The Art of Manliness - The Essential Framework for Understanding The Art of War

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.400 You heard about the art of war, and it sounded pretty cool. So you picked up a copy to read.

00:00:16.240 But you found that, beyond a few of its famous maxims, a lot of this text attributed to the

00:00:20.780 ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu was hard to understand, much less incorporated into

00:00:25.780 your life. My guest offers a tripartite framework that can help you get a lot more out of the art

00:00:30.720 of war. His name is Jim Gimian, and he's an editor of one of the text translations, as well as the

00:00:35.540 co-author of The Rules of Victory, How to Transform Chaos and Conflict, Strategies from the Art of War.

00:00:41.840 Today on the show, Jim argues that the art of war is a holistic, interconnected text that's about how

00:00:46.880 to approach conflict and obstacles in a holistic, interconnected way. Underlying this approach are

00:00:51.900 three dynamics, heaven, earth, and general, which correspond to view, practice, and action.

00:00:58.960 Jim and I talk about the importance of constantly orienting and reorienting yourself to an ever-changing

00:01:03.080 world, working with the sure or energy in the landscape you're navigating, using action to

00:01:08.080 further refine your perspective, and more. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:12.300 aom.is slash art of war. All right, Jim Gimian, welcome to the show.

00:01:32.320 Hey, thanks, Brett. Thanks for inviting me. Good to talk to you.

00:01:35.640 So you co-authored a book called The Rules of Victory, How to Transform Chaos and Conflict.

00:01:39.900 And this is basically, you and your co-author have taken the things you talk about in your

00:01:44.500 consulting work, leadership consulting, about lessons from Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I'm curious,

00:01:50.420 how did you end up teaching leadership programs based on this Chinese text of war strategy?

00:01:57.660 Yeah, it's a good question. It's a long story, and I'll give away a little bit of my age here.

00:02:03.860 You know, it really started, you know, like a lot of things we discover that are helpful

00:02:08.880 and valuable in our lives. It started with an experience of being disappointed

00:02:14.080 and being disillusioned and having a feeling that, you know, things should be better than this.

00:02:19.580 And that happened to me in a number of different areas simultaneously. And it goes back to the years

00:02:23.840 I was in college. I was at Stanford in the late 60s. And, you know, it was a great small college at

00:02:30.100 that point with a great reputation. And I went full of pep and looking to become one of the great

00:02:35.180 leaders as everybody does at 17. It was possible in those days to get to know your professors very

00:02:41.520 well, which I did. They were arguably the leaders in their field. And part of getting to know them is

00:02:47.060 you get invited to their houses and meet their families and observe close in. And what became evident

00:02:52.040 really quickly is there was no transfer between the wisdom that they attained as their big heroes in

00:02:58.340 their field of expertise and the way they treated their family at home. And I just thought,

00:03:03.340 I don't think I want to wind up where this road leads. And, you know, this was also the time a

00:03:08.900 tremendous amount of disruption and disillusionment and disintegration of structures in our society in

00:03:15.000 the late 60s, anti-war, civil rights, counterculture, psychedelic era. And, you know, I was able to

00:03:24.380 witness firsthand the anti-war movement very close up, and it soon became clear that neither side

00:03:32.400 really had any kind of insight into how to overcome aggression. And, you know, as a young guy who kind

00:03:38.920 of reverted to force and aggression to solve my problems, I just, again, saw there was no real

00:03:45.020 insight. So the final, I think, part of it was, you know, this was the psychedelic era, and there were

00:03:53.600 opportunities to take classes in, you know, using hallucinogens to understand more about your mind.

00:04:00.960 And I took a couple of those classes, speaking metaphorically here, of course. And it was

00:04:07.660 tremendously eye-opening. You know, it showed that reality was not something that was fixed. And

00:04:12.740 more than that, my version of reality wasn't always the only one. So those kind of propelled me out of

00:04:19.480 the college scene and really took me into the art of war, among other things, in the early 70s. And

00:04:26.940 that started me on a long course. I found a group of friends and colleagues, other men who were studying

00:04:33.460 it. So we kind of had a men's group over a number of years. And little by little, you know, we saw that

00:04:39.760 there was a lot of profundity that was not coming through in these older translations.

