Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers [Hardcover]

Mark R. McNeilly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 1996

To hand down the wisdom he had gained from years of battles, more than two millennia ago the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote the classic work on military strategy, The Art of War. Because business, like warfare, is dynamic, fast-paced, and requires an effective and efficient use of scarce resources, modern executives have found value in Sun Tzu's teachings. But The Art of War is arranged for the military leader and not the CEO, so making connections between ancient warfare and today's corporate world is not always easy. Now, in Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, Mark R. McNeilly shows how Sun Tzu's strategic principles can be successfully applied to modern business situations.
Here are really two books in one: Mark McNeilly's synthesis of Sun Tzu's ideas into six strategic principles for the business executive plus the entire text of Samuel B. Griffith's popular translation of The Art of War. McNeilly explains how to gain market share without inciting competitive retaliation ("Win All Without Fighting"), how to attack a competitor's weak points ("Avoid Strength and Strike Weakness"), and how to maximize the power of market information for competitive advantage ("Deception and Foreknowledge"). He also demonstrates the value of speed, preparation, and secrecy in throwing the competition off-balance, employing strategy to beat the competition ("Shape Your Opponent"), and the need for character in successful leaders. In his final chapter, McNeilly presents a practical method to put Sun Tzu and The Art of Business into practice.
By using modern examples throughout the book from GE, Microsoft, AT&T, BMW, Southwest Airlines, FedEx, and many others, he illustrates how, by following the wisdom of history's most respected strategist, executives can avoid the pitfalls of management fads and achieve lasting competitive advantage.
Even though down-sizing continues to increase corporate competition, and new technology constantly changes the playing field, the basics of business and strategy remain essentially unchanged. Sun Tzu and the Art of Business illuminates the fundamental strategic principles, providing lessons every manager must know to succeed today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"K-Mart, AT&T, Xerox, and General Motors would have saved themselves billions of dollars if their past CEO's had read this book."--Philip Kotler, J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University

"This practical introduction to Sun Tzu's ideas will help U.S. business leaders to quickly overcome their international rivals' incredible head start in exploiting Sun Tzu's wisdom.... Mr. McNeilly deserves the thanks of American business. His new book is the best of the four American attempts at the difficult feat of converting Sun Tzu's seminal Ping Fa--or The Art of War, as it's called in the West--into a usable guide for strategic managers."--David I. Goldenberg Strategy and Leadership

"Finally someone wrote a book on The Art of War that makes sense."--Bryan Bloom, Chief Operating Officer, The C/W Company

"This book is fun and serious...a fast and interesting read. I recommend it to anyone interested in strategy."--Academy of Management Executives

"If you've ever felt that business is like war, a new business book based on the teachings of an ancient Chinese warrior has much to offer."--Entrepreneur Magazine

About the Author

Mark R. McNeilly is a strategist for IBM as well as an amateur military historian and former infantry and artillery officer. He lives in Apex, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195099966
• ISBN-13: 978-0195099966
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #554,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Reinterpretation and Modernization of a Classic, October 28, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers (Paperback)

Sun Tzu's, The Art of War, has been favorite reading of mine for 30 years. I was pleasantly surprised by the new and improved understanding I obtained of that book from reading this one.

Most military strategists agree that Sun Tzu's The Art of War (circa 400 B.C.) is essential reading. Since around 1960, many business strategists have felt the same way, through seeing his discussion of war as a metaphor for business competition. Since Sun Tzu did not write about business directly, this has made The Art of War a little less than fully accessible to many business people. This book presents a very successful rewriting of Sun Tzu's classic to make it more "about business" while keeping a military connection. This book also contains a full translation of The Art of War by Samuel B. Griffith so you can compare this reinterpreted material to the original. I found that comparison especially useful.

The author has developed six principles for managers from Sun Tzu's concepts:

(1) Capture your market without destroying it or its profitability.

(2) Attack competitors where and when they least expect it and are most vulnerable.

(3) Make the best use of market information to develop advantages.

(4) Move faster than your competitor to create maximum confusion and delay in response.

(5) Pick strategies that will encourage your competitors to respond in ways favorable to you.

(6) Emphasize leadership built upon good character.

