LEADERSHIP Strategies to WIN the Game of Life

Art of War Discussion

Michael: [00:00:00] Anyway, she went to a play one night and in the intermission somebody asked her opinion of the play. She said, there’s less to this than meets the eye. Not with soon. See, there isn’t the guy’s absolutely a consummate master of his discipline.

Rob: It was in Wall Street. Do you remember the film?

Michael Douglas? 

Michael: Yeah. 

Rob: Yeah. He quoted from it and I read it then. It had a great impact on me. I think the biggest lesson was you have to live up to your word. So if you say you’re gonna punish, like I always with my kids.

If you say that this is the consequence, that has to be the consequence whether you want do it or you don’t want to do it. Yeah. I have the 

Sarah: same parenting. 

Sometimes you regret it. Oh my God, why did I say, yeah, it’s hard to do because why did it say we’re not gonna the zoo, I wanna fucking go to the zoo.

Rob: Yeah. You make these consequence and you have to live up to it. 

The story that really struck me, and it wasn’t in the edition I’ve just read. 

But in the first one I read, he talks about. Sun Tsu, when he was trying to prove himself king said, okay if you can lead a group, you can lead my concubines. 

Michael: Oh. 

Rob: So he said, okay, I will lead your concubine.

He [00:01:00] splits them into smaller groups. He takes the king’s two most favored concubines. And he said you are in charge. You are captain of this. You’re captain of this. He said, now when I say you turn like this. And they all turned and they were laughing and thinking it was funny.

When I say left, you turn left like this, and when you march like this. And then he says, okay, turn left. And they’ll just start giggling and he is okay. First time, I haven’t been clear. I will repeat the commands, turn left and they all start giggling. So he took the two captains, and decapitated them.

And then the king’s going no. Once you give the command, you tell me I’m in command. The king can’t interfere in the martial arts. And then he said, turn left, everyone turn left, everyone turn right.

It’s the brutality of it. Oh yeah. But that’s how you marshal. I think like with Machiavelli and things like that, I think they’re a product of their time and their product of their circumstances. And we talk now a lot about empathy and understanding, but they also talked about that.

I really liked where he talks about, you have to be understanding, you have to understand them. But at the same time, there, there’s a level of standard [00:02:00] that you have to live up to. And if you don’t live up to that, then there has to be a consequence.

Sarah: There’s actually a kind of kindness in having those firm boundaries. We talked about children a second before, but, when children don’t know what they need to do, it’s actually quite unkind. They don’t have a wall that they can push up against. They don’t know how to actually please you or how to be a good child either.

Even though I’m queen of empathy as you know, if you know my post I’m all about inclusion. I can be a hard-ass leader. But I’m kind, but if I say something and you don’t follow through, then I can’t rely on you. And without reliability, I can’t trust and without trust, there is no let’s say autonomy.

I can’t give it to you. To be empathic and to feel people let’s say. It’s not that you have to command with power to influence. It is definitely part of having empathy and all of that, but you also need to be a person of integrity.

If I don’t have integrity and I don’t follow through with what I’m [00:03:00] going to say, then I’m also a leader that you can’t feel a safe with. It is just like a parent. She can’t feel safe with that parent. So there’s, I think people mix that up. They think empathy means no consequence or no boundaries.

Michael: But surely empathy is empathy. Unless you have empathy with your enemy, and I think Sun Tsu would agree you’re not going anywhere. You need to have the same feeling. Yeah. Empathy is not sympathy. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Michael: Sympathy includes empathy. Empathy may or may not have anything to do with sympathy unless you’re empathic towards your enemy, you lost.

Sarah: It can go into a crazy topic though of empathy because you’re a psychologist, you’re the queen. There’s 13 was a psych. There’s 13 types of empathy, and actually sympathy is only 13. It’s a subtype of empathy. So I was like, but yeah, 

Tony: ability to put yourself shoes is foundation of empathy.

