Chapter B0
Introduction: Five Rules to decide if you want to fight
You have to be seriously pathological to believe that the answer to every conflict situation is war! At home or at work, conflict is a central part of the human condition. Every day, potential conflicts stalk you, plotting your every move! How it all turns out depends on what you do when you realize that you face a potential conflict. The choices are generally pretty clear. For one, you can always turn the other cheek, swallow your pride, and forget about it. If this is what you choose to do, you do not need to read this book and I do not need to write it!
As an alternative, you may try and find a half-way compromise solution. This is always a good idea. The problem is that it’s hard to compromise without first engaging in some serious sabre rattling. At the very least, it lets your enemy know what’s coming if he doesn’t back down and settle. Call it aggressive negotiation. To engage in this kind of thing, you need to judge how deep your sabre cuts if you use it. That is only another way of saying that you need to assess your ability to fight if you have to.
As a second alternative, you could well decide that you want to fight. There are times when fighting is very profitable. When reward is way greater than risk, when benefit is much greater than cost, when punting is the game to play. Call it speculative litigation. Even when the cost benefit isn’t great, you may decide to fight because you have other long-term goals in mind: like projecting an aggressive image; like intimidating all future opponents. Call that strategic litigation. To take calls on these sorts of issues, you still have to figure out if you have the ability to fight if you want to.
I suppose I should mention a third alternative. You may well decide that you don’t want to decide this issue at all. After all, not taking a decision is also a decision. Call it Narasimha Rao’s BMDD a.k.a the Babri Masjid demolition decision! The good news is that a decision not to decide something still leaves the door open to taking that same decision on that same subject at a future date. To take this call, you still need to figure out if you have the ability to fight the fight that you may not want to.
Actually, if you think about it, with respect to their processes, these three alternatives are not alternatives at all. Without exception, every time you find yourself at loggerheads with someone, you have to sit down and decide whether you are capable of fighting. If you don’t have the ability to fight, you do well to (hopefully!) not pick a fight. On the other hand, if it turns that you can fight, but only up to a point, you would (hopefully) fight up to that point and then perhaps sue for peace. Then again, if you decide you can fight and win, you can go at it with a vengeance. So however you look at it, every choice comes down to the same calculation: are you capable of fighting?
Why should this matter, you may ask?
It is important to ask this question because if you do not, you can end up on the receiving end of a bloodbath. Every warrior knows that wars are destructive affairs and no soldier ever goes into battle with the guarantee that he will never stop a bullet. The soldier shoots at someone who is shooting back. No boxer ever goes into a ring thinking ‘I will never get punched’. The man he is punching is punching back. No businessman ever gets into business saying ‘I will never make a loss’. The man he is trying to profit from could cause him a loss. Winning and losing is inherent in every conflict. You can make statistical calculations about your chances, but you cannot guarantee anything. It’s the same with litigation.
Litigation is inherently destructive and it is resource heavy. Too often, people starting a case have no idea what price they will pay for the joy of the brawl. At the very least, it is appropriate for you to ask if you should be starting it at all. There are many frames in which this question can be asked but it is actually three entirely different questions:
“Am I able to fight a war?” is the first question. This is no different from a soldier asking ‘do I have a gun’, or a boxer asking ‘can I punch’ or a businessman asking ‘do I have a business idea?’ In each case, it’s about the inherent ability to fight a war. A blind solider would normally not want to go to war, unless he was a Kung Fu master in a Hong Kong B movie. An asthmatic athlete would not sign up for a boxing bout. A one-legged man would not normally run the next national marathon to win. Yet, so many people fighting legal wars never ask themselves this question and even if they do, they do not have a way to evaluate, let alone answer the question.
“Am I able to fight a war with this particular enemy” is the second question. It’s pretty simple. You may have the ability to make cars, but can you build a Formula 1 car? You may know some boxing, but can you take on an 400-pound silverback gorilla. Did Iraq ever have the ability to fight a war with America? Can a boxer accept a fight three weight classes above his natural weight? Yet so many people fighting legal wars never ask themselves if they are taking on someone who is way above their league given his or her wealth, strength, networking, ruthlessness or resources.
“Am I going to be fighting a winnable war” is the third and last question. This question is not quite the same as the second question. You may have the ability to fight. You may have the ability to fight with this particular enemy because he is not stronger than you, or whatever. But you may be fighting a war that no one will win. You could be in a situation where the war will grind down both you and your enemy and end in a stalemate. This war will exhaust everyone and benefit no one. How does that help you?
How do you answer these questions? I use five simple tests to find my conclusions as follows:
- The Balance of Personal Power, which we discuss in Chapter B1;
- The Governing Environment, which we discuss in Chapter B2;
- The Field Occupation, which we discuss in Chapter B3;
- The Leadership, which we discuss in Chapter B4, and
- The Logistics, which we discuss in Chapter B5.
Let’s examine each of these Tests in the rest of this section B.