"There are new conduits.
They see things differently." Sun Tzu's The Art of War 13:2:21-22 [Chinese Revealed Version]
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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 how to systematically build up our positions to win success in the easiest way possible.
Keys to The Art of War
Sun Tzu's book is one of the most valuable works in human history. It is also one of the most difficult to understand. Much of Sun Tzu's writing is based on concepts in traditional Chinese science and philosophy with which modern readers are unfamiliar. Simply reading an English translation of Sun Tzu gives you very little idea of his methods. There are a number of serious barriers that stand in the way of our understanding the text. Much of what it teaches is diametrically opposed to what we think we "know" about competition.
To get you started, we give you an idea what the book covers in this brief summary of its chapters. We then explain the work's underlying cultural context and roots in Chinese science, especially its methods of diagramming relationships.
Today's Article on Sun Tzu
Below is one of the 232 articles in our Sun Tzu's Rule Book. Each explains one aspect of Sun Tzu' science and a step-by-step process for using it. We offer a new article every day following our Rule Book's Outline.
As we focus on our little corner of the world, we often don't see a change coming. If changes don't fit into our historic view of what is important, we can easily miss them. The longer we are in a competitive arena ourselves, the less sensitive we are to what is changing. In today's dynamic environment, our position can degrade quickly. Our current strategic position is constantly degrading (1.1.1 Position Dynamics). These trends can help or hinder us. We don't know from which direction they will come. Change propagates itself like a wave. The changes of climate ripple back and forth, from one end of the world to the other, affecting one competitive arena after another. As this wave of change moves through different competitive arenas, it changes its form and shape but it keeps moving, affecting us all eventually.
We want to see these changes coming from the greatest distance possible. Change is what creates our opportunities (3.2 Opportunity Creation). Our contact network gives us a broader perspective of time as well as place. Our opportunities lie not in the past or even the present but in the future (2.4.1 Ground Perspective). To get the right perspective on change, our opportunity is to see our competitive arena with fresh eyes. The faster we can learn about shifts in climate that affect us, the more of an advantage we have over others and the better positioned we are to deal with those changes.
To keep in contact with what is changing in our local neighborhood, we need to develop special channels of information that focus on change. The people most interested in change are those with the...
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