800-CEO-READ Blog

Hardball - An Introduction

I'd like to thank Jack and Todd for hosting Hardball.

I wrote Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win? I believe that in recent years there has been way too much emphasis on the “soft” management issues, such as leadership and culture, governance, and not nearly enough focus on strategy. As a result, there are a lot of companies that, today, rely on weak tactics that do little more than keep them in the game for the short term. Hardball players, by contrast, don’t just want to play; they want to win, in every aspect of the business game. They go for the decisive win for themselves and, at the same time, do everything they can to weaken their competitors and push them off the playing field. In their fear of being losers they create losers.

Hardball players win by gaining an advantage over their competitors, which enables them to increase market share and boost profits, while reducing their competitors’ share and profits. Then they reinvest their gains in their employees, processes, products, and other activities enabling them to further build share and increase profits. If they can keep this virtuous cycle going it is very difficult for a rival company to grow, be profitable, or even stay in the game.

In the book, I describe several classic strategies for achieving competitive advantage, including unleashing massive and overwhelming force, threatening your competitor’s profit sanctuaries, enticing your competitor into retreat, and breaking compromises. The excerpt you’ll find here is one of my favorite strategies, exploiting anomalies. It’s about how hardball companies look carefully into atypical situations or outlier results in search of subtle hints of opportunities for improvement and growth.