Can your company withstand the power of time - or more importantly the cost of time - in a competitive environment?

From the Art of War:

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped.  If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity.  Then no man, however wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.

What is the cost to your company in resources (time, knowledge and money) every day you are in a high competition environement?  Will your team be able to withstand long competitive situations without a win to rally around?

The Human Factor (Your Army): 

I believe for most people it is in our being to want to succeed.  When success is pushed that far further ahead of us, we lose morale in the face of the competition.  Imagine yourself running a marathon, and just at the beginning of the last half mile you find out that they moved the finish line another 20 miles ahead of you…

For every mile more you ask your team to go, they must have an equal amount of motivation to go farther.  Remember, your spiritual cause is always more motivating to you than them - each person enters a conflict with their own motivations.

The Three Resources:

Time lost is just that - it is part of the climate and you have no control over the passing of time.  The longer you are in conflict with competition, the less time you have for other campaigns.

Money lost is expected in most competitive situations, limited loss is achieved only through short successful campaigns.

Knowledge is most powerful in short campaigns.  Long campaigns exhaust our knowledge and creativity.  Once exhausted we lose the ability to move forward.

The Bigger Picture

The final impact of long campaigns is fringe competition.  When we spend a majority of our resources (or lose any amount in long term campaigns) we thin ourselves from being able to defend against non-direct competitors.  These are the ’similar companies’ outside our niche waiting for an opportunity to grab market share in our ground.

We thin our message to our customers and clients, which limits us from being agile when a marketing opportunity presents itself. 

With limited resources and abilities, time in conflict can cost us more than our investment or gain.

Related Thoughts:

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on. - Ulysses S. Grant