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Fight Only the Battles You Can Win |
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First understand the situation, then determine whether to fight and how. |
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Every executive encounters the decision of where and how to expend energy in two primary areas: the political arena and performance of his assigned tasks (either internal or external depending on job function). |
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The political battles can be the most time consuming and debilitating. The larger the organization, the bigger is the political morass. Halberstam explains one type of conflict in his description of conflict at Ford Motor Company in The Reckoning: "The growing power of the finance people made the creative people more vulnerable than ever. For the creative people always, no matter how good they were, made mistakes. No product man was perfect; for every model that was a success, there were others best forgotten. By contrast, the finance men were careful. They were never identified with a particular product. They never had to create anything. In meetings they attacked but never had to defend, while the product people defended and could never attack." |
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In internal politics, while defending your position, target your battle against systems instead of individuals. The person you attack may someday be your boss. |
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In determining where to fight external battles, keep your orientation focused on effectiveness. Where can you add value and win? The larger the target the bigger will be the results. You cannot be strong everywhere; you must determine where you are going to put your main effort and then exercise the discipline that allocates resources, directly and indirectly, to support this main effort. |
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If we are not effective, we have no need to be efficient. Ask Ford about its Edsel, Gerber about its failed venture into adult foods, or the corner grocer who went out of business. |
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Market testing is an option that allows you to determine whether to launch a full-scale offensive. Your first objective in a test is to determine whether the concept works. Apply full resources to the effort. If the test fails when backed with adequate resources, you know you must abandon the effort. If it succeeds, you can adjust to make it profitable. Half-hearted tests tell you nothing. |
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We need to be efficient, but not at the expense of the resources needed to achieve success. An inefficient victory is bad, but not as bad as losingwhich is extremely inefficient. |
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