I would, regardless of how many types of empathy they are, that ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is the essence of it, I would say in this context. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Rob: Question to is to what extent do you feel it’s still valid? What would be your takeaways [00:04:00] that would be relate in the modern environment?

Michael: I think it’s almost completely valid. 

Is it a bit where he says, peace proposals unaccompanied by a sworn covenant indicate a plot? That’s pretty much exactly why the kickoff happened in the Oval Office, because Trump was saying, I’ll give you peace in Ukraine with Putin and Zelensky saying, yeah, we can sign a peace deal, but Putin’s broken the last 25, so what’s going on?

What’s going on here? And then it all kicked off. So I think that was completely pertinent to what happened then. 

I think all the other things he said that most of the things he said, don’t fight uphill. General Custer, the little Bighorn. He fought uphill, didn’t work. 

He said don’t fight after a long journey. Harold at the Battle of Hastings. 

He said, don’t let your enemy know where you’re gonna turn up. D-Day landings, no. Sicily landings again and again. 

He says, don’t have lengthy campaigns. Don’t get bogged on. Don’t have lengthy campaigns. So we’ve got Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.

He said, just don’t do these things. So everything he says do and everything he don’t do, I’d [00:05:00] say pretty much still apply. And I’ve applied all the way through history to now. And I would also say always will apply. Really end of mad rant. 

Tony: Yeah I agree that if it’s validity.

I can use an example from yesterday. I coach a women’s team. So still applying these principles and the more I think about that validity. 

We got beat yesterday, which is rare for us. We’ve had a really good season. And I can put myself back at halftime asking the question of the girls, whether or not they’d identified what it was that the opposition were doing.

They were doing exactly what Sun Tsu would’ve said. They were showing us what they wanted to show us. 

Luing us into a situation and then capitalize on our inability to see the trap that we were falling into. So that had real relevance for me. I think also in general, if I think about any sort of performance environment, the idea that know your enemy and know yourself is just valid in any sort of walk of life.

It’s that whole self-awareness case, 

Sarah: and you have that thing like know yourself, know your enemy, or if you just know yourself or you just know the enemy, like Yeah, 

Tony: exactly. Yeah. So [00:06:00] all of those things just, and they’re on repeat through the book as well that without them we’re putting our finger in the air and hoping for the best.

Michael: Know yourself, know your enemy is five of the wisest words ever written in history. 

I apply them absolutely climbing. ‘ cause I think you’ve said to me, Rob, how come you’re still alive? 

it’s knowing yourself and knowing the environment. 

In this case, the environment is the potential enemy. And I constantly do that all the time. I go out the mindset, I’m always gonna come back. I’m always gonna come back. I’m always gonna come back. 

Last year I pushed it right to the limit for weeks. Where each day, this is unusual, it’s very unusual cloud.

Each day I could have died. And I was constantly testing, how are you feeling? How are you feeling? What’s going on here? I was constantly aware of the environment, me each day and modulating according to that balance really. Honestly, I think those are the wisest words.

It also applies directly to business. If is everybody aware of Ansell’s strategy grid is product market grid. No. Okay. In about 1959, a guy called, so I think he was at Harvard or somewhere and basically did a grid of [00:07:00] existing product against existing market. You know that it’s your business really.

And then he looked at existing product, new market, new product, existing market. And then the final one, new product, new market. 

So you can think of that as your knowing your enemy and yourself, your market and your product. Really. Now the number of people who have gone into that new product, new market and gone bust is unbelievable in history ’cause it is a killing ground.

Now they usually man and they’re usually arrogant and they just think, Hey, I can do this stuff, I can do this stuff. But it’s a killer. Even if you go existing product into new market that the amount of new UK retailers died the death in the US ‘ cause they didn’t understand the new market, the new environment, the new if you like, enemy.

They understood themselves. They didn’t understand the different enemy guy called Billy Butlin used to have a chain of holiday camps in the uk. They were fantastic in the fifties and sixties. You’ve been to one Rob, haven’t you? 

Rob: I spent my childhood in them. 

Michael: Died a death. Nobody wanted it.

