Business is Fight

Doing Business: everybody wants to do Business.

As a general perspective, doing Business means succeeding in defining peculiar goals and objectives, and in accomplishing them all, in a ‎specific timeframe. The achievement of a generic goal occurs in a context, wherein the Company - the legal entity which aims at 'doing Business' - is forced to compete: no competition, neither goals, nor business shots means nothing at all. Competition is the contest in which the overall legal entities setup their strategies and apply them - one against each other - to overcome the obstacles, to reduce the risks, to overcome the enemy, to succeed.

Thus: Business is fight‎, definitely.

Business is not 'similar' to a fight: it is just a 'specific kind of fight'. So all the aspects affecting the performance of each economic operator, ought to be actually considered and explored according to the ancient fighters/warriors doctrines. This is not a joke, this is realism, pragmatism: this is making things happen according to a strategic vision.

There is the agonist (the Company) and there is its antagonist (the Competitor). The final performance (the fight) requires training, setting up strategies, tactics, technical skills to be attained, requires a gym and/or a school for learning and improving several martial procedures, where experts, Masters and Generals, can transfer and assess the belligerent competences of their soldiers; these kind of tangible and intangible features are enclosed in the Company itself: assets, Managers, Team-Leaders, procedures, simulations, procedural patterns, operations. The showground in which the two parties have their fight is the Marketplace, in which players and competitors play to achieve their objectives (customers, orders, contracts) in opposite position and mutual contradiction. There is plenty of mental and muscular energy required to be invested and deployed during the fight or the war campaigns, as well as there is a bundle of huge investments and/or commitments, which all the employees and the managers are required to devolve, for attaining the goals.‎ During the fight, the performance of each player might be influenced by the external environment (weather, sun/dark-light, cold, hunger/thirst, altitude, sizes and topography of the area of the fight). This is true for the fighters as well as for the Business: social, technological, environmental, economic, political, legal, ethics and demographic aspects, definitely affect the performance of the Company, in the Marketplace. There are rules, which the fighter needs to know and to respect, as well as there are regulations in the Market (official/unofficial, legal/commercial, social/cultural), requiring a severe fulfilment from all parties. The result of the fight depends on expertise, experiences, technical skills, mental attitudes, strategic visions, availability and effectiveness of weapons, coherent with the kind of fight and with the kind of enemy to be overcome, as well as any player can rely on strategic patterns, assessment/analysis matrices, strategic plans and operational programs, to run the business properly. A serious and wise fighter should know in advance the biggest possible bundle of information regarding his/her enemy, as much as any market player is required to gather official, unofficial and confidential information regarding competitors. Knowledge and information is still one of the most important and effective factor affecting a result, in war as much as in Business reality.

So Business is Fight, actually.‎

Business men - as well as Fighters - work very hard for a lifetime, to get prepared to the worst possible cases and scenarios, and yet this time is not enough to feel comfortable: neither rest nor relaxation is ever allowed and a lack of attention is prohibited and may lead to tragic failures. Procedures, dynamics, attitudes, habits, visions, tasks and relationships, network and interconnections, tangible and intangible: all is exploited according to rational approaches and attitudes, to get things done.

So Business is Fight: what kind of fight Business is? Which are the main players involved in this battle? Which are the relationships rationally and irrationally interconnecting these actors? Which are the weapons? What is the final reward?

Business is a complex kind of fight, and the better (and quicker) the player clears up its attributes and peculiarities in his/her mind, the best and the most effective will be his/her approach and attitude. Complexity is not difficulty, but only comes from the addition of several factors, combined in a unique scenario, the players have to deal with in order to compete. Thus: a good start consists of 'de-factorizing' the contest, clearing up all of these 'contaminants', un-mixing each of them from all the other, and focus the appropriate attention on the particles.

