The Art of War: Warrior Rules - winning by comparing positions

3. Responses and Execution > 2. Situation Response > 1. Campaign Situations

Which of the following best describes your concerns?

1. I need to understand how successful competitive moves depend on situation recognition.
   6.1 Situation Recognition

   6.1 Situation Recognition

   "See the time to move.
   Don’t try to find something clever."
   Sun Tzu's The Art of War 4:3:8-9

   Situation: 

   Sun Tzu saw that every competitive situation had unique aspects. This diversity of conditions creates many problems for those trying to execute strategic decisions. The details of situations can easily confuse and distract us. Without a system for instantly recognizing different classes of competitive situations, we will often respond inappropriately. There are more than a thousand conditions important to competitive situations. Recognizing them all on a conscious level would be totally overwhelming. In situations where we must respond quickly and confidently, we cannot question every aspect of our situation.
2. I need to understand if committing to a process of exploring an opportunity is worthwhile .
   6.2 Campaign Evaluation

   6.2 Campaign Evaluation

   "Make war without a standard approach.
   Water has no consistent shape.
   If you follow the enemy’s shifts and changes, you can always find a way to win."
   Sun Tzu's The Art of War 6:8:8-10

   Situation: 

   Campaigns involve a series of related moves toward a longer-term goal. Without understanding campaigns and the Warrior's Rules about their nature, we have a much more difficult time identifying and classifying the various competitive situations in which we find ourselves.

3. I need to understand how campaigns usually unfold.
   6.3 Campaign Patterns

   6.3 Campaign Patterns

   "You must control chaos.
   This depends on your calculations."
   Sun Tzu's The Art of War 5:4:10-11

   Situation: 

   Through the course of a campaign, the competitive situations that arise appear chaotic, but, as Sun Tzu pointed out 2,500 years ago, the chaos of competition is not random. There is a deeper order underlying it. We cannot see the patterns in it because we haven't been trained where to look. Today we know this type of chaos as complexity, the patterns that arise from the interactions of independent, adaptive agents. The emergent properties that arise in these environments cannot be predicted from their elements, but we can learn them from observation and training.