Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Introduction
SUN TZU AND HIS IMPACT
THE TEXT
THE WAY OF THE WISE LEADER
FINAL WORD
THE WISE LEADER
NOTES
KEY
ABOUT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON
PART I - THE ART OF WAR
I - PRELIMINARY RECKONING
II - OPERATIONS OF WAR
III - THE ATTACK BY STRATAGEM
IV - THE ORDER OF BATTLE
V - THE SPIRIT OF THE TROOPS
VI - EMPTINESS AND STRENGTH
VII - BATTLE TACTICS
VIII - THE NINE CHANGES
IX - MOVEMENT OF TROOPS
X - GROUND
XI - NINE GROUNDS
XII - ASSAULT BY FIRE
XIII - THE EMPLOYMENT OF SPIES
PART II - THE SAYINGS OF WUTZU
AN INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
I - THE GOVERNMENT OF A COUNTRY
II - ESTIMATION OF THE ENEMY
III - CONTROL OF THE ARMY
IV - QUALITIES OF THE GENERAL
V - SUITING THE OCCASION
VI - ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE TROOPS
FOREWORD
Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War, has appeal throughout the ages because business feels like warfare. We wish romantically that it were not so, but the daily lives of workers and executives alike are full of emotional traumas not unlike those that soldiers face at war.
A successful executive and a friend of mine used to work at a Fortune 500 company. Shortly after he had retired, he confided in me: “I put up with them (his former employer) for 37 years.” A client of mine worked at his non-profit for several decades and, when he retired, he moved as far away from his former employer as he could.
It is no wonder that I bought and read this ancient Chinese classic shortly after I resigned from my Fortune 500 company job as a manager in international sales and marketing in the spring of 1983. My corporate job had given me so much angst and dissatisfaction I had cinematographic visions of large-scale warfare that felt like the apocalypse in my dreams. I wanted to set up my own business. I wanted to have control over my own fate. I knew I must read Sun Tzu in order to survive in this do-or-die, cut-and-thrust world of business.
One of the early stories in Sun Tzu that fascinated me was the way he handled the unruly concubines of his client, the Duke of Wu. He beheaded those who didn’t take his training seriously, and succeeded in turning court ladies into fearsome warriors. War is serious and unsentimental, just like the forces at work in the marketplace. To fail to obey good judgment is fatal. I took this lesson to heart.
After 15 years of practicing my craft in helping companies promote and sell American-made products and services in the China market, I ran up against the most feared moment of my consultancy. My most important client did not get any business from China for one full year, and my annual retainer was about to be renewed. It was late December and I was about to meet my client. I had served my client for 14 years by that time. We trusted each other and we did not feel we had to play “games” with each other. I was telling myself that perhaps I should tell my client to drop me because I couldn’t foresee when the China market would pick up. I was tempted to commit professional suicide.
I was fortunate that the same evening when I was thinking such thoughts, my lawyer friend Mariann invited me to her house for dinner. I told Mariann my dilemma and she said: “James, it is not up to you how your client wants to use you and your service. See your client tomorrow and stay quiet. Listen to what they say to you first.”
As I sat in front of my client the next morning, I obeyed Mariann’s advice because it was so Sun-Tzuesque. I controlled my feelings of insecurity. I did not become defensive or belligerent. Most importantly, I did not initiate a “fight” with my client on whether or not I am worthy of their retainer.
Miraculously, as I sat in silence while keeping my poise, my client told me in a matter-of-fact manner that they wanted to renew my contract. Not only that, they wanted to give me a three-year (not the usual one-year) contract. In addition, my client raised my consulting fee for me. I was speechless. I said: “Thank you.” The “negotiation” session took no more than five minutes.
This story is related to Sun Tzu because I put into practice the most important principle - and the ultimate goal - of the spirit of The Art of War, namely, the greatest victory is one that does not require fighting a war.
My client’s strategy proved to be correct. They understood the business cycle in their industry. They wanted to retain me in anticipation of doing battle with our competitors. In less than two years, the China market picked up and they succeeded beyond their expectations. It is hard enough to battle with one’s competitors; it is fatal to fight an unnecessary war with one’s benefactor.
