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Sun Zi Art of War (Sun Tzu) in One Minute

Sun Zi's Arts of War is so famous that need little introduction. Many translations and applications to business are available. InBusiness as War is Half the Truth, I presented business is more a
love affair with customers than a war between competitors. Customers is prime concern with competitors are reference for the customers. But since it is a book not just about warfare but about
creating organization that are agile and powerful, we need to pay much attention to it.

The book was very well written and organized. It started with overview and then expand the points in greater details later. It is a book that explains itself. It gave terms and then explain what
the terms mean and then how to apply them. It clearly shows the system mindedness of the author.

If there be shortage of time, one just needs to read the first chapter (there are 13 chapters) on planning. It gives
the complete overview and the main strategy of war. I summarized the book in the following mind-map.

Overview of Sun Zi's Arts of War

Because my English translation may not capture the full meaning of the original Chinese, I keep the original Chinese text for comparison by those who know the language well. In the mind-
map above, the orange color box with R: x:y represents the Chapter x and Verse y of the original text so that reader can quickly find the original verse or chapter to read for himself.

Warfare is a matter of utmost importance as it affects the survival of the country. It is divided into 4 main parts:
1. Five Factors to manage well.

1. Mission & Values (Leadership and Organization) or Philosophies or beliefs.

2. Seasons, Trends and Timing. The opportune time.

3. Terrain or Positioning.

4. Commanders (their qualities and capabilities) i.e. Leadership

5. Laws or Policies i.e. the methods and processes.

2. Appraise, or audit, or do a health check on Seven-Measures.

1. The seven measures are related to the five factors. It is the extent and success of the five factors and the morale and capability of the men. More details
are given in mind-maps that follow.

2. This scoring or assessment system is like the Singapore Quality Awards or Deming Awards.

3. Appraise the Situation by looking at the measures, and make comparison with the enemies' so that we can arrive at a conclusion on the probability of winning.
 1. Individual scoring is of not much use. It must be compared against the scoring our competitors (the enemies) to reveal our relative strength or weaknesses
and then deriving the right strategies.

2. This is like doing the SWOT analysis well - deriving strategies to ride on the opportunities, overcome or convert the threats into opportunities.

3. A key principle is to know the enemy/competitors and to know oneself.

4. A list of Good Strategies and tactics.

1. Sun Zi tells us the main strategy of war against the enemy is by surprising the enemy, and this is main achieved by deception. Deception is achieved with
the "Invert" operator. Making strong look weak; weak to appear strong etc (Sun Zi provides quite a list. See Sun Zi Art of War-5: The Principles for Good Strategies ).

2. Sun Zi also covers the strategies exploit the five factors above.

3. There is not one right strategy or pattern for all situations. The KEY is to be agile, flexible and adaptable to exploit the situations.

4. There are also strategies in the use of fire (in today terms, may be artillery or air raids) and the use of spies (espionage) to collect intelligence and to give
false information to misled the enemy.

Sun Zi stresses a lot on planning before action. Planning that are based on facts, situations, intelligences on the enemy, and then try to gain advantages over the enemy. Early probing and
careful planning provide decisive committed action at the right time and place to gain a win in the shortest possible time. Posturing of Power (accumulation of strength) and then a decisive
control release at the right time is key to early success. Lack of power or releasing too early or late are bad.
Sun Zi Art of War-2: How to Manage the Five Factors Well
Continuing with Sun Zi Art of War (Sun Tzu) in One Minute the details for the 5 factors are shown in the mind map below:

You can see that Sun Zi explained its terms well.

The first factor is Dao which stands for the The Right Way literally. But from his explanation, I feel the use of the word mission, the cause, and the values one belief in are more
appropriate translation. The mind-map note without the orange box reference is my added commentary its application in business and management. All organization must begins and exist with
a meaningful mission - the reason for its existence and the value that it brings to the society.

Second is Tian Heaven or Sky + Timing, Seasons or Dimension of Time

Sun Zi explained that the SKY means weather, day or night, cold or hot, seasonal changes. From other parts of his book, I find using trends and timing are appropriate. Chinese traditional
teaching on warfare uses literally means Heaven-Time, Terrain-Advantages and People's harmonious support.

Third is Terrain or Position or Dimension of Space

The terrain, the shape, size, depth etc has great effect on the strategies to be chosen. Sun Zi in fact spent a few more chapters to describe the different types and how to exploit them such as in
Chapter 10 Terrain and Chapter 11 Nine Terrains.
For modern day business, terrain could refers to where the market is. It could be better to use it as the positioning of our offering, with respect to our target market and competitors' offering.

