Sun Tzu's The Art of War and Its Rules for Winning without Conflict

Sun Tzu saw competition as productive rather than destructive. He doesn't mention "enemies" until the second chapter of his book and there  he defines an "enemy" as  the best source of resources, not an opponent to be destroyed.  How radical is that view of competition?

Sun Tzu's Warrior Rules  teach us to advance our position by avoiding our destructive flight or fight reflex. By learning these rules, we reprogram our thinking to create a powerful mindset for understanding our competitive position and advancing that position. Making better decisions in competitive situations is a skill that is different than planning or management skills, but it is also very different from the destructive battles that arise automatically when people are untrained in Sun Tzu's strategy.

At the heart of Sun Tzu’s strategic system are two powerful ideas: 1) that strategic positions are created from a natural balance of forces and 2) that we can leverage those forces to “win without conflict.”

A Universal Language for Competitive Success

Warrior's Rules can be applied to all types of competitive situations. In writing these rules, SOSI has converted Sun Tzu's military language to a more universal vocabulary. We discuss competition from the perspective of "positions," "conditions," "decisions," "situations," "actions," and "responses" because these terms apply to any competitive sphere or field. We illustrate rules with situations from career, business, selling, sports, law, politics, games, and occasionally, military battles.

Sun Tzu's system sees all competition in terms of strategic positions. Success is defined in terms of advancing positions and making those advances pay. While we can fight over positions, this is the least successful method to advance positions because conflict is expensive. Warrior's Rules explains out all the more productive ways in which positions are advanced and made to pay.

No matter what the specific nature of a competitive challenge, our goal is to improve our individual or group's position. We improve our position by making the right decisions about pursuing opportunities, minimizing our mistakes and maximizing our gains. People like you become warriors to understand their strategic position and know how to advance it.

"The laboratory (Ferminlab) employs over 2,200 physicists, engineers, and administrative professionals...These Art of War principles allowed me to see the key actions required to keep my department viable." Fred W. Ullrich, Jr., Fermilab

Seeing Opportunities

In using these rules, good decisions are based on pattern recognition. Most people have only a vague idea of how conditions affect their positions. Sun Tzu's warrior's rules teach us to see common patterns in situations that allow us to know what to do. We cannot advance our position though preplanned steps. We need to see opportunities and our competitive environment is too complex and chaotic to predict where and when opportunities will arise. Success comes from continually adjusting to our situation as opportunities develop.

Over the past 2,500 years, our warrior's rules have identified hidden patterns that define opportunities and how to respond to them. People like you become warriors when they learn how to recognize opportunities better.

Warrior Economics

All decisions have costs. Not all decisions produce rewards. Our warrior's rules work to minimize our losses while maximizing our gains. We catalog which types of decisions have the highest probability of being rewarded. We call these situations High Probability Opportunities (HPOs).

It takes training to recognize High Probability Opportunities. If HPOs were not difficult to recognize, someone else would have already taken advantage of them. There are a number of rules for seeing these hidden opportunities. People like you become warriors to minimize the costs of the mistakes they make.

Leveraging High-Probabilities

In real world situations, decisions must be made in a cloud of uncertainty. You never have time to gather all the information or analyze all possible alternatives. Strategy puts the odds in your favor despite these challenges.

Small differences in success rates make huge differences over time. A $1,000 investment at 8% interest over 20 years grows to $64,000, but the same $1,000 at 13.3% makes over $1,000,000. Even minor improvements in decision-making skills create huge difference in your life.People like you become warriors to increase their probability of success over time.

Cost of Conflict

Conflict is always costly. Too many people can only see opportunity in terms of taking what others have. This, of course, creates conflict and the costs of conflict lower the likelihood of making decisions pay.

Our warrior's rules define opportunities differently. An opportunity is an opening. The surest way to make victory pay is to advance your position without opposition. "Winning without conflict" is not an altruistic goal but the logical necessity of Sun Tzu's rules. People like you become warriors to decrease the conflict in their lives.

Better Mental Models

Sun Tzu's rules leverage general areas of pattern recognition called the Nine Formulas. These formulas consist of our warrior's rules (see the detailed list here) that make up our Warrior's Rule Book. These nine mental models allow us to: 1) compare strategic positions, 2) develop competitive perspective, 3) identify opportunities, 4) evaluate opportunities, 5) avoid costly mistakes, 6) respond to challenges appropriately, 7) create momentum, 8) win better rewards, and 9) defend our established positions.

All "success systems" are based upon one of these formulas and often just one small part of one of them. People like you become warriors to understand all aspects of making better competitive decisions.