00:04:45.260 So at the time, I had a good friend who was doing his PhD in Asian studies at UC Berkeley. So I said to

00:04:52.520 him, you know, one day I said, so look, man, there's a lot of stuff in here that these other translations

00:04:58.140 aren't bringing out. Let's do a translation with the men's group and you. And he looked at me without

00:05:03.620 any hesitation and he said, you're crazy. We can't do that. So I left that conversation kind 0.98

00:05:09.800 of with my tail between my legs. I went back to the men's group. And a couple of years later,

00:05:15.780 I was at a conference. I was standing in the lunch line. And this friend, this guy who's just

00:05:22.100 finished his degree in Asian studies and got a job at Bowdoin College, butts into the line. He looks at me

00:05:29.000 and he says, okay, Jim, I'm ready. So I say, well, ready for what? And he says, you know,

00:05:36.040 translate the art of war. And without skipping a beat, I looked at him and said, we can't do that.

00:05:41.740 That's crazy. Well, we did. We started and we started very simply. We took the parts of the text

00:05:48.860 that really were most meaningful for us, often the sort of maxims or slogans that everybody knows.

00:05:54.060 And we translated those. And little by little, they showed that there was a lot of profundity in

00:05:59.620 those parts that were more opaque and that we didn't really make a connection to. Well,

00:06:05.280 before too long, we had the whole thing translated. We submitted it to publishers,

00:06:09.980 signed a contract, and now, you know, sold over a million copies in 11 languages. And that is called

00:06:16.540 the art of war, the Denman translation. That was the first book, which has essays and a commentary

00:06:22.700 that we wrote on the lines. So when that came out, I got asked to teach to people who were saying,

00:06:29.880 this is great stuff, but how do I actually do it in my life and in my leadership capacity?

00:06:36.020 So I responded to those requests over five or seven years. And the rules of victory

00:06:42.260 is an attempt to summarize what I learned in responding to those people who asked the question,

00:06:49.460 how can I do this in my life? So, you know, it's been a long journey. It's never been like a

00:06:57.540 franchise or a full-time gig, but it's been constant. It's been continuous and kind of spread by

00:07:03.880 natural connections. People like you who, you know, somehow connected to the book, saw some insights

00:07:09.860 there that they thought would be helpful for them and had a genuine connection to it. And

00:07:14.980 that led me to, you know, more work. Now that I'm kind of scaling down my work in the nonprofit sector,

00:07:23.400 I'm able to engage more with the teaching and the coaching around the art of war. And it

00:07:28.180 now leads me to this conversation with you.

00:07:32.180 So the art of war, I think it's a book that really, I think young men, I remember in high school,

00:07:37.260 I picked up a copy from Barnes and Noble thinking that would provide some sort of insight on how to

00:07:42.720 be effective and conquer the world. And as you said, I think as a young man, I was really drawn

00:07:48.140 to those maxims or slogans. What I hope this conversation does is it susses out and really

00:07:53.460 fleshes out that bigger view, the profundity that you were talking about. Before we do,

00:07:59.020 let's talk about the art of war itself, the history of it. It was authored, the author you often see

00:08:04.960 there is this guy named Sun Tzu. Who was Sun Tzu? Was it a real person? More than one person? It's kind

00:08:10.880 of like asking who was Homer, who wrote the Odyssey. Yeah. Yeah. Well, by way of background,

00:08:19.020 the art of war comes to us from what's called the Warring States period of China, roughly speaking,

00:08:25.360 500 to 200 BC. At the start of this period, what we know as China on the mainland was maybe 75 or more

00:08:34.880 small kingdoms and fiefdoms, spending a lot of time either repelling invasions from the north mostly or

00:08:41.460 trying to take over each other. So there was a lot of ongoing battles between them. And over some time,

00:08:48.320 it sort of settled into about 15 larger kingdoms. And at the start of this time, there were no standing

00:08:57.500 armies. If a king wanted to declare war, he challenged the opposing king to a kind of almost

00:09:04.740 a dance in decked out chariots, and someone would be declared the winner. And that's how they'd take 0.84

00:09:09.640 over the adjoining kingdom. But little by little, this need to develop standing armies, when the king

00:09:17.580 wanted to go to war, the king would conscript farm workers. And these were largely untrained,

00:09:25.140 ignorant young men, and the king would hire a mercenary general. And the role of this mercenary general 0.98

00:09:31.940 was by mercenary, meaning he might work for one kingdom, one campaign, and another kingdom, the next. 0.97

00:09:39.040 But what this mercenary king had to do was to take this band of ignorant farm boys and train them as 0.98

00:09:44.940 an army. And largely, what we come to know as the art of war now is the means by which the mercenary 0.95

00:09:53.220 general did that. The Sun Tzu, we refer to the text as the Sun Tzu, because it is a body of work that

00:10:02.180 probably emerged over several generations during this period. Scholars themselves are mixed on the

00:10:09.840 issue of was there a real historical character? Some say yes, some say maybe, some say no. I don't know.

