Moving from defensive to offensive
Changing the rules of the game
In the coming election, the rules of the game need to be changed. There is a need to take a major aggressive attack position rather than the traditional defensive position. The major attack here really means ‘to attack’. It does not mean ‘to counter-attack’, neither is means ‘to indirectly attack’. Not to say ‘to ignore or indifferent’, ‘to do nothing’, or ‘to wait and see’.
Being too complacent
Traditionally, for long enough, the rival party has been in an offensive position to attack. While at this side, as usual, has been remained in the defensive position for long. Furthermore, it is not only believed in that there are always advantages to be in the defensive position, it also has an illusion of invulnerability. These are among the weaknesses (see http://dryeechoyleong.blogspot.com/2010/04/blog-post.html for more illustration of weaknesses). These are the reasons why during the aggressive attack on 308, many seats were lost to the rival party. Before we go deeper to discuss on implementation, let’s look into the real meanings of defensive and offensive in order to recognize the different between them.
What is mean by defensive? 守
The definitions of defensive
Defensive has several meanings. It is especially being use in the military. In military, defensive means the use of defensive tactics that seek to neutralize the enemy offensive tactics. At the individual level, defensive means a specific action taken by individual soldiers to protect themselves with the use of protective materials such as armor, trenches, bunkers, blade weapons, or by using strategies to prevent the enemy from approaching them to initiate a close combat. At the unit level, defensive means operations of a unit of military forces from a largely defensive area that involve many strategic warfare and tactical movements. The form of defensive measure involves a large scale operation. At the organization level, defensive, at this high level of strategy, means military seeks to integrate all units and resources to defend in a coherent whole. In general, a defensive strategy means the strategy to prevent an aggressive attack, minimize the effect of an attack, and prevent from an enemy to conquer a territory.
Defensive position always has no advantage even in the ancient time
Traditionally, it was generally believed that defensive position always had an advantage over offensive party. It was generally believed defenders had the time and ability to make preparations to protect themselves from the enemy, for example to prepare trenches and fortifications, to lay obstacles such as land mines and tank traps. However, in a larger area, the attacker may have the advantage. They can choose the time and place of the battle. They may concentrate their entire force to attack a small area. Meanwhile the defender is forced to spread their forces over a larger defensive area.
Defensive position has no advantage at all in modern war
In the modern war, the advantages of a defensive position have been gradually reduced. This is because the increased mobility of the modern forces, better communication technology and increased destructiveness of weaponry.
What is mean by offensive? 攻
Offensive on land, sea, and air
A strategic offensive move is an aggressive overall war planning and use of all forces as a whole, combining all resources available for achieving goals. It can be done on land, at sea, or in the air. However, the implementation of such a large scale strategic offensive move is always based on theoretical considerations because it is impractical, uneconomic and difficult to implement.
Land offensive
Regional offensive. A small or regional offensive move is a conduct of combat operations that seek to achieve only some of the objectives of the strategy being pursued in the theatre as a whole. Usually it is carried out by one or more divisions that are having about 10000 to 30000 troops.
Strategic offensive. A strategic offensive is often a big campaign that involves the use of over 100,000 troops. It is the largest military operations that often involved multi-front coordinated operations. The ultimate objective eventually is lead to a complete defeat of the opposition, or damage of a significant enemy forces, or occupation of strategically significant territory.
Theatre offensive. Offensives are mainly conduced as a means in a confrontation between opponents. They can be waged on land, at sea or in the air. A Theatre offensive can be a war and a dominant feature of a national security policy, or one of several components of a war if a country is involved in several Theatres. In general Theatre offensives require over 250,000 troops to be committed to combat operations, including combined planning for different arms and services of the armed forces, such as for example air defence troops integrated into the overall plan for ground operations.
Air offensive
An air offensive is an operation that can describe any number of different types of operations, usually restricted to specific types of aircraft. The offensive conducted with use of fighter aircraft are predominantly concerned with establishing air superiority in a given air space, or over a given territory. A bomber offensive is sometimes also known as the strategic bombing offensive. Use of ground attack aircraft in support of ground offensives can be said to be an air offensive.
Sea offensive
Sea offensives can have wide-ranging implications for national strategies, and require significant logistics commitment to destroy enemy military naval capabilities. It can also be used to interdict enemy shipping. Naval offensives can also be tactical in nature.
