lives. “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.” Sun Tzu wrote.

A systematic guide to strategy and tactics for rulers and commanders, The Art of War
depicts a philosophy of war for managing conflicts and winning battles. It stresses the
importance of accurate information about the enemy’s forces, dispositions and
deployments, and movements. This is summarised in the axiom “Know the enemy and know
yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.”

Business Leadership Lessons from The Art of War of Sun Tzu

As one of the world’s most venerated books on strategy and leadership, The Art of War is
far more than a military textbook. Strategic advice that it contains can be used in many
more areas than just the conduct in the times of war. In fact, many great leaders like
Napoléon Bonaparte, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were proponents of this
legendary book, even the President of the United States, Donald Trump. Corporate leaders
like Bill Gates and Oracle’s Larry Ellison are also indebted to the secrets of strategy and
leadership from it. It has even appeared in the classic movie Wall Street, in which Gordon
Gekko states, “I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things. Read Sun Tzu, The Art of
War. Every battle is won before it is fought.”

The Art of War teaches its readers that the most logical way to confront their competitors is
to subdue them by never fighting them at all. In the business battlefield today, successful
business leaders can also apply Sun Tzu’s strategy and tactics to defeat their competitors
and win market share. Here are some lessons that business leaders can learn from The Art
of War of Sun Tzu.

1. Avoid Strength and Attack Weakness

“An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens
to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness.” – Sun Tzu

Many businesses will launch direct attacks on their competitors in the hope of gaining
profit. However direct, unsubtle and heads-down assaults on a competitor’s strengths rarely
works. Instead they drain a company’s resources and rouse the other company to fight back
strongly.

What a business must do is to find the competitor’s weaknesses and capitalise on exploiting
those. A perfect example of this is Costco. Instead of offering too many Stock Keeping Units
for a certain product category like its competitors Walmart and Target, Costco only sells
bulk goods through its warehouse-style stores and it keeps frills to a minimum. Pairing this
with a membership fee (currently $60 per year), the customers can get access to what is
usually the best deal around. By focusing on the competitors’ weakness, Costco maximises
its gains while minimising the use of resources. This, by definition, increases its profits and
makes it outperform both Walmart and Target in the United States.
 2. Use Foreknowledge to Maximise the Power of Business Intelligence

“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” – Sun
Tzu.

According to Sun Tzu, success in surpassing and suppressing a competitor's capacities can be
achieved partially or wholly by the adept creation and exploitation of information,
knowledge, and beliefs, as well as deep understanding of your own strengths and
weaknesses.

This lesson from Sun Tzu is all about knowledge or as we would call it data and business
intelligence in the modern business environment. From small retail stores to large
corporations, data is reshaping the way we do business in every perspective you can think
of, from understanding the customers to streamlining the internal processes of companies.
There is no doubt that once organised the task of interpreting and analysing data to gain
insight of customers and competitors paves the way to a gold mine for businesses.

Amazon is one of the best examples of successful use and implementation of data and
business intelligence in today’s business world. With strong capability of big data and
business intelligence, Amazon does not only provide recommendations based on its
customers’ search and purchase history, they even start the process of shipping a product
before you even buy it! Anticipatory Shipping, as their patent is called, is the process of
shipping an item to a customer in anticipation of the purchase. Amazon is so confident in
their big data that they know you will order a product before you even confirm it. By the
time you click the button to close the sale, your product is already on its way.

Harnessing the relationships in data means that businesses are not only making decisions on
past events, but can undertake precision forecasting to drive operations and customer
experience for the future.

3. Use Speed to Overcome Your Competition

“Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by
unexpected routes and strike him where has taken no precautions.” – Sun Tzu

In business, as in war, speed is essential. The changes companies face, whether social,
technological, political or economic, are only accelerating. If a company cannot move rapidly
to respond to market changes, it will not survive.

In September 2013, Nokia announced that they had been acquired by Microsoft in a deal
valued at US$7.17 billion. At the time, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop ended his speech with the
following words “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.” Nokia has been a
respectable company. They didn’t do anything wrong in their business, however, the world
changed too fast. “They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they
lost the opportunity at hand to make it big. Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn
big money, they lost their chance of survival.” commented by Ziyad Jawabra, a management
consultant in his blog on LinkedIn.