{"id":15118,"date":"2012-01-03T15:36:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T15:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/?p=15118"},"modified":"2014-01-28T16:44:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T16:44:56","slug":"four-steps-to-flustering-your-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/2012\/01\/four-steps-to-flustering-your-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Steps to Flustering Your Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walking through airport lounges, surfing channels in my hotel room, I\u2019m struck by how many kung fu fights and ancient grand battles fill the screens. I suppose this is China, after all, native home of Bruce Lee and Sun Tzu.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I usually switch channels pretty quickly, hunting for some Bloomberg TV before I hit my bed, but on this scene I stop. There is a kung fu master flying through the air, showering his opponent with a flurry of fists too fast to see. The enemy, still reacting to the first strike while the second strike flies in, grows flustered and falls into the arms of his friends.<\/p>\n

It strikes me that this is not unlike what we did all that day in a conference room 26 floors below. I spent the day working with a group of technology executives developing a strategy to beat a dominant competitor out of a critical, emerging market segment. Over eight exhausting hours, we generated nearly 100 potential strategies, and from those, assembled a complex web of about 10 that we think will fluster the competition. As Sun Tzu wrote, you should set multiple traps so that if your adversary doesn\u2019t step into one, they back up into another.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve run such strategy sessions a few hundred times now, but I\u2019ve never seen a team follow the process with such methodical patience. The outcome was lethal.<\/p>\n

If you want to fluster your competition, you need to launch a flurry of disruptive strategies at them. Here are four steps to follow.<\/p>\n

1. Pick four points of leverage:<\/em><\/p>\n

Compare your business with your competitors\u2019 across eight dimensions (the \u201c8Ps,\u201d as I call them in my new book): position, product, price, place, promotion, physical experience, processes, and people. For each P decide whether (a) you have an advantage, (b) your competitors have an advantage, or (c) you are evenly matched. Then pick four Ps that you think hold the greatest potential for you to surprise your competition.<\/p>\n

2. Pick four stratagems:<\/em><\/p>\n

You can go to kaihan.net, click on the \u201cstratagem selector\u201d and use this free tool to identify four strategic patterns, or stratagems that you want to apply to your competitor. If you are not sure which to use, then use these four (which my research says are generally the most important to know now):<\/p>\n