Fourth is Commanders or Managers or Leaders

Sun Zi tells us the specific qualities to look for in our commanders - wisdom, integrity, compassion, bravery and discipline. Values are to be balanced - we need compassion and compassion
must be balanced with disciplined. Intelligence is needed but it must be balanced with integrity. There is nothing more dangerous than talents without integrity.

Sun Zi also gives us the hiring and firing principle - hire those who share the company' Dao, cultures and values (implied by your order and plan) and fire those who do not match the
company's culture and values.

Decisions making are to be based on facts and evaluated objectively. Follow those that bring benefits, increase our posture, gain public support. Sun Zi is against using the company resources
to advance one's personal goals and gains. Look for leaders than can put company's and others' interest above their own selfish gains.

Sun Zi also tells us how to allocate authorities according to the strategic contribution of the positions. Giving the right power to the key positions creates strength. We are then left with finding
the right people to fill the key positions. How to do that is given on the next factor.

Fifth is Laws + Order

The organization must have openly stated and understood laws and policies on telling people
1. what are the right and wrong things to do.

2. What is the promotion system and how does one get promoted.

3. What are the strategic jobs.

I added a reference from 10:4 to give a balance (Sun Zi, or Classical Chinese Thinking, is always about balanced). It is not Laws without compassion. 10:4 exhort the leaders to treat their men
as their own children; to love them but not to spoil them.

Application To Your Business - 10 Questions for Your Review

With these five factors in mind, can you review your company situation?
1. Consider your company mission, are they meaningful and motivating?

2. What values are key to accomplishing your mission?

3. Are those values institutionalized into policies?

4. Do you have corresponding incentives and discipline systems to enforce those key values?

5. Are your offering leading, riding, following, or outdated by the market trends?

6. Is your offering position well?

7. How are you organized ?

8. Can you tell which are the strategic jobs?

9. Do you have the right people in those key jobs?

10. Are those key jobs given the right authorities to make those key decisions?

This is a first cut for your organizational health review. Sun Zi tells us more in the next post Sun Zi Art of War-3: Health Check with 7 Measures.
Sun Zi Art of War-3: Health Check with 7 Measures
What is well known and yet need to be repeated often about management? Measurement. If you don't have a measure, then you are out of control. You become and get what you measure.
Without measure, you don't know how you are progressing. Without targets, you can't tell whether you have arrived. Because measure affects behavior, what and how you measure and what
you do with the measured result had great impact on the behavior of people, it could be good or bad. So the measurement system itself need to be reviewed regularly. Here is Sun Zi's proposed
Seven Measures explained in mind-map format:
1. Top Leadership (The King) commitment to the Mission & Values

1. Does the top embrace and practice the mission and values and thereby gain the following and commitment of his men, such that the men are willing to die
for the cause (Factor 1 of 5 Warfare Factors). (Dao by itself could be translated as whether the Top has character that follows the righteous Ways. But in context, we
had use Mission and Values instead.

2. A lot of top leaders just talk and don't walk their talk and wonder why people are not following or trusting them.

3. It is common for consultants to find that their clients staff generally could not tell the mission and values of their companies that are written and published
on their website and manual.

4. How do we measure this? Not by measuring the Top leader's attributes but by measuring the outcome desired! Hence measures like employee
satisfaction, staff turnover rates, ranking in top companies to work for, employees recommending others to join their companies, etc are the better to use.

5. Personally, I feel that Top Leadership is responsible for the culture of the company. Hence, measures on culture and values are useful too.

2. Commanders - Capabilities

1. Sun Zi tell us to measure this but did not give us the specific measures.

2. Capabilities required may be classified into general soft skill and specific domain skill needed for the jobs. Different strategic jobs need different skill
sets, so we must come out with our system of measurements.

3. Timing & Position

1. These two factors are rated together.

2. Again, we must use output and outcome measures. So we could use measures like cycle-times, delays (with respect to plan, with respect to competitors).
 3. Right position and timing should produces good revenues for us and hence such financial measures are useful too. Cost savings or over-runs are useful as
well.

4. Laws (Policies) Implemented?

1. Implemented can be measured in stages:Drafting, Written, Communicated, Enforced.

2. We can measure the content (quality and depth of the laws) and also the extend or how widespread in the organization, are they being enforced.

5. Work-Force Strength

1. Strength can be measured in Capability Level and Size (no of people).

2. A good measure is Readiness Measure - the number and type of skills have divided by the number and type of skills required.

