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Opinion
Welcome back to a new work week my friends, and on this Tuesday I thought I’d present a review on a book that is very old and is a "How To" book that I have tested in a sense. Though any author can use the particular lessons to beef up a war campaign, any manager can use it to do their work. Full disclosure, I have a couple of degrees in management, and “The Art of War” was something I’ve read many times. It’s not a long book, but the lessons in it are essential. I picked this up on Kindle Unlimited and tackled the concepts again.
Let’s go into a couple of critiques for the story. “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation” has one in the form of Kindle issues when trying to translate or reference footnotes specifically in the introduction to the story. I know the actual book had notes everywhere, and I understand why they are important, but the links are distracting. I know they are needed, but there must be a better way.
Next, I’m not sure if the translation was done precisely to scale, there is a redundant part here and there, and it makes me almost think something happened that could have been fixed. It’s not terrible, but it’s one of those “Didn’t I just read this a few pages ago?” situations.
There also under the same category are margin issues for the e-reader copy. Sometimes the margins are overly shortened, other times depending on the passage it’s a normal margin. I realize this is a translation from an ancient text, but I don’t think the e-reader copy has to try to mimic the classical style to be authentic. I’m reading it on an e-reader. If I want authentic, I’ll get a real copy where it can be exaggerated. I wish that more publishers understood that an e-reader needs some of the stylistic beauty of a normal book, but must also have the margins work for the e-reader copy to look right to the reader.
Let’s go into the part of the review where I talk about what I really enjoyed about “The Art of War.” The first is, the lessons still apply even now to management. If a general gives clear and concise directions to their subordinates, and the subordinates cannot obey, it’s a middle management problem. I saw this at my own work. Middle managers get in the way of progress often. Now, in Sun Tzu’s time that was a capital offense, whereas in these modern days you might get fired.
Another thing I enjoyed about the book was the identification of the state of your “enemies” army. This is the part where I tested some of the concepts. Enemies of a manager are things that distract or frustrate your employees. In this scenario, imagine you are a manager, and you are working with front line employees, you can see similarities to this evaluation method. In the case of the story, he says things like “Watch how they stand” and “Watch what the tents are placed, or if they are placed at all.” What he meant by that was to see if there was fatigue, or famine, or even terrible thirst among the other side. In the case of a manager, if you are helping your company, these lessons apply to employees who work on the front lines of your industry. The first time I read this book, the teaching of troop morale and nutrition was something I took to heart when doing my job as a manager.
A while ago when I was still working for a customer service department, we frequently had issues with computer and data center disruptions. Sometimes they came from customers who were upset about something the company said online and would DDOS. Other times, it was because the vendor we had the internet through was doing line maintenance. These issues meant that at times, the computers the front line contact support were using, would disconnect and nothing worked. Moreover, yet, when that happened, we had no way of knowing how long it would take to get the system up. Sometimes it’d be 10 minutes, sometimes it’d be 10 hours, and every employee was required to sit there ready to work at all of that time.
Due to that situation, I created an “Emergency Pie” fund for my team. If the support computers were not online in an hour, I’d go to the store, and buy them some pie to eat. My team was more willing to stay in place and fight the good fight with a pie at their hands. They were more quiet, relaxed and had a happier outlook on the job and I had less sick time use and excessive absences than other managers doing the same position. Other teams, however, were not that receptive to what was happening and didn't have a manager trying to boost their morale. There was a lot of arguing, excessive sick day usage and trouble with morale. The only difference between my side and other sides, I used pie. I did other things too, but the main idea with the pie came from Sun Tzu because I wanted a happy work environment. I’m no longer working there, but I have lifelong friendships with some of the folks who used to be my employees because I built a good rapport with them.
With regards to the end of the book, there is a long piece about spies and how to deal with them. I think in many ways this still comes up especially in the video game industry. However, we aren’t going to torture people anymore, and no one is going to be harming someone. Instead, we need to be aware if we are in an industry that has a lot of NDA opportunities, that there will be people coming in to harm things. How often do we hear about companies being hacked? This is the same kind of thing. The main lesson we can take from this chapter is a good one, and that is to be aware of it, to work with the right team to stop corruption in your company, and if possible, hire subject matter experts to assist you with ending future compromise. Sun Tzu speaks of “converting” spies, and I took that more as “Find a former hacker who works with a security company” for a modern take to it.
Overall, the point of the book now, read it and use your imagination for your company or business. You easily could apply some of the lessons to any industry, especially something that has a supply line. Schools could take some of the experiences, pay attention to the staff, make sure they are happy and fed, make sure you are watching for things that could corrupt your plans, and use that for loyalty and morality building.
Score
Having done all of the math, and taking everything into account “The Art Of War” has a beautiful 83/100 which is a four-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. I even am putting this in my “Mrs. Y Recommends” pile of books, because I really believe this book is an excellent help to those who are working with teams.
If you are a manager, or maybe you just want an idea on how to build an army for a book you are writing, take a look at this one. The Art of War is a great book.