Sun Tzu tells us not to do battle unless it is really necessary. This is just one of the many pieces of timeless advice in the book that you are about to read.
James Chan, PhD
President, Asia Marketing and Management
Philadelphia, USA
Author of Spare Room Tycoon
www.AsiaMarketingManagement.com
www.SpareRoomTycoon.com
AN INTRODUCTION
BY TOM BUTLER-BOWDON
That a person of today, a civilian, would want to read a manual for waging war that is over two thousand years old must say something about that work’s enduring power.
But what, exactly, can the modern reader get from The Art of War?
First, in the capitalist knowledge society we live in, in which individual qualities are quickly exposed, the book’s emphasis on the importance of personal character and knowledge as the keys to success has never been more relevant. Its author, Sun Tzu, insisted that wise generals or leaders could not simply rely on their knowledge of the terrain or the capabilities of the opposition, but had to know themselves. To become invincible, they first had to develop deep understanding, and full control, of their own reactions, to be the same in the face of praise or blame. Victory, Sun Tzu says, comes to those who have developed an ethic of constant refinement and improvement. It is never possible to control other people, but by developing our own strength of character, knowledge and insight we can build invincibility. In Chinese philosophy, leadership is character. People with great character, developed overtime, naturally become leaders.1
Secondly, The Art of War is intriguing because of its spiritual underpinnings. While other military treatises from its era, and indeed modern war manuals such as Von Clausewitz’s On War and the US Marines’ Warfighting2 , are simply technical manuals on the mechanics of waging war, The Art of War provides a whole philosophy for action that applies to life as much as battle.
“In war there is no fixity,” Sun Tzu says. The wise general does not simply come up with a plan and rigidly follow it, but is attuned to the “Tao” of a situation, or the particular way events are moving at any one moment. Such a leader can act objectively and with perfect timing.
SUN TZU AND HIS IMPACT
Constant fighting between feudal states and dynasties, plus the need to defend borders from invaders (the Great Wall had been built long before Rome began its spread into northern Europe), gave China ancient experience in war strategy and methods. Amid a rich heritage of military annals, histories and manuals stands Sunzi Bingfa (The Art of War).
Both it and Wuzi, or Sayings of Wutzu (see Part II of this volume), are included in Seven Military Classics, the canon of war manuals first collated in 11thcentury China.
The Art of War came into being when Sun Tzu was asked by the king of Wu, Ho Lu, to compose a work encapsulating his warrior wisdom. Sun Tzu, or Sun Wu as he is also known, was a real person. Born around 544 BCE, a native of the Qi state (now Shandong province), he was a contemporary of Confucius during the “Spring and Autumn” period when northern China was essentially a collection of warring states. His father had been a general and his grandfather a provincial governor. By his early 30s he had became known as a brilliant military strategist, leading the armies of Wu (the smallest of 13 states at the time) to great victories. Such “masters of war,” translator EF Calthrop notes, “were in no sense patriots but professional strategists, continually changing their employer.” Yet this very independence and objectivity were the source of their wisdom and prowess.
The impact of The Art of War on warfare in China could be compared to that of Machiavelli’s The Prince on politics in Europe and the West. The Chinese king Qin Shi Huang, for instance, adopted the book’s principles to unite China, and centuries later Chairman Mao would use it for a similar purpose.
Its influence transcends its original time and place. The Sonshi (or Sun Tzu), as it is known in Japan, was brought there as early as the 8th century, and later played an important role in Japan’s unification. It was reputedly core reading for Napoleon in his European conquests, and in more recent times, American generals Douglas MacArthur and Norman Schwarzkopf, along with the Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, noted their debt to the book. It remains on the syllabus in military colleges around the world.
This is the case even though, until little more than a century ago, in the West The Art of War was little known.