3. Work-force's productivity is enabled by the productive assets like machines, methods, materials, environment, and measurement(instrumentation) (6M).
Hence, I included them here.

6. Work-Force Training

1. Are the work-force skills set being continuously improved. Is there a program to ensure this is so. How many and what are the scope of the exercises that
are carried out by the men? Exercises are reviewed and improved. Our soldiers do that regularly so what about our employees.

2. Training need not be formal. It is best to create a Learning Organization for self-learning to ensure the man and the organization learn over time.

7. Rewards & Punishments

1. Are there rewards and punishments systems?

2. Do they support the enforcement of the Laws/Policies or do they go against them?

3. Are the system clearly understood by the workforce?

4. Are they fairly and transparently enforced? Do the workforce trust the system? Untrusted incentives system create suspicion, fear and cheating.

5. Most people are very suspicious of measurement system, especially when they are used for incentive systems. There are proper way to do them.

What are Missing?

What do you think are the Measures that are missing from Sun Zi's Art of War? Take a look at the Singapore Quality Award System Business Excellence Framework fig 1. It covers
Leadership(Driver), System of Planning, Information, Processes, People, Customers, and Outcome of Results, in an environment of Learning & Innovation.

In the mind map I listed down weapons and other assets and customers. Assets could be included in the workforce strength. A key element missing is CUSTOMERS. One can argued that it is
included in the Timing and Positioning. That is so because I change terrain to positioning with creates the concept of marketing position with reference to the customers and to the competitors.
This missing is because Sun Zi is about Warfare whereas business is a Love-affair with Customers that I stated in the post of this Sun Zi Series.

For the seven measures, six are internal and only one Timing and Positioning is external. In the war, timing is about weather, seasons and positioning is about terrain. In business, we will
extend it to mean customers desires/satisfaction, market trends, relative positioning to competitors and the macro factors PESTLE (Politics, Economic, Social, Technology, Environmental and
Legal)

Got Strength or NOT?

Our strength or lack of, should be measured in the eyes of the customers, relative to our competitors'. Hence, Sun Zi is emphasizing that we need to know both, our competitors and ourselves in
order to ensure success. Knowing oneself alone has a 50% chance of success. Not knowing either is sure to fail.

What is Your Company's Health?

1. Can you come out with 7-10 measures for your organization (Remember to include one for CUSTOMERS).
For customers, to just measure satisfaction only. Studies show that satisfied customers behavior just like unsatisfied customers; only those are highly satisfied will be loyal. So it is
better to measure Net Promoter Score.

2. What is Your Score? What are the areas of strength and weaknesses?
3. Pick a key Competitor, do one about him, or better, ask your customers to do one about him.
4. How do you compare against him?
5. What actions should you be taking? About your strengths and not just about fixing weaknesses.
Sun Zi Art of War-4: Appraisal & Prediction
Before we engage in a war, it is better to do a appraisal of the situation and make prediction as to the chance of winning, the associated costs and benefits. The mind-map below show the steps:
W E Deming, the Guru of Quality Control (actually, he is much more than that), says that management is about prediction (theory of knowledge). Management must be able to predict the
outcomes accurately and hence showing his understanding of the working of the system. Management is also responsible for improving the performance of the system, not by meddling, but by
understanding the profound knowledge of system, variation, psychology, and knowledge (ability to predict). (Do a Search on Deming's Profound Knowledge to find out more).
This is exactly what Sun Zi is teaching us - we must be able to predict the outcome before we decide. Prediction of outcome comes from careful analysis of facts from multiple factors and
dimensions.
To Fight or NOT
Appraisal is done with comparison of relative strength. Recalling it is about knowing the enemy and knowing oneself.
It is also about the interests of the Country and its people and is NOT about the Commander's ego or self benefits.

History tell a great number of stories of defeats due to Commander's ego or anger. One of Sun Zi's strategy is to anger the short temper commander and gain benefits against him. Hence, as a
good commander, he must remain calm, objective and always have the interests of the nation at heart.

Continue to Improve One's Position and Strength

Appraisal does not end with a decision to fight or not but about continuing to improve one's relative position and advantages.

Sun Zi gives the steps for Appraisal:

 1. It starts with identification of factors of competitions, besides the 5 general factors and 7 measures, we must study into the specifics of this situation. He used the term
"Dimension" and I extend it to include the common dimensions of time, space and properties of the present situation.

2. Once a factor(dimension) is identified, we need to decide a measure of it. Then we can measure its volume, or strength, in terms of how much or how many.

