Over the next two weeks, I will be posting a series of blog entries on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Today, I start at the beginning: chapter one. (Makes sense.)
If you are not familiar with the book, I highly recommend it. It’s a fast read, and most versions have commentary at the beginning that provide a fascinating historical context for the work. There is also a terrific website, sonshi.com, that has a copy of the book, interviews (including one with me), and a forum dedicated to The Art of War. I highly recommend perusing that site.
So here are the key questions that jump out at me from chapter one: first, why study war? And second, what’s the framework for understanding how to win?
The first question is easy: because if you ever find yourself in a war, you had better know how to win. Not engage, not skirmish, but win. Only by being able to win a war can you hope to avoid one.
The second question is deceptively complex. Sun Tzu lays out a five point model for thinking about the elements of warfare. Master these five elements, and you’ve got it made in the shade. They are: the “way”, heaven, ground, command, and law/doctrine that sounds simple only until you start to apply it.
Way is culture or influence. It is the ability of leaders to unite subordinates under a common theme and create a heightened level of commitment to the common cause. Sun Tzu puts this as the first amongst equals.
Heaven includes things like season, weather, day/night, warm/cold… in business parlance, I liken “heaven” to macro-economic strategy: do you understand the environment in which you operate?
Ground includes, literally, issues related to terrain: hills, valleys, distances, woods, etc. For businesses, this translates into micro-economic strategies and tactical execution.
Command, in the military as in business, reflects issues related to people, and especially leadership.
Law/doctrine refers to organization, control, supply lines, and provisions. Think processes and technology.
But as “all warfare is based on deception,” the way these five forces come together is incredibly nuanced and involved. Your enemy is a hothead? Provoke him. You are too few in number? Stay on the move until you can build your ranks. Your enemy is weary? Make him come to you and lay siege on your towns. Oh, and by the way, maintain discipline, trust, unanimity, and total commitment within your camp at all times.
Think about the leadership skills required to keep an entire organization focused and committed when your entire strategy is a feint! No wonder “the way” is listed first!
Ever wonder how a power-hungry tyrant gets himself to power?
Ever ask yourself, “Didn’t people see the signs? Why didn’t they stop this person when they had a chance?”
Yes?
Then read this, and then read this (original article; scroll down to the question from Arlington, VA).
Are you seeing the signs?
Ignorant people can only get power when others are willing to look the other way. When people feel a lust for power, or a hatred of “otherness,” or another strong, negative emotion, their judgment gets clouded.
It doesn’t feel clouded; au contraire, it feels quite certain. But make no mistake: it is clouded.
This is where we get terms like “blinded,” “caught up in the moment,” and the big one: “what was I thinking.”
Get it together, America… we’ve lost enough freedoms already. We need to be demanding them back, not handing over more. We need to be demanding accountability.
The politicians aren’t listening… but the news outlets are.
Health care.
Finance and banking.
Airline.
Insurance.
Auto.
Home mortgage.
Immigration.
Homeland Security (think: TSA).
Social Security.
Infrastructure (think: bridges and levees).
Lobbying & congressional financing.
Free press (Ask the NYTimes’ Maureen Dowd about restricted access)
Foreign Intelligence.
Non-partisan NGOs (think: NIH).
An independent DOJ.
Consumer product oversight.
Energy.
Civilian control of the military.
Governmental accountability (think: respect for subpoenas, for starters)
The whole system of checks and balances.
These are some of the industries and governmental institutions that are currently failing, to one degree or another.
This list is too big. It’s not one thing, it’s all of them together. We are having a national crisis of leadership… as in, no one is showing any.
Not the current president. Not the candidates. Not the heads of the legislative houses, either. Not the titans of industry, not the pundits, not anyone.
Kind of scary.
I don’t expect the people who currently hold formal power to change. Yet we need something from someone… so it’s got to come from… us. I’m done looking to them for help. It ain’t there. I’m over it.
Here’s what I want, not from them, but from myself and from you:
Activist citizenship. Get to know your councilman, alderman, state or federal representative, senator… anyone. It takes about 10 seconds online to look up your city and figure out who represents you at the municipal, state, and national level. Do it, please.
Seeking to learn. Politics is a tough subject to see objectively, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Because guess what: Obama is not who he says he is, and McCain’s not the man he once was. Biden got blown out of the primary, and Palin is in over her head. Anyone not willing to admit that this election is about choosing the lesser of two evils needs to kick the Kool-Aid habit.
