The Art of War and Modern Leadership - by Glenn Reynolds
From the July 21, 2010 Lunch and Lead Seminar
Before he played his first game in the NBA, a then eighteen-year old LeBron James signed a $90 million shoe contract with Nike, making him an instant icon. Since then, money has never been a problem. Turning professional without spending a day in college, James’ initial contract with the home state Cleveland Cavaliers paid him over $14 million each year.
So, money wasn’t the issue.
James was also adored by his home state fans. Growing up in Ohio and signing with the Cavaliers, James owned the city with his mural painted on buildings downtown.
So, popularity wasn’t the issue.
James won the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award twice, as well as the 2004 Rookie of the Year Award, the All Star Game MVP Award twice, the scoring championship once. Along the way, he played on the NBA All-Star team every year.
So, personal achievement wasn’t the issue.
What was the issue?
Why did James leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, accepting less money from the Heat and scorning fans who adored him for the past six years? His answer was simple:
“This fall I am taking my talents to South Beach and play with the Miami Heat. The major factor was the best opportunity for me to win, to win now and for the future also. Winning is the most important thing for me. I feel like this is going to be the best opportunity.”
Despite the money, the popularity, and the individual achievements, James still feels something missing. He wants to be a winner. He wants to be a champion.
Over 2,000 years ago, a Chinese general wanted to be a winner, too. Not on the basketball court, but on the battlefield. Sun-Tzu not only achieved success on the battlefield, but his philosophies and writing shaped his nation and have continued to impact us today. His book The Art of War continues to be used today by businesses and military strategists around the world. The book is one of the ten best selling books on military strategy on amazon.com.
LeBron wants to be a champion. Sun Tzu wanted to be a champion. And, as leaders all of us want to be champions. All of us want our organizations to win. All of us share the same goal of desiring success for our organization, our business, our church, our families. We all want to be winners. No one wants to play on the losing team.
So, how do we as leaders create a climate where winning is not only possible, but probable in our organization? Sun Tzu gives us a few answers in his writings on victory. Let me read to you what he has to say, “
There are five essentials for victory:
Know when to fight, and when not to fight.
Understand how to deploy large and small numbers.
Have officers and men who share a single will.
Be ready for the unexpected.
Have a capable general unhampered by his sovereign.
This afternoon, I want to dissect these five essentials for victory and apply them to your leadership in your business, your ministry, or your organization.
The first essential is right timing.
Master Sun says you have to know when to fight and when not to fight. Or as the great American philosopher Kenny Rogers said, “You got to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for counting when the dealings done.”
It’s the issue of timing. When do you move and when do you stand. When do you attack and when do you retreat. When do you launch out and when do you pull back.
Leadership is all about knowing what to do next. In fact, Bobb Biehl created one of my favorite definitions of leadership. He said, “Leaders know what to do next, why it’s important and how to bring the necessary resources to bear.”
A leader knows what the next step is, knows why that’s the right next thing to do, and how to make it happen. It’s the right decision at the right time.
Julius Caesar halted his army at the Rubicon River. By our standards is more of a creek than a river. But, Caesar was stopped by the river. Why? He knew that crossing the river in northern Italy meant crossing into another man’s territory and that meant civil war for the Roman Empire. So, he stood there and thought long and hard before he crossed. Finally, he gave the signal and he crossed the Rubicon. It’s a phrase we still use today—to cross the Rubicon means to make the decision to move forward without an option of turning back.
It’s timing and it’s an essential for victory as a leader no matter whether your organization is a church, a non-profit or a business.
Think with me for a moment.
The Wrong Decision at the Wrong Time = Disaster
Think New Coke. It was the wrong decision at the wrong time. There was never a time that that decision was going to be the right decision. The company had built its brand on nostalgia. People may have preferred the newer sugary taste of Pepsi better, but Coke was more than a soft drink…it was part the American way of life. The commercials for new Coke were booed on the jumbo screen at the Astrodome, a class action law suit was filed against the company, and within three months the Coca Cola Classic was back on the market. In fact, Peter Jennings of ABC News interrupted regular programming to make the announcement.
The Wrong Decision at the Right Time = Detour
Let’s go back to Biehl’s definition of leadership—it’s knowing what to do next. It’s not only knowing what to do next, it’s knowing when to do it. So, let’s say you pick the right time, but the wrong decision. What’s the result? It’s a detour. Maybe you it was the right time for you to take the exit, but when you took it you went north when you should have gone south—that’s a detour. You’ve got to get back to your original spot and start all over again—but with fewer resources. There’s less gas in the car, less trust in your leadership account, and less patience and enthusiasm from your team.
