Ronald O. Neely
Sun Tzu writes: In the operations of war, where there
are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots,
and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to
carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and
paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of
a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an
army of 100,000 men.
When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long
in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be
dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will
not be equal to the strain.
Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor
dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other
chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then
no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that
must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged
warfare. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the
evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of
carrying it on.
The skillful soldier
does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded
more than twice. Bring war material with you from home, but
forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its
needs. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength,
the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of
their income will be dissipated; while government expenses for broken
chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and
arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught-oxen and
heavy wagons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.
Hence, a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One
cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's
own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to
twenty from one's own store.
Now in order to
kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be
advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their
rewards. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more
chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the
first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy,
and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The
captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept. This is
called, using the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.
In war, then, let
your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
Thus it may be
known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate,
the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in
peril.
On Leadership: The Application
Sun Tzu reminds us that war is expensive. Now,
twenty-five hundred years later, organizational leaders also feel the
challenges of limited and competing resources. So your strategy
as a leader must include making the most of the resources at your
disposal. Virtually every decision you make must be
considered from a financial standpoint. For example, if you
find your workforce is missing skill sets you wish they had, is it
better to develop the talent you already have or hire new employees
who come with those skills?
Sun Tzu also seems to be telling us that prolonged
wars are never successful. However, experience has shown that
it takes time to change the culture of an organization. So if
our war is about keeping up with the pace of change, and we know that
creating that type of culture in our organizations will take time,
the question becomes how do we avoid the hazards of a "prolonged
war" as described by Sun Tzu?
This author submits that Sun Tzu knew there was
a "profitable way" of carrying on a war, and that sometimes
the best way to know how to do something is to know how not
to do something. Let me explain: We've all worked for, or
known someone who's worked for, "that boss." You
know, the boss who needed to control everything, and rarely delegated
leadership authority, or, the one who seemed to perceive everything
as a crisis and a high priority. Maybe you've worked for a
supervisor who seemed unable to tolerate failure of any kind and kept
the pressure at the highest possible level at all times.
Perhaps you've even experienced the worst case; the manager that just
made it so you dreaded coming to work every day.
If every day is a constant battle, your workforce's
ardor will soon dampen and their strength will become
exhausted. Your human resource capital will not be equal to the
strain. In our war about change, long-term crisis management
will never lead to the type of long-term culture change we seek -- as
observed by Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago, it never has and it never
will. The profitable way to wage the war and achieve victory in
the form of organizational change, we believe, is to establish a
worthy vision and work to convert the non-believers until the culture
of the organization changes.
In any organizational change attempt, there will
be a few employees who share the change vision right from the
start. Those people are the leader's forces for change and a
wise leader knows who they are and rewards their efforts to help lead
the change. There is also a group of people, usually a much
larger group, who will resist the change for myriad reasons.
For the sake of the analogy we're using, these people are the enemy
of the change effort. Sun Tzu tells us that converting the
enemy to our fold is better than terminating them and recruiting new
forces. In his words, "treat them kindly and use them to
augment one's own strength."
Sun Tzu also helps us understand the importance
of rewards and recognition in rousing the troops. Much has been
written about the art of motivating the workforce and a great deal of
the literature focuses on the importance of aligning the employee's
personal goals with organizational strategies. But, for this
article, let us consider the universal motivator. It is
as simple as leadership's acknowledgement of a job well done. A
wise leader never underestimates the power of a sincere "thank
you" or a genuine pat on the back.
Finally, as a leader, if you take nothing else
from chapter two of the The Art of War, please consider
Sun Tzu's last observation about leaders. For the leader truly
is the "arbiter of the people's fate." It is the
leader's temperament that determines whether the workforce operates
in peace, or fear of peril. In any organization, morale truly
flows from the top down. It has been said that people don't
quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. Now may be a good time
to take a look at your leadership style. Are you the kind of
leader you would like to work for? Or, do people think of you
as "that boss"?
Next on our agenda is Chapter 3 of the "The Art
of War," - Attack by Stratagem
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