Strategic Thinking : How CEO and Business Leaders Sharpen Their Mind Using Sun Tzu Art of War?

Author: stepillve

What determines the long term success of a business? It is the capability to see in advance and anticipate the changing business landscape and to ride on these windows of opportunities to gain a foothold in the market.

Knowing what the competitors are planning to do and anticipating what the market needs requires a strategic leadership mindset.

In today's highly competitive global marketplace, through technological advancement, it is no longer the big boys beating the small players. Strategy is focus on the battling of the minds, stratagem versus stratagem. The differences lie between the ability to hide yours and read others, and whoever does this best will be more successful. Success yesterday no longer success tomorrow, giants such as Nokia and Sony are feeling the heat with market share and profit rapidly declining in just a short span of 2 to 3 years.

The rapid shortening of Product life cycle and time to market meant that better products no guaranteed success. At times you might think you have a great business product but you see your clients whiz past your ears only to take up the services of your competitors. This is highly and constantly evolving business landscape and consumer needs are extremely challenging for any CEO and business leaders.

In today's businesses, decisions often have to be made spontaneously. CEOs and business leaders have to internalize the principles in their decision-making framework. Decision has to be made and action has to be executed, conventional strategic planning and thinking are rendered obsolete. A more effective way towards strategic leadership and strategic planning is to adopt Sun Tzu Art of War stratagem, which is harness from over 2,500 years of knowledge. A simple way to learn and understand Sun Tzu art of war principles is to the use of the Sun Tzu Art of War Institute Strategy cards. Comprises of 152 cards divided into 13 sets of cards according to the 13 chapters of Art of war, each card helps business leaders to reflect on their business experiences and decision through Sun Tzu eyes.


The key secrets behind the success of Sun Tzu Art of War cards is its simply yet effective ability to allow the users to reflect on their respective business principles and decisions. Increasingly, there is a growing numbers of senior leaders leveraging on the power of sun tzu art of war to outline their business strategic principles as the foundation for making strategic decisions. Sun Tzu Art of War has been well documented over centuries and was recently featured on History Channel that it can be used to predict the outcome of war, but does it apply to business. The first thing is to test whether sun tzu art of war principles applies to business case studies. If you are convinced it does, reflect the principles to your business context. Be open-minded that the reflection process may show you being out of business with current momentum. There may be turn around strategies through the evaluation process but the cost may not justify the means.

Participants of the course also learned to mind map their entire business strategy using Sun Tzu art of war 36 stratagem as a leadership compass. Aligning their business strategy with the sun tzu art of war tried and tested principles that was passed down over 2000 years ago. In this thought provoking session, CEOs also shared and learn from each other through exchange of experiences and observations.
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About the Author

The author is on the advisory panel of Sun Tzu Art of War Institute, a not for profit think tank based in Asia, it is a strategic leadership center of Aventis School of Management that specializes in research and development of programs using timeless wisdom from Chinese classics.