There are basically three levels of fighting, to which three kinds of level of competition are equivalent.‎

From one side there is 'The Company', here intended to be the player which 'subjectively' is aiming at 'doing Business', entering the Contest (the Marketplace). The first level of fight runs internally - thus - because the Entrepreneur (physical subjectivity) needs to set up the internal structure, which will be in charge of competing in the Market on his/her own behalf (juridical subjectivity): only a Legal Entity is allowed to operate (Lawfulness). Apart from the standard patterns generically characterising the Company - Vision/Mission/Commitment, Compliance Package, Organisational Charts, Strategic Business Units patterns, Operational Programs, procedural patterns/matrices/operations, Strategic Business Plan, Supply Chain Management, Value Chain Strategy, Marketing Mix Plan and several others - which theoretically should combine all internal assets/resources for making them consistently coexist and succeed in the long term, there is always an internal fight, by nature, in the Company, as much as in the inner part of any Warrior. The most ancient and expert fighting arts Grand Masters would always teach that 'the main Enemy is Yourself', and they mean that the first limit of the power is the 'internal limit' of each one of us. Similarly, the Company will face internal fights unavoidably, amongst all the human resources, in spite all the managers should already be aware of the strategy and of all the interconnections these strategies ought to ensure, amongst the Business Units. The first limit to overcome - then - is the current internal attitude to compete.‎

On a second instance, there is the Offer, the 'Gross Offer', consisting of the ‎sum of all the Companies offering a specific set of products/services in the Market; the factors determining the Offer are sometimes called: Players, Competitors, Suppliers, Providers and Bidders, depending on the relevant perspective and kind of analysis. The second competition takes place in the Marketplace, and is between those factors which are included in the same segment (Offer); such kind of rivalry - which is more evident to everyone than anything else, and it is often and wrongly considered the sole sort of Competition in Business - is amongst the Competitors: each one of them wants to overcome the other, to ensure his/her supremacy, whose final evidence is the Contract, the Project.

On third and last relevance, there is the Demand, the 'Gross Demand', which consists of the sum of all the Companies and/or Governmental/Institutional Entities, demanding the same (or similar) kind of goods/services to the Market. Similarly to what occurs in the Offer perspective, even the Demand companies are competing amongst them, to ensure their own and legitimate Business (their Customers and Market-Share). As for our perspective, we do not mind regarding this 'internal' competition the Demanders are running, but only its results. Based on their contracts and/or commercial prospects, the Buyers 'need' to purchase some products/services in the Market, and they are forced to deal with Suppliers, and to do that at their possible best (high quantities, high quality, effective post-sales services, low prices). Based on the same kind of different perspectives, ‎these entities are named: Purchasers, Customers, Clients, Tenderers, Buyers. The third kind of competition - to which is never committed enough focus and attention by the Entrepreneurs - takes place in the Marketplace between the Supplier (which has already won its fight against its Competitors), and the Customer. This kind of competition is called 'negotiation' and can be considered a heavy and energy/time consuming process, requiring high professionality and expertise, to be properly run and finalised.

In facts, there are three main kind of competition in Business: organisational, free Market competition, negotiation.

The objectives any Entrepreneur would like to attain - as any kind of commercial law definition recommends and officially requires - are few figures: Profitability, Market-Shares, Market-Coverage, in this specific order. Any other aspect, directly or indirectly somehow belongs to the Company, is nothing but 'a tool', ‘a mean' to attain the objective. The last, ‎and most important recommendation we consider 'crucial' and definitely it affects the enterprises lifetime and approach, is 'sustainability': any running business, apart from the Business field in which the Enterprise wants to compete, should be coherent and consistent in the long term. Without sustainability, there can be no real business.

There is a fourth kind of fight, finally, even if most Entrepreneurs and Academics neglect naming it as ‘a fight’, because it is included in the concept of “Entrepreneurship” by nature. Last enemy the Company should fight is “uncertainty”. Business natural environment is “uncertainty”, subtending (average) human ineptness to foresee the future events. Any strong and effective Strategy might be jeopardised by some specific events occurring in the wrong time and in the most unexpected shape and size. That is the reason why some Multinational Companies use to practice “Scenario’s Planning”, very often.

But business is uncertainty, definitely.

This Volume intends to clarify and show few tools which are used by the Entrepreneurs in their competitions. The most used and most effective weapons, applied in the Marketplace ‎worldwide. Even today many Entrepreneurs and Enterprises owe their success to the appropriate implementation of these tools.‎

They are not only Entrepreneurs, they are Fighters.