Welcome to Mark McNeilly's Sun Tzu blog, the purpose of which is to take the quote of the week and explain its relevance. Feel free to email it to others.
Therefore, determine the enemy's plans and you will know which strategy will be successful and which will not.
Knowing your opponents and their plans is a key tenet of Sun Tzu's strategic philosophy. The key to doing so in business is through a solid market intelligence department. The MI department needs to know not only the basics about the competition (e.g. their financials and the product lines); that will provide good insight into what the competition can do. The MI team needs to go beyond that and understand the strategies of the competition, how their execs have acted in the past, the opposing firm's objectives and view of the industry.
By knowing these key facts and providing timely, insightful analysis and recommendations to the executive team the MI group can help the firm employ the right strategies.
