Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, including Sun. Tzu's The Art of War. - book review

Mark McNeilly: Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, including Sun. Tzu's The Art of War

Ard-Pieter de Man Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

1996, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 261 pages.

A real classic inspires people to think through its implications for their everyday life. Sun Tzu's The Art of War is such a classic, that continues to be read and interpreted even after two and a half thousands years have elapsed since its writing. Sun Tzu is often quoted in strategy and marketing books, but few people have consistently tried to apply his thinking to business strategy. McNeilly fills this void and makes an attempt to translate Sun Tzu's lessons into modem business practices. But is it valid to apply ancient military lessons to modem business? This book rests on the romantic notion that business is something like war. Of course a book like this appeals to the heroic image that some managers like to have of themselves. Nonetheless, this book is more than just highly entertaining; it also offers some interesting insights. Yet, on the whole, it has some important limits.

The structure of the book is as clear as can be. Each chapter is devoted to one of six strategic principles that McNeilly has distilled from Sun Tzu: win without fighting, avoid strength/attack weakness, deception and foreknowledge, speed and preparation, shape your opponent, character-based leadership. A final chapter translates these principles into six strategic business lessons. Throughout the book, tactics and strategies employed on the battlefield are related to economic warfare. There is not really one basic management idea underlying the book, except that the six strategic principles are important and that they can be combined in an infinite variety of ways, depending on the battlefield of competition.

The author does not fall into the trap that is common among people who try to apply ancient thinkers to modem business: gross oversimplification of the original ideas. Although it is not exactly clear how McNeilly has distilled the lessons from Sun Tzu, they appear to be a reasonable summary and McNeilly has obviously studied Sun Tzu well. Sun Tzu is definitely not the victim of the kind of simplification that has befallen other classic authors. The original text is treated with respect, even so much so, that a complete edition of The Art of War is incorporated in this book. This is definitely a positive point.

Of course, for a book like this one, the real question is whether it contributes new insights or whether it mostly sticks to illustrating Sun Tzu's thinking by showing some examples from recent business life. Unfortunately, it mainly does the latter. Nonetheless, some valuable ideas are put forth as well. For example, the idea of using indirect attack and avoiding competitive strongholds is argued forcefully and is convincingly illustrated with business cases.

There are four points of critique on this book. First of all, it is more war than business. In illustrating the Sun Tzu principles, the general gets more space than the CEO. For example, on page 108, Saddam Hussein's strategy takes up three quarters of a page, whereas the BMW/Honda/Rover case gets a meagre paragraph. The business examples remain mere illustrations and are not analyzed in depth.

Second, similar themes come up under a variety of headings, which makes the book somewhat repetitive. The importance of speed, indirect attacks and psychological warfare is discussed under almost all of Sun Tzu's principles. One wonders whether these should not be the main lessons from Sun Tzu, instead of the six lessons defined by McNeilly.

Next, most statements are very general and lack practical applicability. For example, McNeilly's observation that firms have to choose the right alliance partner and make skilful use of their alliances is obvious. But how? Especially the skilful use of alliances is very relevant in the current economy, and surely examples can be found that clarify specific alliance tactics. Undoubtedly, as quite some of them mirror military partnerships, interesting lessons for business might have been drawn from a well-structured comparison between military and economic alliances.

Finally, and most importantly, the idea of strategy lying behind the book appears to be valid only when there is static competition (for the differences in perspective between static and dynamic competition, see Jacobson 1992). Whether it applies to dynamic competition remains to be seen. McNeilly implicitly assumes that all competitors are known, that the battlefield is given, and that sufficient information about the enemy is available, or can be obtained by doing research. But what if there is no terrain for spies to reconnoitre? For a truly innovative product, the market is not only non-existent, but intangible, invisible and perhaps even constantly changing. Here, the military metaphor reaches its boundaries. Markets are not battlefields. In dynamic markets, information may not be available and strategy becomes a moving target. Moreover, unlike war, dynamic competition usually creates value instead of redistributing or destroying it. Consequently, recent advances in dynamic strategic thinking, especially by Brown and Eisenhardt (1998) and D'Aveni (1994), contradict the applicability of many of the principles laid down by McNeilly. It is not only 'a rush to invest in the latest management fads' (p. 152), which lies behind the many short-lived strategies of modern companies. Although fads and fashions do divert managers from strategic thinking (Porter 1996), there is also a fundamental shift in competition. Consequently, the idea of strategy itself is changing. A critical discussion of the relevance of applying ancient military lessons to modern business might have shed more light on the limits (and opportunities) of the author's approach, in this regard.