More than two thousand years ago ancient Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu composed a book that contained the most important strategies and tactics surrounding conflict. Since the writing of this book no other has been able to capture the simplistic yet effective thoughts of disagreement situations that can be used from the harshest of battlefields to modern business. The Art of War has been noted as having such influence that the United States now require all military intelligence personnel as well as members of the CIA to read this book prior to assignment. Sun Tzu considered war to be one of life’s many necessary evils; however the overall idea behind the book is to win the conflict without a battle. In thirteen chapters Sun Tzu breaks …show more content…
The book begins with a look at the five key elements that make up any competitive position. Evaluation of the mission, climate, ground, command, and methods while simultaneously assessing your strengths against those of your competition make up the first step to any conflict. Sun Tzu later goes on to explain that in war environments, information is the key and one’s perceptions oftentimes vary greatly with reality. Being able to identify the objective and subjective information in such environments is one of the most important points to successfully employ his strategies. Next Sun Tzu evaluates the idea of physically going to war and the economic impact that war typically has. In order to define success, winning must pay and the overall cost of the conflict must be limited. This entire chapter supports the idea of avoiding conflict altogether. In general, any conflict brings great expense that must be carefully evaluated prior to battle. Beating adversaries and winning fights may fulfill the self image; however Sun Tzu considers that objective an unintelligent one. The final thoughts of Sun Tzu regarding position awareness focus on the concept of gathering information, what he considered to be the most important topic of all. The importance and the development of high-quality information sources …show more content…
Sun Tzu uses the term attack to describe the concept of advancement on the “battlefield” into a better position, although not necessarily in a war or conflict scenario. Theoretically, you must grow or develop your current position to survive. While defense is far less extravagant than development over the short term, change undermines existing positions, so on the off chance that they are not best in class, they will fail altogether. Sun Tzu goes on to explain positioning and the need for competitive positions in all forms of conflict. Your abilities to protect yourself and to advance are both in view of your current position. To get where you need to go, you must begin from where you are. You cannot afford to make the openings or opportunities that you have to progress in light of the fact that the earth is too complex to control. Rather, you must figure out how to perceive opportunities made by changes in nature. In Chapter five Sun Tzu explains the concept of force and explores the idea that imagination is the energy responsible for driving all human actions. One of the primary reasons competitive situations are turbulent is that innovativeness makes projections inconceivable. The human creative energy is boundless. Its boundless limit makes the conceivable outcomes of human riches and advancement unending also. On the other hand, this