Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” is considered to provide most profound lessons for leadership, and victory in East or West. Today its principles are applied to business all over world. This classic body of work came from life and death scenarios, which evolved from empire, trade and political struggles. Obviously today’s corporate world does not induce anywhere near as strong a mechanism for change, or success, as consequences of failure in business are far less than warfare. Nonetheless, trickle down lessons from “Art of War” are definitely applicable to any organized effort, project or business. Although Chinese in origin, “Art of War” and lessons from Zen were adopted by Japanese groups such as Samurai and Corporate Japan for clarity of mind, decision making and strategy.

Past and Present: Modern Asia is now very different from its past. The question is: how much do today’s managers in an environment like Japan apply these principles? In short, answer is that some components of “Art of War” are easily spotted broadly across Japanese business culture and other attributes of text are rare. Looking at specific companies, or managers, one will sometimes see avid followers of principles of “Art of War”, and sometimes very little application at all. The roots of almost any good strategic plan can be found in text “Art of War” so it’s implementation is also present in Western business (even if it not derived by someone who directly studied text).

Alliances: Using alliances is a key strategic component of “Art of War”. This translates to partnering in business world. Business partnering models and strategies based on “Art of War” are outlined in detail in a downloadable video series by Applied Zen (www.AppliedZen.com). This article will not go into details of such strategies but rather relate to their presence in Japanese business today and make comparisons to Western business. The importance of partnering and relationships is apparent to anyone who has done business in Japan. While these may not always portrait efficiency of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” strategies, partnering in Japan has permeated almost every aspect of Japanese business to an extreme. Over years it has evolved to a degree of “middle men” involvement not seen in West. The benefits, and hindrances, of such a system are often discussed by those doing business in Japan. Strategic partnering if carried out correctly should optimize sales, marketing, reduce operational requirements and create synergies that a company who approaches end point sales cannot. From Sun Tzu’s teachings such partnering strategies should also be put into product development (both item itself and marketing of it) as a process – not an after thought once product is finished. Again, broadly speaking, Japan is rich with examples of this type of implementation.

Leadership and Decisions: The “Art of War” offers many lessons on leadership and people management. After all, if you can create a situation where people are willing to follow you into battle and die, there must be valuable motivation and leadership practices in place. Nowadays in Japan, one can see good examples of team co-operation and communication, and yet also some very bad examples. For example, Japan is a group-oriented society and usually makes decisions on that basis. Therefore, typically more staff are consulted and informed about decisions and ideas while they are in making. However, this draws out decision process. In comparison, Western companies often have decisions made only by upper management and then ruling is put into company as policy. In this Western approach, it is common for staff to learn about policy only after it is announced. (the net result is often a long time before staff “buy-in” and policy becomes practice). The interesting thing about these two different approaches is that time spent from contemplating a new idea to company implementation is very similar in both cultures, despite generally faster decision making that occurs in West. When one considers staff compliance and conflict avoidance, Japanese way is better in that more staff are involved in communication before policy is induced.