Sun Tzu and the Art of Chicanery
Business books usually sell very well, usually because they represent the near-perfect harmony of buyer's greed and seller's greed. There's nothing wrong with this in a capitalist society, even if it's difficult to resist the urge to weep at the pathetic sight of an overweight 40-something middle manager wearing a bad suit and reading a copy of "Who Moved My Cheese?" so intently that one would think it contained The Ultimate Question. (The answer, of course, is 42.)
I found myself in an airport of late, and eschewing the usual titles by familiar names such Grisham, King and the author du jour, Brown, I elected to peruse the business section, which was located next to what appeared, judging by the book titles, to be the orgasm section. (One imagines that the scientific news that there may be a genetic component to the likelihood of female pleasure will likely lead to a reshuffling of the literary sections, as well as reduce the number of articles in Cosmopolitan by one-third.)
There seem to be four primary schools of thought when it comes to business management. One is the whimsical approach, as epitomized by the "Cheese" book. This generally involves some sort of unpleasant metaphor, in this case likening corporate employees to rats in mazes. The second school involves an aphoristic approach, featuring a pithy sentence that is explicated over the following two pages. The third school is autobiographical, although what one has to learn from Messrs. Trump and Zigler, et al., is of dubious utility to the average assistant account executive.
P.J. O'Rourke once wrote a hilarious review of Lee Iacocca's contribution to this literary sub-genre, wherein he likened the value of the book for would-be future executives to the author's feelings during a certain period, i.e., lower than cetacean excrement.
The fourth school could be characterized as the pseudo-historical approach. There are a number of variants, usually incorporating the sayings of a historical figure so famous for his intellectual firepower that even business majors have heard of him, such as Niccolo Machiavelli. But this school might best be characterized as the school of Sun Tzu, as there are more business-related books attempting to ride the silken coattails of the ancient Chinese general than all the others combined. A few of the books devoted to Sun Tzu and his seminal work on martial strategy include:
- "Sun Tzu for Success: How to Use the Art of War to Master Challenges and Accomplish the Important Goals in Your Life,"
- "Sun Tzu Was a Sissy : Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War,"
- "Sun Tzu's Art of War for Traders and Investors,"
- "Sun Tzu and the Art of Business: Six Strategic Principles for Managers,"
- "The Art of War for Executives,"
- "Sun Tzu: The Art of War for Managers; 50 Strategic Rules,"
- "Sun Tzu Strategies for Winning the Marketing War: 12 Essential Principles for Winning the War for Customers,"
- "Sun Tzu Strategies for Selling: How to Use The Art of War to Build Lifelong Customer Relationships,"
- "Sun Tzu: War and Management : Application to Strategic Management and Thinking"
This is ironic for two reasons. The first should be eminently obvious. Business is not war. Furthermore, there is a very poor metaphorical relationship between the two concepts, as business is inherently constructive, ideally involving transactions that benefit both parties involved, whereas war is inherently destructive. Even if an impudent whippersnapper were to take semantic liberties and attempt to link Schumpeter's concept of Creative Destruction and build off a theory of entrepreneurship to strengthen the metaphor, more precise minds would point out that even this semantic gamesmanship requires a shift from business to economics, and the metaphor therefore fails.
The second is that despite Sun Tzu's status as a legendary Chinese general from the Chunqiu Shidai, the state of Wu he is supposed to have served was not a significant success militarily or economically. Instead, it lasted little more than a century before being conquered by the state of Yue in 473 B.C. The notion that the intellectual heirs of Aristotle, Smith, Rothschild and Drucker have anything important to learn from the semi-mythological military leader of a failed, half-barbarian Chinese kingdom is questionable at best.
And yet, if one examines Sun Tzu's text, one may ascertain part of the ethical problem inflicting American business today. For the general once wrote: "All warfare is based on deception."
If the arrests of men such as Dennis Kozlowski, formerly chief executive officer of Tyco, and Kenneth Lay, once CEO of Enron, are any guide, it would seem that many American business leaders have learned their Sun Tzu all too well.