And nobody wanted Billy telling them how to live their holidays. So I think Ansoff product strategy [00:08:00] grid is one of the simplest, best things ever in management. 

And I think it’s a direct consequence of, of our old friend Sun Tsu, whether Ansoff was aware of it or whether he wasn’t really.

That thing, know yourself, know the enemy. To me, it’s as good as it gets. You don’t get better than that. 

Rob: Just on that point, I remember reading that somewhere. And someone broke down. How hard it is to switch contexts. So someone is like a huge company.

For example, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player and he played baseball and it didn’t really take off. But also huge companies that when they try and switch context into a different market, it just doesn’t work. it’s amazing that you think they would have every advantage, yet they’re built for a certain context. And when they try and do something different, Google’s had so many failures. Microsoft’s had so many failures, huge companies, limitless resources, and yet they try in a different focus and they just don’t seem to get the nuance of it.

Michael: You must have come up against this Tony in your time, I would’ve thought. Yeah. 

Tony: Lots. 

I’ve been there myself. I’ve tried to take people into places where they’re not ready to [00:09:00] go. 

It was completely the inappropriate approach. It feels noble on one hand that I might believe in people more than they believe in themselves.

It sounds like a really noble thing to do, but it’s actually a lack of depth of understanding. 

If I think that I believe in my team more than they believe in themselves, therefore I’m trying to take ’em somewhere where they don’t feel ready to go. That’s quite crazy. So I’ve been one of those people who got it wrong.

And that’s brilliant, right? 

Because there’s the pain that’s associated with that. And, the pain of accept accepting that, okay, wow, I didn’t even. know that was a thing. But once you realize that you can make those adjustments. And again, it goes back to, knowing yourself knowing your people.

That’s before we even get to the opposition. Before we even get to the enemy. I clearly didn’t know my people well enough in order that I was taking ’em somewhere where they didn’t wanna go. You lose trust, you lose respect. Because they haven’t been heard properly.

You haven’t taken the appropriate amount of time. And that’s painful lessons to learn as a manager, as a leader, as a coach, but also, they’re [00:10:00] life lessons. They’re massive. But you see it all the time that the CEO who’s beating his chest about, about where he’s gonna take them. It’s this where I’m gonna take this organization. Okay. There, there’s a time for rhetoric and, but not in many of those contexts where you see it happening over and over again in the hope that people just think that’s the way we should go.

It just doesn’t work like that.

If I think about it from a art of war perspective, appear weak when you’re strong and strong when you’re weak is a great metaphor for that. 

Rather than stand there going, whoa, here we are. Just that humility just kick in and again, that’s without addressing what’s going on over there in-house where we are, who I am.

When we turn that on, would shine the light then on the opposition or the competition. If you’re thinking about being in a preparation phase, I could think of it as a football manager. You are looking for strengths and weaknesses in the opposition which in effect manifest as opportunities to win and, risks to mitigate.

Where are the greatest threats coming [00:11:00] from that we need to be prepared for in order to minimize the chances of conceding goals? And what’s the one chink in their armor that we can see where we might have a chance to win the game? And then if we know where that is, how do we, create a false scenario that we’re actually gonna try and do something else, but we’re really gonna go round the back over there. We’re going to gonna get you when you got your eyes closed. That’s the nature of the beast for me. Really. 

Sarah: For me, you mentioned something that I also think really pertains to today is, preparation wins the wars way before they begin.

But, rigidity also lead leads to defeat. So you need to have strategy in mind. You need to have a clear vision you need to be able to understand the realities of those that are walking with you because their realities or their perceptions and their morale are just as real as the actions in which they’re doing.

You need to prevent yourself from being rigid in how you approach situations and take the opportunities as they come. [00:12:00] Those are hard for people because when you’re prepared and you have a plan, you know your terrain you know what’s going on very often. It leads to a rigid mind or your own perception of what you’re seeing.

So it’s hard to imagine that others standing in that same space may have a different conviction of what they see and what their morale is. To be an effective leader, not only do you need to know the terrain and be prepared for where you’re going, and you need to understand that others are having different perceptions of the exact same terrain that they’re standing in.

