Leadership Substance, Style and Shadow 31and the winning strategy only wins as long as your competitor
does not use it too. When they do, their reaction becomes part
of the market situation and you need to change again. You
have to react to others reacting to you reacting to others ... like
a chameleon in a mirror, companies change according to the
conditions, and the conditions change in response to the
company policy.
Co-dependent, parasitic and symbiotic relationships occur
in the business world as well as in the natural world. We talk
of modern markets as a ‘jungle’, but look further and you
will see commercial deserts and rain forests as well. Firms be-
come dependent on particular suppliers and suppliers
become dependent on firms. They need competitors to
stimulate them. Microsoft would not have penetrated the In-
ternet market without Netscape successfully leading the way.
The so-called ‘Browser Wars’ (military again) that followed
led to new software, as Microsoft changed its products to ac-
commodate the Internet.
So, new patterns of products and relationships emerge
from competition. Competitors naturally co-operate in a
dance of new products and new markets: ‘co-opetition’. The
computer industry has the most obvious co-opetition – co-
operation between competitors establishes technical
standards, makes the market grow faster and creates new
markets. At the moment Sun, IBM, Apple and Netscape have
formed an alliance to challenge Microsoft’s hold on the in-
dustry. Whoever ‘wins’, the game will go on.
A position of authority may help a person to be a leader, but
a person in authority is only a leader if they have influence
apartfrom their position. A good test of leadership is to con-
sider whether, if a person suddenly lost their formal
authority, others would still follow them. If the person is a
leader, then yes. If not – maybe. If they were authoritarian,
wanting unquestioning obedience and caring nothing for
the people they led and were responsible for, then no, and
their erstwhile followers might well turn on them to seek re-
venge for the humiliation they have suffered.