I was watching First Knight tonight with the boys and with Janet. At a certain point, in the battle for Camelot, there was a release of arrows from far, far, far away intended to hit the enemy target.
Jordan, at 10, comments, “Dad, it’s all about the arrows!” It’s all about the arrows.
You know, he’s right. We’re talking about medieval England somewhere between 800 and 1100 A.D. in which the stories talk about the guttural, brutal, life of the settlers of a land which eventually became England.
Battling each other was day-to-day existence at many fronts and over centuries.
But what was obvious, is that in their fight for survival, it wasn’t just a question of defense, at the end of the day, it was about killing the enemy. And it was a whole lot better to kill the enemy at 200 yards with arrows than it was at 2 feet with swords.
As I thought about his comment, it occurred to me that it really represents the essence of commercial gamesmanship in business.
Defense—protecting your turf—is certainly appropriate and it makes an awful lot of sense. Cost controls are also appropriate to make sure you maintain some level of protection so that you are not spending more than you’re making. However, no turf is won and no niche is secured by defense. It’s always a question of offense. And, candidly, the farther away you are from the front lines, the more effective the offense.
Think about it for a second.
Would you rather be fighting an enemy at 2 feet or at 200 feet, if you’ve got the weapons to be able to disable that enemy far away? Strategic planning is not a whole lot different than that.
Strategic planning is all about making sure that you’ve got very sharp arrows, plentiful, pointed at the right target in the market, that you can launch well in advance of any type of invasion. The closer your competitors get to your home turf, the more you’re at risk. The farther away you can keep them while simultaneously making sure you’re clearing a path for yourself, the better off you are over time.
As Jordan says, “Dad, it’s all about the arrows!”
Frankly, he’s right!