I have recently made the acquaintance of Chris Bassford a professor of strategy at the National War College, in Washington D.C. Chris was a major contributor to the development of the USMC warfighting doctrine including  MCDP 1-2, Campaigning one of the more useful references we use at vSente for our campaigning methodology. Chris is an expert on Carl von Clausewitz and wrote a book a short time back with co-authors Tiha von Ghyczy and Bolko von Oetinger (both of the Boston Consulting Group) titled Clausewitz on Strategy.

I highly recommend both his book and web site to competitive marketers. I will be blogging several sections from the book over the next several weeks because I feel they demonstrate critical concepts that marketers need to understand in order to compete in the 21st century. I’d like to start with the chapter titled Attack and Defense which opens with an exquisite explanation of attack and defense:

Whenever two concepts form a true logical antithesis, in other words, one is the complement of the other, the one is essentially implied in the other. However, if the limitations of our mind do not allow us to consider both at once, and to find the totality of one by mere antithesis in the totality of the other, in any case, nevertheless, strong light is shed by one that is adequate to illuminate many parts of the other.

Hence in addressing the attack, we shall most often have the same subjects before us as when considering the defense.

The ability to hold and reconcile two opposing notions in your head at the same time is a necessary competency for an effective strategist. The ability to clearly sense the differences and similarities between attack and defense, when to employ the attack and when to establish a defense, and most importantly when they become one in the same is the hallmark of a great strategist. Next posting we’ll discuss their thoughts on using military metaphors to describe business operations.

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