A Question For The Sunzi's Reader" How Does One Moves Like a Wind and Be Quiet as a Forest?

" Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your silence that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire, be immovable like a mountain...."  -  Art of War 7

Without understanding the configuration of the situation and having the zero mastery of the adjustment tactics, how does one performs the following:

• Move like a wind;
• Be silent as a forest; 
• Burn the competitor with fire; and   
• Possess the fortitude of a mountain.

Click here for more information on this quote.

Some aspects of Chapter Seven of Sunzi's essay is focused on maneuvering with speed. We preferred to view that portion of the chapter from a psychological perspective. 

Our Compass Suggestion

                                                    

One can only move like a wind if the strategist understands the configuration of the terrain or possesses the economics, the logistics and the team to achieve that intent. It also helps if the team has the proper preparation to maneuver as a team.

One can only be quiet as a forest if he and his team are properly prepared for all tactical situations.

One can only effectively burn (or influence) the competitor if he knows what is the specific target while having the proper preparation for that tactical situation. .

One can only be quiet as a forest and have the fortitude of a mountain if he and his team are properly prepared for all tactical situations.

Click here for more on the insight relating to our suggestion.

Lesson
Proper planning and preparation prevents pissed poor performance.

The Fundamentals of The Strategist: Be Prepared

Do you know what is a victory? What is your definition of your victory?

How prepared are you?

Amat victoria curam   (Anonymous) 
Victory loves preparation.

A good victory usually possesses a definite and deep meaning.  Identifying it properly and being able to approach it with cautious preparation before your competition does, is the first step to securing your victory.

Unprofessional hustle could only go so far.  There is no beginners luck if you are prepared and focus-driven.



Proper Planning (and Preparation) Prevents Pissed Poor Performance
In the field of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. -  Louis Pasteur

unquam non paratus  (used by Itaiy's military unit)  
Never unprepared, ever ready, always ready 

Transforming a idea, a end goal into a plan and a process of preparation into the end goal of victory is always the challenge.

You have to assess yourself, your terrain, and the grand terrain first. 

The next step is the positioning of yourself with a good plan and sound and solid preparation. The final step is influencing your terrain while proceeding toward your target. It begins by being mindful of the byproduct of assessing, positioning and influencing  while having a good script .

Click here for more insight on assessing strategically. Then click here for a perspective on how one plans and prepares himself for a great victory.

Final Thoughts
By understanding the fundamentals of assessing, positioning and influencing, one can solve their own relevant problems.

To achieve great objectives, do not worry about being the hero that the people need. Know what is your victory. Comprehend your motive and your method. Finally, focus your time and your effort on it.

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"He is lucky who realizes that luck is the point where preparation meets opportunity" - Seneca, the Younger. 

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Profiting Temporarily by Competing Extremely in the Info Economy (The Uber vs Gett Situation)

updated at 3:33 hr

Regardless of the location in our global economy, some companies compete aggressively by doing whatever it takes to prevail. In the case of contracting transportation business, Uber temporaily thawed the plans of their competitor (Gett) by performing the following activities:

• denial of service attacks; and
• recruitment  of their competitor's drivers.

Is it illegal? Is it unethical?  The answer could be depended on that region's state of law.
  

Luckily, some of our other associates do not believe in the practice of competitive darwinism.  ... Our belief is that one should be prepared against the act of competitive darwinism while implementing fair and ethical business practices.   ...  Remember that life is never fair especially competing in an extreme scenario. 

Q: How do you know that you are in an extreme competitive scenario?
A: Ask yourself the question of how well do you know your competition. 

Being Strategic Efficient in the Information Economy
In some parts of the information economy, where some of the elite competitors almost possessed the similar tactical approach and the same set of operational modes.   It becomes a challenge to becoming technically efficient for them.    . . .  Once the strategical efficiency standard of marketplace is met, the majority would compete in their limited terrain by grinding, grounding and pounding.   Based on our research, there would be only a few competitors who are able to innovate successfully.  Whether they are able to compete effectively is a different story.

