Are you an incumbent business, scared by the media and advertisers with stories of ‘the disruptors’? If so, consider this electrifying quote from Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings. In it, the legendary Japanese sword master tells us how to avoid being psyched out by a perceived adversary:
“To become the enemy” means to think yourself into the enemy’s position. In the world people tend to think of a robber trapped in a house as a fortified enemy. However, if we think of “becoming the enemy”, we feel that the whole world is against us and that there is no escape. He who is shut inside is a pheasant. He who enters to be arrested is a hawk.”
If you’re scared of challengers, try to see the world from their perspective. What if they’re burning through cash, fretting about how to best spin this month’s results to their investors, fed up with ramen noodles, or can’t afford enough thread to darn the worn elbows in their sweaters?
Incumbents have huge advantages in the form of assets that actually matter in the long run: deep customer knowledge, trusted brands, operational know-how, financial strength, and hard-won expertise no newcomer can easily replicate.
In my book Start With What Works, I show how leaders can unlock the often hidden strengths already in their organizations. The key isn’t to throw everything out and “go digital” at any cost. It’s to see your essence more clearly, double down on what truly differentiates you, and use that as the launchpad for growth.
So how do you do that? Here are five practical moves:
- Learn to find your hidden assets. Every organization has underused strengths – capabilities, relationships, insights, opportunities – that can be turned into growth. It’s easy to overlook them. For years LEGO ignored their adult user community. Now they embrace them (they’re the ones with the money).
- Stay focused on the customer. Trends come and go, but understanding and serving real needs never goes out of fashion. Law firms will keep being changed by tech, but they will always need to build and maintain trust.
- Work with technical experts in new areas – while trusting your commercial savvy. You’ve stayed in business for a reason. Don’t abdicate judgment just because the language is technical. Marketing automation used judiciously might be helpful, but complex branching algorithms that send a zillion reminders (email, text, WhatsApp) every 30 minutes before an approaching meeting that’s already in an executive’s calendar? They’re spam.
- Simplify instead of adding complexity. When facing change, the temptation is to bolt on more systems, teams, and processes. Often the real breakthrough comes from streamlining. The Sunday Times reduced its subscription options from a dizzying fast-food menu of combinations to three simple choices. Subscriptions jumped 127%.
- Balance urgency with patience. Move fast where you can – but remember transformation is a series of compounding steps, not one big leap. e.g. remember the chaos when Heathrow Terminal 5 opened? They thought they could implement it in one big bang. It’s a great experience now, but it took a long time to recover their reputation.
Disruptors may grab the headlines. But Musashi is telling us: “Don’t forget they have their problems, too.” Incumbents can draw confidence from assets built up over many years, start with what works, and use that to meet the moment.