The Right Decision at the Wrong Time = Delay
The right decision at the wrong time causes resistance from the team and the customer base. In life as a church leader, there have been many times when I have been impatient. I have known what we needed to do and wanted to do it now. But, it wasn’t the right time. Maybe it’s the right thing to dissolve a ministry or a department and start something completely new. But, that right decision at the wrong time will meet with incredible resistance.
The Right Decision at the Right Time = Success
When leaders do the right things at the right time, success in almost inevitable. People, principles, and processes converge to make an incredible impact. And, the results not only touch the leader, but the entire organization.
On his eightieth birthday William Churchill addressed Parliament and said, “I have never accepted what many people have kindly said—namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it. It was the nation and the race dwelling around the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.”
It wasn’t luck, it was timing. He knew it was his time. He said, “There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born. That special opportunity, when he seizes it, will fulfill his mission—a mission for which he is uniquely qualified. In that moment, he finds greatness. It is his finest hour.”
The finest hour for your leadership is when you make the right decisions at the right time. You’ve got to know what time it is as a leader. The Bible talks about the sons of Issachar in 1 Chronicles 12.32. It says they “understood the time and knew what Israel should do.”
How do you know what time it is?
1.Think Earlier
2.Think Longer
3.Think Broader
The first essential for victory—right timing.
The second essential for victory is a high performance team.
Master Sun says, “Understand how to deploy large numbers and small.”
The general is only as good as his army. The leader is only as good as his staff. And, that leader has to know how to use that team—whether it’s a 4,000 member congregation or a three member think tank. The leader has to understand how to inspire, motivate and deploy the team for victory.
One is too small of a number for greatness—you’ve got to learn how to deploy the people around you to accomplish the task in front of you.
Jim Collins put it like this, “It’s not enough to have the right people on the bus, you’ve got to have the right people in the right seats on the bus.”
Growing up in Kentucky, I loved basketball as a kid and played on organized teams and in my drive way until it was too dark to see the ball any longer. Later, I coached YMCA basketball and invariably one of the biggest issues we faced as coaches was helping the players understand their role on the team.
Without fail, the short guys want to go and mix it up in the paint and the tall guys all think they can dribble like Carmelo Anthony. You get a big guy that grabs the rebound the first thing he’s supposed to do is make the outlet pass to a guard to get the transition started. But, more often than I want to remember the big guy would just take off dribbling down the court. Before he got to half court, he either lost control or had the ball stolen from him.
We all have a tendency to want to be what we are not. It’s up to the leader to deploy the team into the right spots—to know their gifts and talents and put them in a place that maximizes their gifts and minimizes their weaknesses.
The Bible says in Ephesians 2.10, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he has prepared in advance for us to do.”
Every person is shaped with gifts and talents that prepare them to make an impact. If you can get the right people into the right place—their talent can blossom. As the leader, you’ve got to make the call—who do you put where to maximize their benefit to the organization.
Right timing. High performance teams.
The third essential for victory is a united vision.
Master Sun says, “Have officers and men who share a single will.”
A recent reality show on CBS—Undercover Boss—demonstrated the gap between senior leaders and employees of various companies across the United States. In an Emmy-nominated show, a senior executive of a company works for a week incognito as an entry-level employee to find out how the company really works. What is amazing is how wide the gap is between what the boss thinks is going on in the company and what is actually happening in the field.
For an organization to achieve victory…that gap must be eliminated. As Master Sun puts it—officers and men must share a single will. A common vision, mission, and values have to permeate through the company.
So, the first thing a leader has to do is develop the vision and pound it into the group? Right? Wrong.
Here’s the truth…people buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. People don’t at first follow worthy causes. They follow worthy leaders who promote worthwhile causes. You are the message in your organization. Every message received by the people you lead is filtered through the messenger who delivers it. So, before people buy into the vision, they have to buy into you. Once they buy into you, they’ll give your vision a chance.
It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.
They’ve got to buy into you and to the vision.
When followers don’t like the leader or the vision, they’ll get another leader.
When followers don’t like the leader but like the vision, they’ll get another leader.
When followers like the leader, but not the vision, they’ll change the vision.
But, when they like both, they’ll get behind both.
As a leader, people will follow you more if they like you. A Lunch and Lead talk coming up will be the Likability Factor. Once they like you, you’ve got to embody the vision—through what you do, but also what you say.
Tree of Life….that phrase has been empowered because I attempt to live there.
Then you set the stage for the team to be united in the vision. Amos 3.3 says, ‘Do two walk together unless they agree?”
Right Timing. High Performance Team. United Vision.
The fourth essential for victory is exhaustive preparation.
