Strategy is not monolithic.  It comes in many forms, most recognizably as business or operational strategy, which serves to maneuver all things tangible, from cash to cows.  Less obvious, is its other half and the subject of this blog, influence strategy, whose purpose is to give light to all things intangible, from goodwill to good publicity.

My good friend at Booz Allen Hamilton, Dr. Allan Steinhardt, asked me the other day, "What about the plays of Muammar Gadhafi?"  We were talking about information warfare and the role of influence strategy.  Good question, huge topic, I thought.  But to satisfy his query and my own curiosity, we retreated to the Playmaker's batcave for a quick decoding.  This, we can say about the disappearing act of Libya's fallen despot:

However notorious, Gadhafi is a playmaker, no doubt.  His use of influence strategy, his innate understanding of the 25 plays we so carefully coach the less gifted, is historically on par with many masters.  Think Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs and Oprah.

To our eyes, Gadhafi's enduring alpha play has been the Red Herring, the signature stratagem of every back-peddling, chest-pounding player whose options are thinning and whose time is expiring.  He needed to buy time to send emissaries to Western capitals, secure his assets, plan his escape, and test the rebels' metal.  Why not a Jam, the killer freezing play?  Because it was not enough to simply stop his uprising citizenry.  He needed to throw them and their surrogates off the scent of liberation.  But I digress...

There are upside benefits to running Red Herrings, taken from our online tip-sheet:

• Creates breathing space for a player -- valuable time and real estate to operate without interference.
• Weakens a competitor by diverting its energy and/or resources into false fronts or dead ends.
• Preserves the player's advantage by concealing its true needs or strategies.
• A well-run Red Herring can excite a rival, causing it to quicken its pace toward the diversion and thus deepen its miscalculation.
• De-positions your opponent as a follower -- gullible and responsive to your whims.

As Gadhafi found out, plays are nothing without content, and Red Herrings have perilously short-half lives.  Here are the downsides:

• You may be fooling more than your enemies. Employees, partners, customers, etc., can be lured into the play too.
• A poorly run Red Herring can mean lost time and money, sometimes lost friends.
• If the play is exposed, it can tell a competitor much about a player's situation, tendencies, and fears.
• A Red Herring can create the appearance of impropriety. You could be well within your rights to run it, but the new standards for marketplace transparency may say you're wrong to even try.

Despite these risks, Gadhafi ran myriad supporting or beta plays to divert his pursuers:  Peacocks in the forms of rallys, tank occupations of city squares, and of course his random Elvis-like sightings.  These were novel and newsworthy and, like any Richard Branson media stunt, they had an eye-catching and even chilling effect.  Adding to his arsenal, the dictator used Screens, hijacking again the color green to recall his own revolution, and citing so many Islamic caliphates and symbols of a sovereign Libya.  Recasts of facts and Filters of other realities were table stakes, too, in his game of playmaker poker.

So why is Muammar Gadhafi out of power and out of plays?  Perhaps, as Steinhardt speculates, because he lacked the full playbook.  Yes, he had physical assets and he wielded them well; his operational strategy worked for decades.  And, yes, he also managed his intangibles; his influence strategy confounded world powers and Libyan shopkeepers alike.  But with the rise of social media (the channel Gadhafi could hardly control), the influx of Western resources, and opponents running simple but devastating Mirrors, he had only a fraction of the deck to deal.  His plays were limited to the stratagems that would only buy time and never victory.

Tanks, in other words, are no match for tweets.  And Red Herrings are no match for Mirrors.

Post by Alan Kelly with analysis by John Koval.

Photo credit: CBC News

The Red Herring is one of the savviest of stratagems in the Playmaker's System.  Military and political strategists have discussed and employed the play for time immemorial: In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, "feign disorder and crush [the enemy];" during the Second World War, a daring British pilot dropped a metallic painted soccer ball pumped full of helium over a Nazi airfield to confuse the enemy (see p. 107, The Elements of Influence); and just yesterday, Ohio Governor John Kasich redirected his political fortunes toward the Beltway, saying that he's prepared to pay a political price for the difficult decisions he's made [in Ohio] and that D.C. lawmakers could learn something [from him] by putting aside "political considerations."

But my adoration of the Red Herring goes deeper than just military and political strategy.  I admire the brains behind the play as much as the play itself.  The practitioner of influence strategy -- be it a CCO, a political operative, or a social media strategist -- who's able to successfully employ the stratagem is almost always a step ahead of the competition; he or she is dictating the rules and tempo of a marketplace on his/her own terms in the defense and promotion of all that we hold so dear in today's influence industries, such as corporate reputation, brand-building, de-positioning a competitor's product or service, or convincing someone how to vote or spend money.  So long as the strategist doesn't run afoul of the law and isn't ethically compromised, the Red Herring is one of the most important plays in the full spectrum of 25 influence strategies.

Study the Red Herring closely, and you'll see that it's the ultimate expression of gamesmanship, which is what trips up sub-par influence practitioners (e.g., marketers who neglect the competitive context of their industry, PR pros who write press releases that are contextually irrelevant, and corporate social media-types who only Tweet on what's rainbows and unicorns).

Conversely, running Red Herrings is what great marketers, PR pros, campaign strategists, public policy advocates, etc., all do so well--whether they'll admit to it or not.  They bide time, conceal plans, divert a competitor's resources, and redirect discussions onto affairs that are more easily managed.

Posted by: John Koval

Photo credit: Photobucket.com