You need to be able to lift their morale, and you need to be able to shift and not be rigid. So you need to be able to take opportunities as they come and move forward. Otherwise you fail. So there’s this fluidity that you need as a leader. Strength and again, empathy in order to see, or not even empathy.

Just being able to differentiate yourself from others in the room because you’re self-actualized. 

This is my perception and this is my planning and [00:13:00] I know this terrain like this, yet someone else the people that are walking with me are having a different experience of that exact thing and how can I use their experience of that moving us forward to where we need to go and where can I shift where it’s required because maybe they just don’t have the energy at that particular moment, or maybe it’s not the right opportunity to jump on the enemy at that moment.

Rob: In the group I’m in with Tony is also Clark, he talks a lot about Bayesian thinking. 

That is so true that when something change, you then have to update and the more that you understand the terrain. I really the five factors ’cause I think they’re really relevant.

And it’s not necessarily terrain, but it’s the situation. And it’s not necessarily weather now, but it’s the unforeseen circumstances, what’s going on politically. A lot of it comes from 

Sarah: life experience. 

Rob: It’s that ability to update.

Also think a line I really liked is if you are basically if you are perfect, you are invincible. 

When you go back to Michael, you’re talking about Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam. On paper, everyone thought that was gonna be over [00:14:00] when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Everyone thought, Russia’s just gonna take ’em ’cause they’re so much bigger and so much stronger. But it’s all of the mistakes that we make. And now Trump is talking about, he’s gonna be in Gaza’s clearing out the Palestinians. He’s gonna be in Greenland, winning over taking the Greenland.

He’s gonna go and take Canada as well. And you think you couldn’t even win Vietnam. You couldn’t even win Afghanistan. You couldn’t win Iraq convincingly. You had to pull out. So how, how are you gonna take three wars at once? 

Going back to the main point is it’s our mistakes that defeat us. So it’s all under our control. 

It reminds me, I learned in martial arts, often, people are punching or kicking and they’ll overextend themselves. But it’s, you keep yourself solid as long as you are solid, don’t be so affected by other people, but you make sure that you are always on solid ground.

And then I remember like we were doing, fighting, if you had to fight a big group, once you, if you are at the head so that there’s only probably 1, 2, 3, or people that can attack you at once. But after that, they start to get in their way. [00:15:00] So the more numbers just becomes more damaging and more, they confuse themselves.

And so it’s, when you look at, I’ve often wondered how did Afghanistan or Vietnam hold out for so long? And it’s because they were perfectly tightly organized. Whereas obviously there was riddled with errors in the bigger forces. 

Sarah: There was a part of the book I where he was talking about a don’t step into unnecessary conflict, where if you don’t have to fight, don’t there’s the best way is to win without even fighting at all.

Avoiding the conflict actually picking your battles wisely in a way. And I think that was like, that was a really powerful section. But it went through like a whole list. Like first do this and then do that, and then do that. But the starting point was really try to win the battle without a battle.

And that was pretty cool. I think and which yeah, I agree. These wars are not actually doing right because they just go into the fighting. 

Yeah. Which 

Sarah: isn’t that smart. You get tired, right? You lose a lot of bodies. Yeah. You [00:16:00] get exhausted. You lose the morale, what were the first steps to PR that were done before actually going there?

Tony: Yeah, I agree. So break the enemy’s resistance without fighting is a brilliant, that’s 

brilliant 

Tony: statement. And the testament to that is the team that I’m working with at the moment on the two times prior to yesterday, which was different on the two times where the opponent has confronted us with their desire to fight.

And we’ve fallen into that trap. ’cause we’re not fighters. We’re our best form of attack is just to be evasive and be clinical and be artistic and beautiful the way I love the game to be played. But whenever there’s, people are saying, come on, then we’ll fight with us. And we fell into that trap.

We started arguing with them, we started arguing with each other. The whole thing disintegrated. 

