Liddell Hart and the Indirect Approach: Why the Best Competitive Moves Avoid Direct Confrontation

B.H. Liddell Hart was a British military theorist who spent most of his career between the world wars arguing that the dominant military doctrine of the era — the direct assault, massed force, attrition — was not just inefficient but fundamentally misguided as a theory of how force should be applied. His alternative, which he called the strategy of indirect approach, held that decisive results in warfare were almost always achieved by moves that unbalanced the opponent psychologically and physically, rather than by meeting their strength with equal or superior strength.

Liddell Hart studied every decisive campaign in military history — from Scipio Africanus in Spain to Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley to the German Blitzkrieg, whose architects he influenced — and concluded that the pattern was consistent: the indirect approach, which found the opponent's line of least expectation and attacked it, produced decisive results with economical means. The direct approach, which engaged the opponent's strength frontally, produced costly attrition at best and defeat at worst.

The strategic principle translates to competitive business with unusual precision.

The line of least expectation

Liddell Hart's key concept is the line of least expectation — the axis of approach that the opponent has either not defended or cannot defend efficiently because of their existing commitments, their organizational structure, or their doctrine. Hannibal found Rome's line of least expectation in the flanks at Cannae. The German Panzer divisions in 1940 found France's line of least expectation through the Ardennes, which French doctrine held to be impassable.

In competitive terms, the line of least expectation is the market segment the incumbent has underserved because it didn't fit their cost structure, the product capability they haven't built because their architecture makes it expensive, the customer type they've ignored because it was too small for their sales motion. This is where the indirect approach finds its point of entry.

The direct approach — competing with the incumbent on their primary dimensions, in their primary market, using their established playbook — produces the attrition that Liddell Hart documented across military history. The indirect approach builds a position where the incumbent cannot follow without disrupting what makes them successful.

The line of least expectation is the market segment the incumbent has underserved because it doesn't fit their model. This is where the indirect approach finds its entry.

The dislocation principle

Liddell Hart identified dislocation — physical and psychological — as the key mechanism by which the indirect approach achieves decisive results. A force that is physically dislocated has been moved out of its prepared positions. A force that is psychologically dislocated has lost the coherence and confidence that allows it to respond effectively to unexpected threats.

The business equivalent of physical dislocation is forcing the incumbent to respond to a competitive threat in a market or product dimension that requires them to redirect resources from their core. The equivalent of psychological dislocation is creating uncertainty about where the next competitive move will come from — keeping the incumbent in a reactive posture rather than an offensive one.

Amazon's entry into cloud computing is the textbook indirect approach: a retailer building cloud infrastructure for its own needs discovers that the capability is more valuable externally than internally, enters a market that existing IT vendors were not positioned to serve with Amazon's cost structure, and dislocates the entire enterprise software industry before the incumbents understood what was happening.

Application to early-stage competitive strategy

For founders positioning against established competitors, the Liddell Hart principle generates a specific set of questions: where is the incumbent's line of least expectation in this market? What is it about their existing commitments, cost structure, or organizational design that makes them unable or unwilling to serve that segment or build that capability? And can I build a sufficient position there before they recognize the threat and respond?

The answers to these questions determine the competitive strategy more precisely than any amount of SWOT analysis. The indirect approach is not about avoiding competition — it's about choosing the terrain and the timing of competition in ways that maximize your advantage and minimize the incumbent's.

Liddell Hart spent his career fighting against doctrine — against the institutional tendency to repeat the last war's approach regardless of the new war's conditions. The same tendency exists in competitive strategy: companies that won through one approach keep applying it past the point of its effectiveness. The indirect approach is always available to those willing to find it.