Having the skill to integrate the various operational modes to the grand approach is the tangible challenge for those who want to be strategically efficient.

If you are interested in our strategic perspective on knowing when to stay efficient and when to be innovative while operating in a strategic competitive scenario, please contact us. 
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Filtering The Reality From The Mountain of Illusions: The NBA Draft

Yesterday was the NBA Draft, where each professional basketball team choose a "presumed  flawless" young superstar  who will score so many points and rebound so many times.   The reality is that most of those performance reports are hype.  Rarely does anyone ever focus on some of their possible flaws like the constant habit of turning over the ball during a  defensive press.

Some of my favorite negatives are: 

• Replying too much on athletic skills than on technical skills; 
• Having a learning disability; 
• Possessing the emotional refusal to learn the playbook and/or to play team ball; 
• Having the attitude of not playing "one on one" defense; and 
• Having the possible reputation of being a team's cancer.

Sometimes, the statistics that the general manager employ, do not show some of these negatives.  ... That is the grand flaw of the "Moneyball" approach.

Depending on the circumstances, some serious fans and various general managers are more focused on their second round draft choice. The cost is less and that those chosen players are given more time to refine their various skills.

Speaking of statistics, the longevity of most NBA players are usually is about few years.  It is quite rare that a drafted NBA player stays in the NBA for over 10 years.

Most smart sport observers are usually assessing them throughout the season as a team player and having the patience and the tenacity to overcome pressure.

Past Result is no Indicator of Future Performance 
The lesson is that the successful strategists do not get hooked on the hype.  Instead of focusing on the same old set of horses, they look for the zebra.  ... The zebra is someone who does more than expected.   ...  He does the dirty work and is usually the consummate team player. These rare individuals usually venture above and beyond the call of duty.

In this current draft, there are no over-hyped superstars.  The best "safe" decision is to pursue a good performer who has a good work ethic and possessed a reputation of not becoming a  social embarrassment.

Preparation Precedes Performance
In professional basketball, one of our favorite zebras is Shane Battier. He has been in the NBA for over 10 years and is currently playing for the Miami Heat.   ... What makes Shane's unique is his competitive nature that has propelled him to spend many hours of studying the strengths and the weaknesses of his next opponent.  This  act of preparation has helped him and some of his teammates to gain a strategic advantage in the myriad of games. Beside being an exceptional three point shooter,  Battier is also considered a first class defender and is usually assigned against the opposition's best shooter.

His favorite quote "... proper planning (or preparation) prevents poor performance   tells us that he is quite focused on achieving the ultimate win, not the semantics of saying that he wants to win.


Click here, here  and here on the other aspects that have transformed him to become an exceptional coach-player on the floor.  ... 

Preparation Creates Profit
During game time, Shane's comprehension of each player's proclivity and deficiencies has enabled him to positioned his team to succeed and his opponent to deteriorate in a dramatic fashion. 

For example, Shane knows who he is guarding and what are his strengths and weaknesses regarding to their proclivity and deficiency.  

He also understands how he fits into the grand offensive and defensive scheme of the floor team while always mindfully recognizes where is his opponent on the floor of the court in relationship to time and space.  

Example:  
His targeted object might have a habit of driving on the right side of the court 95% of the time and toward the middle the rest of the time while shootings with the left hand and never passing the ball.  Shane might force him to go left and shoot with his right hand, knowing if he ever passes the ball, that it might be a forced pass.  

If forced to defend against someone else in a poorly team defense situation,  Battier would still know their offensive tendencies.

At the end of the game  Battier usually have defended him well enough that the offensive damage by the opponent would be minimized.

On the offensive side, Battier knows when and where to set that screen play or that pick play that frees a certain teammate for an easy shot. In most occurrences, he is a superior three point shooter.