The author then goes a step further and proposes six implementation steps for employing these principles. I thought that these steps were especially valuable because some of them expand upon the principles in new ways that make them more business related:

(1) "Prioritize markets and determine competitor focus"

(2) "Develop attacks against competitor's weaknesses"

(3) "War game and plan for surprises"

(4) "Integrate best attacks to unbalance your competitor"

(5) "Ready your attacks and release them"

(6) "Reinforce success, starve failure"

The book is greatly improved by the many examples in it. The best military ones relate to Operation Desert Storm (discussed in much interesting detail) and the two world wars. The business examples are also good, but not as good as the military ones. The business examples seem to lack a full understanding, and some chapters are noticeably lacking in successful business examples (such as chapter 1). The business examples were best in chapters 2 (Wal-mart, CNN, MTV, and Southwest Airlines), 4 (Southwest Airlines), 5 (Hewlett-Packard's patents and FedEx's magazine for office assistants), and 6 (Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines). Southwest Airlines is the obvious role model in this book for what a company should be doing.

I thought that chapters 6 (on character-based leadership) and 5 (on shaping your opponent) were outstanding.

The author has some places where his writing is outstanding, as well. For example in chapter 1 he says, "In business, you should follow the philosophy of Go rather than chess. You should seek to control the most market territory with the smallest investment, not to destroy your competitor and your company with endless fighting." In chapter 6, he shows this same quality in a list of leadership characteristics such as "Build your character, not just your image," "Lead with actions, not just words," "Motivate emotionally, not just materially," and "Share employee's trials, not just their triumphs."

I reread Sun Tzu's original material after reading the reinterpreation, and found that the new examples and analogies in this book added richness to my understanding of that original text. I strongly encourage you to do the same, whether or not you have ever read Sun Tzu before.

After you have finished enjoying this fine book and applying its lessons, I suggest that you consider this same perspective in terms of accomplishing something for a nonprofit organization that you volunteer for. You may be able to accomplish much more good as a result.

Look for the unguarded way to find more health, happiness, peace, and prosperity!

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom from the First Management Consultant, January 6, 2000

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers (Hardcover)

In recent years, a great deal of nonsense has been published concerning similarities between the military battlefield and the business world. Authors frequently invoke military terms such as "attack", "ambush", "pre-emptive strike", "blitzkrieg" (or "blitz"), "no man's land", "chain of command", "firepower", "guerrilla", "kamikazi", "overkill", and "scorched-earth policy." Amidst all the other books in which forced comparisons are made, Mark McNeilly has written Sun Tzu and the Art of Business. He includes in his book the original (and superb) translation of The Art of War by Samuel B. Griffith.

Time and again, McNeilly stresses (as does Sun Tzu) the absolute importance of personal character. Respect and trust are earned, not conferred by title or decree. It remains for leaders to formulate the correct strategies as well as those tactics needed to implement them. It remains for leaders to allocate resources only where they will achieve the greatest possible success at the lowest acceptable cost. Whether the competition is on a battlefield or in a marketplace, the six principles discussed by McNeilly are appropriate to whatever strategy or strategies may be needed. Historically, the most successful armies and the most successful companies have shared much in common: meticulous preparation, superb timing, speed, maximum use of resources where they will have the greatest impact, sufficient intelligence on opponents, mobility, flexibility, and (above all) resolve.

In Sun Tzu and the Art of Business , McNeilly provides a brilliant analysis of six specific principles (first set to writing almost 2,500 years ago) which, he correctly suggests, will enable all manner of organizations to formulate appropriate strategies for the New Millennium. This is a solid, eloquent, sharply-focused book. Unlike so many other authors who force analogies between war and business, McNeilly respects the basic (indeed obvious) differences between them while explaining how certain principles are relevant to both.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read!, May 7, 2001

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers (Paperback)

This book takes the metaphor, "business is war" as far is it can possibly go - and then pushes it a little bit farther. The writer, an amateur military historian, draws many examples of strategy and tactics from battlefield applications - none of them Chinese, interestingly enough, considering the inspiration for the book. He establishes indisputably that Sun Tzu's observations in China, circa 400 BC, would have been equally valid in Imperial Rome or World War II. He falters somewhat when he attempts to apply these principles to business. The author struggles to make the connection and occasionally succeeds, most effectively when discussing price wars and hostile takeovers. If the premise that business is like war is questionable, the idea of using a Chinese military handbook as a business text is unusual enough to be stimulating. We [...] recommend this intriguing book to business strategists and managers.