3. Certain factor is the combination of several sub-factors, then we need to compute the result.

4. Comparison with the Enemy's Computed Result will give us the conclusion to be drawn on the next step.

5. Will we win against the Enemy? I think with should read Sun Zi's claim of Winning as a probabilistic measure, a measure of confidence level, rather than absolute.
There are too much factors of variation to make a deterministic prediction for victory or defeat.

5 Principles of Victory

They are clearly depicted in the mind map below:

Exhortation from the Experts

I wish to quote one of China leading Guru on Chinese Classic on Success & Failure. He said that the reason for failure is not lack of planning but lack of activities before the planning. What
does he mean? He means that we need to do a lot of work to list our our assumptions and conduct survey and experiments to find out. Planning cannot be based on luck, dreams, and unknown.
This is exactly what Sun Zi is teaching. Sun Zi is an advocate of data and intelligence collections before planning or planning must be based on facts. Sun Zi has a Chapter 13 dedicated to
Espionage for Intelligence collection.

Successful
Entrepreneurs are in fact not risks taker or gamblers as commonly perceived, but are in fact risks minimizer. They identify the key assumptions for their business to be successful first and then
conduct survey or experiment to validate the assumptions before taking the plunge.
Sun Zi Art of War-5: The Principles for Good Strategies
This is the last post in the series of Sun Zi's Art of War. The 5 posts of this Sun Tsu Series are:
1. Sun Zi Art of War (Sun Tzu) in One Minute

2. Sun Zi Art of War-2: How to Manage the Five Factors

3. Sun Zi Art of War-3: Health Check with 7 Measures

4. Sun Zi Art of War-4: Appraisal & Prediction

5. Sun Zi Art of War-5: The Principles for Good Strategies

The Best Strategy is to Win without a Fight

SunZi in Chapter 3 'Planning to Attack' says that winning every battle is not the best. The best is to subdue the enemy even without a fight! Every war will result in destruction even for the
winning side. Hence, we begin the principles of good strategies with this foundation principle of win without a fight. Here is the mind-map.

How can one win without a fight?

The answer is given in the 1st chapter on 5 Factors and 7 Measures. You must build yourself up and engage others and be sure that you and others see that you are relatively much better off
than them and recognize you as their leader.

The Other Strategies for War

We summarize the teaching of Sun Zi's strategies into the following 8 main principles or guidelines shown in the mind-map:

(Sun Zi in Chapter 1 said the main strategy of war is deception. But in going through the 13 chapters, I felt the starting or basic strategy is actually agility and flexibility in reading and
exploiting the variations in time, terrain, and attributes encountered. So I put this mastering variation or change as the first and deception as the 2nd principle).
P1 Mastering Variation & Occupy the Advantage Position and Time.
There is no fixed strategy for war. Attack is not always right. Direct approach may be the wrong way. The best strategy is the ability to read the situation encountered, understand the variations
and the advantages or disadvantages offered, determine the truth or false of intelligence gathered, and then come out with the right strategies. This is the very basic teaching of i-Ching which is
using unchanging principles to handle the changes encountered and obtaining the desired outcome. There is so much richness in this principle that we need to expand it in the mind-map below:
P2 Deception - The Basic Strategy
How to deceive the enemy is given in the mind-map below. A typical operator is 'Invert' (see the BVITS Innovative Thinking Method for other 10 operators). We have covered in fact the
Divide and Combine operators in the P1-Mastering Variations mind-map. You may need 2 or more actions to create deception. See
12 Success Principles from Chinese 36-Strategies

The Patterns of Chinese 36-Strategies.

P3 Key Factors for Attacks
The keys for attack are: The key of a force is speed, attack when he is not ready, take the unexpected route, attack the defended (or at least the weak spots).

P4 Divide the Enemy

To weaken the enemy, a key operator Divide is used ...cause the enemy force to be divided, front from back, small from large, power and weak, top from bottom, so that the enemy cannot
combine and cannot be in mutual support of each other.

P5 Combine and Move only when there is an advantage else stop.

This is reminder that no guideline is always right for all situations. Reading the situation and apply the right guideline is the Art of War.

P6 When we are relative lesser in size - Capture the Enemy's Love(or nightmare)

We don't always need to rely on bigger forces to win. When we are lesser in number, we can still win the war. We do not attack the enemy at its strength but focus our forces and attention in
attacking the enemy's love - it could be their King (this is one of the 36 tactics to destroy the thieves capture their chief first), but it could be other things. The things that keep the Enemy
sleepless at night. Find out this key resource, critical success factor or concern of the enemy and possess this key resource.

