KOTA KINABALU: Vice President of Asean–China Commerce Association Dr Dar Wong expounded on the 2,500-year-old “Sun Tzu Art of War in Business” at the Sabah Chinese Economic Conference.
Dr Wong explained the first out of 13 chapters of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ book on “The Initiation Plan”.
He said while making plans, a leader should never be too naive and believe in the rightness of his plans.
Conditions should be constantly checked and compared. Humanity makes a leader much more respectable.
“If a leader is humane to his subordinates, they will respect him. According to Sun Tzu, soldiers should be treated with humanity.
Any plans should be modified in accordance with the circumstances, which means that a leader should be flexible enough and always ready to undertake measures.
A leader who wins a battle makes many calculations. This follows that being strategic and making calculations do not necessarily will grant you success, however, they can contribute to the victory.
Dr Wong elaborated to the audience that the five essentials to leadership qualities are wisdom, trust, awareness, courage and benevolence.
In his writings, Sun Tzu identifies a mix of five traits that characterise a good leader - virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and discipline as a good leader should know how to make plans.Credibility emerges from trust built by a leader.
Credibility can be established through love.Sun Tzu states that if you regard your soldiers as your children and look upon them, they will follow you and stand by you until death.
Courage stands for decisiveness shown by a leader.
Wisdom stands for the ability of being competent in the field of your activity.
Knowledge is bound to be valuable for a leader.
Virtue of wisdom implicates knowing yourself as well.
However, knowing yourself is not enough.
According to Sun Tzu, the perfect combination that will lead to success is the following: if you know your enemy and know yourself.
“The five elements to create success are timing, geographic locale, human resources, methodology, and the ‘Tao’ that comprises integrity, balance, and righteousness,”Dr Wong said, adding that the way Westerners understood the ‘Tao’ as the way of the energy flow etc., is not accurate.“
According to Sun Tzu, a strong military is vital to a country. It determines the life and death of a nation.
“The military force of a country is equivalent to the financial cushion of a business,” he said, while the four signs of managing finance in a business are to fundraise, grow, reserve, and re-invest.
As for the Seven Measurements to determine a winner, Dr Wong posed the following questions for the audience to ponder and reflect on his take:
1. Which employer or boss has the virtues or the Tao?
2. Whose head of department has better capability?
3. Who gains an edge in timing and geographical site?
4. Who has better rules of compliance?
5. Who has a stronger team?
6. Whose workforce is more skilful?
7. Who has a better incentive or bonus scheme?
Sometimes it is not enough to lay plans, it is more important to govern your subordinates in the right direction.
It is a leader’s duty to establish certain standards for the army which should be reached.Another important leadership trait is strictness.
It is vital to maintain order no matter what.
As Sun Tzu proves, order can only be achieved by the strictness of a leader.
Strictness grants well established authority with assigned duties and control.
A good leader should know the conditions under which it is possible to gain victory.
Once he masters the skill of governing the people, he may expect success.
A good leader will be acquainted with the techniques of picking up the right people for certain tasks.
It is all about governing people in the right direction.
One may say that leadership is something to be born with.
You either possess it or not.
However, Sun Tzu does not make any difference whether a person is born to be a leader or not.
He provides every person who is willing to master the art of leadership with certain teachings.
— David Thien
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