Trying new ways of doing things
In the political term, an offensive move is an aggressive action that uses multiple resources to gain voters’ acceptance. The main purpose is to gain support through reducing the support of the rival party. Other terms for offensive are 'attack' or 'invasion'.
The weakness of the rival party is exposed
The weakness of the rival party is now being exposed. Their weakness is they have never been attack from that position before. For decades, the rival party has been in the ‘attack’ position. They has not been in (or not used to) a position of defend. Currently, many issues have been raised, thus, it has created many opportunity for an attack. When they are not ready, the attack will be even more effective. Furthermore, the rival party this time has to defend on behalf of their counterparts.
Justification for an attack
From the past election, experiences told us that adopting the following strategies were not feasible. For example, ‘to do nothing’ is suicide, ‘to be conservative’ can reduce hurt but gain no mileage, ‘to be in defensive’ is useless, and ‘to counterattack’ has only half strength because voters already pre-conceived (has the initial perception) and it is very hard to change their initial mindset or perceptions. The wisest move would be to play a major offensive.
需要重组与建立一支“主攻”队伍。
A need to re-structure and build a main ‘attack’ team.
Restructuring
In order to attack, ones need restructuring. Although many have discussed about restructuring and reengineering, such as the one that appeared in http://dryee-management.blogspot.com/2010/04/blog-post.html entitled “Total Transformation Process”. But, this time is different. This is because at this time there is a good opportunity to attack. Unfortunately, the current organizational structure is too rigid to attack. The current structure is not being design (neither is fit) for an attack. It was previously designed in such a way that it is more suitable for defend. The restructuring will have to totally transform the current structure into an attack position. Using the right structure is important for strategy to be effectively implemented. Strategy and structure has unique relationships. Changes in ones strategy often require changes in ones structure.
To attack ones need an attack structure
Changes in strategy from a defensive position to an offensive position require changes in the way an organization is structured. They are many reasons why this is required. First, structure largely dictates how objectives and strategies will be established. For example, objectives and strategies established under an attack organizational structure are couched in offensive terms. Objectives and strategies are stated largely in terms of defensive position in an organization whose structure is based on defensive groups. The structural formula for developing objectives and strategies can significantly impact all strategy implementation issues. Another major reason why changes in strategy often require changes in structure is that structure dictates how resources will be allocated.
Changes in strategy lead to changes in organizational structure. Structure should be designed to facilitate the strategic pursuit of an organization and, therefore, follow strategy. There is not just one optimal organizational design or structure for a given strategy or type of organization.
Old units are slow, rigid, inflexible, and non-aggressive
Currently, the whole structure (or the army units) is in the defensive position for decades. An analogy for the defensive structure can be best described as the building of the tunnel, the bunker, the walls, the sandbags, etc., which are for the purposes of defend. In political terms, these can be described as providing service, offering education programs, writing supporting letters, giving helps, cares, charity, etc. All these are built for the purpose of defend. They are immobile, rigid, not flexible, non-aggressive, slow and heavy. Both for their units and equipments are the same.
Old units is un-fit for taking an attack position
Based on the analogy above, this army unit is totally un-fit for taking an attack position. To attack, ones need missiles, you don’t have missile. To attack, ones need tanks, your vehicles are not tanks. Furthermore, to attack, ones need aircrafts, your aircrafts are the old and outdated. Not only are they slow, but inaccurate, and less destructive. To attack, ones need mechanized troops, your troops are slow, fat, and dull. To summarized, this army is not trained to carry out an attack. It is trained for defend. And they are also vulnerable for an attack.
Old units are unable to defend
As discussed earlier, defensive has no advantage over offensive strategy. To defend, you need to spread your resources over many aspects of political issues from education, to economics and social in order to improve them. However, the rival party who is taking an offensive position can actually concentrate their entire resources to attack one aspect of those issues that you are weak.
New units are fast, destructive, and effective
Changing the army ability has to change three things: the strategy, the structure, and the units of army. First of all is the strategy. The strategy is to take an offensive rather than a defensive position. For this strategy, taking the current opportunity to attack from a position that has never been done before will be a good move. The structure needs to be converted from the current defensive posture to an attack posture. New units need to be deployed. The new units has to be fast, high impact, has high publicity value. To attack, you need speed, high impact, wide coverage (range), and heavy bombardment (destruction). To attack, you need motorized infantry, artillery, mechanized troop, and tank. The success factor would be: mechanization, airpower, speed, impact (high destruction).
