Sun Tzu's Warrior's Rules -- for Winning Productively

At the heart of Sun Tzu’s strategic system are two ideas: 1) that strategic positions are created from a natural balance of forces and 2) that we can leverage those forces to “win without conflict.”

While Sun Tzu's strategy offer many rules for succeeding in conflict when it is unavoidable, he teaches that the best approach is always avoiding it. Competitive success is judged by its rewards and the costs of conflict always decrease those rewards. Over time, conflict has a low-probability of success. This principle is so basic to Sun Tzu's rules that it introduces it in his second chapter in The Art of War .

Strangely, it is our fear of loss that makes conflict so expensive. After conflict begins, no one wants to lose their investment in a situation with only one winner. All sides must continue to invest in conflict in order to win back some of their costs. The only logical stopping point in conflict is when on party's resources are all gone. Even for the winner, the rewards at that point are unlikely to cover the costs of conflict. Consistently engaging in conflict to resolve competitive situations is a losing strategy. All "wars of attrition" are losers even for the supposed victors.

What the Science Says

Interestingly, Sun Tzu's ancient concepts has been fairly recently proven by modern scientific experiment. Those in the social sciences and game theory have set up auctions where both the winner and loser must pay the costs. The result is always the same: everyone pays to much because only by continuing can they reduce their costs. The problem is that by continuing, we actually make our losses worse and worse, even for the winners. Max Bazerman a professor at Harvard Business school, who ran hundreds of such auctions, calls this "The Winner's Curse."

Defining Conflict

Conflict has a very specific definition in Sun Tzu's strategy. The term "conflict" describes all situations where two rivals must continue investing to prevent their opponent from winning. Since the goal is to prevent the rival from winning, conflict always seeks to damage an opponent enough to prevent them from continuing. Conflict is not merely the lack of cooperation. Conflict means seeking confrontations that are meant to be costly to opponents. While all competitive acts, even those that are primarily creative, can destroy opposing positions as a byproduct, conflict is purposeful destructive action for its own sake.

Since competition is a comparison of alternative positions, conflict can seem to make sense in contest for rewards. Our positions seems comparatively better if our opponent's position damaged. However, ranking alone doesn't define competition. Any comprehensive definition of competition must factor in the rewards gained. The reality is that we are rewarded for being cooperative much more frequently that we are rewarded for being belligerent.

Too many of us think of competition in terms of "getting even," but Sun Tzu rejects both aspects of getting even. We succeed neither by bringing others down to our level nor by simply catching up to them. Instead of getting even, Sun Tzu teaches us to "get odd," that is to distinguish ourselves from others by standing out and doing things that are unexpected.

A Logical Choice from Economics

The logical argument against conflict is economic rather than moral.

If we try to damage others, they will try to damage us. It doesn't matter how the rewards are defined: physical, emotional or social. If the battle is one of attrition, where the costs must be extracted from both parties and there is only one winner, the costs must escallate. This exchange is always costly to both parties.

Though we cannot know the costs or benefits of any strategic move in advance, but we can know that any move that brings us into conflict with others will be more costly than any move that avoids conflict. Since the goal of strategy is not merely to win a victory but to make victory pay, conflict is conceptually counterproductive. In a war of attrition, both parties lose more often than not.

Sun Tzu's Focus on Mission

The logic of conflict is myopic. It focuses on an opponent and their position instead of our mission and our position.

As two parties try to damage each other, the positions of both decline. If we are artificially forced to choose between them, as we are in a single political election, for example, one party can "win" through conflict, but over time, these victories are Pyrrhic. In judging such conflict, most people eventually decide for "a plague on both their houses." In real life, a smart boss is more likely to fire rivals who work on damaging each other's careers. Just because some games such as chess can designed as wars of attrition doesn't mean that the lessons from such games can be applied more generally to good strategy.

The impulse to fight, like the impulse to run away, is instinctual and reflexive. Sun Tzu taught that anger, hate, and demonizing our enemies are all strategic traps. These mindsets weaken positions rather than strengthening them.

The Nature of Enmity

Understood correctly, the heart of any competition is always dueling philosophies. Positioning is a battle to win supporters and discourage opponents. When we demonize opponents, we undermine our chances of success by attracting supporters are looking for someone to hate rather than a goal to support. The character of these supporters will lead us inevitably in costly conflict. Positions built on philosophies of enmity inherently weak. Positions built on mutual rewards are inherently strong. Groups bound together by mutual enemies are, to quote Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury signifying nothing" and have been shown throughout history to fall apart once the enemy is defeated.

As we discuss in detail in this article on the importance of empathy in using our rules,establishing winning positions isn't based on fighting others but in finding common ground with them. Sun Tzu's strategy is based on positioning, which requires us to see how others think and feel. This requires seeing the world from the perspective of others, empathizing with them.