The Art of War
by Dean Lundell
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What do financial markets and war have in common? A lot, say the American firms. They train their managers in military camps, and the hierarchy-free new economy has recently started hoping to increase their competition capabilities with the help of military trained employees. Paul Schappert It is night in the Kentucky forests, and despite of it being spring, the temperature is at a few degrees above freezing. Edward Johnson, in his mid forties, has sweat running down his face. The manager and his 10 man team are under fire: Paintball bullets whistle around their ears, the enemy is shooting.
Frustration consumes him. Edward sneaks behind a tree, cleans his already fired upon protection mask, and moans, "If they had given me a choice, I most surely would not have come." Too late, his only alternative is now to cheat sleep, bite his teeth together, and to carry on.
Four hours later, when it is already daylight, does the solution come: the camp is reached. The firm’s bosses let themselves fall over exhausted and devour their unappetizing dried up food. Despite everything, the majority of the participants are in a good mood. Their mission was a success. "That was an excellent experience," the 29 year old Tim Ernst stated. "We got lost, but I’ve never experienced such team spirit. I learned how important it is, that we stand together as a group, and that communication has to be correct."
Welcome to the completely successful American boot camp for managers. Unembellished uniforms, unheated tents, little sleep, and non-service replacement: Here, spoiled Firm employees are thrown into army life.
Dean Hohl had this idea in 1992, when he served in the US Army. "People believe that soldiers just blow bridges up in the air, but the military also stands for team spirit and communication," states the at one time ranger, "that is exactly what is so often neglected in firms."
Paul Schappert, the product manager in the US affiliate of the German Monoplast, can only agree. He sends his managers regularly to boot camp and is convinced: the $3000 that the firms pays pro participant pays off. "What’s extraordinary is that my people sense what it means, when they don’t plan or stick together. If just one time they don’t go further into the night frost, because the group does not work, then they keep that sort of thing in mind and bring that back with them to business life."
As for the employees who went through boot camp, Schappert establishes, that they can straighten up problems faster than before, are strengthened in team work, and are also prepared to think through something when the plan does not work.
Before this background, the product manager can also identify himself pretty well with leading concepts of competent military strategies. "It is not about cultivating or humiliating people. Completely the opposite. The participants will confront stressful situations together, similar what happens during the work week."
However, there are always loud critics of these management soldier games. Even Mike Boyle found the military drills needy of getting used to. The university professor participated in the camp as an academic observer. He did not expect anything less than giving men the chance to be allowed to go wild in the forest like little boys.
However, after 4 days, his original skepticisms were turned over. "The thing works. In contrast to typical management seminars, participants are not just crammed with wise theories, which they would forget anyway. No, what they learn in the morning must be applied in the afternoon."
Boyle plans to have a research center built at the University of Kentucky in order to investigate the connection between military and economic education. The concept has a good chance of success, then the initiatives like Leading Concepts stand for a trend, that is no longer disregarded out of the American economy. "The danger of warlike confrontations between industrial nations appears to be over," wrote the military strategist, economist, and author Edward Luttwak. "But another war is running wild: the world’s economic war."
As radical as these words sound, in practice they are very clear, how the army and the business world melt together into a symbolic unit in the United States. American endeavors are built stronger on military qualities. The CEO of Bank of America, Hugh McColl, and his retired colleague from Citicorp, John Reed regard their military time fondly as the buttress of their careers. Even the honorable hierarchy-free new economy gives the army new, unaccustomed interests. "These boys hope for an undertaking, that they, with the help of military employees, will be able to increase their competition in the non-battled technology market," claims the Texan headhunter, Jim Cochrun.
Cochrun, a former marine officer, reflected on the tasks of smoothly moving more army personnel in the business world even a few months ago. To his clients at the Computer employer Dell: "Dell had consciously recruited former soldiers, in order to improve the integrity and quality of its management team.
Even more progressive are the firms, which understand the military awareness for its employees. An evident example of this is "The Art of War," the book of Chinese philosophies that were followed by Sunzi and then by Sun Tzu.
"Leading an army can only be done by those who know their land precisely, its mountains and forests, its traps and abysses, its marshes and mud." In this famous passage of his successful book, Dean Lundell clearly points out the parallels to the business world. The Vietnam veteran and one time vice president of Merrill Lynch is convinced: "Financial markets is similar to conflict situations, which one comes out the winner or the loser." Only those who think along the strategic lines of Sunzi and achieve an exact overview of one surroundings, can be successful in the long term.
Similarly, this is also valid for established traditional companies, thinks Philip Kotler, an economics professor at Northwestern University in Illinois. Whether the collapse of the entire industry scale, the shift in production abroad, the increase demand for flexibility, or the internal communication: "Firms like the supermarket chain K-Mart, the telephone company AT&T, or the Auto maker General Motors could have saved billions of dollars, if their CEOs had read this book."
With so much admiration for the Chinese master, it is not surprising that the American literature market is flooded with excerpts of the popular version of Sunzi’s "The Art of War". For the CEOs, "The Art of War for Leading Powers" by Donald G. Krause is recommended; for marketing specialists and representatives, "The Art of War and the Art of Marketing" in addition to "The Art of War, and the Art of Sales," both by Gary Gagliardi; for the stressed manager, the 10 minute lesson in "The Art of War for Manager," by Gerald A. Michaelson; for the stockholder, "The Art of War for Investors," by Dean Lundell.
In all works, selected quotes from Sunzi about concrete business situations are transferred and promised in a pragmatic, compact, and easy to follow lecture. With this, if at all, practical use of these fundamental little books attribute themselves to nothing else than the philosophies in general: both can be served as thinking impulses.
One should take note of a critical interpretation of the tests "Make money, not war," in The Journal of Business Ethics. The objections of the economic magazine are directed against a central theme, to which terms like "deception," "opponent", "ally", or "victory" are taken on in the book. The same allocation to the economy and its structure are not directed to every long term business relationship, but is evidence for the war melancholy of some entrepreneurs.
And in response to that, the same participants from boot camp appear. Then, even Dean Hohl took on the military enthusiasm. In such moments the one time ranger slips back into his memories and tells his students how he dragged a wounded colleague daylong through enemy territories or selflessly buried the corpses of friends. By such stories, nobody’s eyes can remain dry. And the economy is suddenly far, far ahead.
The bestseller from business schools, "The Art of War" (156 pages, 14.90 DM) was composed by Sunzi about 2500 years ago. It is an obligatory book for US soldiers, but also is on the readers list of many US business schools. Sunzi was a philosopher and a general. It deals with above all strategy questions and stresses the meaning of encompassing information, "If you know the enemy and yourself, you don’t need to fear the exodus of 100 slaughters."
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