What has war
got to do with everyday life and what can war-strategies teach even people who
have nothing to do with war? According
to the author Robert Greene - everything! Two quotes in the preface of the book
- “The life of man upon earth is
warfare” (The Bible), and “Let him
who wants peace prepare for war” (Vegetius)- set out his argument that one faces battles in every sphere
of life and that the application of military strategies would help one overcome
them.
Today strategy
is a general term meaning a plan of action intended to accomplish a specific
goal. The word strategy however comes from the Greek word strategos, meaning general or “the
leader of the army”. Strategy was thus originally the art and science of
planning and conducting of war, or generalship. (It is no wonder then management
guru Kenichi Ohmae has propounded
that the only purpose of strategy is to gain advantage over competitors; thus,
if you don’t have any competitors then there is no need for strategy!)
The author
has gone through the best writings on war and has come up with 33 strategies that
encapsulate the timeless wisdom from great military leaders and strategists. Two
of the greatest books on the subject, the 6th century BC Chinese
text, The Art of War, by Sun-Tzu and On War, by the Prussian general Carl von
Clausewitz forms the bases for many of the ideas in the book. The ideas of
great military leaders like Alexander, Napoleon, Nelson, Rommel, Giap too
have contributed greatly to the strategies listed in the book.
The 33 lessons
are spread over the five parts of the book: Self-directed Warfare –
understanding ones weaknesses and overcoming them; Organisational Warfare-
building an effective and efficient army; Defensive Warfare – leveraging your
limitations into power; Offensive Warfare- using the opponents’ weakness to
your advantage, and Unconventional Warfare – use of tactics like deception ,
guerrilla warfare etc.
The strategies
are explained well with detailed examples of its execution by some of its
greatest exponents. And it is not just warriors and soldiers, but also people
as varied as Mahatma Gandhi, John Rockefeller, Alfred Hitchcock, Margaret
Thatcher, Prophet Mohammed, who appear here to testify to the universal
applicability of these strategies. In 1605, Miyamoto Musashi, a samurai
swordsman was challenged to a duel by Matashichiro, whose father he had killed
earlier that year. Musashi’s friends smelled a trap and advised him not to go
alone; yet he went alone. In his earlier fights, Musashi had angered his rivals
by showing up late; however this time he came early and hid in the trees.
Matashichiro arrived with a small army. Musashi “would arrive late as usual,” they
said. Confident of their ambush, Matashichiro’s men lay down and hid in the
grass. Musashi leaped from behind the trees and skilfully killed off his
opponents.” That was an example from the chapter on Strategy # 2: “Do Not Fight
the Last War” meaning that you should not repeat the tactics from your last war
in next one.
The
deliberately kept wide margins in the book are used for excerpts and quotes from
a wide range of books – religious texts, classics, biographies, fables, etc. These
inform us how the strategy being discussed has been presented over the years by
various people and also help us appreciate the subject better. Here is one such:
“Mohammed Ali the Heavy-weight boxing
champion did not have any great punching power. Yet he won all his first twenty
fights – seventeen of them knock-outs! What is the mystery? The answer is in
the speed and timing. Ali could punch with extreme speed and would time it
right, before his opponent could anticipate it. So we arrive at one knockout of
a conclusion: the punch that puts you to sleep is not so much the hard punch as
the punch that you don’t see coming”. That excerpt from a biography of Ali is
one of those that illustrate Strategy # 14: Overwhelm Resistance with Speed and
Suddenness”, or The Blitzkrieg Strategy. (Blitzkrieg or Lightning War was the
highly successful WW-2 German strategy of swiftly overrunning enemy lines with
highly mobile infantry).
The strategies
described in the last part of the book – ‘Unconventional Warfare’ would be
considered as amoral or unethical by most of us and we would be loath to practice them- indeed,
the author himself describes it as “dirty’. However, his argument is that this
is the way the world functions now; at the very least having an understanding
of them would help you from getting surprised.
At well over
400 pages this is a lengthy read, but is written in a gripping style that many of us would finish it in a few
sittings. Read this book and refer to it in times of need; it will help you in
dealing with the battles in your professional and even personal life. The trick
though, lies in choosing the right strategies and then putting it into
practice.