THE TEXT
First communicated orally, over time Sun Tzu’s original tenets were made into a book, complemented by commentary and annotations from other military philosophers including Li Quan, Du Mu, Mei Sheng-yu, and the great warlord Cao Cao. For a period, doubt was cast on whether Sun Tzu was actually the author of The Art of War, with some scholars arguing that it was simply an aggregation of the philosophies of various military leaders, or the work of Sun Tzu’s descendant Sun Bin. However in 1972, in Shandong, bamboo-strip versions of The Art of War and Sun Bin’s The Art of War were found in a Han dynasty (206 BCE-220CE) tomb, confirming each as separate works and Sun Tzu as the author of the text long attributed to him.
The first European translation was completed in 1782 by a French Jesuit priest living in China, Joseph Amiot, but it was another 120 years before the first English translation appeared. Captain Everard Ferguson (“EF”) Calthrop was a British officer who had served in the Boer War before being stationed with the Foreign Service in Japan. As part of its then alliance with Japan, Britain deemed it useful for 50 or 60 of its officers to learn Japanese and study their host country’s military system. Calthrop was exposed to the Sonshi and learned of its impact on the history of Japanese military strategy.
Calthrop’s first translation of the Sonshi was published in 1905 in Tokyo, before it was fully revised for British publication in 1908 under the title The Book of War: The Military Classics of the Far East. This version carries well the basic force of Sun Tzu’s maxims and, along with his translation of the Sayings of Wutzu, Calthrop’s translation3,4 forms the basis of this Capstone edition.
In Calthrop’s wake, Lionel Giles, a sinologist and keeper of Far East antiquities at the British Museum, published his own translation5. In it, perhaps resenting the incursion of a mere army officer onto his academic turf, he trenchantly criticized Calthrop for various perceived omissions and mistakes, and for lack of scholarship. However, as historian and military scholar Hamish Ion6 has noted, Calthrop was unfairly maligned since his translation was based on a Japanese version of Sun Tzu, which would always have differed from a Chinese text. Moreover, it was never Calthrop’s purpose to provide exhaustive scholarly commentary, but rather to mine the wisdom of Sun Tzu for his higher-ups in the British Army, showing how that institution could be reformed and illuminating how Japan could have defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese war7.
After the Calthrop-Giles era many other translations of The Art of War followed, including Samuel Griffith’s notable work of 1963, and they keep coming. Recent versions8 tend to emphasize the book as a guide to managing any kind of conflict, positing Sun Tzu as an enlightened Taoist master.
Below is a brief exploration of some of the main concepts in the work as we can apply them to work and life today.
Some versions begin with an account provided by the Chinese historian, Ssu-ma Ch‘ien, of Sun Tzu’s notorious actions at the court of King Ho Lu. Though not included in the main text, this apocryphal event is also discussed below.
In its basic form, The Art of War consists of Sun Tzu’s 13 chapters, beginning with “Preliminary Reckoning,” or the preparation for war, and ending with “The Employment of Spies.” Yet modern readers should not expect a neat sequence of lessons. This is, after all, an ancient and sometimes enigmatic text that works best when we let it seep into our consciousness over several readings.
THE WAY OF THE WISE LEADER
The five factors
Sun Tzu identified “five indispensable matters” that had to inform a leader’s decisions: The Way, Heaven, Earth, Leader, and Law. What do these actually mean, and how can we apply them in our own context?
In Sun Tzu’s army, The Way refers to the extent to which there is singularity of purpose, with leader and soldiers tightly bound to the same goals. There is very little such a body of people cannot accomplish, since they move with the power and purpose of one. The obvious lesson for organizations of any place or time: Do not waste energy on internal divisions, and move ahead united.
Related to the individual, The Way involves the five virtues of humanity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith, suggesting a mature person who, having developed themselves over many years, is “all of a piece” and galvanized by clear goals.
Heaven and Earth, as Sun Tzu uses the terms, are the conditions within which a general wages war. In a modern context, this can be interpreted as heightened, present-moment awareness of the social, political and economic environment in which one lives and works. Such awareness allows one to make the most of opportunities, avoid dangers, and develop intuition about what is to come.
Leader