Sarah: And if you look at the political realm, a lot of the time it’s annoying because politics, like they like the UK Prime Minister, whatever, when he was talking about, it’s this like middle ground, but in a way.

It prevents the war, yeah. And it can be [00:17:00] irritating because very often we just want all of our way and we want it now. Otherwise, fucking you’re gonna, yeah. Yeah. Which is the Trump mindset. But it doesn’t always win 

it. 

Michael: Yeah. I guess nowadays winning without fighting would probably translate to cyber warfare or, and or economic warfare if you control the sanctions and Yeah. The enemy. The enemy stop. They’re going nowhere. And that’s probably what’s gonna happen more and more. Yeah. 

If the enemy, if you’re opponent, it just close you down or even better just influencing you when you’re not even aware of it. So you just go in the direction they want you to go.

Tony: And I think it’s also Michael about energy management. It’s about energy management. So they use a sport sporting anal, a sporting analogy where you might rotate your squad in order to keep people fresh. Whereas in a business environment you don’t often have that. But the way you deploy people in the way, I work with a, an aviation manufacturer who, in Northern Ireland actually, who as a sort of a badge of honor would say, we demand resilience from our people.

And then it almost gave them license to put them through an interminable amount of preTsure [00:18:00] on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. With no breaks. Leaving them yeah. Leaving them bereft of energy and engagement. And so I saw that with 

Sarah: my son’s football team last, not last weekend, but two weekends ago, his team was winning.

But they didn’t have anyone to switch because there were some sick players and stuff, so it, they all had to play the whole game. I was with my daughter and she predicted, she said they’re probably gonna lose because look his team is getting tired. And the other team, although they weren’t playing as well, they ended up kicking ass in the second half of the game because they simply had more energy.

It’s a big thing. Yeah. 

Tony: It’s huge. 

Rob: And I liked how he, he talked about that, about you, the importance of being unified. Because if you’re not unified, he said, you are like, your bravest men will 50%, or they’ll be ahead of them, they’ll have more energy, they’ll go to the fight.

You are more timid, you’re more tired. Soldiers are gonna be at the back that you’re not gonna fight with the full force. They’re gonna invade them or dominate them. So yeah I thought it was really and also the cost where he detailed. If [00:19:00] to give like a, I dunno, it was like a thousand whatever of food.

It costs you 20,000 to transport it there. And yeah, so the costs, and I think going back to the power of your word, I think that that does a large part of, the battle before you even fight. So I think America and Russia have probably weakened themselves with recent wars and I think China probably has more intimidation because they haven’t been, if you don’t pick a fight and you don’t go to a fight, people just see how the power of your force.

Yeah. When you actually fight pe you, this is when you’re gonna make mistakes is when you’re going to seem more fallible. And that’s when people can know you. So I think I. It’s quite easy for anyone to, with military intelligence, to understand the Russian way, the American way. It’s very hard to the China wake because, I don’t know who know.

They’re a country we don’t know so much about. And so I think that mystery would, make people a bit more afraid of them. 

Sarah: Yeah. And in the end, it’s not about brute force, it’s about [00:20:00] understanding the battlefield. And if you don’t understand your enemy, and how they work, then yeah you’re at a disadvantage.

Tony: This idea of unity and cohesion and shared purpose.

Obviously fundamental and really important, but they don’t negate that need to understand people on an individualized basis. Yeah. And I think the idea of team spirit, which is you can see it when it’s there, right? You can, and it’s easy in football in a way because it, every week you’re gonna go out and there’s a physical connection that you are all gonna go through something together that you don’t get in the workplace.

So you gotta try and somehow create that team unity and that shared sense of purpose towards something meaningful. And it’s really difficult to, we can talk about team spirit and how to manifest it, but it is really difficult because it’s experienced at an individual level. And yet as a group, we’re trying to.

Move in one direction to meet some challenge that with the businesses has created for us. And I guess on the idea from the book around the courageous lead [00:21:00] leader how do we maintain a consistent level of courage that people will be inspired by is a much harder, harder thing to translate into the business world than it is on the.

