In judo, you do not try to overpower a stronger opponent. You accept their strength, side-step their thrust, and use their weight and momentum to throw them. My earlier article, “The Power Of ‘Yes, And…’ Judo Leadership To Inspire, Enable And Empower Others,” highlighted how effective leaders stop reflexively saying “no,” accept what is with a “Yes,” and then build on it with an “And” that moves everyone forward.
You can use that same “Yes, And…” philosophy as a challenger facing a stronger business competitor. “Yes, you are bigger, richer, and more entrenched than we are. And we are going to move in a direction you don’t expect—one where your very strengths become liabilities.”
To be clear, if you are the market leader, you should be thinking “diverge.” For you, the game is divergence and separation from those nipping at your heels.
If you are not the leader, choose between converging on the leader or adopting a judo strategy to throw them.
Converging on the leader often works well. You can experience all sorts of profitable growth moving from a 20% market share to 40%, even if your main competitor maintains a 50% market share. You ride their category creation and demand generation and copy their moves while quietly gaining share.
But the most interesting opportunities, especially for challengers, often come from judo strategy—using your competitor’s strength and momentum against them.
Say “Yes” To The Leader’s Strength
The first move in any challenger playbook is intellectual honesty. Stop pretending you can out‑muscle the incumbent on their terms. Say “Yes” to their strengths:
- Yes, they have more capital, brand awareness, and installed base.
- Yes, they have deeper relationships with distributors and influencers.
- Yes, they have a more complete product line and more people on the ground.
This is your strategic “Yes.” It keeps you from charging straight into their power. The moment you accept that reality, you can start looking for the angles they cannot see or cannot afford to pursue.
Add “And” By Moving Where Their Model Breaks
The “And” in challenger judo strategy is about movement. You win by moving where the leader’s business model, processes, or pride make it hard for them to follow. That could be:
- Serve segments they undervalue.
Leaders optimize around their largest, most profitable customers and segments. As a challenger, you can win by designing yourself around the smaller customers, fringe use cases, geographies, or channels that do not fit the incumbent’s model. That may look niche at first—until it doesn’t.
- Ride trends they do not anticipate.
Incumbents are anchored by what has worked in the past. They often dismiss early signals of new technologies, behaviors, or preferences as too small or too off‑strategy. You can say, “Yes, today this is small for you, and that’s exactly why it’s big for us.”
- Exploit their habits and promotions.
Leaders create industry habits around pricing, promotions, and communications. You can sometimes plug directly into those habits and turn them to your advantage.
Drypers, the small diaper maker, did not try to outspend Procter & Gamble’s massive coupon promotion for Pampers. Instead, Drypers ran a campaign telling consumers they could use P&G’s coupons on Drypers as well. P&G’s strength—its big coupon spend—became Drypers’ strength as well. Drypers said, “Yes, you’re spending heavily to get coupons into homes, and we’re going to let people redeem them on our product.”
In its early days, Wal‑Mart did something similar against a larger, more promotional Kmart. When Kmart ran expensive weekly circulars, Wal‑Mart store managers simply posted Kmart’s ads in their own stores and promised to match or beat the deals. Kmart paid to bring shoppers into the market; Wal‑Mart accepted those habits and then added a move that redirected the traffic.
Use Movement, Balance, And Leverage
The classic judo strategy framework helps organize your challenger playbook into three disciplines:
- Movement – Stay light and avoid head‑on collisions. Enter through side doors: different segments, channels, or business models that the leader finds uneconomic or distracting. Be willing to pivot as you learn.
- Balance – Choose battlegrounds where you can stay centered while the leader gets pulled off‑balance. That might mean focusing on service while they emphasize product, or on speed and simplicity while they emphasize breadth.
- Leverage – Turn the leader’s scale, brand, and investments into drivers of your own growth. Use their promotions, their ecosystem, and even their pricing architecture as “handles” you can grab to move customers toward you.
Each is a “Yes, And…” move. Yes, we see your position. And we will move, balance, and leverage in ways that make that position work for us.
A Challenger’s Checklist
If you are a challenger facing a stronger competitor, build your judo playbook around five questions:
- What are the leader’s defining strengths—and where do they create rigidity, blind spots, or overconfidence?
- Which customers or segments does the leader systematically under‑serve because they seem too small, too weird, or too unprofitable for their model?
- Which emerging trends are they incentivized to ignore for now, but that you can ride early?
- How do their pricing, promotion, and communication habits shape customer behavior—and how can you plug into those habits with a smarter “And”?
- How can you design your organization to stay lighter, faster, and more focused than they can ever be?
That is how you deploy judo strategy to throw a stronger competitor. You start with the same “Yes, And…” mindset you use to inspire, enable, and empower people. You accept the leader’s strength and the reality of your situation. And then you choose to move—deliberately, creatively, unexpectedly—in ways that make that strength work for you instead of against you.
