“The future is already here — it is just not very evenly distributed” — William Gibson
In the summer of 1917, during World War I, British officers drew up plans for what would become known as the infamous Battle of Passchendaele. The fighting raged for over three months, yet no senior officer visited the battlefield where 250,000 British troops would fall. Passchendaele was continually drenched in rain; ‘guns clogged, soldiers slipped into muddy shell holes and drowned and artillery could not be moved forward nor the wounded moved back’ — yet “still the attack went on”. British officers back at HQ “lamented that the infantry did not show more offensive spirit”.
After the battle was over and all was quiet again on the front, a staff officer finally visited the battlefield. Gazing out “over a sea of mud” he muttered to himself, “My God, did we send men to advance in that? After which he broke down weeping and his escort led him away1”.
Battles like Passchendaele — where officers too easily mistook their own disregard for the lives of their men for the Clausewitzian determination of a strategic genius2 — reveal how overhead conditions can affect a Landscape. What looks like an easy distance to traverse across a Landscape in the warmth of summer can become treacherous in a torrentially wet autumn. Plans made in ignorance of external conditions are destined to fail — and not because of a lack of “spirit” amongst those tasked to execute such ill-considered plans.
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Business, like war, doesn’t take place in an unchanging Landscape. It’s shaped by factors beyond our control — shifts in overhead conditions on a battlefield, or the emergence of a new technology in a market. These changes unleash a dizzying array of complex patterns leaders must be aware of and respond to.
Clausewitz described these factors as chance — something to be endured, almost fatalistically. In contrast, Chinese philosophical thought views such unexpected changes as proceeding “according to a general pattern that can not only be anticipated, but can be manipulated to one's advantage3”. Awareness of how these patterns can shape a situation, and adapting to harness their ‘potential’ (shi), enables one to seek victory from conditions4 — not in spite of change, but because of it.
Shigetaka Komori5 used a crisis that had destroyed the global market leader to lead Fujifilm to even greater success than before. He argued that: “Once you have a proper grasp of the present state of affairs, you take that as your starting point and ask: “What is going to happen next? What is unfolding here”? You read the flow of events6”. He understood that Landscapes change, shaped by external forces beyond anyone’s control and that one must learn to read the flow of events to anticipate new possibilities and embrace opportunities.
In this third part, we’ll explore the ‘economic rules of the game’ in the Wardley Maps method — the general patterns of change in the world of business. We’ll learn how to use these patterns to ‘read the flow of events’ — to anticipate future shifts in the Landscape, manipulate conditions to our advantage, and create better strategic options. But first, we need to understand the wider economic Landscape we operate in more clearly.
1 Stokesbury, J. L. A Short History of World War I (1981) pp241-2
3 Yuen, Derek M. C.. Deciphering Sun Tzu (p. 53)
6 ‘Innovating Out of Crisis: How Fujifilm Survived (and Thrived) As Its Core Business Was Vanishing’ by Shigetaka Komori (2015) p.40