Sarah: But it isn’t 

Tony: in a mil in a military or a sport, if you see 

Sarah: a leader acting courageously, if you see, what does that look like? Even in the war field, that the leader going up into the front, yeah. It’s wow. They have fear, but they’re doing it anyway. It’s the same when a leader is fighting the status quo, or having that hard discussion with their leaders instead of just okay, this is expected of me, so I’m pushing it down to you.

And when people see that courage, it raises the courage up in themselves because suddenly they see also the humanity in their leader and they feel, okay, I can also be like that. But I think in war times is different than, yeah, daily times, because war times, you don’t have enough time to figure out for example, and maybe I’ve never been in war, but I can imagine you don’t have enough time to figure out how every single individual in your [00:22:00] troop what they need to thrive.

It’s not like this long-term process. Like it’s not, you’re like, you’re sitting with these people for, a couple of months or here and you know exactly the values of each individual and you can you have to be able to like, think what fits the best for the entire group. It’s I think a little bit different in board times than in every day.

And I’m really curious what your guys’ thoughts are on that, because I’ve never had to lead through a war, 

Rob: I don’t know, but I think the, what he’s talking about is, lead where he says lead a large group is the same as lead a small group. And it’s because you subdivide and every, 

Sarah: it’s like there’s leaders of leaders and that’s where the hierarchy is.

Yeah. And ‘

Rob: cause I heard, 

Sarah: I read that part, but I was like, in my mind, I didn’t quite get it. 

Rob: Yeah. So in a in an army I think they stay together like they have the sergeant 

Which would be their leader. And I don’t, I can’t remember how many men, I don’t even know if I knew.

But so they would know their men well. And that’s 

Sarah: where a hierarchy maybe was born from. 

Rob: Yeah. I think yeah, I think most things stemmed out of war because that’s where we had to [00:23:00] organize the most. But it is, and it’s the courage of which comes back to the integrity of, I think.

Leadership is very tough, but what makes it tough is not what we have to do, it’s who we have to be to do that. It’s the, it is the, because ultimately you can have all the skills and the communication. You can have rhetoric, and you can have all of this stuff to motivate people in the short term.

But if you don’t live up to your word, if you are not making those courageous decisions. And I think with Trump and all the people around him, 

Sarah: voices, yeah. 

Rob: You’re seeing that because all I see on social media is, the, it’s 

Sarah: easier to be spineless, yeah. 

Rob: The vice president has said how bad Trump was.

The that was the one who sat in with Zelinsky Rubio or something. JD Vance. Yeah. Yeah. But the other one, so JD Vance had said that, but I get the impression that he’s always been, in of America, not really trust. 

Sarah: It’s very hard to trust anyone that doesn’t. Act consistently according to their values on a daily basis, I act if there’s anything with me, I am consistent in my personal [00:24:00] life, in my work life, my values are my values.

And that’s the integrity that’s required for trust. And if you cannot trust your leader, you’re not gonna give up your life for that person. 

Not, yeah. 

Sarah: You need that trust. And what I find that I’m missing in today’s leadership is lack of trust, because they don’t act with integrity.

I don’t know who they are. And if I don’t know who you are, I don’t know your values, then how can I stand with you? And that’s a big problem. And it takes more courage to act every day, to choose to act with integrity, even if it goes, like I said, against the status quo. And that is harder 

Tony: argue. Sarah, I would argue that their values are on clear display.

Yeah. It’s just their own values and that’s why we don’t trust. Yeah, exactly. 

Michael: Yeah. We don for, that’s today. I 

Sarah: find that they project more or that they absorb the values of those around them if their values were consistent. I had, there’s a reason and this is very political, so I dunno if we should bring it up here.

There’s a lot of people that blindly follow Trump, for example. Trump is [00:25:00] consistent with his values. He actually acts with integrity according to his values. Yeah. And that’s why he can get an entire group of people to follow him blindly. Now, a lot of people in his wings. They are not, if you look at who they are on one day versus the next day, versus the next day, they are shifting.

