in the Three Kingdoms Era, he would rather listen to Zhuge Liang and Cao Cao, also from the Three Kingdoms Era, in its early days, he would rather listen to Guo Jia. Therefore, he must have all this knowledge at his fingertips to be able to anticipate, to a reasonable extent, the movements that his enemy will make. This is why intelligence work is very important in the old days. This importance is seen by the fact that Sun Tzu devoted an entire chapter to espionage alone (Chapter 13).

2) Know the motives behind the movements of each enemy.

The second step is that you need to know the reason why these movements are adopted. This is because you can then better understand why these moves are taking place, and if there are changes in movement or direction in the enemy’s camp, you can still anticipate to some degree what they are doing. And you would also have a better understanding of the weakest link in your plans. If you thwarted your plans at the weakest link, it would stop the momentum or successful execution of your plan.

3) Propose a counter-strategy that can be executed within the constraints.

Step three is a matter of working within the constraints. Most of us have worked under restrictions before, for example, without enough time, money, or sleep. So I would understand what a tactician is going through having to come up with a strategy that should have a high chance of countering the enemy’s move and not cost the nation.

All in all, as mentioned above, it’s a battle of wits. The smart will always prevail. And if you’re able to thwart your enemy’s plan often enough, chances are you can subdue him without going into battle because they know it’s useless to go against you since you can ‘attack’ his strategies just fine.

So how do we apply all this to business?

Referring to the book, Wharton on Dynamic Competitive Strategy Ed.by George S. Day & David J. Reibstein in Chapter 11.

In the chapter, writer Jerry Wind of the Wharton School’s Marketing Department wrote that bias is risky because if you anticipate the wrong move, it could turn out to be costly for you. For example, tapping into the wrong potential market that never materializes can cost you dearly in capacity expansion, etc.

The first step in formulating your preferred strategy is, first of all, to be aware of the trends in the markets. Technology, consumer preferences, demographic or social trends are some of the data that we can analyze before formulating our preference strategies. Once we have information about all this, we can figure out what potential new markets we can enter before our business rival does.

For example, Sony anticipated the growth of the 3.5-inch drive in 1984, so it announced a fivefold increase in production capacity. He made this move even before IBM announced its intention to be the next generation of personal computers. As such, Sony was able to discourage potential rivals from setting up their own plants, as Sony was able to manufacture in large quantities due to its extensive capacity.

Looking for signs of movement from business rivals

So after determining the trends, the next or concurrent task (depending on your goal) would be to determine how your competitors will react as well. Now you can tell that information like this is hard to come by, but if you look closely, there may be some hints or signals that tell you their intentions.

a) Competitive signals: Do a patent search and see what kind of patent your rivals have filed, then you will have a general idea of ​​what technology they are currently developing. Stay tuned for news of planned strategic alliances. You could anticipate what area they are moving to.

b) Competitive Analysis – Look at how your competitors have reacted in the past and also their strengths and weaknesses. This way, you would have an idea of ​​how your competitors would react to your next move. (See points 1 and 2 above)

c) Distribution Channels – Look at all the available distribution channels, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Combine them with the information you have about your competitors and you will be able to anticipate what type of distribution channels your competitors may use to attack the potential market.

d) Environmental analysis: understanding changes in the forces of the environment, such as socioeconomic, political, cultural and technological forces. These forces would be useful in formulating his preemptive strategy because, as mentioned in the last chapters of Sun Zi’s The Art of War, a general can use environmental or external forces to generate a strong momentum to help his troops attack or the defense.

With all this information, you can formulate what moves your competitors are likely to take. Make a list of moves your competitors can adopt. Using this list, you can create targeted preference strategies for each expected or potential move by competitors.

Factors Affecting Preference Strategy Formulation

Keep in mind here that when you create each specific preference strategy, there are several factors that you need to take into account.

a) Your current objectives – Is the strategy you defined aligned with the current objectives of your company? But even if the targets are not met, you could continue to pursue your preferred strategy unless you throw your company off track. Do you need to give up your market niche for a while when carrying out the preventive strategy?

c) External and internal environment: do the current trends that exist in the industry and the market in which you are operating help your implementation by driving or hinder your implementation? What are the risks of these trends changing? Is the corporate structure adequate for the implementation of the strategy? Any confusion of roles and responsibilities would create confusion.

b) Magnitude and Duration: You should look at the magnitude and duration of your competitors and your own preferred strategy. Will it be temporary or permanent?

c) Costs – The implementation of each strategy has its costs. So you have to look at the costs along with the magnitude and duration of the rivals and your strategy. Is there a need to move resources from one point to another? Do you have the resources to get ahead, or does it take a long time to find the resources? When measuring costs and resources, try to find a partner or ally to take advantage of, and he too can take advantage of you to perhaps stop a bigger rival.

e) Level of Risk – Any implementation of the strategy involves a certain level of risk. Is your company able to bear that risk during implementation? Do you have a safety mattress? Have you accurately assessed your level of risk? People say that many cooks spoil the broth. Does the implementation of your strategy involve a lot of people, which brings me to the next point?

d) Efficiency and effective implementation: You have the resources, but your company is able to execute them well, for example, the skills of your employees and managers or the skills of the CEO, such as timing and judgment. How well designed and well managed are your communication and coordination systems?

Once you’ve come up with the preferred strategies, you again have to go through the whole cycle again, because as I said before, what you can do with others, others can do with you. Therefore, you must again anticipate how your opponent will react to your prevention strategies, and from there, formulate the next level of prevention strategies. After several cycles, the best set of strategies and the final impact of it would become clear.

The next part would be running them right and having backup plans in place, whenever possible.