“In warfare, the strategic configurations of power do not exceed the unorthodox and orthodox, but the changes of the unorthodox and orthodox can never be completely exhausted. The unorthodox and orthodox mutually produce each other, just like an endless cycle. Who can exhaust them ?” - Art of War 5 

In summary, this intense preparation enables him to be the catalyst or the force multiplier who makes other players better. ... Whenever Battier is on the court, the team scored more than the opponent. ... In the last championship game against the Spurs, Shane scored 18 points in 30 minutes.

One day, Mr. Battier will make a ultra class basketball coach/strategist.

To reach that 10+ year benchmark, the rookies should study the "Shane Battier's" model.


Side notes
Click here on our specific view of  the Moneyball approach. 

Knowing when to release a court performer one season sooner than one season later, is the essence of the art of evaluating personnel.   

In the efficient economy, we are always evaluated by our last performance. 

Proper Planning (and Preparation) Prevents Pissed, Poor Performance #2b

Another Thought on Proper Planning and Preparation

• In the field of observation, chance favor the prepared. - Louis Pasteur

Regardless of the situation, the successful strategist is always prepared. His assessment could be off.  But he knows when to stay in course and when to adjust.  

It all begins by having the proper Big Tangible Picture.

[ revised ]

Proper Planning (and Preparation) Prevents Pissed, Poor Performance #2

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Some of our readers loved their quotes. They live their way of life through their quotes.  Sometimes, their flock follows them. 

To appease this section of our readers, here is an abridged list of quotes that the Compass team has collected:

• "Preparation Precedes Performance"
• "Proper Planning  and Preparation Prevents Pissed, Poor Performance"
• "The Will To Prepare" is more important than "The Will to Win".
• "Know when and how to prepare for planning is the first stage of preparation. ... Knowing what and how to plan is the next stage. ..."
• "Preparation Pays Profits when Preparation meets Opportunity...."
• "Preparation + Opportunity = Success. ..."

# # #

• "The plan is nothing; . . . the planning is everything." - Dwight Eishenhower, the Grand Thinker of the "1944 D-day invasion of Normandy, France
• "Failure to Prepare is to Prepare to Failure." - Bill Walsh, the Architect of the West Coast Offense. Former Coach of San Francisco Forty Niners (Super Bowl Champions 1981-82, 1984-85, and 1988-89).
• " ... Organization leads to preparation. . . . Preparation eliminates the unexpected. Be ready for everything. . . . Overlook nothing. ... " - Brian Billick, Former Head Coach of Baltimore Ravens (Super Bowl Champions 2000-2001) .
• "If you have a plan, and if you have your direction laid out, you can chart your progress to your dreams at each stop along the way. ... And just as important, all along the way you can see how far you've come." - Michael Shanahan, Current Head Coach of the Washington Redskins, (Former coach of Denver Broncos, Super Bowl Champions 1997-1998, 1998-1999) 
• Organizing, leading, enduring setbacks and ultimately succeeding lies at the heart of every profession, be it business, the military or football. -Walsh ( Forbes | December 7, 1992 |)

Interestingly, the preachers and teachers from the Cult of the Art of War also employed this approach.  If you asked them how do they integrate the principles into one solid entity. they have no answers.  They just don't know.  Principles and quotes could only go so far. 

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, 

you don't know what you're doing.  - W. Edward Deming

Philosophy does not win battles. Understanding the psychology, the mathemathics and the physics of the situation are the key factors behind the building of a plan. The next step is the processing of the intelligence into a process model. 

So, do you have a process model that allows you to see the tangible specifics?  ...  Do you?

Side note 
You can find interesting and unique views on planning and preparation in the Seven Strategic Classics and Sun Bin's classic.

The Dao of the Unorthodox Play (5)

The following article is something that most businesses can learn from the "Russian Blitz" that occurred in the 17th of August 2008. ... The outcome can be described as the immediate effect of properly implemented strategic power

Military Analysis
Russian Blitz Meld Old-School Onslaught With Modern Military Tactics
By Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON — Russia’s victorious military blitz into the former Soviet republic of Georgia brought something old and something new — but none of it was impromptu, despite appearances that a long-frozen conflict had suddenly turned hot.

