Strategy Isn’t About Outsmarting Others. It’s About Making Their Smartness Useless. Here is how it happens...
- Belguin Prosper L
- Oct 1
- 3 min read
In business and life, many assume strategy is about being the smartest person in the room - predicting every move, countering every play, and dazzling with brilliance. But true strategy isn’t about outsmarting others. It’s about designing moves that make other people’s intelligence, resources, and advantages irrelevant.
Outsmarting vs. Outmaneuvering
When you focus on outsmarting others, you enter a constant arms race. You try to think faster, plan deeper, and calculate further. But here’s the flaw: someone else can always think harder, hire more talent, or buy better tools. Outsmarting is temporary.
Outmaneuvering, on the other hand, is permanent. It’s when you create a position, a system, or a path that renders other people’s cleverness ineffective. You don’t have to be smarter - you just have to build something that makes their intelligence useless against you.
Think of chess: a grandmaster doesn’t win because they know every trick in the book. They win because they place their opponent in a position where no amount of brilliance can change the outcome.
My perspective on The Power of Irrelevance
Strategy, at its core, is about changing the rules of relevance. You don’t fight on the same battlefield where your rival is strong; you create a battlefield where their strength doesn’t matter.
Uber didn’t outsmart the taxi industry with better drivers. They built a model where owning fleets of cars - a taxi company’s strength - was no longer relevant.
Netflix didn’t outsmart Blockbuster with better late-fee policies. They built a system where late fees became irrelevant.
Apple didn’t outsmart PC makers by offering cheaper hardware. They created an ecosystem where the hardware was just one piece of a lifestyle experience that competitors couldn’t replicate.
Now, bringing it home in our own Uganda:
MTN vs. Competitors: MTN didn’t try to outsmart every telecom on call quality. They built a mobile money ecosystem so powerful that even with good voice networks, competitors were sidelined - because the real battle shifted to financial services.
SafeBoda vs. Boda Boda: SafeBoda didn’t try to recruit Boda men who were “smarter” at negotiating fares. They introduced fixed pricing, safety helmets, and digital wallets - instantly making the street-smart bargaining skills of traditional riders irrelevant.
Ruparelia Group: Sudhir Ruparelia didn’t try to outsmart every hotelier on food menus or room rates. He built dominance by controlling prime locations and real estate - so while others argued about service tweaks, his properties became unavoidable.
Jumia Uganda: Instead of competing with every shop on Kampala Road, Jumia shifted the marketplace online, making a shop’s street visibility irrelevant.
In each of these cases, the competitor wasn’t beaten at their own game - they were forced into irrelevance because the rules of the game had changed. In other words, the opponent wasn’t beaten by superior intellect - they were neutralized by irrelevance.
Why This Matters for Leaders, Managers, and all of us entrepreneurs
If you spend all your energy outsmarting competitors, you’ll always be playing defense. But if you spend your energy making their smartness useless, you’ll always be shaping the game.
Ask yourself:
What strengths do my competitors pride themselves on?
How can I build a system where those strengths no longer matter?
What rules can I change, bypass, or rewrite so their cleverness doesn’t touch me?
This is not about being smarter; it’s about being more strategic.
Here is The Silent Genius of Strategy
The irony of true strategy is that when it works, it looks almost too simple. Outsiders think, “Why didn’t anyone else think of that?” The answer: they were too busy trying to outsmart each other, while you were busy making their smartness irrelevant.
That’s the real genius of strategy. It’s not brilliance for its own sake. It’s the quiet ability to bend the game so that no amount of brilliance from others can undo your position.
At Young & Free International, this is exactly what we help companies and organizations do - craft strategies that don’t just compete, but redefine markets in ways that make rivals’ advantages irrelevant.
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