May the Force be with your business strategy

How do you create change? Move. How do you overcome inferior mass? Move faster.

Geoff Wilson

Strategy is a combination of direction and applied force. It’s the force of assets deployed, talent assigned, new products launched, or new initiatives driven. In short, strategy is applying what you have to achieve what you want.

But wait a minute. What if what you have isn’t enough? What if your assets, talent, products, and other “things” are inferior? What if you just think they might be inferior? Well, I have news for you.

The laws of physics teach us about force. Newton’s second law states that force—the “thing” that creates change in the motion of an object—is derived via mass and acceleration. That is to say, if you want to create a change in something, you have to use a mass and move it at some rate over time.

So what does that mean for a business strategy? It means two things:

1. If you have a mass of assets to apply, you need to move them in order to create change.

You can’t just sit on your laurels and expect change to happen. This is a key issue when it comes to critical strategic moments in a company’s life. Need to change the basis of competition in your market? Better get moving, redeploy assets in a new configuration, and do something rather than do nothing. (And no, I’m not imploring you to just “do something.” Think first.)

When we look at well-worn examples of companies that shape and reshape industry segments, we see constant motion. Walmart stores look nothing like they did 25 years ago. Walmart has led all these years not by sitting still, but by shaping and reshaping a set of retail concepts around a juggernaut of a supply chain. They created force by maintaining a massive base of assets in a constant state of acceleration.

2. If your mass of assets is inferior, you have to move faster than the competition.

That’s right, you can overcome inferior mass with superior acceleration of the mass. What this means in business is that you can, in fact, outwork the other person. You can move faster than the competition.

Some might say this is exactly what Samsung is currently doing to Apple. Samsung has settled into a device product-launch velocity that is a multiple of Apple’s. While Samsung may not have Apple’s brand and market weight, the velocity of what it does have is applying real force to change the market.

So, if a strategic direction is known, here’s the question that should come to mind next for the management strategist: How are you applying force? Are you relying on massive assets moved at a steady pace, or are you counting on a rifle shot—a bullet fired at high velocity—to achieve change?

How do you create change? Move. How do you overcome inferior mass? Move faster.

Don’t just take it from me. Take it from one of the most brilliant military strategists in history:

The strength of an army, like the momentum in mechanics, is estimated by the weight multiplied by the velocity. A rapid march exerts a beneficial moral influence on the army and increases its means of victory. – Napoleon Bonaparte

What do you think? Is the force with your strategy?