Respect. The more people I meet, the more hopeful I am. People get petty when they don’t understand what’s going on. Armed with information, most of the people I interact with get downright magnanimous. Respect your peers, they’re doing the best they know how. If they’re falling short, help. At a minimum, cut ‘em some slack.
Sacrifice. I had a boss once who talked about the fact that, every once in a while, we all get “to take a bite out of the sh*t sandwhich.” It’s only natural to think that you can find a way to insulate yourself from the impact of a crisis… or at least outthink your neighbors. This one’s too big, and too far reaching. What are you going to do, move to China? They’re holding so much American debt, we all may soon be living in China. “China East Pacific,” that is. Steady yourself, take a deep breath, and whatever energy you were about to put into self-preservation, dedicate it to the preservation of the whole.
Open your doors. We live in a world of “weak” ties… but moving forward, we’re going to need to forge some deep relationships. I foresee the return of the neighborhood as we find we cannot rely on government and big business to help us… it’s going to be back to watching each others’ kids; cooking for more people to spread out food costs and reduce waste; banding together to support local schools, trading homeopathic health care tips; etc. Start to meet your neighbors if you don’t already know them.
Stop listening to stupid. There are real issues impacting us today that require our attention. Understanding finance might not be as fascinating as who wore what on the red carpet, but when the impact of the issue can be measured in the hundreds of billions, which EACH of the issues above can be, ignorance is neither cute nor acceptable.
Bury your pride. Secure victory in Iraq? What victory? There’s no victory there to be had. Keeping at it until we can “claim” victory through a narrow, military-only lens is hogwash. That’s mid-20th century thinking. After Vietnam, Iran-Contra, Afghanistan’s freedom fighters, Israel-Palestine, N. Ireland, Kashmir, etc. one would think the world should have learned by now that military victories often make the inevitable healing process longer and more difficult… while standing down often has the opposite effect. They hate us. I know. But they won’t hate us less when we insist on kicking their asses one more time. It’s time to grow up and get past our pride, as individuals and as a nation.
Look up. The world is changing, and while change is scary, it’s not bad. The sky ain’t falling. As of the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie, we ceased to be a free market economy. (Whatever we are in 10 years, after today’s $700 billion bailout package and last week’s $85 billion AIG loan, it won’t be we won’t be capitalist.) Those days are gone. And it’s scary as hell because the people in power right now have proven over the past 16 years—yes, 16—that they cannot be trusted with power. Yet they have more than ever… so yes, something’s got to give. And it will. And it will hurt, because those with power will resist giving it back, but in the end, we will emerge better for it. Have the courage to see it through.
Look big. You make $250k+ and you’re worried about taxes going up? Don’t be a schmuck. You should be worried about not being able to heat your home because you can’t buy sufficient electricity at any price. Or about your sons or daughters being able to breathe. Air.
Celebrate math and science. Possibly the greatest thing going on right now in the world is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. At a close second are the research institutions, like the Weitzmann Institute. Make a donation… in them and in your local schools. We need to be investing in scientific research right now like mad… because we are going to need a whole slew of new technologies to support the world we are becoming.
Enjoy the ride. This is an historic time. Enjoy your life, your family, your friends. Don’t forget to live.
I expect to survive this mess we’re in, and I expect you will, too. I have no intention of living in a bubble, nor do I intend to stick my head in the sand. We know what we need to do.
OK, you just read the title of this post. Did it make you think:
Excellent, the world could use a little more peace and joy!
RUKM? When did this turn into one of those fruitcakey, nouveaux age kumbaya-hoo blogs?
Uh, is this post serious? Or is he being sarcastic?
BTW, Urbandictionary.com is your best friend for unknown acronyms which, you should know ahead of time, are generally not scrubbed for polite company. (As you may have noticed, manners are out of fashion today.) Above, RU stands for “are you” and KM stands for “kidding me.” Sometimes people stick an F in the middle, which I understand to be for “fantabulous.”
But I digress.
Rest assured, I’m being totally serious on this point. The world can use more peace and joy, and not just the surface level, feel-good Disney-flick kind of joy. I mean the deep-seated, I’m-in-a-good-place kind of contentment that crowds out fear and let’s you take life by the horns. Too often, people are filled with fear, and all the negativity that fear breeds, such as contempt, jealousy, and frustration, to a level they are not even aware of. Yesterday I wrote about one of the sources of that negativity and the need of managers to account for this when engaging their teams. (I had a comment on HRMToday that suggested maybe some found the post useful… and a comment on this jasonseiden.com that suggested less than 100% penetration.)