P7 Use Fire to Attack - Artillery or Air Raids in Modern Times

Don't just think in 2D flat plain of operation. Think 3D, go by air, go wireless, go remote control. It could be a small impact to create confusion that the enemy will kill each other in panic or
run away. In business world, what will be the equivalent of using fire legally?

P8 Espionage
We have stressed much in earlier post that planning must be based on facts and correct intelligence. We can collect intelligence in many ways. Sun Zi proposed five types of spies. We must
reward them well, as some may die in the process. In this modern times, there are many equivalent to spies like customers, our sales and service staff, candidates seeking jobs, competitors'
public information, disgruntle staff, etc. etc.
We can also send out false intelligence to misled our enemy.
Here is the mind-map:

Hope you have benefited from the reading of this series of posts on Sun Zi's Art of War and could apply them well in your business. Just to emphasize again that Business is a Love-affair with
Customers rather than just a pure war against competitors. To the Sun Zi's principles, we must map it to today business situations, which I have presented much, and we need to add in the
Customers factor - loving them (which Sun Zi only covered loving your own work-force. For that, please refer to my I-Ching Series and Ancient Chinese Wisdom).
Sun Zi Art of War-6: Leadership Skills and Creating HPO
I thought I have covered Sun Tzu (Sun Zi) Art of War well with just 5 postings. But I felt I needed to cover one more important area, Leadership Skills or Leadership Principles to bring out the
point that the 'Art of War' is more than just strategies for war. It is first about the building of High Performance Force or Organization(HPO) if I have not made it clear enough in the first 3
posts.

Leaders hold the greatest responsibility for creating the mission and culture for a High Performance Organization. Hence, let me cover the leadership skills from Sun Zi with the following
mind-map:
Five Qualities of a Leader
1. Wisdom - knowledge, skills, capability, competence

2. Integrity - walk the talk, deliver promises, trust worthy, ethical.

3. Compassion - love and care of staff and even of their families.

4. Bravery - Boldness. Bravery is not recklessness. Bravery is acting on calculated risks.

5. Strict-Discipline.
Let me emphasize that the set of values listed above are counter balancing one another (as mentioned in Sun Zi Art of War-2: How to Manage the Five Factor). Compassion must
be moderated with strict discipline and vice vesa. So it with wisdom and integrity, bravery and wisdom, wisdom with discipline (be flexible when needed) etc. See Complementary
Values from Chinese Zodiac Signs for a longer list.

What are Stronger than Number?

To a good leader, strength in number is not something to count on. Big market leading companies are dethroned by start-ups. Here are the Five things that are stronger.
1. Alignment - shared mission and values provide concentration and focus of laser sharp cutting strength. Read my posts on Corporation Performance Management
(CPM). Kaplan & Norton's Strategic Map Driven Balanced Scorecard method is a great framework to follow to create focused and aligned corporation.

2. Foreseeing Enemy's actions or reactions - In the business world, I will translate to mean the ability to understand and foresee the trends in the market, customers
preferences, industry, technology, social, environmental, economic and political situations.

3. Getting Commitment of Staff - Highly engaged and motivated staff are key to corporate growth and performance. Happy employees creates happy customers who in
turn rewards the corporation with money and loyalty.
 4. Detailed & Careful Planning with Agility - As covered in previous posts, Sun Zi believed in planning on real data, of weather, terrain, staff and enemy's intelligence.
Sun Zi also teaches about agility and flexibility to adapt and exploit changes.

5. Humility - Never Under-estimate the Enemy - Our customers and our competitors are no fools. They can tell our 'lies' and 'spins'. With social media, one 'small'
customers can create great impact. Don't assume our competitors are dump or dead that will not react or pro-act against us. Continued learning and innovation is the key to long
term survival and growth.

Love & Discipline

The strongest motivating force for people is still LOVE - I Care about you. It must be demonstrated and not just spoken of. Yet love is not indulgence. Standards need to set and discipline need
to be enforced.

The order is important - love first and then set standard. Discipline without love will produce temporary and on the surface following of commands. Deep down in the heart is the feeling of
misused, abused, bitterness, anger and will create sabotaging whenever there is opportunity.

Lead by Example
Leaders must walk their talk. Best form of teaching is not by instruction but by example. This is the teaching of Lao Zi, teaching without talking! see The Tao Bible in One minute and Levels
of Leadership Which Level are Yours?.