Imagination is competitiveness.
All wars are fought with tradition and won with innovation. – Sun Tzu
The movie “Kingdom of Heaven (2005)” is set against the backdrop of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Crusade. As is well known, the Crusades were a fight between Christian and Islamic forces to control Jerusalem. The streets of Jerusalem depicted in “Kingdom of Heaven” resemble California during the Gold Rush. With European knights pouring in to establish their own territories and nations, and merchants from various regions seeking business opportunities, Jerusalem is portrayed as a bustling and complex international city. Ironically, soon after, it falls victim to an invasion by the Mongol army, neither Christian nor Islamic.
If the Crusades represent Europe’s eastward expansion, then the Mongol invasion of Europe can be seen as the westward expansion of the East. Although temporally and geographically disconnected, the movements of East and West inevitably influence each other.
The Crusades, starting from 1096 with the First Crusade, aimed to occupy Jerusalem, but approximately 90 years later, in 1187, the Arab hero Saladin seized Jerusalem from them. This is the historical backdrop of the movie “Kingdom of Heaven.” At this time, a significant movement was detected in the east. In 1220, the armies of Genghis Khan, who had become the ruler of the steppes, began their conquests. This first Mongol conquest led to the disappearance of the Islamic Khwarezmian Empire, which had prospered across present-day Uzbekistan and Iran. Now, Jerusalem was not so distant to the Mongol forces anymore.
Among the Crusaders was the belief in a legendary Christian kingdom’s army, known as Prester John or the Priest King. However, Europeans soon found themselves facing the Mongol army, whom they had believed to be their Christian allies. With the ascension of Genghis Khan’s son Ögedei, the Mongol Empire initiated its second campaign. After occupying Moscow in 1235, the Mongols went on to conquer Poland, Hungary, Romania, and even ventured into Italy, reaching Venice. The Mongols swept through Europe, defeating the armies of Russia, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, and Hungary, without suffering a single defeat. However, the death of the Mongol Khan Ögedei led to a retreat.
After Ögedei’s grandson Möngke ascended to the Mongol throne, using the southern route in 1253, they began another campaign, this time targeting Islamic territories. They captured Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic Empire, in 1258, and Damascus in Syria in 1260. Coincidentally, it was around this time that Möngke died, halting the advance. Although they retreated due to Möngke’s death and internal strife within the Mongol Empire, Jerusalem was still targeted by the Mongol invasion during this period. However, it was repelled by the Mamluk army, an Islamic state based in Egypt. Despite the defeat by the Mamluks and internal divisions within the Mongol ranks, the Mongol campaign ended as a third expedition. Nonetheless, with a Mongol army of 100,000 shaking up the known world against hundreds of millions, they left an indelible mark on history.
Anthropologist Jack Weatherford, author of “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,” emphasizes that the success of Genghis Khan’s army was not due to great strategy, but rather execution. However, the greatness of strategy lies precisely in that execution. Genghis Khan’s execution placed swiftness and practicality as its foremost principles. In battle, they pursued gains ruthlessly, as victory in warfare is about gaining advantages. They did not hesitate to retreat to lure their enemies, not just for honor or principle but to lure the enemy. Ultimately, strategy exists to win.
The goodness or badness of a strategy is primarily measured by its effectiveness. Effectiveness means achieving good results through actions aimed at certain goals. It’s about whether an action can achieve the desired result. For instance, if safety for 100 days is a goal on a construction site, and a bonus is promised upon achieving it. If the site maintains a safety record for 90 days, it’s considered 90% achievement, proving the effectiveness of the bonus as a motivational tool. Hence, the Mongol expedition strategy can be deemed effective. However, the assessment of effectiveness, which measures the degree of goal achievement, can vary depending on how the goal is set. If, for instance, the goal is set low, the effectiveness might be overrated.
There was a time when simply being able to organize accounting books could land you a job and even earn recognition as an expert. This was because you could achieve your goals. However, as competition intensified and all methods of competitors became effective, the story changed. When many similar competitors emerge, merely being capable is no longer a competitive advantage. What becomes essential in such situations is the evaluation method of efficiency.
Efficiency refers to the ratio of output to input expressed as a percentage. The higher the output compared to input, the more efficient it is. Efficiency can be expressed as output/input or profit/cost. To illustrate the difference between effectiveness and efficiency, consider the analogy of catching a fly on the wall. If you use a hammer, typically used to break walls on a construction site, to swat a fly stuck on the wall, you have effectively caught the fly, achieving the goal 100%. However, if you exerted more force than necessary by swinging the hammer instead of simply using a fly swatter, it’s hard to call it efficient.
