"Make an uproar in the east,
but attack in the west," Sun Tzu 500 B.C.

What is being illustrated below—aside from considerable hubris--are the timeless battle principles of deception and control. They can work great in business too. Unlike the previous Enron example, where the fog makes it difficult to take action against you, here you WANT the competition to make an active, sometimes aggressive move. But YOU control it--and they don't know that . As always, a great CEO, just like a great General, controls the movements of his competition, often by creative and cost-effective fakery. Below a Fortune-level Chairman/CEO comments on how he does it…

In reaction to the “snake comment” of a couple of months ago, where the CEO compared himself to a Chinese snake (note: to date about 110 readers have properly guessed who that was), one comment that is consistent and certainly reflects good corpcraft™ follows*: “I would never attack like a snake. That guy’s crazy. All that thrashing around? Even with the best management in the world it’s too difficult to control. It’s better to be subtle. [For example] we send out inexpensive teams just to show up, make some noise and look interested, then disappear. The next thing you know they’ve [the competition] sent in their own people and have started spending money to get in front of us because we’re supposed to be so smart. Fact is we’re leading them all around and they don’t even know it. It’s interesting that they haven’t figured it out. But it's great for our shareholders.” When asked about the chance that they have, in fact, ‘figured it out’ he responded: “Impossible. I have much better spies.” *reproduced with permission Here, getting his competition to open up outlets where the CEO has no intention of competing, allows him to focus his best resources, all initially deployed in secret, on opening locations where he gets a very solid market jump on those that can still follow. Note: The individual stock performance of these competing companies comes as no surprise. So think about it: what illusion can you create to get your competition to do something they really shouldn't... -------------------------------------------------- Past issues To nominate someone to the readership, go here. Note: only an existing reader can do this. Send general comments or questions here. Corpcraft is a trademark of Parcon Research. This newsletter is produced by the Executive Search Practice of Parcon Research. 312.952.1777