El Arte De La Guerra

THE ART OF WAR

“The art of war” has been recognized for centuries for being an influential Chinese book about strategy and military tactics. It is believed that is was written in the year 500 BC. This book has always been very studied by all those military strategists who have guided armies and led battles. Even when it was originally written to beapplied in warfare, the book can also be applied by managers in business in order to achieve their goals and be more competitive. Nowadays global markets can be seen as a battlefield where companies should implement strategies based in the most of the principles established by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War”, management always requires a strategy to achieve all its goals, the strategy is the processthrough which an organization plans, develops, executes and orientates its politics in order to perform its activities as much productive, helpful and efficient as possible.
For every battle you should evaluate five key factors: The doctrine, the weather, the terrain, the command and the discipline, these five factors should be known by each general and each team of work in order to determine astrategy that improves your chances of winning. That is why is vitally important to make prior estimates to see if they indicate a victory or a defeat, so you can decide if you participate or not in a war.
The strategy is a process that is determined by many factors and actions, every movement, every fact, every change must be based on a study of the needs of the organization, of its goals and theway that the organization has planned to follow in order to arrive to these goals, always thinking about the wellness and about a continuous improvement in all the aspects of the organization. Strategy is fundamental to achieve a total managing activity and to develop an important place in the playing field in which we are involved.
There is no single approach of the meaning of strategy on thebattlefield, the strategies are part of our daily lives, are the vehicle through which we can find solutions to the problems we face every day, these strategies allow us to study the behavior of men in times of hardship and confrontations, but also in moments of victories and triumphs.
The strategy should always be the study of the conditions, of the time and place of confrontation in order toalways look for what is beneficial for the organization, securing ourselves against defeat, and to discover what is bad or dangerous for the opponent. An army should avoid strength and must attack the weakness of the enemy, knowing this is the key of their victory.
The art of war is based on deception, on surprise the enemy when it least expects, knowing the enemy as well as you know yourself you canachieve as many battles as you want, and thus attack in moments of weakness and avoid the enemy in times of strength, remember that the opportunity of overcoming the enemy is given by the enemy itself. Attack the enemy when he is not ready and try to destabilize and separate him, are factors that ensure the path to the victory.
The master plan should be based on the knowledge of the rival, on thereflection of the own strengths and weaknesses, it is crucial to attack the enemy positions that he must defend. You have to be always prepared to innovate in terms of tactics (when you win a battle, the tactics should not be repeated because this could allow your enemy to know your tactics and predict your next move). The most important thing is to combine the direct methods (the ones that areused for joining battle) with the indirect (the ones that are needed for securing victory) in order to create infinite series of maneuvers. Distract and weaken the opponent, stay one step ahead of him and continually test the enemy in the playing field gives a vision of the state and condition of the opponent. One of the most important rules consists in defeating the enemies through alternative...