The Art of Comparison 8: Competitors
You must question the situation.
You must ask:
Which government has the right philosophy?
Which commander has the skill?
Which season and place have the advantage?
Which method of command works?
Which group of forces has the strength?
Which officers and men have the training?
Which rewards and punishments make sense?
This tells when you will win and when you will lose.
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Chapter 1, Section 2: Lines 2-12
Situations do not consist of one factor but many. They arise from many competing groups and individuals. Each of these competitors has its own key factors of goals and values, climate, ground, command, and methods, and all their related characteristics. To understand our situations, we must understand how our competing characteristics affect one another.
The Right Goals and Values
The Chinese character that I translate as “government” more precisely means “ruler.” When I improve my translation of The Art of War, I will change “government” to “decision-maker”, so it applies more broadly to all forms of competition. (I will explain that rewrite as I perform it, in series of articles here on Substack.) The Chinese character translated as “philosophy” in most translations is what I now call “goals and values” or “mission.”
Goals and values are the most important things in comparing any field of competitors. How do their goals relate to each other? This doesn’t only mean what they are trying to achieve, though that is important, but which priorities are highest in their minds. As we discussed in the earlier article on comparing missions, we seldom have one goal. Instead, we have changing priorities among different goals. To compare the goals of competitors, we must understand not only their goals, but which values are most important to them.
The Right Methods
After goals and values, the most important criteria for comparison are the skills that the competitors have. What are they good at? As a general rule, we can predict that people will use the abilities and knowledge that they already have rather than learn new things. Skill comes from practice. New methods take time to develop.
The question is: how well do any competitors set of skills fit the current situation? As situations change and evolve, different skills become more valuable. Our strategic challenge is always to predict the reactions of others. The better we understand our competitors’ existing skills, the better we can predict their reactions.
The Right Climate and Ground
The competitive arena, of course, determines our context for comparison. This is not only the larger competitive environment, but the part of it we control, the place and tine resources that are part of our own positions. These resources limit how much any of us can do.
The climate includes time, but it also means change. We all must adapt to different environmental changes as they arise. Different competitors must adapt to different internal changes at any given point of time. Adapting to changes in their ground, their climate, the leadership, and their methods distract them from the current exterior competition.
The Right Strengths
We also compare the individual strengths and weaknesses of all competitors in the same competitive arena. Strength does not exist in a vacuum. One question is always, “strong compared to who?” (See this article on strength and weakness.)
The other major question is “strong in doing what?” We must also compare those strengths and weaknesses to the requirements of the situation. Different situations required different responses. Some require more speed. Others require more creativity. Others require more patience. Others require more resources. By comparing the required responses to the characteristics of the competitors, we can know who is the best prepared for the current situation.
The Right Training
This is the first time Sun Tzu mentions training in his work, but that topic is the central mission of his writing and my own. Competitive strategy is a complex topic. It begins with a few basic principles, but it branches out into more detailed and more specific situations and conditions. The book itself is written from the ground up. The four elements of climate, ground, command, and methods are the roots of the tree. They come together in Mission, the goals and values that form the trunk, giving the tree unity and focus. The myriad of related strategic lessons branches out from that trunk, echoing the four roots, four related clusters of lessons on climate, ground, command, and methods, that interweave into the canopy.
This creates a tree of strategic possibilities. Because we can only be in one place at one time, we always find ourselves out on one branch of that tree, where only the nearby lessons are useful. The tree itself is too complex to memorize, even for those of us who have studied it for decades. Instead, we internalized its lessons through training and practice. As we travel again and again through its branches, we begin to recognize where we are and remember where to go next.
This training is very like military drill or practicing any art or science. Over time, training becomes gut instinct. We may not even consciously remember “the rules,” but we know which way is right and which way is wrong.
The Right Rewards and Punishments
It all comes down to rewards and punishments. Those around us are going to reward or punish us for our moves. They reward us for making the right moves and punish us for making the wrong ones. If we help them, they will reward us. If we hurt them, they will punish us. We may think that we can get away with something. We are wrong. Those who know us know who we are and what we do. Over time, all of our secrets are made visible. Nothing is hidden that is not revealed.
The “rewards” that give us immediate gratification are lies. These rewards we also become our punishments. As are the easy pleasures of hatred, envy, narcissism, and nihilism. Destruction is always easier to “accomplish” than building, but it is not rewarding over the long run. Seeking immediate gratification doesn’t improve our positions, not even in our own minds.
Who Will Win? Who Will Lose?
We need to make progress in our lives in order to be happy. Our brains are wired this way. We can try to fool our brains with false forms of progress, but we cannot fool the results in our lives. We all know if our lives are getting better or worse over time. More importantly, we all know if our spirits are getting stronger or weaker. We want to become more resilient and well balanced, more courageous, trustworthy, intelligent, disciplined, and caring.
Bad things will happen in our lives. We are all tested eventually and repeatedly. When those times come, we need the type of character that faces those troubles and help ourselves and others through them.