CLAUSEWITZ in BUSINESS

CEO, General Electric
1981-2001
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CLAUSEWITZ ON STRATEGY:
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Think about strategy and sharpen your judgment in an unpredictable environment.
Carl von Clausewitz is widely acknowledged as one of the most important of the major strategic theorists; he's been read by Eisenhower, Patton, Kissinger, Chairman Mao, and many other leaders. In Clausewitz on Strategy, the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute has excerpted the passages most relevant to business strategy from Clausewitz's classic work On War. That famous book is the most general, applicable, and enduring work of strategy in the modern West: a source of insight into the nature of conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom. Clausewitz speaks the mind of the executive, revealing logic that those interested in strategic thinking and practice will find invaluable. He presents unique ideas, such as the idea that friction—the difference between what happens in plans and what happens in reality—is an intrinsic part of strategy. Clausewitz on Strategy offers Clausewitz's framework for self-education, a way to train the reader's strategic judgment.
"Writers who use war as a metaphor for business have always been less than appealing to me. Maybe it's because, as some folks say, "It's a 'guy' thing," and I'm not a guy. On the other hand, I had trouble putting down Clausewitz on Strategy (Wiley, 2001), a publication of the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute and edited by Tiha von Ghyczy, Bolko von Oetinger, and Christopher Bassford. In their carefully chosen selections from Clausewitz's On War and in their lengthy commentary in the introduction, these present-day strategists present much food for thought."Marilyn Norris, Strategy &
Leadership, May/June 2001
"Like many who are interested in strategy, I have attempted to read his classic book, On War. I found it to be hard going, and of limited benefit to my interest in business strategy. Clausewitz on Strategy is an extremely well-done book that takes the key points of On War, polishes them until they shine brightly, sets them amid many commentaries that elaborate on the same points, and uses a thoughtful introduction to connect the ideas to business strategy. The book's structure reminded me of a fine necklace, with the major gem stones set amidst complementary smaller gems. For me, this was the perfect approach, and I liked the book very much."
Donald Mitchell
Amazon Reader Review
THE BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP is one of the world's leading management consulting firms. Its clients include many of the world's industry leaders.
TIHA VON GHYCZY is a faculty member at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He is a fellow of the BCG Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group. As a former partner of BCG, he was engaged in the practice groups for manufacturing/time-based competition and high technology.
BOLKO VON OETINGER is a Senior Vice President of The Boston Consulting Group and Director of the firm's Strategy Institute. He is a member of BCG's Technology and Communications practice and has published many articles and several books on strategy and innovation.
CHRISTOPHER BASSFORDis a former US Army artillery officer. Long Professor of Strategy at the National War College in Washington, DC, he now teaches at JSOMA, part of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. He is webmaster of The Clausewitz Homepage, and the author of several books, including Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
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CLAUSEWITZ.COM EDITORIAL:IS BUSINESS "WAR"?Clausewitz is frequently referred to within the context of business strategy. For example, Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel, Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management (New York: The Free Press, 1998) makes intelligent references to Clausewitz in six separate discussions. There are many other examples of business theorists drawing on Clausewitz, some interesting and insightful, others nonsensical. Some other relevant links are listed below. We don't normally comment on the validity of any particular reference, unless we are particularly impressed or provoked. While many writers say quite bluntly that "business is war," The Clausewitz Homepage takes the position that business is NOT war—not even metaphorically speaking. It's true that politics, business, and war belong to the same broad class of phenomena, and that there are events within business that correspond in significant ways to war. Indeed, wars have actually been waged at times by commercial corporations (think of the Hanseatic League or the East India Company) for essentially commercial objectives. For that matter, there have always been mercenary armies, which are essentially businesses that sell their military capabilities. But these are very specific instances of business and war occupying the same space at the same time. In general, just as war is a particular manifestation or subset of politics, business analogs to war are subsets of a larger phenomenon—thus, business as a whole is properly compared to politics, not war. On the other hand, we've known some business thinkers who reject the business/war analogy altogether, claiming that business is about the creation of value, whereas war is pure destruction. This idea, too, is, in our view, in error. War—at least, when it is pursued with sense and skill—is about the creation of political value. Thus politics may involve "creative destruction" in much the same manner as business obviously does. |
Stephen Bungay
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This is a business-oriented site devoted to promoting the ideas of air-combat theorist John Boyd, inventor of the famous (and very useful) OODA Loop. Boyd's pretty interesting, but too many of his acoltes fee that his disciples are obligated to attack Clausewitz—for no evident reason.
Creativity-enhancing quotes from Clausewitz
"Waiting for our Clausewitz"
Originally posted Monday, April 28, 2003
by Fast Company. Business in the New Economy is a civilized version of war. Companies, not countries, are battlefield rivals.
"If you are looking for power, this is the place to be. You have just entered the world of corporate power. On this site you will find the visions of two dozen students of the Erasmus University Rotterdam on how the theories of Carl von Clausewitz find their ways in modern society. The context in which these visions were written down is a project of the Rotterdam School of Management on power given by Dr. S. Magala. These visions are the result of the assignment to describe modern transformations of power and new power agencies on a global scale. The larger goal of the assignment was to answer the question about political, cultural and commercial mobilization: Napster, Seattle/Washington anti-IMF/WB/WTO demonstrations and European integration." (Papers are in Dutch.)
"Changing the Game: Least-Cost Planning for Competition and the Environment," by Mark E. Krebs. "The bulk of the chapter relates electric utility marketing programs (including DSM, IRP and economic development) to the nine principles of warfare originated by General von Clausewitz in the early 19th century and Sun Tsu's "The Art of War," written 25 centuries ago."
Our approach to the development of strategic management software is influenced by ancient theories developed by army generals like Sun Tzu and Von Clausewitz, but put into practice with the latest technology development.
by Keith Hoskin, Richard Macve and John Stone
UMIST, LSE and The University of Wales, Aberystwyth
As submitted to Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, Manchester,7-9 July,1997. Later published as "Accounting and Strategy: towards understanding the historical genesis of modern business and military strategy" in Bhimani, A. (ed.) Contemporary Issues in Management Accounting, pp. 166-197, (OUP), 2006.
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William A. Levinson at Clausewitz.org
Levinson tells us that business is war and quotes Clausewitz: "Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale." On War, Book I, Ch. 3." See his book, The Way of Strategy (December 1999). See also http://www.ganesha.org/wos/index.html. Buy this book from Amazon.com |
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The US Marine Corps' Warfighting Manual adapted for Managers
Currency's edition of the USMC's highly Clausewitzian manual Warfighting features interviews with famous former Marines including F. Lee Bailey, Ed McMahon, and Donald Regan. They tell how they have used the Marine Corps' battle strategies of strength and straightforwardness as their secret weapons in every confrontation, whether at a corporate, departmental, or personal level. [See original military version] |
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