00:10:17.160 I don't know the answer to that. But I can tell you from our point of view, this represents a kind of a

00:10:23.020 lineage, a conversation that went on over that period. And from our point of view, has continued to this

00:10:29.100 day. Because if you read the literature, you will see not just the text itself, these 13 scant chapters

00:10:35.620 that are left, but oodles of commentaries by military leaders across the centuries, who are joining in the

00:10:42.880 conversation. So when we do a workshop, most often in a corporate setting, we actually describe this as

00:10:51.760 continuing that conversation. We're grappling with these same issues of how does one deal more

00:10:58.200 effectively with conflict that's all around us in human existence? How can we do that better? What

00:11:05.280 means, what views, what methods lead to a more successful engagement with conflict?

00:11:12.260 So it was written, kind of came about during the warring states period. And because of that, that

00:11:17.700 shapes the strategies or the insights that you find in the art of war. So it's a period where there's

00:11:24.040 lots of different kingdoms and they're constantly jockeying for position. One guy could be in charge for a

00:11:29.280 little bit than another guy. So it's very uncertain. Conflict was always happening. And that shapes what

00:11:35.840 we get in the art of war.

00:11:38.240 And what does that remind you of? Is that a description of anything else in modern day?

00:11:42.480 Yeah, today. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, someone who owns it, who's a business owner, you're competing,

00:11:46.660 it's constantly shifting. Guys who were on top, you know, five years ago can be out of business today.

00:11:52.500 Exactly. Exactly. And that's one of the reasons why the lessons and the methodologies that were honed

00:12:00.120 over hundreds of years in that setting in China are so applicable and valuable because it emerged in

00:12:07.180 a time very similar to ours. And so the view, the elements that created successful and skillful

00:12:14.500 techniques lead to the same now, the ability to respond to uncertainty, to be able to shift quickly,

00:12:20.720 to respond to the changes. And I think one element that we emphasize is that during that time in

00:12:28.760 China, the worldview was that the world was not separate entities, but it was one interconnected,

00:12:36.300 interdependent, constantly changing whole thing. And that's another way in which our view has shifted

00:12:43.480 over the last 40 or 50 years. We used to see the world as individual things that we could act upon.

00:12:50.720 Well, as things got more complex, as the whole uncertainty and the emergence of complexity as

00:12:57.340 a kind of foremost way of looking at the world took over our view, it didn't work anymore. People had

00:13:04.340 to throw out their strategic plans because they became useless within, you know, hours of being

00:13:09.860 completed because everything had changed already. So the kinds of trainings of how to respond that come out

00:13:19.240 of that time of seeing the world interconnected. Now it's a little easier for us to see the

00:13:25.860 interconnection, social media, the internet, the weather patterns that are changing constantly, the way in

00:13:33.600 which, you know, look at the supply chain issues in terms of interconnectivity. So we're able more genuinely to

00:13:40.900 adopt a view that leads to skillful actions. It starts with that interconnected view.

00:13:46.620 And we'll talk more about that because that's a big important point from The Art of War that you flesh

00:13:51.680 out. But before we do, before we kind of flesh out this profundity you want people to take away when they

00:13:56.940 read your book, when you talk to people about The Art of War, because I think a lot of people have maybe

00:14:02.420 read quips of it, what do you think a lot of people get wrong or miss when they read The Art of War?

00:14:08.420 Well, you know, first of all, I think we have to admit it's a tough read. It can often be opaque and

00:14:16.420 dense and difficult to understand it. It doesn't give up its treasures easily. So and then, you know,

00:14:23.040 a lot of people just dismiss it out of hand because it's all about war and warlike and people want to

00:14:28.220 think they can deal with conflict in a whole different way. But I think in my view over the years,

00:14:35.800 you know, the main thing is that, as I just said, you know, the skillful actions actually arise from

00:14:44.380 seeing the world as an interconnected whole. And the part that most people miss is that

00:14:50.080 we as leaders are an integrated part of that interconnected whole. So the mistake people make

00:14:59.640 is they think they can extract a few of the lessons and then use that to sort of get over on others.