Master Sun says that we should be ready for the unexpected. Often the unexpected comes because we don’t prepare. One of my favorite quotes from Pastor Tommy Barnett, lead pastor of Phoenix First Assembly is “Make no provision for failure.”
You are surprised because you took the time to prepare. You don’t make excuses. You work hard and you prepare. You don’t make excuses.
Proverbs 21.5 says, “The plans of the diligent lead to prosperity.”
Diligence. Don’t leave anything to chance. Outprepare. Outthink. Outwork your competition.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success, he describes what sets apart people who are successful. The good news is that according to his research, you don't necessarily need any special talent or skill. The not so good news is that it can take you putting in 10,000 hours of work to reach success. In his book, he describes that becoming successful is a mixture of opportunity and how much you take advantage of that opportunity. This opportunity knocks as a result of an individual's circumstance, environment, social status, even culture and religion.
The 10,000 rule was derived from a study by Anders Ericsson, who researched successful violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music. In Ericsson's study, he asked the students how much time they spent practicing and found that in every case that the violinists that performed better spent more time practicing.
"The curious thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals" - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find "grinds", people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn't have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder."
This magic number of 10,000 hours of practice showed up across the board in various studies:
"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... "
This book gives a detail account of the stories behind the success of many celebrities like Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and The Beatles. Their success turned out to be a mixture of many circumstances such as when they were born, the opportunities placed before them, and of course putting in 10,000 hours of more into their passions. Outliers also has various studies that show how your culture, how much money you have, and your date of birth can either be advantageous or disadvantageous for you.
Even though there were other factors that accounted for the success of most of the people in the study, I found that the 10,000 hour rule was still very encouraging and motivating. If you end up putting 10,000 hours into something you enjoy, then definitely have a win-win situation. Putting in 10,000 hours over 10 years may seem like a like a long time, but the important lesson to take away from this is that, most people don't set out to put in this kind of time. What happens first is that a passion for a skill is realized. Before you know it, you end up working at it simply because you love it and you want to find out all there is to know about it. For example, when Bill Gates became interested in computers, it was no way for him to even dream about the kind of success his passion for computers would bring him.
Finding your passion is the most important aspect of the 10,000 hour rule, after all time flies when you are having fun. Once you have a passion for your work, then it doesn't seem like work at all. If you have a passion for a skill or interest then I would say that you are already half way there. Your next step is to start your 10,000 hour journey toward success.
Continuing on this thought – in golf, to hit a consistent shot it takes practice, but more than that it takes great muscle memory and there is only one way to create muscle memory – repetition. It takes 10,000 movements to create muscle memory – 10,000 swings, 10,000 of the correct swing to be able to hit the same shot over and over. That’s why pro’s know when the shots are bad before they see them – they didn’t feel right. The feel came from preparation.
The final essential for victory is empowered leaders.
Master Sun says, “Have a capable general unhampered by his sovereign.”
There are two important ideas here. First, the senior leader has to empower the team to succeed. Second, the senior leader has to make sure capable people are on the team. It does no good to empower an idiot. It does even less good to stifle a genius.
Machiavelli said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
If power corrupts then powerlessness corrupts even more.
When we don’t empower the team to act, to make decisions, to respond to situations, they will corrupt the system by finding ways to short-circuit the flow chart and get done what needs to be done. Then we have two systems—the written system and the way things really get done around here.
Abraham Lincoln is widely recognized as one of America’s three greatest presidents, if not the greatest. One of his secrets was the ability to empower leaders. To do that, he had to be secure enough to share credit and brave enough to share the responsibility.
For example in June of 1863 Lincoln put the command of the Army of the Potomac in the hands of General George G. Meade. Lincoln hoped that he would do a better job than preceding generals Ambrose Burnside and Joseph Hooker. Within hours of Meade’s appointment, Lincoln sent a courier to him. The president’s message, in part, said, “
Considering the circumstances, no one ever received a more important command; and I cannot doubt that you will fully justify the confidence which the Government has reposed in you. You will not be hampered by any minute instructions from these headquarters. Your army is free to act as you may deem proper as the circumstances arise…All forces within the sphere of your operations will be held subject to your orders.”
Meade’s first challenge appeared at Gettysburg. He held the ground, but didn’t pursue. He missed the timing part of the lesson. But in the end, he was not to make full use of the power Lincoln offered. It took Ulysses S. Grant to turn the war around. Meade stopped Lee when it counted—but Grant pursued the victory because he took full advantage of the empowerment Lincoln offered.
Jesus in Matthew 28.18 empowered his followers—All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go!”
Five essentials for victory in your organization or business:
