
Being Unpredictable Is a Bad Strategy - apress
https://hbr.org/2017/01/why-being-unpredictable-is-a-bad-strategy
======
pystack
In chess, amateurs play for tricks, masters play for position.

Amateurs assume competitors will fall for the tricks, but that is dangerous in
business. Competitors could be sandbagging, and there's no ELO based on many
prior games. You're also threatening their business and livelihood, not just
the loss of a 2 hour game.

Masters assume competitors can see all the tricks, so they play for better
pawn structures and piece placements. It is grinding out slight long-term
advantages and converting it to a win in the end game. Grinding is the only
way, because the players are so equally matched in the short-term: their
pieces have similar powers, and they are limited to one move per turn.

In software, businesses can build only so many features per month due to the
mythical man-month. Businesses are building on top of more or less the same
technologies and mathematical techniques. Businesses understand what is
important to customers and how customers use the features. Businesses watch
each other's product demos and talk with each other's customers, so nothing
released is hidden for long. Businesses also poach talent from each other.

Scholar's mate won't work here, there's no silver bullet features, and
anything you build can and will be copied. You'll have to grind it out,
fighting for better pawn structures, bishops on long diagonals, network
effects, brand, and talent. And in the long-term, you come out ahead.

~~~
orderlyoctopus
In a perfect information, turn-based game like Chess, there are no secrets.
You know where all the pieces are, who moves what when, and the goal each
person has. Direct subterfuge is simply not possible.

Chess masters use unpredictability, but in a perfect information, turn based
game, unpredictability is indistinguishable from other traits like
adaptability or position. Furthermore, their "tricks" are aimed at achieving
proximal goals -- capturing a pawn, splitting a bishop pair, a better
position. These proximal goals are then leveraged for victory. This speaks
more about chess (or other, perfect information, deterministic, turn based,
head to head games) than about mastery in general.

In a game where much information is hidden and victory can be sudden and
swift, optimal strategies will take absolutely take advantage of deception,
aggression, and risk taking.

I'm hating on your analogy, but I agree with your message. In most games,
predictable things are predictable because they are among the most beneficial
and safest courses of action. Doing something unpredictable carries with it
the implicit cost of doing something that is materially worse, and hoping you
will come out ahead because of side effects such as your opponent's confusion.
You're probably much better off focusing on executing those simple, obvious,
and predictable things well while your opposition bleeds to death while
attempting a never ending cycle of net-negative cunning deceptions.

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Spooky23
I think the author here is using "unpredictable" as a term of art and not in a
context that's well understood by me.

"Strategic" is not the opposite of "unpredictable" \-- "predictable" is.
Strategic thinking is identifying a long-term interest/objective/aim and
developing the means to achieve them. The application of strategy isn't
necessarily predictable to some parties at all. You can certainly choose or be
forced to respond unpredictably in the context of a broader strategic aim.

Taking away the catchy title and fancy discussion and the point it pretty
basic: emotional/intuitive responses are generally inferior to logic/fact
driven planning.

~~~
bmh100
Yes, I found the usage odd. He equates "unpredictable" with "random", which is
not how I have usually heard the term in strategic contexts. That means
unpredictable, even assuming perfect information. The usual meaning of
"unpredictable" is more like the author's use of "secrecy", meaning "denying
the ability for competitors to confidently predict the next move".

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tboyd47
I don't know why unpredictability must always be considered a strategy all its
own and not part of a larger strategy.

I've been reading a lot about John Boyd and the OODA loop, and one of the
major takeaways was that if you have a "fingertip feeling" on changing battle
conditions, acting unpredictably from time to time can disorient the enemy
commander, expand their loop and therefore allow you to act at a faster tempo
than he. This idea was not new but something he adapted from Sun Tzu's "cheng"
and "chi", his two fundamental moves of war, from which all maneuvers and
strategies are built.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Usually predicability vs unpredicatability maps to zero- versus non-zero-sum
games.

In a purely competitive (zero-sum) game, the equilibrium strategies are
randomized ones which deny the opponent any exploitable openings. But you get
much more interesting structures in non-zero-sum games, where both players
have an incentive to coordinate with each other.

War and fighter combat is quintessential zero-sum games, but one would hope
that business is win-win.

~~~
nostrademons
Also depends on 2-player vs. many-player games.

A few feints to throw off your opponent can work very well in a 2-player game,
where, like the grandparent says, they throw off his OODA loop and can give
you additional room to maneuver. In a multiplayer game, though, it's unlikely
that _all_ your competitors will be thrown off. One will go for the ideal
strategy, irrespective of competitors, and while you & your chosen adversary
are duking it out with feints and countermoves, they'll silently come up and
pwn you all.

I'm reminded of the Microsoft/Netscape battle during the first browser war.
The two of them set each other firmly in each others' sights, each trying to
predict what the other would do and counter it. In the end, Netscape died and
Microsoft became irrelevant, and it was a tiny startup called Google that
ended up winning.