Deploying the right attack strategy is the key 善用攻的策略
The use of ground troops
Attack strategies require intensive efforts if your competitive position is to improve. One of the possible modes is to use ground troop to carry out territory penetration (组织战). The territory penetration strategy seeks to increase voters’ support through greater promotional efforts and campaign from door to door. It can also be done on a small group basis such as small gathering. Using the current advantages of a large network system and full human resources support, this strategy is feasible. However, this strategy can only be effective with increasing the capabilities of the ground troops. If the ground troops are not capable, well trained or effective then this strategy cannot be used as the objectives can hardly be achieved. Meanwhile, training the old units will be difficult and slow. Forming an entire new unit will be fast but required additional resources.
The use of media/virtual troops
The other possible mode of attack is to use media or virtual troops (文宣战). The recent virtual assault troops are the right move but activities should be very well coordinated and the strategy should be in congruence.
The use of survey
The use of public opinion survey is important (科学战). According to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat. Survey has to be carried out more effectively by professional body. The results can be obtained on daily or periodically basis. Through survey, the support from the voters, the popularity of the party or candidates, and the possibility of winning over the next election can be analyzed quite accurately.
The use of coordinated strategy
Coordination is the key to success. The use of coordinated strategy is vital (统合战). All strategies need to be well coordinated. Changes to an attack direction do not occur automatically. It has to be directed by the party leadership. On the day-to-day operations, leadership, policies and guidelines are needed to make a strategy in congruence. Leadership provides the right direction, policy refers to specific guidelines, methods, procedures, rules, forms, and administrative practices established to support and encourage work toward stated goals. Policies let both party leadership and members know what is expected of them, thereby increasing the likelihood that strategies will be implemented successfully. Due to space limitation, detail strategies for coordination, ground troop, media troop, etc., will be discussed elsewhere.
Strengthen the logistics and support management 加强后勤与支援管理
Allocating resources
Support the change in strategy with additional resources. Resource allocation is a central management support activity that allows for strategy execution. In organizations resource allocation is often based on political or personal factors. Effective strategic planning enables resources to be allocated according to priorities. In general, the management can manipulate four types of resources that can be used to achieve desired objectives: financial resources, physical resources, human resources, and technological resources.
How to manage conflict
Changes in strategy, structure, and unit can cause conflict within the party. Competition for limited resources often leads to conflict. Conflict will happen when there is a disagreement between two or more parties on one or more issues. However, conflict is unavoidable, and is not always bad. There are many ways we can use to manage and resolve conflict.
For example, avoidance represents such actions as ignoring the problem in hopes that the conflict will resolve by itself or physically separating the conflicting individuals. Defusion is playing down differences between conflicting parties while accentuating similarities and common interests, compromising is neither a clear winner nor loser, resorting to majority rule, appealing to a higher authority, or redesigning present positions. Confrontation is exchanging members of conflicting parties so that each can gain an appreciation of the other’s point of view, and holding a meeting at which conflicting parties present their views and work through their differences.
How to deal with resistance to change
There may be very high resistance to change among the members or groups within the party. Resistance to change can be considered the single greatest threat to successful strategy implementation. It may take on such forms as sabotaging, absenteeism, filing unfounded grievances, and an unwillingness to cooperate. Resistance to change can emerge at any stage or level of the strategy-implementation process.
Adopting change strategy
Despite the possible high resistance to change, three different strategies can be used for implementing change: 1. Force change strategy – involves giving orders and enforcing those orders, 2. Educative change strategy – presents information to people, and 3. Rational or Self-interest change strategy – attempts to convince individuals that the change is to their personal advantage.
Creating a strategy supportive culture
More importantly, a strategy-supportive culture has to be created within the party. In general, less than 10 percent of strategies formulated are successfully implemented. Strategists should strive to preserve, emphasize, and build on aspects of an existing culture that support proposed new strategies.
选战: 如何从被动与防守转向主动与攻击
Successful strategy formulation does not guarantee successful strategy implementation. It is always more difficult to do something (strategy implementation) than to say you are going to do it (strategy formulation). Many issues central to strategy implementation include deriving the right attack strategy, organizing the right organization structure, and form new units. Then, supported by deploying the right strategies such as intensive territory penetration through the use of effective ground troops, virtual and media war, public opinion survey and well coordinated strategic plan. Meanwhile, providing leadership, devising policies, allocating resources, restructuring and reengineering, minimizing resistance to change, reducing conflict, and developing a strategy-supportive culture are among the necessary issues that should not be overlooked when adopting an attack strategy.
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