Strong competitive moves should always be blocked.

Most companies have only one chance to win, but leaders have two. If a leader misses an opportunity to attack itself, the company can often recover by copying the competitive move. But the leader must move rapidly before the attacker gets established.

Many leaders refuse to block because their egos get in the way. Even worse, they knock the competitor’s development until it’s too late to save the situation.

Blocking works well for a leader because of the nature of the battleground. Remember, the war takes place inside the mind of the prospect. It takes time for an attacker to make an impression in the mind. Usually, there’s time enough for the leader to cover.

The U.S. automobile industry illustrates this principle well. Says John DeLorean in the book on a Clear Day You Can See General Motors: “Even though ford was superior to General Motors in product innovation during the time. I was with GM and Chrysler surpassed it in technical innovation, neither firm made substantial cuts into GM’s half of the market.”

“Gm had not produced a significant, major automotive innovation since the hydramatic automatic transmission (1939) and the hard-top body style (1949),” continues DeLorean, “Ford pioneered in practically every major new market while Chrysler produced the significant technical innovations, such as power steering, power brakes, electric windows and the alternator.”

But who gets the credit for engineering excellence? General Motors, of course.

It’s the flip side of the “truth will out” fallacy. The prospect also assumes that truth will out. Therefore, the prospect reasons that the market leader must have truth on its side, that is, the GM product is superior.

There is also the psychological pressure that benefits the leader. In a famous experiment by Solomon Asch of the University of Pennsylvania, many people were willing to go against the evidence of their own senses in order to go along with the majority.

When asked to match the length of a set of lines and confronted with a group that had been carefully briefed to give unanimously wrong answers, 37 percent of the subjects submitted to the misleading group opinion and also gave the wrong answers.

The power of the majority was indicated by the typical reaction in the Asch experiment: “To me it seems I’m right, but my reason tells me I’m wrong, because I doubt that so many people could be wrong and I alone right.”

The fact is, many people pay more attention to the opinion of others than they do to their own. If everyone else is laughing in the theater, you assume the movie is not funny. (That’s why they put the laugh tracks on the TV situation comedies.)

Should a leader cover all bets or just the ones that are most likely to succeed? Obviously there’s no point in covering downright silly ideas, but who’s to judge? When the first Volkswagen Beetle arrived, it looked strange indeed. “The three most overrated things in America,” went a typical Detroit joke, “are Southern cooking, home sex, and foreign cars.”

Many companies have lived to regret instant putdowns like this. So today the watchword is more likely to be: “Let’s monitor the situation and see what happens.”

But that can be a dangerous tactic for a leader. Too often what happens too fast? All of a sudden, it’s too late to get into the new ball game.

Currently, disposables represent about 40 percent of the razor blade market. If Gillette had waited and let Bic dominate this market segment, Gillette’s position would be much weaker today.

It’s safer to over cover than to undercover. The stainless steel blade introduced by Wilkinson Sword never went anywhere, but Gillette covered anyway. The small cost was worth it. Call it insurance if you wish.