~~~
blowski
That depends on the timescale. While Google is winning in 2016, in 2006 we
would definitely have been saying Microsoft had won. Nobody knows who will be
winning in 2026.

~~~
orderlyoctopus
The two lessons from this:

\- Microsoft got so good and prolific at fighting on their terrain, they
overspecialized and forgot how to win anywhere else. Once their opponents
stopped stepping on their terrain, MS started losing.

\- There's no such thing as the first browser war or the second browser war or
the operating system war, and there's no such thing as winners or losers.
There's just a never-ending sequence of skirmishes and battles.

------
CarpetBench
Interesting article.

Not sure I totally find this persuasive: The author tries his damnedest to
draw a distinction between "unpredictability" and "secrecy", but it ends up
being pretty murky.

For example:

> Keeping secrets can protect competitive advantage. Imag­ine the D-Day
> invasion of Normandy if the Allies had announced dates and locations.

> But secrecy is not the same thing as unpredictability... Unpredictability
> bluffs, postures, and palters to gain advantage through uncertainty and
> misdirection.

Wasn't a big part of the D-day strategy to feed misinformation to the Germans?
Weren't the beaches at Normandy significantly depleted on the German side
because the Germans thought the allied invasion was happening somewhere else
(Italy? I don't recall offhand).

His other points are similarly iffy:

> The leader — the strategist... They propose a race rather than a duel.

Isn't proposing a different contest a fairly unpredictable move? Secrecy and
unpredictability seem more-or-less synonymous when viewed through the lens of
your competitor.

It seems like by "unpredictable" he means "making moves that seem to provide
no net benefit," not actually "unpredictable."

~~~
devoply
It depends in some cases you can't be unpredictable to your competition
without being unpredictable to everyone else. In other cases you can. Strategy
is about knowing when you can and can't be unpredictable. It's fine to be
unpredictable to make your competition think that you want a company when you
don't, so they waste a bunch more money than they should in acquiring it. Not
so with your next product.

~~~
CarpetBench
I don't disagree with you, but that isn't really what the article is saying.
The article is all but making a blanket statement that "unpredictability = bad
in any context":

> Behaving unpredictably with one group — customers, employees, competitors,
> suppliers, etc. — means exposing your unpredictability to all.

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tbrownaw
What kind of "unpredictable"?

Game theory says that in certain circumstances the best option is to pick
_randomly_ with calculable probability from known options. But, anyone using
the same model of the situation will come up with the same options and
probabilities for that choice. So does that really count as "unpredictable"?

(I also have doubts about how often things like that will actually show up in
business in the real world, but even assuming that they do...)

~~~
Retric
Repeated negotiations benefit from random behavior. Each side benefits from
information disparity, so if they always use identical approaches they start
leaking more information than they want to.

~~~
randcraw
Probably that should read, "ONLY repeated negotiations benefit from random
behavior." Random choice among N possibles will select the best only 1/N of
the time.

~~~
Retric
ONLY would mean all one off transactions must be deterministic strategy. I am
not sure that's the case due to uncertainty.

------
randcraw
I think the author's word choice of 'unpredictable' refers to Trump-like
tactics in business and media: do they work or not?

I think the answer depends on where you are in the market -- do you deliver
commodity or novelty? If you're a parts supplier or a contractor, you need to
be reliable; you deliver an essential service on-time at a fair price. In that
space, unpredictability is clearly a liability.

But if you deliver a product with features that must differentiate itself from
the competition in the eyes of consumers, you must stand out: by hook (being
better) or by crook (merely appearing better). Here unpredictability may
indeed serve you well, especially if you need to hide your lack of
exceptionalism.

But unpredictability can also arise due to originality, where your new/better
approach is perceived as unexpected and destabilizing, inviting exploration of
new capability rather than mere exploitation of old ones. But for this tactic
to succeed, it requires genius -- insights into possibilities and capabilities
that others have missed. Otherwise, your unpredictability isn't really
originality, it's just clever marketing (crook, not hook).

------
davidhunter
> Ask Coca-Cola for its secret recipe and listen to a whole corporation laugh

Coca-Cola is a highly vertically-integrated company with huge economies of
scale, giving it a near monopolistic position. Even if you had the 'secret'
recipe, there is little hope of being able to profitably compete on price. And
if you could compete in some tiny segment of Coca-Cola's market, they could
lower prices and run at a loss in that segment until you ran out of money.
This is before you take into account brand value...

