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"A must read for any serious executive, strategist or marketer. I constantly refer to the concepts McNeilly outlines and they never fail to provoke new insight into the challenges I must address."--David Harkleroad, CMO, Hay Group; ex-head of intelligence at IBM
"Among shelves stuffed with superficial misinterpretations of The Art of War, Mark McNeilly offers what no one else can: an accessible and practical guide for applying Sun Tzu's true philosophy to business. There are but a handful of experts who have studied Sun Tzu as thoroughly as McNeilly. Fewer still can bring decades of real-world management experience to the challenge of interpreting these ancient principles for use in modern business competition."--Kaihan Krippendorff, CEO of Outthinker and author of Outthink the Competition
"McNeilly's updated work delivers even more fresh and relevant insight into Sun Tzu's ancient battlefield wisdom. This book clearly and powerfully applies Sun Tzu to the modern business battlefield in a way that resonates with today's business practitioners. Rich with real-world corporate examples, Sun Tzu and the Art of Business is truly a multi-dimensional look at how to apply Sun Tzu."--Becky Sheetz-Runkle, author of Sun Tzu for Women: The Art of War for Winning in Business
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In recent years, a great deal of nonsense has been published concerning similarities between the military battlefield and the business world. Authors frequently invoke military terms such as "attack", "ambush", "pre-emptive strike", "blitzkrieg" (or "blitz"), "no man's land", "chain of command", "firepower", "guerrilla", "kamikazi", "overkill", and "scorched-earth policy." Amidst all the other books in which forced comparisons are made, Mark McNeilly has written Sun Tzu and the Art of Business. He includes in his book the original (and superb) translation of The Art of War by Samuel B. Griffith.
Time and again, McNeilly stresses (as does Sun Tzu) the absolute importance of personal character. Respect and trust are earned, not conferred by title or decree. It remains for leaders to formulate the correct strategies as well as those tactics needed to implement them. It remains for leaders to allocate resources only where they will achieve the greatest possible success at the lowest acceptable cost. Whether the competition is on a battlefield or in a marketplace, the six principles discussed by McNeilly are appropriate to whatever strategy or strategies may be needed. Historically, the most successful armies and the most successful companies have shared much in common: meticulous preparation, superb timing, speed, maximum use of resources where they will have the greatest impact, sufficient intelligence on opponents, mobility, flexibility, and (above all) resolve.
In Sun Tzu and the Art of Business , McNeilly provides a brilliant analysis of six specific principles (first set to writing almost 2,500 years ago) which, he correctly suggests, will enable all manner of organizations to formulate appropriate strategies for the New Millennium. This is a solid, eloquent, sharply-focused book. Unlike so many other authors who force analogies between war and business, McNeilly respects the basic (indeed obvious) differences between them while explaining how certain principles are relevant to both.
It seems to me that this book is one of a select few which form a theme, the best exemplar of which, IMHO, is the Living CompanyThe Living Company. At the heart of this theme is the notion that long term success for businesses does not come from short term measures aimed at profit maximisation through minimising costs and selling at the highest possible price in the marketplace. While such tactics predominate in many areas of the American economy where corporate power and marketing have limited consumer choice to poor products sold at a high price providing high salaries and big bonuses for top executives for a relatively short period of time before they have succumbed to the storms unleashed through globalisation and domestic monetary and banking policies.
Instead, the approach on offer here is based on sound principles rather than get rich schemes favoured by Madoff and his Ponzi accolytes, or the latest management fads which generate short-term results before being shown to be the fakes that they are.The principles ennuciated within are based on Sun Tzu's Art of War, which is a collection of anecdotes, and pointers to miltary success. The author relates the principles therein to buinesses and provides contemporary case-study examples to support his thesis. In doing so he points the way to a different type of business enterprise to the command and control, micromanaging, CYA type which has been so common in America but, truth be told, is to be found wanting in the new global competitve markets.
What is being advocated is the type of networked business model which has proved to be so successful elsewhere, surviving the squalls which have beset the world economy in recent years. The trouble is that a transition to these types of business will come at a heavy price for those who have managed to become very wealthy through the short-termist type of tactics that have predominated in the past. Perhaps the current depression will prove to be the fulcrum which tips the scales in favour of the new type of business which is promoted in this book.
Change management is often advocated by those who are most resistant to change themselves, often in challenged companies who are fighting for their very existance. Executives should take the opportunity to establish long term strategies for the future and go on to build a better mousetrap or whatever and set about winning the war which is going on on a global scale and not just in America. This is just the book to help them.
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