Do you have what it takes to play hardball?ĭoes your company have the strategic backbone to dominate its markets? If not, hardball players may overtake you. The playbook won’t do you any good if you feel squeamish about using it. It’s also about the attitude you bring to them. Best employed in bursts of ruthless intensity, these strategies are: Devastate rivals’ profit sanctuaries, plagiarize with pride, deceive the competition, unleash massive and overwhelming force, and raise competitors’ costs.īut hardball isn’t only about the moves you make. While there are countless ways to play hardball, a handful of classic strategies are effective in generating competitive advantage. Indeed, the discourse around soft issues such as leadership, corporate culture, knowledge management, talent management, and employee empowerment has encouraged the making of softball players. That approach may reflect the recent focus of management science, which itself has gone soft. They don’t play to win they play to play. Instead of running-not scared, but smart-softball players seem almost to be standing around and watching. They don’t accept that you must sometimes hurt your rivals, and risk being hurt, to get what you want. Softball players, by contrast, may look good-they may report decent earnings and even get favorable coverage in the business press-but they aren’t intensely serious about winning. They pick their shots, seek out competitive encounters, set the pace of innovation, and test the edges of the possible.
They single-mindedly pursue competitive advantage and the benefits it offers: a leading market share, great margins, and rapid growth. The winners in business play hardball, and they don’t apologize for it.
0 kommentar(er)
