Generals and Nation

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Generals and Nation

In the section "Strength of Nation Depends on Generals" of Chapter 3 from Sun Zi Art of War, we have seen the importance of the generals of the nation, the stronger and more capable they are the stronger the nation. This sentence reinforces the saying of Sun Zi from Chapter 2 under section "Importance of a Good General Part (I)", that the generals hold the fate of the nation and its people.

Business Application

So did you staff your management with capable 'generals'? As Sun Zi mentioned above, your company will only be as strong as the weakest management staff in you company. This is because the weakest management staff would be restricting how far your company moves.

There are two essential skill or knowledge that a manager should have in order for the department he is managing to be functional in a company. First is the 'people' skill and secondly is the knowledge of the industry that the company is in.

'People' Skill

Let’s look at 'people' skill first. The manager must definitely have the ‘people’ skill because he will be leading a team of people. He must be able to inspire and motivate his team, build trust and confidence with his team or else all instructions that are passed down by him would not be executed at all.

He needs to maintain the cohesiveness of his team so that the team members can create synergy together to produce far greater results. By making the environment that his team works in conducive, he can reduce staff turnover as well and there are a lot of benefits to lower staff turnover as seen in my other article "Securing Loyalty Before Punishment"

And as many of us know, a healthy dose of conflict is good during any discussion but the managers ability to manage conflict will greatly come from his 'people' skill as well. If any of the conflicts was allowed to go out of proportion, chances are his team dynamics may be severely affected.

As mentioned in the article "Five Essential Characteristics of General" four out of five characteristics are related to 'people' skill, which goes to show its importance.

Industrial Knowledge

Manager of each team should have industrial knowledge. This is critical or he would not be able to steer the team in the correct direction that is aligned with the company’s direction. Now you may ask, "What about administrative departments or human resource departments? Do they need to be led by managers that have industrial knowledge?" Of course, they need to have. Remember one of the factors that Sun Zi mentioned that is critical to strategic planning and execution? It is system or processes (Please refer to "Areas of Business Strategic Planning and Execution"). If any of the company's processes does not keep up with the change, or worst, requirements of the industry or market the company is serving, it can be disastrous.

So as mentioned by Sun Zi, your 'generals' are very important to the company. Make sure you put the best person in and most importantly at least, have the industrial knowledge and the 'people' skill.