Sun Tzu
Win first, then fight
The work happens before the clash
Art of War, Form
Everyone quotes it as bravado. Read slowly it says the opposite: by the time you are fighting, it is mostly decided.
What actually happened?
The line is four characters longer in Chinese than in any translation, and it is built as a pair: the victorious army wins first and seeks battle afterwards, the defeated army fights first and looks for the win afterwards. It is not advice about how to fight. It is a claim about when the outcome is set. The book spends its early chapters on measurement — ground, numbers, supply, weather, the character of the commander — because that is where the decision actually happens.
Preparation is not the same as planning
A plan is a description of what you intend to do. Preparation is changing the conditions until the intended thing becomes easy. The first can be done at a desk in an afternoon; the second takes months and shows up as very little visible activity.
The negotiation that went well was decided in the six weeks of getting a second supplier to the point of being usable.
If it needs courage, something upstream went wrong
Reaching for nerve is usually the sign that the conditions were not set. Sometimes there is no choice. But treating courage as the plan converts an upstream failure into a personal one, and hides the part that could have been fixed.
He had to wing the board meeting because the numbers had not been reconciled the week before, and afterwards told himself he was bad under pressure.
Not starting is a move
If the conditions are not there, the strongest available action is to not begin yet. This is the hardest part to practise, because waiting looks identical to doing nothing, and only one of them has a reason.
They held the launch a quarter and shipped into a market that had already heard of them, instead of into silence.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: something is coming that you are bracing for.
Ask first: what would have to already be true for this to go well? Write the list, and see how much of it is still available to change.
Where it goes wrong: reading it as never act until certain — the book is about setting conditions, not about waiting; and the conditions include a deadline.
Lines to keep
If it takes nerve, look at what was left undone upstream.
Same situation, other people are asking
If this is wrong, is there a way back?It starts on Monday and I'm bracing myself. Is that the problem?I think I know them well enough. Do I know my own side?There is no undo on this one. How long should I stand at the edge?A decision I can't undo · all 11 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.