They, they are a projection of who they are trying to please. They have, they are spineless. They don’t go up against Trump when it goes against their own value system and those people you can’t trust. Now, I know for a fact that Trump, his values don’t match my values, but I also do understand why there’s a lot of people that follow him because they, those, their values probably are in accordance to hi and they trust him.

And that’s, and that trust comes from integrity. And it’s not that we’re all gonna have the same values, but a leader dares to act with integrity no matter what. You know this, and that’s where you get that trust. That’s where [00:26:00] you get the following. And it can be dangerous if they happen to be values, which totally suck, but that’s, what I see happening.

Michael: Okay. Can I ask you about that please? Because Oh, 

Sarah: yes. Okay. 

Michael: Obviously what I’m saying can be totally a hundred percent wrong or anyone, but my definition of integrity, which may not be yours or anybody else’s, is Yeah. My definition is saying what you do and doing what you say. 

Sarah: Yes. 

Michael: That’s my definition.

And I just, yeah. For 

Sarah: me, integrity is a little bit more. Integrity is there’s all kinds of layers of personality, and I think when you are really leveled up as a person you’re like you’re leveled up as a leader, you act in accordance to your core. So you are integrity, you are integrated with your dragons.

Most people don’t ever get to that level like that. They get to maybe the values level. They know what they need to thrive. And to act with integrity for them is to act in accordance to their values every day and their decisions and what they do, how they behave. For me, that’s integrity. So being congruent [00:27:00] with who your values on a daily basis.

If you don’t have the value of trust, you don’t have a value of honesty. You may be acting with integrity without being honest. So that’s where it can be confusing for people like me, where if you look at my values, I have them always here. I have trust here at the top. For me, trust is a core value.

So for me to act with integrity, I need to be trustworthy. And I trust you. So integrity for me really means that you act in accordance to your values that you on a daily basis. So I can trust what you’re going to do. I know you. So it, it may not be that I like you. 

Michael: But 

Sarah: I know how you will act and I know how you will be.

Michael: Okay. Okay. But to me, that is, it’s a different use of the word integrity. To me, it’s more like congruence, really. 

So we take Trump as example. What is what is his modus operandi? It seems to me chaos really, it seems to me anyway. For 

Sarah: me, he [00:28:00] values chaos 

Michael: and real estate deals for 

Sarah: me.

He values money. He values capitalism. He values he, his values are. More on the superficial level of things. I don’t think he values chaos. I think the chaos comes from his psychological disorders. That’s how he behaves. That’s his he creates chaos in order to get what he wants.

But I don’t think he values chaos. 

Rob: I would say it’s deceit, I would say, because he’ll tell you whatever, because you’ll change. Yeah. 

Sarah: Brute force. If you have power, you will win. I bet something is there in Yeah, 

Rob: but because it’s all about, strength’s a dictator. I didn’t say that.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Rob: And he changes what he’s saying because it’s all about winning the deal in the moment. 

Sarah: Power, even if you look at his earliest books, it’s all about power winning the deal, like you said it’s all about having the most money, having the most power, having the strongest of voice. That’s his.

Value system. Now, the chaos, is either his methods to try to get there, to get people to move there or it’s [00:29:00] his own mental disorder, which he that’s going on that we experienced because he’s very, he’s not in control of his triggers. He’s not in control of what’s happening with him.

And he goes directly to rage, and then he thinks about it and thinks, okay, that’s not the right way. And then he, so it’s like a child if you imagine in his in the way he behaves. But that’s his behavior. It’s not his values. So if you look at his values and how he has been, even his whole, back in the time when he was younger and you saw he was pretty consistent all throughout what’s important to him now his mental function is going a bit worse I think over time.

Michael: Yeah, great. But obviously he does not. He does not work on the basis of what he says is what he’s gonna do and vice versa. He doesn’t, it’s 

Sarah: not something he values. 

Michael: So on that integrity, that definition of integrity, which is the most common one, I think he doesn’t, that doesn’t work for him at all.