00:15:05.940 They're apart from that interconnected whole. They can act upon others. They can, you know, conquer

00:15:12.360 and one-up others using these little tricks. And, you know, the magic of those skills, which appear as

00:15:20.820 tricks to people, comes from that view of interconnectedness. And if you don't have that,

00:15:26.420 then there's a power in things like employing sure, this great sort of central view of

00:15:33.520 working with the energy that's in systems in the world. It's just not, it's just not possible.

00:15:38.280 It's like any kind of discipline where you see somebody dip in, you know, quickly learn some of

00:15:45.600 the language and then start teaching it. You kind of have a feeling that they've never genuinely

00:15:51.200 learned the deeper discipline. They've never really integrated the deeper lessons and therefore the

00:15:57.520 sort of maxims and the tricks don't have the profundity. You can kind of feel it.

00:16:04.900 So I think you argued to really understand the art of war, you have to understand this framework.

00:16:10.140 It's a tripart framework of heaven, earth, general. So let's talk about heaven first.

00:16:16.300 What does heaven mean in the art of war?

00:16:21.760 Well, I think, you know, the first thing to take note of is the heaven, earth, and general

00:16:28.000 framework appears in a lot of places in Chinese philosophy and literature. And it appears in the

00:16:35.020 very first chapter of the art of war as the middle of what the first chapter calls the five.

00:16:42.640 The first chapter is about kind of an overview and how to take assessments, how to actually look at a

00:16:50.100 situation and see, well, do you stand a chance of dealing with conflict in a victorious way?

00:16:59.000 What are the obstacles? What can you learn? So the five starts with the Tao, which is that sense of

00:17:07.160 how things really are, how things really are, the rules, the law, when you apply that to a situation,

00:17:12.740 what the Tao means is, is there coherence between the leader and the army or the leader and the team,

00:17:21.380 if it's a corporate setting? Is there a common culture, context, language, and view that gives

00:17:27.700 cohesion and strength? Then it goes into number two is heaven. Number three is earth. Number four is the

00:17:37.860 general. And then number five of the five is what's called methods. And that's the way a general

00:17:43.660 actually organizes and orders and develops an army. So in the middle, you have these three.

00:17:49.480 Heaven. Now, first, let's talk about how a general regards these three. For a general, heaven is the

00:17:59.120 weather. Because if you're going to move an army, you have to know what conditions will you be facing

00:18:05.360 that are weather related. Earth in a military setting is terrain. So what's the ground of the

00:18:15.200 situation? What ground am I moving the army through? What will that require? And the general,

00:18:20.200 the general is literally the person who's got to make the decisions joining the realities of the

00:18:28.180 weather and the terrain. So really, if you take a step back and apply this principle to any leadership

00:18:36.180 setting, leaders basically faced with the same situation. Heaven can be, you know, aspirations,

00:18:43.320 the vision, what you have to accomplish, the future that you're trying to bring about.

00:18:50.400 Earth is the conditions of the situation, the realities of whatever the setting is.

00:18:57.660 You know, if you're talking about taking a team through a successful campaign to launch a new

00:19:03.200 product, what's the ground of that? What's the competition? What's your capability to produce and

00:19:09.340 market? What's your capability to actually, you know, successfully launch? And then as the leader,

00:19:15.420 you've got to assess how you have a goal, how you inevitably have obstacles or resistance,

00:19:24.140 this notion of, you know, the earth, and then how do you move forward? So, you know, I think it's

00:19:31.740 easiest to understand something like heaven or earth or general in the context of how it works as a system

00:19:36.860 all together. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:19:44.620 And now back to the show. And another way of looking at this framework is that heaven is view,

00:19:50.580 earth is practice, and general is action. And it's interesting, this view part, right? So heaven,

00:19:56.920 view, how we see the world. It reminded me of another military strategist, John Boyd, who developed

00:20:03.380 the OODA loop. And the view part is the Orient, right? And he said that Orient is part of this

00:20:08.440 OODA loop thing of observe, Orient, decide, act. Orient is how you see the world. It's all these

00:20:13.980 mental models and your culture could contribute to it and the goals that you had going into a

00:20:18.960 decision. And the Orient phase, that drove how you would act or make decisions. And then it was a

00:20:25.440 cycle. It would just cycle through. You'd make an action, you would see what happened with your action,

00:20:30.240 and then you'd put that back into the Orient phase and then decide again and act and over and over

00:20:34.700 again. And Sun Tzu was basically saying the same thing thousands of years ago.

