There is a lot that is spoken in praise of the international oil cartel and its hold on the world economy. And to a large extent, the hype holds true.
Yet, their operations and viability are threatened by factors or geographies that most people would consider to be insignificant.
What if I told you, that the world’s oil supply operations could be devastatingly disrupted by any person or organisation controlling a critical 21 mile area?
The area I’m referring to is the Strait of Hormuz.
This 21 mile area has over 17 million barrels of oil pass through it everyday. Much of the oil that passes these straits are destined to the US, Japan and Europe.
Despite its insignificant size, multiple forces try to control this area including the Iranian troops and the revolutionary guard. Everyone with a significant material interest in the world of oil tries to control this small area.
This strategy of controlling a small piece of critical area to influence a much significant domain is known as choke point manipulation. The strategy is a staple in driving war and geo-political attacks but it also has micro-applications that can be applied to our lives.
War, what is it good for?
The choke point strategy was born out of necessity during times of war. Here is how we can define it:
A small or narrow area that a larger number of soldiers cannot pass at the same time. Because of this, they have a harder time launching an attack that can immediately overpower their opponents. Thus, giving the less powerful opponent a chance at winning the war through strategic attacks.
If there are 2 warring parties with soldiers who are identically armed, the one with the bigger army will win most of the time. However, if the smaller army is able to identify choke points in the bigger army’s military might, then they stand a real chance of beating them.
All is fair in business
If you are a smaller company competing against a bigger company, your best bet is to find choke points in their operations and attack them.
For example; if you run a CRM software business, try identifying markets that the incumbents do not go after due to the changes it will bring to their main product. SalesForce won’t build software that caters to individual professions in certain geographies and local laws because that will change how they build products and position themselves in the market. So why can’t you build a CRM tool specifically for dentists in India or tour guides in Thailand?
Discord couldn’t compete with WhatsApp which was built primarily for first degree communication, so they created the go-to communication tool specifically aimed at third degree communities where most members don’t know each other before they join the server.
By attacking the market for 3rd degree communication, Discord went after a space that WhatsApp was not built for even though both are communication tools with some overlapping features.
Office Choke Points
If you have a job, you probably are looking to get promoted. However, if you have competition that has been there for longer and more proficient in existing operations, getting that promotion can be harder for you.
However, by using the choke point strategy, you can make headway.
Let’s look at a generic workplace example on how to manipulate a contest / competition.
Start by identifying opportunities that are out of scope for your competition. These might be things that they find risky or not of immediate urgency.
Shortlist the opportunity that is most closely linked to your company’s prospects and possibly the most financially viable.
Do your research around it and strategise a possible path forward for your company in this lane.
Find the presentation standard of your competition and exceed that by a mile.
Pitch yourself as the POC for this opportunity and add more opportunities each month.
Keep hitting these standards and within a few months, you’ll be in a much better position to lead the company into the future and ergo a prime candidate for promotion.
You can apply this to more or less any job in the knowledge economy.
TL;DR - Find an edge that your competition ignores or can’t pursue and double down on it.
That’s it for this edition. Thanks for reading and tell me what you think about this post by replying back to this email.
looks like 'choke point' model is quite different from 'Seizing the middle - a chess strategy' but probably they both can be layered/stacked to get even more significant benefits?