Introduction: From the Battlefield to the Business World

I never could have done what I did at FedEx had I not served in the Marines.

”Fredrick W. Smith, CEO, FedEx ^[1]

This book aims to show you how you can use maneuver warfare , the modern-day combat philosophy of the United States Marine Corps, to lead a winning organization in the business world.

In the simplest of terms, maneuver warfare is the use of speed, surprise, and concentrated force against an opponent s weakness to achieve a maximum impact with a minimum expenditure of resources in the presence of strategic uncertainty and hostile intent. In warfare this outcome implies shattering the enemy s will to resist with minimum friendly losses of combat equipment and human life. In business this outcome implies maximizing profits by employing information, capital, physical equipment, and personnel in the most efficient manner.

How Maneuver Warfare Is Relevant to Business

We are not advocating a facile and superficial comparison between business and warfare, nor are we advocating the brutalization of business. Furthermore, it is not our intent in this book to glorify warfare and the associated loss of life. But we firmly believe that the concept of maneuver warfare is directly relevant to leadership in business, precisely because it has been developed to address conditions that in many ways mirror those faced by modern executives.

First and foremost, leaders in war face the harshest of trade-offs ”knowingly placing their men and women in harm s way to seize an objective. While lives are not at stake in the marketplace , we believe that decisions made in war give insight into the deployment and conservation of resources in business because those resources being expended ”human lives ”are so precious. Second, in much the same manner that commanders position men and mat riel on the battlefield, business leaders deploy information, capital, personnel, and physical assets to capitalize on market opportunities. Third, as in armed conflict, altering the conditions that govern competitive encounters in the business environment enables companies to approach market opportunities along a path of least resistance from a position of relative strength. Finally, business, while not as extreme as warfare, is a dynamic interplay between opposing wills, where human and environmental attributes mediate resource-based conflict. Companies compete aggressively ”even viciously ”for strategic advantage in a chaotic arena that is increasingly similar to the modern theater of war.

Accordingly, we believe maneuver warfare to be a useful guide for business thinking, particularly in the fast-paced, complex, fluid, and uncertain business environment of the twenty-first century. Companies that can effectively shape the conditions that govern competitive encounters will flourish; those that cannot will fail. Perhaps more significant, companies that win using outdated strategies ”for example, through lengthy wars of attrition, such as protracted price wars ”may find themselves so exhausted that their executives, their shareholders, and their market valuations may not recover for an extended period of time.

^[1] Phone conversation with Fred Smith, May 12, 2003.