00:20:39.540 That's right. And of course, you know, if you're a student of John Boyd in the OODA loop, you know

00:20:43.560 that he was a great student of the art of war and integrated a lot of that into his development of

00:20:49.840 fighter pilot training. I mean, he's regarded as the founder of many of the basics of jet fighting,

00:20:57.300 strategy, and action. And what you described is exactly what he taught.

00:21:03.200 And he also talked about this idea, you have to see things holistically. Because like the stuff

00:21:07.800 that he talked about was used later on in counterinsurgencies, right? And he said, in order

00:21:11.980 to be an effective counterinsurgent, you have to, you can't just think about the battles. You also have

00:21:16.600 to think about, well, if we win this battle, that might have some negative consequences. And so we have

00:21:22.340 to do it in a certain way and we have to maybe win the hearts and minds of the people. That's another

00:21:26.280 way you could go about it. And so I think this is a great segue to talk about Sun Tzu's idea

00:21:31.020 of taking the whole. So we've been talking about that. When you're viewing the world,

00:21:35.200 you want to see the world in a connected whole. But let's flesh out, where else do you see this

00:21:39.700 idea of taking the whole in the art of war? 0.96

00:21:43.180 Well, you know, I think the best, simplest way to understand that principle is if you look back at

00:21:49.480 that mercenary general's challenge, his king had conscripted soldiers from off the farms.

00:21:57.920 And so, in fact, the soldiers were farmers. And at a certain point in a world that was interconnected,

00:22:06.220 if you conquer the neighboring land by killing all the soldiers, there'll be no one left to produce food

00:22:13.540 when you take over that territory. So there is a lesson about the interconnectedness.

00:22:22.560 We have to see all the implications of how we respond to conflict because that employee in the

00:22:34.040 company you take over is somebody you're going to rely on to produce the products of value of the

00:22:41.660 company that you just took over. We have so many examples from people in the workshops that we do

00:22:49.680 where they have actually shown, we have a slide that shows farmer equals soldier with the circle

00:22:57.100 in the line through it saying, kill a soldier, kill a farmer, who've used that single slide to go to

00:23:02.560 two of their reports, say one in production and one in accounting, who are squabbling and fighting 0.98

00:23:08.260 about when the report's going to happen and what's the format, and the leader showing them that

00:23:14.800 they need each other to be successful. So dealing with conflict has to include all the repercussions

00:23:22.760 in order to have a meaningful, successful outcome. And that's the taking hold, which, you know, goes

00:23:32.680 right back to the most iconic lines in the art of war about, you know, the 100 victories and 100 battles

00:23:45.040 isn't the most skillful. Subduing the other's military without battle is the most skillful. And

00:23:51.160 that's, you know, the kind of seed syllable of the whole notion of taking hold.

00:23:55.620 So what is, you know, what does he, people love quoting that line, but I think it gets

00:24:00.420 misunderstood because I think it means like when people read that as well, you got to figure out

00:24:04.980 a way with duplicity and some intrigue to beat the guy without actually fighting. But it sounds like

00:24:12.340 there's something more going on there, the way you describe it in the book.

00:24:17.300 Yeah, I think the most common way for us to understand it nowadays is as things have gotten to be

00:24:24.780 more complex. We have to look at solutions as being more systemic actions. So for example,

00:24:34.380 you have a team of 10 to 15, and there's maybe a very problematic, challenging, difficult employee in

00:24:46.220 that team. And the conventional way is to go at that challenge directly. Whereas in terms of

00:24:55.340 dealing with a complex system, every one of the people has relationships with each other.

00:25:01.180 So dealing with the shaping that team, putting certain sort of bumpers and goals, mutual goals in

00:25:12.620 line, requires each one of those people to conform and work as part of the system. And that creates,

00:25:19.980 you know, as we've seen so many times, a situation where that difficult or problematic

00:25:25.580 person sees that that's not the place for them. The team is going in a certain direction,

00:25:33.900 the company is going in a certain direction, and they would be better off somewhere else,

00:25:37.660 they decide to seek another place could be another place within the company, another department,

00:25:43.180 it could be another company altogether. But it's an example that comes right out of the

00:25:49.340 employing sure that is how to form and shape the ground of a situation to address a conflict or a

00:25:57.580 difficulty. It doesn't really require subterfuge. But it's kind of an indirect warfare, something that

00:26:04.860 the art of war is very well known for indirect warfare. But it's just another way of saying

00:26:10.140 dealing with the situation systemically. So I think that the issue of subterfuge is

00:26:16.860 really a misconception, it does derive from the way the art of war talks about deception. But, you know,

00:26:27.420 deception is a whole range of behaviors. And the extreme range that people often default to,

00:26:35.580 the kind that may be required in dealing with an enemy that means you lethal harm, is really not the

00:26:42.140 situation most of us find ourselves in in life. So there are a lot of more plastic ways of dealing

00:26:49.900 with systemic change that don't require those being, you know, tricky or deceptive in a way that's

00:26:57.420 causing the question one's moralistic behavior. I think that's an exaggeration and unnecessary.

