Areas of Knowledge Managers should be Equipped

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Areas of Knowledge Manager Should Be Equipped

As mentioned under Chapter 10 of Sun Zi Art of War, in the Section “Generals Must Know the Terrain, it was mentioned that the Generals must understand know four things so that his victory will not be threatened and the way to achieve victory will be limitless.

These four areas are:

1. Knowledge of the Enemy
2. Knowledge of ourselves
3. Weather
4. Terrain

Business Application

We all know that generals are similar to managers in the company. They have to manage a team, strategise and direct the team towards the teams department. So in order to achieve success and reach the department goals, the managers must be then equipped with knowledge similar to the ones advocated by Sun Zi. Let us see how we can relate the above four areas to business domain.

1. Knowledge of the Enemy – Knowledge of the Problems
2. Knowledge of Ourselves – Knowledge of Resources Available
3. Weather & Terrain – Environment outside the Department

Knowledge of the Enemy

Managers must have full knowledge of the problem they are tackling, the problems that need to overcome in order to achieve the goals. Sometime the knowledge is easier to seek if they do not need to tackle problems related to competition. Knowledge of competitors are the most difficult to seek.

Sometimes, because an organization is large, information may not again flow to the correct place and timely. Such lack of timely and precise information may cause the manager to perceive the problem wrongly and make a costly decision or worse, a costly mistake. (Please refer to Communication Tools and Managing a Large Force Like a Small Force for the importance of Communication)

Knowledge of Ourselves

Managers must also have knowledge of themselves, meaning they should have knowledge of what are the available resources he has within his team and what other resources he needs to overcome the challenges. With such knowledge, he is able to organize his team to achieve the department goals, with the least amount of resources.

With knowledge of the problems and the team, the manager can put himself in a situation where victory will not be threatened easily as mentioned in the section. (Please see Know the Enemy-Sun Zi)

Weather & Terrain

As mentioned in Areas of Business Strategic Planning and Execution, we can always relate weather and terrain to uncontrollable aspects of environment we function in. For managers, depending on their department, they need to understand and gain knowledge of the following:

1. Policy and rules in the Company.
2. Policy and rules of the Industry.
3. Trends, culture of the Market.

Only with these knowledge, the manager can devise and strategise properly how to reach his goals. It is similar to understanding what roads need to be taken before you start driving your car from Point A to Point B. If you do not know the terrain you are driving in, you will need to change your route quite often and that will costs resources or worst, do not reach Point B at all. Of course that does not mean that once you have planned your strategies, you should stick to it. As mentioned in the Section Type of Generals to Use, the managers should also take advantage of positive changes in circumstances so as to gain better results or produce results at a lower costs.

Thus if the managers know the ‘terrain’ and ‘weather’ well, the possible routes to achieve his goals is limitless, as mentioned in the section.

Have a look at your company and see if there are facilities and tools that will make available the above areas of knowledge to your managers or even team leaders.