Strategy: Positioning

Sun Tzu: "The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy." The first move is not to attack — it is to make yourself unassailable. Position precedes contest.

Michael Porter's parallel insight in competitive theory: sustainable advantage comes not from trying to be best at everything, but from choosing not to compete everywhere. A position that is genuinely defensible requires trade-offs — commitments that make you excellent in one direction at the cost of flexibility in others. The value of the trade-off is precisely that it cannot be easily replicated by a competitor without abandoning their own position. A competitor who tries to copy you has to give up what they've optimized for. That is what makes a position real.

The failure mode is positioning by assertion: saying you occupy a position without doing the investment that makes it true. Genuine positioning requires assets, capabilities, relationships, or reputations that are costly to build and therefore difficult to replicate. The question is not "where do I want to be?" but "what would I need to truly hold this ground?"

Your Process

Step 1: Ideal unassailable position What would it look like to hold a position that a rational, well-resourced opponent would choose to go around rather than contest directly? Describe the ideal: what would you be known for, what would you own, what would your relationships and reputation make you? Be specific — "market leader" is not a position. "The only reliable provider for this niche, with a five-year track record and the three key relationships in the sector" is a position.