Business and Money Tips

In his military classic "Art of War" written 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu taught us that to defeat the competition and achieve your goals, you must have foreknowledge.  Foreknowledge is not about the following: Prediction based on the past Unsubstantiated Hearsay Analogy with past events Derived from calculations Foreknowledge is about 4 things: Detailed research and analysis from people who know the competition situation in details Knowledge of the personality and behaviour profile of people Psychology of things, why people do things in certain way Knowledge about the environment, including business climate Foreknowledge does not stop at knowing your competitors.   The most important knowledge is to know yourself.  You must know where you are strong and where you are weak so that your weakness will not be exposed and instead positioned as strengths.   Having foreknowledge will also help us to exercise Deception, which is simply not letting the enemy kn

Sun Tzu said in the Art of War that it is not enough to "Know Yourself, Know Your Enemy", we also must ensure that our opponent does not know the real us.  This is what he meant by 'Deception' - "When strong, appear weak, when weak, appear strong".  The famous Sun Tzu quote: "All war is based on deception" does not mean Sun Tzu teach us to deceive people and be dis-honest.  At the beginning Sun Tzu said "Moral" is of utmost importance, thus we know that Sun Tzu is not a book for cheats. To Get People Not to Know You could mean the following 5 Things: Be Humble , for humility gives you flexibility if things go wrong Under Promise , so that you could Over Deliver easily.  If you over-promise, you would stand a high chance of under-delivering Be Confident , especially when things are uncertain.  For that confidence gives people confidence in you, and that will translate into support, which in turn will make you stronger Leave Questi

Human beings like to fight even though they know very well from past history that fighting never work for any parties.  Just look at the devastation World Wars I and II and the on-going wars today and you'll realize how silly we are. Psychologists said that fighting is an animal instinct, for people have this scarcity mentality and they are too attached to the notion of having things and that's why we cannot let go. Yet wisdom from over 2,000 years of ancient civilisation including Sun Tzu Art of War, Zhuang Zi, Confucius, Lao Zi and Sidharta Gotama 'Pali Canon' told us that at the end of the day, the winner is the one that wins EVEN WHEN HE DOESN'T FIGHT .  In fact smart companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple know and practised these No-War Strategies.  In particular, Facebook is a latecomer in social media but they did not go out to fight head-on with pioneers like MySpace and Friendster.  Instead Facebook created a perfect photo-sharing and time-l

Sun Tzu 孙子 (or Sūn Zǐ in pinyin) was a 500 BCE  Chinese general , military strategist , and author of The Art of War 孙子兵法, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. Many great leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan studied his work and became legendary leaders. Many corporate leaders paid thousands of dollars to attend courses to learn Sun Zi's secrets. We at Asia Trainers believe that you too can learn this master's secret with just two hundred dollars. This is because we take the key essence and compile them into a 4-hour course that will leave you with just enough materials to lead your team to greater heights. Since October 2010, we have trained over 373 leaders coming from countries including Hong Kong, Japan, Myanmar and even China. The next run of Leadership with Sun Zi is on 26 Sep 2014 Friday. Limited seats are available, click here or call Niza at 6225-1784 to register. The most valuable lesson out of his 13 chapter of 5

It may be obvious to many people now that the Singapore government applied the Sun Tzu Art of War in dealing with the Little India Riot. Sun Tzu considered war as a necessary evil that must be avoided whenever possible. The war should be fought swiftly to avoid economic losses.  This was what the Special Force has done: they avoided direct confrontation war with the rioters and instead formed a wall to prevent them from running away. By 11.30 pm, just 2 hours after the riot broke out, the police has fully controlled the area and began arresting the rioters. The most famous verses from the 5,000 words book is this in chapter 3: 知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。 So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself. This can be shortened to: 知己知彼，百戰不殆。If you

As we know, Sun Tzu does not advocate a martinet-style of leadership. Instead, he states that a leader must be strong enough to executive the strategy in the organization. On the other hand, the leader must also be confident and trusting enough to allow his team to carry out the strategy successfully.  It is thus both HARD and SOFT: Hard on the Problem Soft on the People .  There are 5-Ways to Sun Tzu Leadership: Build Your Character, not just Your Image .  To Sun Tzu, a leader must be courageous, sincere and yet humane. But a leader must always  appear to be in control  of the situation, exuding confidence and assurance at all times. This confidence is not a facade, but based on true inside confidence. In short,  if the leader has even one doubt, his followers will have several . Lead with Actions, Not Just Words .  The best way to show your character is not to talk about it, but set the example. Talk is cheap.  You should never say one thing and focus on another

As we know, Sun Tze does not advocate a martinet-style of leadership.  Instead, he states that a leader must be strong enough to impose the strategy in the organization, but also confident and trusting enough to allow his team members to carry it out successfully.  There are thus 5-Ways of Leadership with Sun Tzu Art of War: Build Your Character, not just Your Image .  To Sun Tzu, a leader must be courageous, sincere and yet humane. But a leader must always appear to be in control of the situation, exuding confidence and assurance at all times. This confidence is not a facade, but based on true inside confidence. In short, if the leader has even one doubt, his followers will have several . Lead with Actions, Not Just Words .  The best way to show your character is not to talk about it, but set the example. Talk is cheap.  You should never say one thing and focus on another.  Share Your Team's Trials, Not Just Their Triumphs .  If you expect your team to sacrifice, you must s

Sun Tzu in the Art of War stated that all war is based on deception.  Does he mean to cheat?  Of course not. What Sun Tzu means is that we need to adjust the enemy's perception so that 'when able to attack we must seem weak, and when weak must appear to be strong'. The reason is that people simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are, or the way they should be. Also, our attitudes and behaviours grow out of these assumptions.  In other words, we are not really seeing, but perceiving. Pick up the phone now and call your own company pretending to be a customer.  How are you treated?  If you are going to adequately manage other people's perception of your company you need to know what that perception is. This is not an exercise to catch people out but to find areas of improvement.  Like my seminar clients, you'll be surprised that the way your people answer the phone is not every business friendly! In business it is imperative that you