|
New to Sun Tzu?
In translation, Sun Tzu's The Art of War reads like a collection of vague military aphorisms. In the original Chinese, it is a series of detailed competitive rules in the formulas of ancient Chinese science. The Warrior's Rule Book is an explanation of this system in today's terms of modern...
More...
|
|
Outline of Warrior's Rules Articles
The Institute collects, organizes, and explains Sun Tzu's Rules for winning in competition. Read more about our Rule Book here.
This outline describes our articles on Sun Tzu's strategic principles. This outline follows the nine strategic skills that advances our
positions: 1. understanding...
More...
|
|
About Our Organization
The Science of Strategy Institute (SOSI) teaches the use of Sun Tzu's principles in simple, everyday terms as a powerful system that anyone can use to become more successful. Starting with our award-winning books and audios, we have gone on the create a complete training system to help you master...
More...
|
|
On-Line Training in Sun Tzu's Strategy
The Institute's On-Line Training reprograms your decision-making reflexes to automatically make faster and better decisions. The core of our system is a challenge format which continually challenges you to make decisions and keeps track of your results as a measure of your level of skills...
More...
|
|
Warrior Success in the Public Sphere
The Art of War has a long history of creating winners, not only in the military, business, politics, and sports, but in virtually every other competitive arena. We have collected a few examples here from the public sphere, but also see the articles from our members who describe their...
More...
|
|
Peter Drucker on Strategic Planning
It is remarkable how the same lessons need to be rediscovered again and again. Sun Tzu dealt with the confusion between a warrior's adaptive strategy in dealing with competing people and long-term planning in dealing with objects. We are still dealing with it today.
In this 1973 book, Management...
More...
|
|
Linear Versus Adaptive Strategic Thinking
There is a real difference between Sun Tzu's strategic methods and the deterministic planning model of problem solving. A useful way to describe this difference is to contrast the linear thinking of planning with the adaptive loop. Planning works with objects who cannot resist our plans. The...
More...
|
|
Complementary Opposites: The Levers of Competition
At the heart of Sun Tzu’s strategic system of comparing positions are two ideas. First, strategic positions arise in an environment of natural balancing forces in a temporary dynamic equilibrium. Second, we can leverage these forces to “win without conflict.” This article explains the balance of...
More...
|
|
Winning is Neither Linear nor Deterministic
Sun Tzu's Warrior's Rules teach the cognitive methods by which the best decisions are made in complex, dynamic, non-linear, non-deterministic situations that arise in human relationships. By non-linear, we mean that the whole situation is greater than the sum of its parts. By non-deterministic, we...
More...
|
|
Live Training
Contact us about your interest in live training conducted personally by Gary Gagliardi using this form.
If your organization is dealing with the challenges of today's more competitive market, we can train your front-line people to make faster and more creative decisions in dealing with...
More...
|
|
Why Sun Tzu's Rules Work
Since we grow up and are educated in controlled environments dominated by non-competive relationships, we develop unrealistic expectations about our world. People are not predictable like objects are and cannot be controlled in the same way. Situations and positions on the front lines of...
More...
|
|
The Basics of Sun Tzu's Rules
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...
More...
|
|
Position Awareness
Position awareness gives you a framework for understanding your strategic position. It also enables you to see your position as part of a larger environment surrounded by other positions. You can understand which aspect of your position are secure and which are the most dynamic and likely to change...
More...
|
|
First Steps to Mastering Warrior's Rules
The articles and resources linked to below are free to the public, provided by the Science of Strategy Institute to promote a better understanding of why Sun Tzu's Warrior's Rules work so well.
Test your current level of warrior skills in five minutes. (Must be logged in. Registration is free...
More...
|
|
Competition as Comparison
Sun Tzu saw that success is based on comparisons. For Sun Tzu, competition
means a comparison of opposing positions. Battles are won by positioning before they are fought. Good positions
discourage others from attacking you and invite them to support you. Sun Tzu's system teaches us...
