Sun Tzu taught a set of powerful methods for winning constructively in competition. The Science of Strategy Institute's multiple award-winning work makes the strategy of The Art of War easier to use.
Read our daily article on Sun Tzu's Warrior's Rules to retrain your instinctive reactions to competitive situations. Learn all Sun Tzu's rules as we go through our publication schedule.
"Using a huge army in battle success is very expensive.
Long delays create a dull army and sharp defeats."
Sun Tzu The Art of War 2:1:12
While there are competitive situations where we must use all of our resources to survive, choosing our actions for exploring opportunities is never one of them. Exploring new opportunities requires a minimum rather than maximum use of force. When we constantly invest too much in each opportunity, we soon find ourselves out of resources. Large forces take more time to organize and they always move slower since, to stay together, they are tied to the pace of their slowest component.
We learn to separate the concept of "force" and "strength" from that of "power." Strategic power comes from unity and focus (1.7 Competitive Power). Strategic strength arises when we target an opposing weakness (3.5 Strength and Weakness). Both depend on leveraging the situation. Force, on the other hand, is simply using an abundance of resources to overpower a challenge or problem.
These are the rules defining the use of strategic force.
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