Ambiguity as Competitive Weapon

“take a decision that the advantages of moving quickly were often lost. There would be no such problem with McCain Foods. Decisions were quickly made and it was also acceptable to make mistakes, provided one learned from them. Morris explained, “If you were wrong, you got a heck of an education and you probably didn’t make that mistake again. If you were right, you were so far ahead of everybody else and it was a major coup for the company.”24 The McCain brothers and Morris hired staff that were of like mind.”

“This is a story about a man from a small community who, together with his brothers, built a global empire. Harrison McCain was a lead- ing entrepreneur of the last century. He had all of the strengths of a great entrepreneur and some of the weaknesses as well. He was bold and decisive, and, if needed, could hold a meeting in his own mind, without need for others to help make a decision. The meetings never lasted long, but they produced decisions and results. Though the early years at McCain Foods were particularly challenging, he seldom had time or inclination for self-doubt. His deep attachment to his business, his community, and its residents is legendary. Driving through Florenceville, one intuitively slows down. The com-”

“Keep Up the Pace, Not the Pressure Speed has been one of our sharpest edges in winning competitive deals. We can typically cut the due diligence and negotiation period from two or three months to a matter of weeks. To achieve this, we do a lot of research before we make our initial contact with the target business. As a result, our first or second meeting with a seller often goes something like this: “This is what we’re prepared to pay for your business, on these terms. If this is acceptable, we can be signing a definitive agreement in two weeks.” That’s going to get their attention.”

“We’ve created a systematic evaluation process that lets us move quickly, with less risk. And while there’s no one-speed-fits-all in M&A, faster is almost always better. Here are some of the specific questions my team and I answer as…”

“Balsillie followed two Sun Tzu tactics religiously: appear strong no matter how weak your hand; and move to uneven terrain if an aggressor is overwhelming. For Balsillie, rugged ground meant keeping competitors, suppliers, and customers off balance. “Bung them up in wool and play obfuscation; promise them this and then do that,” he says. “I am very good at that. I can send very uneven signals. Give them nothing to be certain with. Let them think they are getting what they want, but don’t be overly provocative. I can do that forever.””

“There was a bigger game under way. Though they flattered Yankowski with attention, RIM’s partners had no interest in selling their company. They took Yankowski’s calls, showed up for meetings, and swapped boasts to keep him off guard. “Most people’s instincts tell them to seek clarity in business dealings, but ambiguity is more powerful in my view,” Balsillie explains. “You’d be surprised how long you can string competitors along without ever showing your cards.” An unsuspecting Yankowski pursued a takeover of RIM for months. Throughout Yankowski’s courtship of RIM, Balsillie downplayed his own company’s abilities and ambitions—flashing what he calls the “Aw, shucks card.” BlackBerry, he told Yankowski, was a small niche device lacking the global appeal of Palm. He talked of licensing Palm’s operating system and continually asked what RIM should do next. “That seemed to be his primary preoccupation,” Yankowski says. That’s exactly what RIM wanted him to think. “My objective,” comments Balsillie, “was to get him to underestimate RIM.” When Balsillie joined Yankowski in San Francisco for dinner later in 2000, the RIM chief pulled out a prototype of an upgraded BlackBerry, called the 957, which shared many of the features of the latest Palm device, including a large, square screen. He handed the model to Yankowski, who was suddenly full of questions: “What network will RIM use for this BlackBerry?” “We haven’t told anybody yet,” Balsillie replied. Eyeing the screen, Yankowski flashed Balsillie a big grin. “That’s okay. I already know.” “What do you mean?” “It says right here.” Yankowski pointed to the letters CDPD in the top right corner of the screen. CDPD, short for cellular digital packet data, was a wireless data network technology heavily promoted by its creator, AT&T. So that’s what RIM’s up to: dumping Mobitex for CDPD, Yankowski figured. Palm was already testing its next device on the CDPD data network. Balsillie was still giddy when he caught up with David Yach, a Canadian engineer who had been recently hired away from California software maker Sybase as RIM’s chief technology officer. Joining Yach in RIM’s jet, Balsillie blurted out: “He fell for it!” In fact, what he showed Yankowski earlier in the evening was a decoy with the screen changed to read CDPD by one of Yach’s engineers, with the specific intent of fooling the Palm boss. RIM had no interest in CDPD. Lazaridis viewed it as technically inferior technology, correctly predicting it would soon be dead. If Palm wanted to jump to CDPD, that was fine with Balsillie. For now, RIM was sticking with Mobitex, a slower but more reliable messaging highway. Yankowski has no recollection of the San Francisco dinner, but he remembers what happened soon afterward. Takeover talks broke off abruptly when Balsillie said he would have no part of a deal that did not hand him full executive control of the merged company. The petulant demand by a firm with one-twelfth the revenues of Palm seemed…”