00:27:03.180 Yeah, I think you're right. I think it can mean something not as conniving as people would think.

00:27:08.140 I think people use it all the time without even knowing. So I think, I think the big takeaway

00:27:11.980 from the view is, so the view is just how you see the world. And I think important thing to

00:27:15.820 understand is for Sun Tzu, you had to take the whole, you had to see the big picture and understand

00:27:20.140 that you are part of that picture. So the decisions you make, you act on the world, but the world is

00:27:25.180 going to act back on you. And the world is going to change because of your decisions. And as a

00:27:30.220 consequence of that, you have to update your view. So there's no, you really can't have a,

00:27:34.540 a static worldview. You can have guiding principles that can shape that big view,

00:27:40.380 but you have to have some flexibility on, you know, just updating your mental models when you

00:27:45.900 see the world change. Well said.

00:27:48.380 I think we, basically what we did is we, we went to earth next, right? We kind of connected

00:27:52.860 heaven to earth, right? So heaven is view and earth is the terrain, the situation,

00:27:59.820 kind of the specifics, right? What we find ourselves. And that will dictate what we do

00:28:04.940 in order to bring about. What your action is.

00:28:07.500 Yeah. Bring about heaven, basically. Yeah. And an important part of this earth component,

00:28:13.500 you dig in deep in the book, is this idea of sure. Now it's pronounced, it's spelled S-H-I-H,

00:28:18.780 I believe. It is, it is. That's the Chinese, the transliteration in English, but it is pronounced

00:28:25.100 sure. Sure. So this is a really important concept because you really, you hammer this

00:28:29.660 home in the book. So what is sure and why is it important to understand what sure is?

00:28:37.500 Well, it's a, it's a natural outcome of seeing the world as an interconnected whole,

00:28:42.140 that parts move other parts. You know, it's a wonderfully rich and helpful idea. And it's so rich,

00:28:48.620 it's why we didn't translate it in, in our, in our book. You know, it's probably, if you looked at the

00:28:55.900 various translations of the art of war, there are 20 different words used when sure appears words like

00:29:03.100 energy or configuration or advantage or momentum, things that are familiar to us. But we just felt

00:29:11.340 that to convey to the reader, the richness of this concept, we would keep and retain its,

00:29:16.380 it's Chinese and carry all those meanings forward. But fundamentally, sure is talking about how any

00:29:24.180 system has energy within it and a pattern of how that energy moves and that energy can form a

00:29:32.060 particular configuration of forces that affects effective power. So that's one way in which sure

00:29:39.840 describes a phenomenal world. And the text has wonderful images from the natural world that it

00:29:46.180 uses things like how a meandering stream in the high mountain plains then turns into a tumultuous

00:29:55.460 rushing river with such force that it can toss rocks about. That's one of the lines right out of the

00:30:01.700 text. It tosses rocks about. And then that same water becomes a mass behind a dam, which is another way

00:30:10.020 that power is accumulated in a certain configuration and can be released and focused and used for the leader.

00:30:19.300 So, so the examples of this for us, in addition to the physical world are, you know, things like,

00:30:29.300 you know, football is a perfect example of trying to discern the weak spot on the opposition and amass

00:30:38.580 the powers in the offense's configuration to strike that open and weak spot. You know, we have broad concepts,

00:30:49.140 like leverage or the tipping point popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, how alignment of forces within

00:30:58.340 a situation make quick action possible that wasn't before. One of our kind of thought partners in this

00:31:07.060 is a politician on the national scale. And before finding the art of war, he used to talk about,

00:31:15.060 is the situation ripe to take a particular action? Are the forces aligned? And now he talks to his staff

00:31:23.860 in the language of the art of war. They talk about the sure and looking at the configuration, depending

00:31:30.980 on, you know, for example, at one point, not that long ago, maybe a little over a year, it was about

00:31:35.460 when to start bringing the attack message about China into the national dialogue.