The Russian military borrowed a page from classic Soviet-era doctrine: Moscow’s commanders sent an absolutely overwhelming force into Georgia. It was never going to be an even fight, and the outcome was predictable, if not preordained.

/// Finding even parity in any "real" competition, is quite rare. The 2 on 1 is the minimum standard in most extreme street fights. ///

At the same time, the Russian military picked up what is new from the latest in military thinking, including American military writings about the art of war, replete with the hard-learned lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan.

/// The emphasis of most strategic classics is to provide the direction and the tactical view for  completing one's own objective.  ...  Most strategic readers (chief decision makers) faltered on their reading of the situations.   They usually become too entrenched with their obsolete belief. ///

So along with the old-school onslaught of infantry, armor and artillery, Russia mounted joint air and naval operations, appeared to launch simultaneous cyberattacks on Georgian government Web sites and had its best English speakers at the ready to make Moscow’s case in television appearances.

If the rapidly unfolding events caught much of the world off guard, that kind of coordination of the old and the new did not look accidental to military professionals.

“They seem to have harnessed all their instruments of national power — military, diplomatic, information — in a very disciplined way,” said one Pentagon official, who like others interviewed for this article disclosed details of the operation under ground rules that called for anonymity. “It appears this was well thought out and planned in advance, and suggests a level of coordination in the Russian government between the military and the other civilian agencies and departments that we are striving for today.”


/// In our modern society,  securing the political-social support of spectators has been a high priority for any relevant competitors.  ///


In fact, Pentagon and military officials say Russia held a major ground exercise in July just north of Georgia’s border, called Caucasus 2008, that played out a chain of events like the one carried out over recent days.

“This exercise was exactly what they executed in Georgia just a few weeks later,” said Dale Herspring, an expert on Russian military affairs at Kansas State University. “This exercise was a complete dress rehearsal.”

///  We presumed that the Russians spent much of their time preparing and rehearsing their implementation. They knew their Big Tangible Picture and were able to perform well-devised scenario modeling sessions.   In summary,  these activities increased their strategic effectiveness.

Russian special ops are famous for their synchronized offensive tactics. ///

Q:  Do you know how to perform scenario modeling?

Compass Rule of Preparation: 
The time that it takes to deploy one's plan is inversely proportional to the time that is spent planning your plan and preparing your team.

Our Compass AE process requires the project implementers to review and rehearse their recently-built Tangible Vision process before connecting to it. ///

Russian commentators have countered that more than 1,000 American military personnel were in Georgia for an exercise last month. But that exercise focused on counterinsurgency operations to prepare a Georgian brigade for duty in Iraq, a different mission than the seizing of territory or denying an aggressor a new stake on the land.

Even as the Russian military succeeded at its most obvious objectives — taking control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, humiliating the Georgian government and crippling the republic’s army and police units — serious shortcomings on the Russian side were revealed during the brief fighting, Pentagon and military officials said.

To the surprise of American military officers, an impaired Georgian air-defense system was able to down at least six Russian jets. The Sukhoi-25, an aging ground attack plane, appeared to be the most vulnerable.

Georgia never has fielded an integrated, nationwide air defense system, and those ground-to-air weapons that survived early Russian shelling operated without any central control — and some without battle-command radars, as they were destroyed by Russian strikes.

That they bloodied the Russian air wing was taken as a clear sign of poor Russian aircraft maintenance, poor Russian piloting skills — or, most likely, years of insufficient funds for adequate flight training.

Russian-language media and unofficial national security Web sites in Moscow, which since the days of the disastrous Soviet foray into Afghanistan have developed a skeptical independent streak, also noted other shortcomings.

A Russian general in command of the 58th Army was wounded in the leg when he led a column of 30 armored vehicles toward the capital of South Ossetia, apparently without sufficient intelligence from scouts on the ground or surveillance aircraft overhead to know a Georgian ambush was awaiting.