Ask Berkshire Hathaway to invest in a sugary drinks company based on its
secret recipe and listen to a whole corporation laugh.

~~~
Spooky23
Reinforcing your point, the "secret recipe" has been revealed, to no ill-
effect. :)

[http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/15/is-this-the-real-
thing-c...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/15/is-this-the-real-thing-coca-
colas-secret-formula-discovered/)

Of course the special arrangement to grow Cocoa in the US is a powerful
barrier to entry as well!

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Coca. Cocoa is for making chocolate. If they made their drink with that, I'd
probably drink it.

~~~
Spooky23
"Damn You, Autocorrect!"

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kordless
Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed in the quality of this article, especially
given it tries to tackle something that is so non-intiuitive. Unpredictability
runs the universe, so it's evidently not a horrible strategy at some level,
given I wrote this.

The author states unpredictability is NOT the same as secrecy, but then goes
on to say "building fake factories" is not a good strategy. If a corporation
built fake factories, then the fact they were fake would be a "secret" that
only they knew about for a time (diversion).

On the other hand, if the corporation randomly picked an activity that was
obvious, such as diving into a new product line, the new product line would be
real and there would be no secret behind the move (given it was randomly
chosen to be produced). The "purpose" behind the move may reveal itself as
added profits by taking existing production efficiencies and applying them to
a random product. Or, it could be a tactical maneuver to confuse or disrupt
the competition (in other words, it could also be a diversion).

The problem with these types of discussions is that they typically fall into
the bucket of "talking about talking about doing something". One will have a
hard time seeing the benefits of it while only discussing it.

------
zw123456
Being unpredictable is not the same thing as being random. In chess or even
football or other sports, you don't want to telegraph to your competitor what
your next move is. For example if the other team knows you always run a draw
play on first down, then obviously that becomes easy to defend. Or if you
always use the same opening in chess, etc. So unpredictability as a strategy
can work but only if you do something that makes sense. Just being random is
not a good strategy. Making it difficult for your competitor to anticipate
your next move can be a good strategy. In international affairs however, being
unpredictable can be a liability because if your advisory is not sure if your
next move is to push the big red button or not, then they may mistakenly
retaliate too quickly. I think that is what concerns a lot of people including
me.

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anjc
Just to be clear, the guy's talking about Corporate Strategy. And he's correct
in a way yet incorrect in others. As he says, secrecy may lead to competitive
advantages (e.g. Apple's control of the supply chain meaning advantages in
both New Product Development and in Marketing and Sales).

But some companies take advantage of the public's perception of their
unpredictability, and foster the perception, e.g. Paddy Power's marketing
campaigns, e.g. Ryanair's pricing strategies. Obviously unpredictability for
unpredictability's sake - i.e. nonsense manoeuvres - is senseless, but there's
not necessarily anything wrong with a perception of unpredictability.

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jwtadvice
In Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibria, the amount of unpredictability to use in
alpha-beta-like competition games to maximize expected gains assuming a
similarly motivated adversary.

In many cases these strategies are dominated by a fully deterministic
strategy, or with the mixed-strategy that is highly uneven in its
distribution: favoring that one action be taken almost all of the time.

The title taken on face value is flatly wrong but as headlines go it's trying
to be cute and attention grabbing. Strategic surprise is a fundamental tool to
strategy, but should never be assumed to just work without explicit motivating
reasons (be they heuristic or calculated).

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huherto
Unpredictability can confuse your competition and you can gain some advantage
on that. But it can also confuse you own internal resources and make some real
damage.

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neom
imo, the only time your business should, from the outside, look unpredictable
is when others simply don't see the course you have charted. Even then--
markets are pretty easily segmented and so while your implementation may seem
surprising - if those around you in business are good and are also totally
confused by your moves you are likely running against a core competency.
Systems design for predictability should be the most important principle of
any operator. </ pontification>

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Pica_soO
But the madman theory guided the U.S. through the cold war?

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dominotw
> The opposite of unpredictable is strategic.

What does the noun 'strategic' mean here?

~~~
CarpetBench
The author expands on what they mean by "strategic" in the following
paragraphs.

~~~
dominotw
I know, but I was wondering if that word is commonly used as a noun in
English. I've only seen it used as an adj. Sorry should have been clear.

~~~
elros
It is still an adjective in this context. English becomes more and more
copula-dropping – i.e. leaving out the verb "to be" when it can be implied by
context. If you add it back you can see how it's an adjective:

The opposite of (being) unpredictable is (to be) strategic.

~~~
dominotw
Oh yea makes sense now. Thank you for your comment.