00:31:46.820 Now, you know, there's been a longstanding symbiotic relationship and close relationship,

00:31:53.860 whether we've admitted it or not, in terms of our iPhones made in China, just the simplest example.

00:32:00.820 But at a certain point, it became political advantage, measured in how many dollars it

00:32:06.580 would raise in fundraising to start bashing the Chinese. But the calculation for the politicians

00:32:11.860 was, if they came out too soon, and it wasn't the right timing, they wouldn't get the donations

00:32:20.100 back from that line. So they had to kind of calculate when was the right moment.

00:32:26.020 Now, that's one possible way of sort of seeing about reading the situation, the alignment of

00:32:33.940 the power in that situation. And as the text talks about in terms of employing sure,

00:32:40.340 the good leader waits for the moment where the action is like rolling around rock down a steep hill.

00:32:49.780 Doesn't take much effort because that's what that rock wants to do, pull down by gravity.

00:32:54.660 So sure, it's hard to translate, but it's the juice, you know, it's the mojo. When I was

00:33:00.580 reading the book and I saw sure, I was thinking momentum, you know, it's the momentum that shows

00:33:05.380 up in the terrain, in the earth, you know, in the circumstances you find yourself in. And you

00:33:10.740 really can't control it. But a good leader, you know, he can he can nudge it, he can recognize it and

00:33:18.500 be ready to take advantage of it when it does appear. So we've talked about heaven and earth,

00:33:23.540 or view and practice. Let's talk about action. And you say that before you take action or, you know,

00:33:30.980 skilled action, it's important to engage in what you called knowing, which is a direct ongoing

00:33:38.420 relationship in connection with the elements of your life. And we can know by using our senses and

00:33:45.140 picking up on patterns. But there are challenges and limitations to knowing. And I think everyone,

00:33:50.740 you know, everyone's heard about cognitive biases and how they can hinder our view. And if our view

00:33:55.940 is clouded, then we can't take right action. What the art of war says is that victory is created long

00:34:02.420 before the battle arises. So before we take skillful action, we have to try to get our thinking, you know,

00:34:09.060 our view as clear as possible. But then I think too, you know, action is also the way to figure out

00:34:15.780 if your view is correct or not, right? It's like, it's feedback.

00:34:20.260 That's right. It's a feedback loop. Just like Boyd talked about too.

00:34:24.300 Yeah. So you take action to see if it's right, and it might be right, it might be wrong. And then you

00:34:29.200 just take that feedback, and then you put it back into your view. You take a look at the terrain,

00:34:34.420 the practices that you're using, and then modify, and then you try action again. And that was a good

00:34:39.400 point you made through the way you learn about action, a really effective way to learn about action

00:34:43.300 is looking at the stories of other individuals, leaders who took action. So you can see what

00:34:50.260 worked and what didn't work for them. So that's one of the reasons I love reading biographies.

00:34:53.720 It's a way to see action in action.

00:34:58.400 Yeah, no, I think that's really great. I think, you know, there's nothing,

00:35:02.160 nothing more powerful, and we've learned this, than the story and narrative to move people.

00:35:08.520 You know, oftentimes, we're asked for examples about parts of what we're right about in the

00:35:16.720 rules of victory. And, you know, when you give an example, if it's not a story, it winds up being

00:35:23.760 a sort of one-directional, didactic, almost solid lesson that somebody either has to repeat or

00:35:31.040 they'll fail. And if you tell a story, a person can see themselves in that. And they can see the

00:35:39.240 possible skillful action that may arise for them in a similar situation. You know, one of the great

00:35:46.180 lines people will pick up on in the art of war is that victories cannot be transmitted in advance.

00:35:53.800 So you can't tell somebody exactly what the best action in their story is going to be. But a story

00:36:01.880 shared is an example that can widen the possible options for another person. So it's about helping

00:36:10.220 somebody discover insight, rather than giving them a prescribed set of rules that they have to follow.

00:36:16.200 So what's one thing you think listeners can start doing today to better understand the art of war

00:36:21.320 and start implementing this view, practice, action mindset in their lives?