So how do you make your workplace “better”?
Let’s assume that of everyone reading this, 1/3 of the people are positive (and chose answer #1 above), 1/3 are negative (and chose #2), and 1/3 could go either way (and chose #3). And they all work for you. How can you successfully engage such diverse groups and bring them all along to a better place?
Here are some suggestions, from holistic to tactical:
Recognize that not everyone comes in at the same place. This is critical. You can’t expect everybody to have a good day just because you want them to, emotions don’t work like that. Give people permission to be who they are, and take care to distinguish a passing mood from a sour personality. Cheering someone up is easy, de-bitterifying someone is not. Do what you can, and expect of others as much as is possible, but no more. Ultimately, you’ve got to let others be themselves, and you need to stop yourself from letting your lack of control over others stress you out.
Get in front of your own emotions. When you find yourself saying things like “you doesn’t understand,” “you’re not listening,” or “don’t tell me what I’m thinking, nobody knows me better than me,” stop. The problem is you, and you need to walk away for a bit before re-engaging. If this sounds frustrating, trust me, it is. If it sounds like baloney, trust me, it isn’t. Smarter people than I have cracked the code on this one, and the results always come out the same way. What’s got you frustrated isn’t that other person doesn’t understand, it’s that you haven’t done a good enough job articulating the alternative.
Identify where people are emotionally on a day-by-day basis. For intuitive people, this may sound like a no-brainer… but for people who lack empathy, this may sound like a big waste of time. Managers: the act of trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes does not mean you automatically agree with them, it means only that you’ve taken the time to listen and understand them; tracking their moods is not synonymous with giving credence to every little ticky-tack he said/she said issue, it means only that you recognize the humanity of the situation. If you do this much, what you are showing is respect, and the other person will pick up on this and will likely respond in kind, even if you ultimately tell them to “knock it off.”
When other people seem to be acting crazy, it’s generally because you no longer have any idea what’s really going on. Too often, we pay attention to what others do without realizing that they are sometimes responding to what they see in us. (I had a 360 in which a bear of a manager got glowing reviews from subordinates but got dinged by his peers. I had to explain to him that his subordinates were blowing sunshine at him because they were afraid of what would happen to their jobs if they said anything differently—their responses weren’t genuine, they were reactions to him. Not an easy conversation.)
When your directions don’t get followed, assume you communicated poorly and go from there.
When using humor, let everyone in on the joke by pointing the finger at yourself.
If you find a talented individual being teased and stopping it is beyond your control at the moment, turn the teasing to the positive. “Do you know why you’re catching grief for this? You’re the only person around sometimes who doesn’t seem to know how good you are! How do I convince you that you’re underutilizing your talent?!”
Don’t immediately assume that the problem is that people don’t know what to do. Usually, the issue is that people don’t know how to do what they need to do. Remember the story of the Tower of Babble? It didn’t fail for want of engineering expertise! (Can’t you just picture all those project managers haranguing the brick layers on proper technique, when what they needed was an interpreter?)
Ask people about them and focus them on the positives. You can talk about work, life, whatever; you’re goal is to take an interest in the person and draw out a talent of theirs. This is called connecting with others. It’s one of the building blocks in a little thing we like to call loyalty.
Show optimism and energy.
Be honest. Not mean, but honest.
Just do. Older generations seem to have grown up in a world where it was expected that a person would have a public persona and a private persona. When discussing issues, it’s not uncommon for Boomers to go through a bit of preamble, during which they seem to be re-establishing the ground rules for dealing with an issue… that’s a communication style wholly unnecessary when dealing with younger generations, who—thanks to TMZ, Facebook, Star Magazine, etc.—have been watching the guy behind the curtain their whole lives. Let your actions speak for themselves. All that preamble does is make you sound like you’re hiding something.
Take all blame, give away all credit. If you’re the boss, your team already thinks their smarter than you… and don’t people love it when you agree with them! Giving your team credit shows that you agree with their assessment of you… and costs you nothing. They’ll love you for recognizing their brilliance.
These tips for injecting some positivity into your work environment may sound simple, but implementing them can be incredibly tough. Don’t try to do them all at once. Don’t try to do more than one or two at once! Let me know if it’s worth expanding on one or more of them…
