ABSTRACT
A newly installed CEO instantly recognized the urgency before an “active, courageous, and resolute adversary” dominated the field. In a strategy meeting, he issued a straight-forward, austere assignment to attending executives—to submit campaign plans directed at a single imperative objective: “Establish a dominant position in the market for mobile devices. If managers accept Carl von Clausewitz’s timeless truth that a major competitive campaign consists of “a number of important engagements, all confined into one whole,” then a business plan provides a framework for developing more precise objectives and strategies. The magic of victory and the curse of defeat can change the elements of a campaign. It is better to retrieve a losing engagement before its close, rather than fight a second engagement later on. If “an engagement was considered lost,” the loser can learn from his/her costly mistakes and, through good leadership, rally personnel with an intense desire to win.
