Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Art of War is one of the most successful books written by Sun Tzu for military strategy. Its approaches are all about victory with minimal conflict, minimal effort and maximum operational efficiency. Sun Tzu's principles are very helpful if you're planning to have a business since there are very useful strategies that you can apply on. The principles will help you establish a SWOT analysis. There are many concepts tackled in the book such as calculating, planning, directing, adapting to situations, using strengths and weakness and engaging which are functional in business. As I have read the book, it describes that calculations play an important role. You have to establish your strength against your competitors so that the calculation for success is clear. You have to know the business very well before putting it into a reality. Your plans must have specific objectives, putting the right people and leading them to achieve your goals. In my own experience, I realized that I failed to put my state of mind to specialize my skills for planning. Intuitions are also helpful so learn to trust on them. To come up with success for your plans, you should be determined that you will win.

For me, a successful business is not based on the big amount of money you put into it but on to how you come up with the success while limiting your costs. I also believe that when there are changes, you must know how to recognize opportunities within it and not thinking it as a weakness and won't be vulnerable. Before the change occurs, you have already planned ahead and have alternative solutions for it. Then it is important that you should be positive on the effects rather than being negative for you may be defeated with your competitors. It is important that you know how to defend yourself by positioning your business in the right place.

My favorite popular quote from Sun Tzu is "If you know yourself and your enemy, you will win a hundred battles." Aside from mastering your own products, it is also significant to recognize and familiarize your competitors' products and not just focusing on your own. Information gathering is one of the strategies in identifying your competitors and how to manage them. It will be very helpful for you in making your own strategies and planning on how and when to apply them. In applying these strategies using Sun Tzu's principles, in order to attack successfully, you should start attacking on their weaknesses and do not attack right away on their strengths.

Strategic Management process is most entirely like Sun Tzu's principles. In a business, the process plays a vital role. It always start on by developing mission and vision statement, making objectives, assesses threats, evaluating and formulating strategies, implementing strategies and evaluating the performance. It is a managerial activity under settings and over tactics. Just as Sun Tzu's principle, do not