A head to head game in the vacuum of a single match, like, say, Chess or Go or Starcraft, is conducive to certain kinds of strategies. You have one opponent and no teammates. Your win is his loss. It's black and white, clearer what you're trying to accomplish.
Not all games (or "games", i.e. business) are this simple. There can be multiple players. You may have teammates, or you may need to forge alliances. You may then need to break alliances. There can be multiple degrees of victory or defeat, and multiple paths to victory.
Being unpredictable is inherently scary. It's effective in direct conflict because your opponent must account for more possible future situations, diluting his ability to attack you directly, or thwart your true attack directly.
Exactly what makes this effective in direct conflict, makes it a liability when seeking alliances. People will not want to cooperate with you if they aren't comfortable in their prediction that cooperation will be beneficial, so they'll only do it if the alternative is worse. Being predictable makes it easy for people to work with you. This opens you up to many opportunities for cooperation you'd otherwise miss. When cooperation is essential to victory, this is immensely powerful and puts a hard limit on how unpredictable you want to be if you'd like to win. And heck, in life and business, maybe relationships with people are most valuable trophy anyway, i.e. https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
A head to head game in the vacuum of a single match, like, say, Chess or Go or Starcraft, is conducive to certain kinds of strategies. You have one opponent and no teammates. Your win is his loss. It's black and white, clearer what you're trying to accomplish.
Not all games (or "games", i.e. business) are this simple. There can be multiple players. You may have teammates, or you may need to forge alliances. You may then need to break alliances. There can be multiple degrees of victory or defeat, and multiple paths to victory.
Being unpredictable is inherently scary. It's effective in direct conflict because your opponent must account for more possible future situations, diluting his ability to attack you directly, or thwart your true attack directly.
Exactly what makes this effective in direct conflict, makes it a liability when seeking alliances. People will not want to cooperate with you if they aren't comfortable in their prediction that cooperation will be beneficial, so they'll only do it if the alternative is worse. Being predictable makes it easy for people to work with you. This opens you up to many opportunities for cooperation you'd otherwise miss. When cooperation is essential to victory, this is immensely powerful and puts a hard limit on how unpredictable you want to be if you'd like to win. And heck, in life and business, maybe relationships with people are most valuable trophy anyway, i.e. https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