In this sense, the Mongol conquests were efficient. They achieved remarkable success with minimal resources, swiftly overcoming far larger foes. Efficiency has been emphasized in past management theories. During the era of mass production, efficiency became a crucial evaluation criterion for competitiveness. Ford Motor Company, known as a pioneer of industrial automation, is a prime example. Despite Ford famously stating, “Customers can have any color they want as long as it’s black,” the Model T was sold at 50-70% lower prices compared to similar vehicles, mainly due to drastically reduced production costs.
In an era where everyone strives for efficiency, productivity becomes a critical competitive factor. However, as competition for efficiency intensifies, competence in this aspect alone is no longer a competitive advantage. Efficiency is primarily achieved through specialization and division of labor. Competing for efficiency in the same field leads to a “squeezing water from a dry towel” type of competition. Businesses must produce better products at lower costs, while individuals must accomplish more in the same amount of time.
Efficient companies like General Motors began to catch up with Ford. General Motors started overtaking Ford by producing various products under different brands like Cadillac, Chevrolet, and Pontiac, thus securing competitiveness through market differentiation.
Differentiation brings rewards in the form of monopoly. Every entrepreneur dreams of having their own blue ocean, and individuals aspire to have their own unique expertise. That’s what monopoly is about. Bill Gates built Microsoft as we know it today by monopolizing the PC operating system market. Monopoly is created through market differentiation, product differentiation, and differentiation in consumer perception.
Where does the astonishing combat power of the Mongolian army come from? It could be found in the arrows carried by Mongolian cavalry, but the Mongolian army’s differentiation fundamentally lies in speed. The army of Genghis Khan mainly consisted of cavalry, with horses possessing superior endurance compared to Western horses. Their maximum daily marching speed reportedly reached 200km, a feat even challenging in today’s conditions. Mongolian warriors each brought with them four to eight horses, adopted a military system without a separate logistics branch, and minimized unnecessary items while making essential ones lightweight to increase movement and combat speed.
The Mongolian army, equipped with such speed, would strike like the wind without giving their opponents time to prepare, and vanish just as quickly. If the enemy expected the Mongols to reach their fortress in two days, Genghis Khan’s army would often arrive the same evening, catching the enemy off guard.
Both the Mongolian and European armies of that time relied on cavalry. However, while European knights were heavily armored and wielded heavy spears and swords for frontal assaults followed by infantry charges, the Mongolian army, composed entirely of cavalry, primarily carried bows. They employed tactics of attacking, luring, surrounding, and ambushing their enemies, rather than engaging in direct confrontation like a frontal cavalry charge. For them, neither attack nor defense depended on armor or weapons but on speed. Napoleon’s ingenious tactics ultimately stemmed from the mobility of his army. He famously said, “My army can march double the distance of the enemy in one day. I may lose a battle, but I won’t lose a minute.”
Having speed doesn’t just mean being fast; it means having the ability to create countless variations and surprises by controlling your own speed. Having speed allows for numerous strategies and tactics to be employed, all stemming from a single unique advantage.
The tactics employed by the Mongolian army followed a simple pattern of attack, lure, and surprise, but their speed allowed for endless innovations. Early on, Sun Tzu said, “There is no end to the variations of surprise attacks employed by those who use them skillfully.” He explained this with examples:
“The musical scale consists of only five notes (do, re, mi, fa, sol), but the variations are limitless, beyond enumeration. The primary colors are only five (blue, yellow, red, white, black), but the variations are limitless, beyond recognition. The primary tastes are only five (bitter, sour, spicy, sweet, salty), but the variations are limitless, beyond distinction.”
The Mongolian army, with its distinctive speed, faced traditional strategies head-on and won through innovation and adaptation.
In warfare, differentiation doesn’t solely rely on speed. Differentiation means doing what others aren’t doing, not what’s already being done. An attack that the enemy can easily anticipate isn’t a differentiated attack. That’s why Robert Greene, the author of “The 33 Strategies of War,” emphasizes that sticking to predetermined patterns or predictable ideas makes one a target for enemies. And Sun Tzu taught, “Victory comes from not repeating the same method twice and adapting endlessly to the situation.”
This applies not only to individuals and businesses but also to nations. Throughout history, the winning side has been the society that developed new forms of technology or unexpected methods. We call such differentiation innovation, and innovation stems from creative thinking. Here, let’s define creative thinking as imagining the future. Strategy itself begins with imagining the future. When planting flowers in the garden, one must envision how they will bloom. Through such imagination, one can make better decisions about what to do now. People often say having a vision means imagining the future. Vision, quite literally, is imagining the future.
Self-help gurus like Robert Collier and Claude M. Bristol all find the foundation for success in belief. But for that belief to materialize, one must envision a more concrete future. They call this method “visualization,” which is picturing what one desires as a single image.
Visualizing myself winning in competition is having a vision. Finding ways to create that vision is strategy. Good strategy has the characteristic of differentiation.
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