Front-line strategy draws the critical distinction between competition and conflict. Sun Tzu taught that the easiest way to win in competition is to avoid conflict. Conflict arises only from a failure of front-line strategy.

This doesn't come from planning. If everything could be planned, you wouldn't need the tools of strategy. Unfortunately, we all live increasingly on the front lines of competition. Whether you realize it or not, the challenges of an increasingly competitive world are shaping your life. To be successful over the long term, planning is not enough. You need to know how to make good decisions about reading your strategic position, advancing your position, and dealing with unforeseeable challenges. In the science of strategy, we call decision-making in these three areas positional strategy, expansion strategy, and situational strategy. As the Roman strategist Flavius Vegetius Renatus said, “Warriors are not born; they are trained.”

What do you want? To get a pay raise? To settle a dispute? To make a sale? To be successful in your career? To start a business? To find a spouse? To become better known? To be recognized for your work? Your success in any of these areas cannot come from simply planning and working through your plans. Planning alone doesn't work, because in any competition plans collide, creating situations no one plans.

As you start learning classical strategy, you begin to see what you are doing right and why it works. Your hard-won knowledge from experience fits into a larger, more comprehensive system. Wouldn't it be nice to have a set of tools to help you see more opportunities and take more effective actions to embrace them? Start learning what you are missing with a FREE trial of our on-line training.