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STRATEGY
D O U G W I N T E R
I S O T O M A
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“Cause I'm gifted, I read Sun Tzu
I bought a gun too so you'll never come to”
Just Another Victim, Helmet and House of Pain
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“the only practical advice
that we were given was that
every company should
send teams of people to
country hotels every year to
think about the future”
Participant on a fifteen part
course on business strategy
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What is
strategy?
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“The talent of the strategist is to
identify the decisive point and to
concentrate everything on it,
removing forces from secondary
fronts and ignoring lesser objectives”
C A R L V O N
C L A U S E W I T Z
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“The determination of the basic long-term
goals and objectives of the enterprise and
the adoption of courses of action and the
allocation of resources necessary for
carrying out these goals”
A L F R E D
C H A N D L E R
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“Probably the commonest sense in
which the word strategy is employed
today is as a synonym for expensive”
J O H N K AY
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M OH AN DAS
KARAMCHAND
GAN DH I
1 8 6 9 - 1 9 4 8
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Why was non-violence a strategy?
• Was directed - didn’t just happen
• Coherent exercise with clear goals
• Consciously considered other options
• Was designed specifically to influence the
choices of his opponents
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“Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics
of deception, of asking yourself what is the
other man going to think I mean to do. And
that is what games are about in my theory.”
J O H N V O N
N E U M A N N
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The
prisoner’s
dilemma
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• Explicit strategic model was of escalation
• Communication: all communication during the
crisis was by military maneuver
• Resolved by a phone call between the leaders
• Exposed how poorly each side really
understood the other
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•Game theory persists
to the present day with
nukes
•Trident is an explicitly
“game theoretical”
resource because it is
a second strike
weapon
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Corporate
strategy
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During 20th Century, much of strategy meant
competing better:
• Squeezing margins
• Competing harder
• Constant improvement
Lots of corporate strategy is full of stories from this approach:
C F . F O R D , T AY L O R I S M , D R U C K E R ,
T H E R A N D C O R P O R A T I O N , M B A S
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Here, you see, it takes all
the running you can do, to
keep in the same place. If
you want to get somewhere
else, you must run at least
twice as fast.
Alice Through the
Looking-Glass
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Marginal gains are
not enough, because
they can be copied
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Blue Seas Culture Alliances
Three big areas that now comprise a
lot of modern business strategy:
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Culture
& Values
Vision statement?
That, believe it or
not, is a strategy.
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Alliances
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All of these moves
come from game
theory - developing
non-zero sum games.
“Coopetition”.
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Why compete,
expensively, when you
can share the profit,
and potentially
generate even more?
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Negotiation
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People think negotiation is haggling: winning
somehow, probably by beating someone else.
That is not a negotiation. That is an argument.
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Negotiation is really about:
• Listening
• Timing
• Control of the process
• Knowing and understanding your BATNA
Rarely are there any secrets, there are only
misunderstanding
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Strategic
Failure
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Brexit is a wonderful
example of strategic
failure
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HMG approach
• Referendum called to resolve party differences
• Article 50 terrible vehicle for UK purposes
• EU control timing
• EU control process
• No leverage
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HMG conduct of A50 process
• No objective
• “Playing the man, not the ball”
• Needlessly destroying goodwill
• Hilarious BATNA posturing
• Hilarious claims about our Sooper Sekrit
negotiating position