More...
|
|
Winning Without Conflict
People confuse conflict with competition. This confusion is extremely costly. Sun Tzu defines competition as a comparison, where the "winner" of the comparison gains certain rewards. Competition is inevitable because comparison is inevitable. Comparisons must be made before choices can be made. Any...
More...
|
|
Seeing the Invisible
The "Nazca lines" are giant drawings etched across thirty miles of desert on Peru’s southern coast. The patterns are only visible at a distance of hundreds of feet in the air. Below that, they look like strange paths or roads to nowhere. Just as we cannot see these lines...
More...
|
|
Where Planning Is Needed
Planning works best when we are transforming inanimate objects. We can predict how objects will respond to a series of preplanned actions. Planning is based on linear thinking. Its success is typified by the building of the railroads, the assembly line, and landing on the moon. Starting with...
More...
|
|
Key Warrior Skills
Sun Tzu's Warrior's Rules give you a powerful view of how the competitive world works. As you master the principles of Sun Tzu's strategy, you make better decisions about how to advance your position and make them effortlessly and confidently.
Constant Positions Awareness
Positional...
More...
|
|
Today's Need for Warrior Skills
Why learn Sun Tzu's Rules? To take advantage how our world is changing. Even though these principles go back 2,500 years, they are increasingly important in the more competitive world of in which we now live.
Our education system teaches us how to transform objects through planning and management...
More...
|
|
Benefits of Becoming a SOSI Trainer/Master
NOTE: Current training materials were developed PRIOR to the completion of our Warrior's Rule Book, which will serve as our future standard for training and certification. We have also discontinued sale of all our printed books. All our publications are now only available in eBook format and...
More...
|
|
Executing Strategy
Sun Tzu was right about executing strategy while most management gurus get it wrong. Much of our Institute's work has been
dedicated to helping organizations become more efficient by moving
decisions-making out of bloated bureaucracies and into the front-lines. This research...
More...
|
|
Linear Education Versus Warrior Training
(Note: This article is inspired by the work of Maj. Donald E. Vandergriff, one of SOSI's associate trainers, in his book, Raising the Bar,
Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War.)
Our traditional sense of adaptive strategic behavior in competing with others...
More...
|
|
Strategy Requires Empathy
As strange as it may sound, success in competition from war to business to your personal life, isn't based on conflict but in empathy. Strategy starts with imagining how others think and feel. We can never know how others think and feel. We can only imagine how we would feel in their position....
More...
|
|
Your Gut and Your Brain
Our sense of having gut reactions is truer than many of us think. The latest research into how people make decisions demonstrates that, contrary to popular opinion, our emotions do not interfere with our decisions. Our emotions are essential to making good decisions in dealing with people rather...
More...
|
|
Six Myths about Sun Tzu's the Art of War
Myth One: The Art of War teaches hostile conflict.
Reality: The opposite is true. Sun Tzu's book teaches winning without conflict. He taught that a general that fights and wins a hundred battles is not a great general. A great general finds a way to win without fighting a single battle.
Myth Two...
More...
|
|
Opportunity Development
Opportunity development builds competitive positions by identifying and utilizing opportunities in the environment. Opportunity development is necessary because your existing positions is constantly being degraded by change. In STARS Training, opportunity development is broken down...
More...
|
|
Types of Sessions
The specific topics for each Institute presentation is customized for your organization from a large list of potential topics.
Our standard introductory program is Two Hours on the Front Lines of Strategy. During this entertaining keynote address--often presented by Gary Gagliardi, America's...
More...
|
|
Core Training: Warrior Class Lessons
Warrior Class lessons are the core of the Institute's training based on Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Warrior Class Lessons are both challenging and fun.
Every day you...
More...
|
|
Modern Translations
In the 1990s, the first translations using the complete Chinese versions began to emerge.
Roger Ames, a leading interpreter of Chinese philosophy, did another, more scholarly version called The Art of Warfare in 1993. He included a number of newly discovered fragments attributed to the original...
More...
|
