Friday, September 05, 2008

NOT ANOTHER MANAGEMENT BOOK ON SUN TSU

I went to a book buying spree a few weeks back at Fully Booked at Serendra. It’s been quite a while since I went into a book buying frenzy for I spent more than 3000 pesos for 4 books that Sunday. Anyway, in the course of my shopping spree, I came across an entire shelf in the business book section filled with management books based on Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Not that I have anything against Sun Tzu’s Art of War or the authors who “distills” his genius into management principles but I hardly find the idea of Sun Tzu’s Art of War as a management book appealing if not outright preposterous. I mean The Art of War is a book about warfare, period and nothing more. Even if the wisdom contained in the 2000 year old book is timeless and applicable to basic business management, still it is out of its context and premise when it is applied to business. The primary reason people used The Art of War as a management book is because of the seeming similarity between warfare and business. In both arenas, it’s about the battle between two opposing forces vying for dominance with each marshalling their resources for the inevitable titanic clash and by logic, if The Art of War can be successfully applied in the battlefield, then why not in the bloody dog eat dog world of business. It is quite a strong and convincing argument indeed. It is not only The Art of War that is being used in “discovering” enlightened management truth; other military thoughts mostly in the form of military maxims are useful as well. In the words of the imminent management “theorist” Henry Mintzberg, the very first and oldest school of management thought is the school of military thinking exemplified by the famous military maxims that we came to learn about. However, though military maxims make good management principles, they hardly constitute good management at all, i.e., you can’t simply piece together a coherent management philosophy by piecing together military maxims. This is where The Art of War comes in. Unlike military maxims, the Art of War represents a coherent philosophy and not just some chop – chop thinking on how to fight a contest between two adversarial forces seeking dominance but that’s where the similarity between war and business ends. In warfare, the contest is basically a zero – sum game, you either win or dead, nothing in between. Even in victory, there is always casualty – corpses littered in the battlefield. It is in these circumstances that Sun Wu wrote his treatise in the Art of War. How to win a war without actually fighting a war? How to transform war from a literal fight to the death into a battle of wits, of maneuvers, of stratagem, of tactics? And his answer is simple - - - deception. The art of war is the art of deception. Sun Wu if he were alive now would have told anybody about that straight forward. You feigned, create diversions, launched a propaganda campaign of misinformation, psych out your enemy such that your enemy would be clueless about your motives, misread your intensions, misjudge about your plans and as a consequence cloud his thinking, lowered his guard, and fooled into making a wrong decision that expose his weak side for you to exploit thus handing over to you an opening, an opportunity, and ultimately victory if you’re not stupid enough to have bungled it. That’s what the Art of War is all about. The game of business on the other hand is not a zero – sum game not like war. And unlike war, there is an arbiter between feuding business competitors – the consumer. Lest one forgets, business is about satisfying a need or want of a consumer within his paying capacity. It is about providing a choice for the consumer to choose and in the process becomes The Choice. The objective of business is profit which in the simplest description is the difference between the revenue exacted from provision of satisfaction to the consumer and the resources expended to provide such satisfaction. The central premise in business is efficiency. The more efficient you are the more profitable you are. In war, we can’t talk about efficiency, for how we are going to define efficiency in warfare? The ratio between the number of soldiers killed versus the number of enemy killed? That sick. The objective of business is profit which hinges on efficiency meaning maximize the gain at the least cost possible. The objective of war on the other hand is nothing but the gain itself regardless of the cost however pyrrhic it can be; be it territorial conquest, strategic advantage, prestige, tribute or any perceived economic benefits. And this why I never liked the idea of Sun Tzu as a management philosophy because it is really out of the context and not in synch with the premise of business. If you’re anywhere good with deception in war, you’re a good commander; if you’re a master in the art of deception at war, then you’re a freaking military genius. Now, if you’re really damn good at deception, you’re a bloody god of war. In business, if you’re good at deception, you’re probably dishonest. If you’re a master at it, you’re a shrewd businessman but if you’re damn good, you’re a con man not a businessman.

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