Sun Tzu's Management Leadership

By Dr. Ong Hean Tatt

Leaders must recognise complex social issues to be effective

YOU would have heard of the cry of frustration, "Why can't you do a simple thing like that!'' or "It is as simple as that.'' Unfortunately, the world, especially the modern world, is never that simple. The song goes, "If wishes are horses, beggars will ride."

The leader must recognise the complexity of the issues of society.

The indirect methods, efficiently applied, give an endless combination as Heaven and Earth, never ending as the flow of rivers and streams; renewing like the cycles of the sun and the moon, going and coming like the four seasons. There are not more than five musical notes, yet these five combine to give more melodies than ever heard...In battles there are not more than two methods of fighting, the direct or indirect. But they give an endless combination of manouevers. (Sun Tzu 5:6-11)

Life and its great issues are never simplistic. Many claim they recognise life as complex, yet they astonishingly go about trying to deal with it in a simple way. It is the male and yang attitude to see things in a direct simple and often brash manner. It is the feminine yin way to understand in a soft manner the complexity of life.

It is the hallmark of the great leader that he be able to deal with complex situations. The complexity would be more than just the multiplicity of factors, rather the changeability of each factor which causes so much confusion and elusiveness that determines the status of an issue. The leader par excellence is the "Divine Commander'' or master of the "Way of Innumerable Changes'', even as Sun Tzu emphasises:

Just as water retains no constant shape, in war there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics according to the enemy's situations shall be victorious and may be called the Divine Commander. The five elements is not always equally predominant; the four seasons make way for each other; and days are sometimes longer, sometimes shorter; the moon sometimes waxes and wanes. (Sun Tzu 6:32-34)

A partial solution is to categorise the issues. The principle of categorisation forms a solid foundation of a checklist whereby an organisation could make sure everything would be dealt with.

Forming a checklist without an adequate categorisation would make that checklist impractical and everything would be frustrating. Sun Tzu uses such a categorisation approach in saying that the deliberation of war must consider "five factors'':

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. A matter of life and death... It is essential that it has to be studied thoroughly. Therefore, appraise it in terms of the five fundamental factors... First of these factors is the moral law; the second heaven; the third earth; the fourth, command; and the fifth, doctrine. (Sun Tzu 1: 1-7)

Of the issues, human factor is the most changeable and thus the most difficult to gauge. The war plans would have to assume certain limitations in the variations of human behaviour and define some contingencies. But in the field the variations, human behaviour would go beyond what can be considered in the war council. Therefore, the success of the war plans would depend on the ability to adapt to the changeability in the field, especially in the human behaviour of the enemy.

The war council cannot go into the field. Hence, it would be left to one man to take the plans into the field and adapt them. This man would be the general. The war council would do well to pick a man who understands the art of change.