Your Competitors Aren't Who You Think They Are - Sun Tzu's Art Of ... Business Part 3

[Music] Back in season 4 we spoke about Sun Zoo and the art of war and I gave an overview about the book of why it's relevant to today. We had a lot of comments and feedback that asked if we could do more of a deep dives. I've decided let's do a mini series that looks at the book in more detail. Hello and welcome back to all your leaders and strategy. I'm Mike Harris and this is episode 3 of our mini series looking at Sun Zoo and the art of war. Most leaders think strategy is about working harder selling more or simply outperforming the competition but what if I told you the best business leaders don't win because they do more they win because they think differently before they act. There's a book over two and a half thousand years ago that explores exactly this idea. It's not about business, it's not about leadership or at least not directly but it is about something far more fundamental how to win before the fight to even begin. The book as I say the art of war by Sun Zoo and in this mini series we're taking those ancient principles and turning them into a practical toolkit for modern business leaders because this isn't about war, it's about making better decisions, choosing better opportunities and building a business that wins more consistently with less waste. And today's episode I'm calling "know yourself, know the market, the foundation of every winning strategy." Most businesses don't fail because they're incapable, they fail because they misunderstand one of two things themselves or the market they're operating and sometimes both. They underestimate their strengths, they misread what customers actually value, they ignore competitors, they don't want to acknowledge and then they build a strategy around that. In the art of war Sun Zoo puts it simply, if you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result. So today we're going to translate that into business because before you think about growth, before you think about positioning, before you think about winning you need to ask a much harder question. Are we actually seeing the situation clearly? So let's start with our truth, most strategy failures don't come from bad ideas, they come from bad diagnosis. Leaders assume they know their strengths, they assume they know their market and they assume they understand what customers want. But the assumptions are not strategy, they're guesses and when those guesses are wrong, everything built on top of it is flawed. You can have a great plan, a strong team and solid execution. But if the foundation is wrong, you will still lose because you're solving the wrong problems. So this is where the know yourself comes in. So let's break this down, firstly knowing yourself as a business. This sounds simple but it's one of the hardest things to do properly because it requires honesty, not aspirations, not ambitions, not what you want to be known for but what is actually true. So ask yourself what are we genuinely good at? And I do this a lot in workshops when I work with my customers. I ask them the question to write down what it is that they're good at as a business. And then where have we consistently delivered value? What do clients trust us for? Ask where do we struggle even if we don't like emitting to it? Because most businesses blur this line, they say we can do everything. But in reality there are strong in a few areas and average a best in the rest. And strategy is about leaning into the truth, not ignoring it because when you build on the real straits, everything else becomes easier. Sales, delivery, growth and reputation. Now let's look outwards. This is knowing the market because knowing yourself without understanding the market is dangerous. You need to understand what the customers actually value. How do they make decisions? What problems are they trying to solve? What alternatives do they already have? And importantly, who are you really competing with? Not who you think you're competing with, but who the client is actually comparing you to because this is where strategy often breaks down. Businesses position themselves one way, but are perceived another way and comparing completely different categories. And when this happens as a business, you've lost control of the narrative. Now the gap between perception and reality. And as we all know, in some ways, perception is reality because that's how you're perceived. So here's a critical insight. Most strategy problems exist in a gap between what you believe is true or what is actually true. You may believe you are differentiated. You deliver unique value and have a strong position. But if the market doesn't see it that way, it doesn't exist. And the same applies internally. You may believe your team has aligned. Your capability is strong and the systems are affected. But if performance tells a different story, that's the reality you need to work with. This is where strong leaders focus on evidence, not assumptions. So let's make this practical. Here's a simple framework you can use. I call it a strategic intelligence map. Break it down into four areas. One, internal truths. What are our genuine strengths? Where do we consistently perform well? And what gives us confidence based on evidence? Two, external realities. What does the market actually value? How are decisions made and what is changing? Three, assumptions. What are you taking for granted and what have we not questioned recently? Four, unknowns. What do we not understand yet? What do we need to test or explore? Because once you've mapped this out, you can start replacing guesswork, bias and optimism with clarity, insight and better decisions. To help with this, you can find a copy of the strategic intelligence map on our Patreon, which will give you a template that you can use to apply it to your businesses. So in practice, what we've just gone through shows up everywhere. In strategy development, it's the difference between a plan that looks good on one that actually works. In business growth, it's the difference between chasing opportunities and targeting the right ones. In leadership, it's the difference between confidence and false confidence. And from a consulting perspective, and this is how I look at things when I'm working with clients as strategies consulting, this is often where the real work with begins, not in creating the strategy, but in getting to the truth first. Because once you see clearly the right decisions become a lot easier to identify. So here's the shift you need to take from today. Stop asking what should we do next and start asking what do we know for certain and where might we be wrong? Because strategy is not just about making decisions, it's about making informed decisions. So in summary, today we've taken another key principle from the art of war. Know yourself, know the market. And we've turned it into something practical, a way to challenge assumptions, strengthen your thinking and build strategy on solid ground. And the homework for today, as you know, I like to set some homework, take 10 minutes to ask yourself this, what do we believe about our business that we haven't truly tested? And what might change if that belief turned out to be wrong? Because as I say, strategy doesn't start with better ideas, it starts with better understanding. So that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed it and you come back again next time for another episode in our mini series when we're going to start moving from clarity to discipline and we'll look at the cost of conflict and why most businesses are doing too much with too little. I'll see you then. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]