00:36:27.160 You know, it's interesting you put it that way. When we do the workshops, usually they're two-day

00:36:32.500 workshops we do in corporate settings. One of the first things we say is, you know, you're going to

00:36:37.580 hear a lot of new terminology and ideas. Don't try to swallow it all. Just look for one thing,

00:36:45.880 just one thing that speaks to you, that makes you go, hmm, that makes sense to me and I can see how it

00:36:55.300 could have a positive benefit in my life. And that one thing, in fact, in terms of the way the art of

00:37:02.800 war is structured, gives you access to the whole thing. I mean, we describe the text as holistic and

00:37:11.340 fractal, that it's so integrated, it's so repetitive, that any part of it that speaks to you

00:37:19.900 gives you a real genuine entryway to all of the rest of it. So, you know, that's what we

00:37:28.600 encourage people to do. It can be one of the maxims that you described. You know, we describe

00:37:34.360 them as slogans because they're simple sentences that can trigger deep meaning and connection.

00:37:42.420 You know, it could be something like soldier farmer that triggers the ability to take whole

00:37:48.980 when you're confronted with a challenging situation rather than reverting to force,

00:37:55.280 you know, to see how your solution can be inclusive of others' aspiration.

00:38:00.320 So, I think the other thing, you know, following along our discussion of how challenges and failed

00:38:14.100 actions lead to more learning, I think one way of starting off with making the art of war

00:38:23.120 more a genuine part of your life is, you know, whenever that moment arises for you, it could

00:38:29.780 be an obstacle, a conflict, a seeming intractable situation. Be curious about your view. How are

00:38:37.840 you seeing the situation? What limitations is your view putting on the situation? Just kind of almost

00:38:44.520 a contemplative curiosity. And as long as that's done in a way that you have some kind of openness to

00:38:51.960 the interconnectedness of the world around you, some kind of basic, you know, ongoing curiosity,

00:38:57.660 and I think, you know, a sense of making friends with yourself, learning how you, you know, your

00:39:03.840 emotions and your mind work, whatever means that is for you, then it's possible to, you know, to make

00:39:09.600 a genuine connection, to start being part of the dialogue, as I talked about earlier, to start

00:39:16.100 entering into this sort of lineage of people who are looking to find a different way of dealing with

00:39:23.180 conflict, a different way of dealing with obstacles as a leader. Well, Jim, this has been a great

00:39:28.860 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work? Well, there are two

00:39:34.340 books. In fact, there's the Art of War, the Denma Translation, and that, as I said, has a couple of

00:39:41.540 background essays and some commentary. We do our own line-by-line commentary, you know, as I said

00:39:47.640 earlier, a lot of the literature has commentary by generals throughout history, and rather than

00:39:56.660 reproduce those, as most other translations, we just thought we'd add our perspective to what

00:40:02.840 these lines in the text could mean for us in our lives in modern day. Then, of course, there's Rules

00:40:10.040 of Victory, the book, and the Rules of Victory website, which presents both the way we approach

00:40:17.920 the teaching of workshops and also the coaching that I do. And there's another resource out there

00:40:24.200 that's not ours, but I would recommend for someone. Professor Andrew Wilson at the Naval War College

00:40:31.580 has a relatively short, I think it's called Great Courses Available Through Audible, and he does a

00:40:38.780 wonderful job of presenting what the art of war is historically. He doesn't go where we go in terms

00:40:48.500 of how can you actually do this in your life, but that's not, you know, that's not his job, but it's

00:40:53.400 a wonderful articulation of the meaning and the history and very, very kind of user-friendly.

00:41:02.040 So, that's a resource that we recommend.

00:41:04.760 We had Andrew on the podcast a while back.

00:41:07.180 Oh, you're kidding.

00:41:07.960 Yeah, it's episode 664, Masters of the Art of War.

00:41:11.880 Oh, that's great. So, you had this conversation before.

00:41:15.740 A bit of it. We talked about, you know, even Klaus Witz, we talked about the Peloponnesian

00:41:19.340 War.

00:41:19.900 Oh, that's terrific.

00:41:22.160 Yeah. Well, Jim Gimian, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:41:25.280 A pleasure for me. All the best.

00:41:27.660 My guest today is Jim Gimian. He's the co-author of the book, The Rules of Victory. It's

00:41:30.840 available on Amazon.com. You can find more information about the book at the website,

00:41:34.100 rulesofvictory.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash artofwar, where we find

00:41:39.160 links to resources, and we delve deeper into this topic.

00:41:41.320 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Every week, Kate and I work hard

00:41:53.540 to distill interesting and actual insights from the authors and leaders in a variety

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00:42:26.020 support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to not listen to the AOM Podcast, but

00:42:30.140 put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - March 06, 2023

The Essential Framework for Understanding The Art of War

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