The Russians also suffered losses as they came through the Roki Tunnel, which connects South Ossetia to the neighboring region of North Ossetia in Russia proper. Russian national security analysts said there was no air cover to protect Moscow’s forces in their first minutes on Georgian soil outside the safety of the mountain tunnel.

Despite these failings, the Russian military was able to coordinate infantry advances with movement of airborne troops, simultaneously with the deployment of armor and artillery. To be sure, they only had to travel short distances, but Russia was able to inject 9,000 to 10,000 troops, 150 tanks and 700 other armored vehicles onto Georgian territory in the first weekend of fighting, officials said.

Russian warships moved off the coast of Georgia, and Russian special operations forces infiltrated into Georgia through Abkhazia, according to Pentagon and military officials.

“This was not the Russian Army from the humiliation of Afghanistan, and it’s not the Russian military that had to flatten Chechnya to save it,” said one Pentagon official knowledgeable of how the fighting unfolded. Another said: “The Russian military is back. They are to be contended with.”

Despite a recent increase in Russian long-range bomber flights along old, cold war routes near United States airspace, the offensive into Georgia gave little indication of a renewed capacity or renewed interest in global projection of power by the Russians.

But Moscow’s military is wholly capable of pressing the Kremlin’s designs on hegemony over the formerly Communist states along the border that Russian leaders call “the near abroad.”

Russia prepared the battlefield in the months leading up to the outbreak of fighting.

In April, Russia reinforced its peacekeeping force in Abkhazia with advanced artillery, and in May it sent construction troops to fix a railroad line linking that area with Russia.

Georgia’s overmatched army of about 30,000 was able to field four combat brigades of about 3,300 soldiers each.

At the start of the fighting, the Georgian Army’s First Brigade was in Iraq, and subsequently was airlifted home aboard American aircraft — but without their war-fighting gear. The Fourth Brigade was in training for the next rotation to Iraq. The Second and Third Brigades were in western Georgia, closer to Abkhazia than to South Ossetia, where the fighting started.

The American military training for the Georgian troops has been described as involving counterterrorism for domestic security and counterinsurgency for the Iraq mission, with little emphasis on taking ground, holding ground or defending against invasion.

The influx of American training and American support might have left the Georgians feeling that their far smaller military could stand up to Russia in asserting sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

But Georgian command and control withered quickly under the Russian attack, and army and police units were operating on their own, often at cross purposes or overlapping missions.

/// Opposing operational responsibilities usually create internal conflicts. It also wastes time and resources. Poor leadership culture is the usual cause.

With our Compass AE strategic process, the implementers always know their operational objectives and how each objective is connected to each other in a sequentially mode.   ///

Although the Georgian units had been taught that speed of operations brings a mass all its own to the battlefield, and that improving accuracy in firepower brings a mass all its own, the lesson of the conflict is that, in some cases, mass has a mass all its own.

Russia easily smothered the smaller Georgian force.

The Importance of Momentum:
"When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of momentum; ... When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing. ... Thus the momentum of one skilled in war is overwhelming, and his attack precisely regulated. His potential is that of a fully drawn crossbow; his timing, the release of the trigger. ... " - Art of War, 5

Source: NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/world/europe/17military.html?pagewanted=all


The Compass View 
Successful professionals of this caliber are usually capable of coordinating and implementing multiple processes in a parallel order.

With a Big Tangible Picture, one can coordinate multiple processes sequentially while anticipating the next step. This reduces the competitor to the stage of grinding one objective at a time. This standard of performance does not always happen when competing against a competitor with greater resources and manpower.

Any project team can achieve this level of performance. They must build a strategic overview  that allows their implementers to view the "multiple process" in a geometric order. By understanding how everything is connected strategically, the team knows how to respond in certain circumstances. 

A project team that connects to their Big Tangible Picture, increases their efficiency while eliminating their redundancy. They are usually pre-positioned to move with momentum. 

In summary, this "automatic blitz" is the way of usurping the competitor's position. One will see more of this approach in business and some sports.

If you are interested in knowing more about our Compass AE process, please contact us at this link.