Sun-Tzu and the Heights of Strategy

when the bow is taught it hasn't been shot yet but the power is there and it and you can shoot the bow in many different directions that is the essence of [Music] strategy so another person had a very big effect on me is the great ancient Chinese strategist sunu I did the 33 Strategies of War I don't obviously know Chinese at all and I never pretend to it would be one of the great achievements of my life if I could but what I wanted to do was I had this feeling in Reading The Art of

War and these translation these slim volumes was I'm missing something there's something here that I'm not getting because I felt like in Chinese it's different so I bought this very thick book it's behind me somewhere on the Shelf the annotated sunu and what it did was the book The Art of War is only about like 80 pages but this was like 700 pages every little word in there was annotated this is the Chinese word not every word but this is the Chinese word and this is what it literally means physically right so I could see

that there was complexity to his ideas that's not there in our common conception of him and so he opened up this idea to me as I was reading this book that strategy there are levels of strategy right the there are people that are pretty good at it they can think ahead they can plan ahead not bad there are other people much higher and even higher and there's like a Godlike realm because the ability to to think in depth is what makes a great strategist so normally we examine a b and c as a possible strategic

way out of a problem and we choose one of them right but we don't go into great depth we don't think oh if I choose B then X will happen and X will lead to Y and Y will lead to Z okay so sunsu wants you to focus on all of that incredible depth and he had this idea that fascinated me I'm sorry as I said I'm getting old but he had a word in there uh that I used in in 33 Strategies I don't remember it was like Shia or something like that where he

was talking about power in the sense of as a potential Force so in strategy he compared it to a boulder that's sitting on top of a mountain that at any moment it could fall and as it falls it gains tremendous momentum it could fall this direction this direction this direction but in that moment that the boulder is there it has the potential for force and power that's immense he compared it also to a a bow and an arrow when the bow is taught it hasn't been shot yet but the power is there and it and

you can shoot the bow in many different directions that is the essence of strategy you put yourself in a position of sh I wish I could remember the word sorry please excuse me it'll come to me at some point you want to put yourself in that position of potential power doesn't mean that you do this this this it means you can't you can choose anything but you're in a place where you have options and there's immense force behind it if that Boulder does fall if you do shoot that arrow and what I tell people in

business or any kind of strategic situation is it's not important what you do or exactly the strategy it's what matters is putting yourself in a position that has potential for doing all sorts of very exciting things very powerful things in Warfare we call it maneuver War you have the flexibility To Go in different directions but the place you choose to occupy has a sense of tremendous potential power Napoleon who we don't know for sure but probably was one of the first Western strategists to have read sunsu understood that was the essence of Napoleonic Warfare so

he had other Concepts that I think are extremely valuable such as you defeat your enemy before you even battle the greatest victories are where nobody is killed the enemy just surrenders because you have put yourself in that position of power and they have no Escape he has many great ideas but the idea is to think in a higher level to play three-dimensional chess not to be playing checkers and when I see so many people in the world today so many politicians Etc they are such weak strategists their strategies are so one-dimensional if they read sunsu

in depth they would understand that strategies this expansive realm that requires great deal of creativity and great deal of deep thinking so that the um influence sunu has to think more expansively about the concept of strategy and to think more creatively about it