He obviously is conent his values. And Zelinsky said that, you’re looking at Ukraine and so it’s a real estate deal. And [00:30:00] that’s exactly how I looked at it. Exactly. It was a place to be carved off. So it’s, there’s a quote to me. It’s congruency, whatever, but it’s semantics. As long as we know what we’re talking, that’s, yeah.

Yeah. 

Tony: There’s a quote from the book which may lend itself to this, and it’s probably contextually completely different, but according to circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans. And it sounds like every time, this is what I’m gonna go for. Oh, that’s changed. Now I’ll go for this instead.

Yeah, I don’t think so. So there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of that going on. 

Sarah: I don’t think he would be able to get the masses to follow him. If he wasn’t acting with integrity to his values, and so it is just a definition of integrity or something like that. 

He 

Sarah: is not he changes his plans, but I think his audience, the ones which connect with him and have a similar value system, they don’t value that.

You will do that. You will say, you will do where I having reliability as one of my core values, do what you say you, you will do is really important. So that’s why I struggle to connect with somebody like that. [00:31:00] Now, there’s a lot of people that don’t need that. They, and they still, so you, you may have an argument with him, say, Hey, but look at your leader.

He said he would do this, and now he’s doing that, but they don’t seem to mind, and it’s because their values probably are more in line with his. They don’t care about that. They don’t see that as important. 

Rob: I think I think his values are very much about power, about money, about status.

Yeah. And I think what he. He does is he makes a deal. But I think what he’s really done, why they trust him is not necessarily because of him, because they distrust the rest and he told them there’s a conspiracy. He throws rocks at their enemies. And they feel like this is someone different.

And I feel there is a cult type thing there definitely cult that the more, the worse it goes wrong, the more the mag lott believe him and the more they go, yeah I saw something about they want, someone said, you want him to be king. And he’s, and I think that’s his play. I think that’s his value is about hearing if surrounded so 

Sarah: old that if he tries to be king, like he’ll just be a lot older.

But 

Rob: he’s already talked about [00:32:00] you, we need to change things. So I can be fair President. Yeah. He’s talked about 

Sarah: it about the four years as not being like he’s talked about it. 

Michael: I think he sees himself not so much as a king, but an emperor. Just as people. 

Sarah: Yeah. He already sees himself as that and rules don’t pertain to him. 

Michael: Yeah. But I think his following, or it’s, as you’ve said Rob, I think it’s that he’s throwing rocks at enemies where they’re perceived or real, just as Hitler did, everything in Germany in the thirties was the fault of one bunch of people, Jewish people that, convenient target.

Sarah: But if we move back to the art of war, who’s going to win this war? 

Rob: Which war? 

Michael: I think I’d be more inclined to say he is not going to win it, really. But no, 

Sarah: I don’t feel like it, 

Michael: He doesn’t follow 

Sarah: the principles of the books, to be honest. 

Tony: I look at there’s a deception and misdirection there’s a fair bit of that going on, I think.

Yeah. And that’s a big part of the book. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night. And when you move for a thunderbolt like that, it’s like there’s plenty, like you’ll burn fast. Yeah. 

Michael: But Tony, that, that’s a very different, the motto of Mossad, it is different also deception.

Exactly. It’s deception. It’s a different type of deception. This is it’s, yeah. So crazy 

Tony: [00:33:00] misuse of language. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. But it’s, 

Rob: yeah. It’s bluster. It’s bluster that’s made everyone else stronger. Europe’s gonna be stronger because Europe knows now that they have to rely on themselves.

China’s gearing up and 7.2%. It’s why Switzer became a 

Sarah: country. Yeah. Switzerland used to be all of these different let’s say tribes. And when yeah. And when the French Napoleon came in, Switzerland became strong because all of the tribes gathered together, and that’s where they became a country.

So I think that my prediction is that Europe is going to be stronger than ever. But right now, Europe depends on the us. I think in the future they won’t. 

Michael: We can’t afford to. No, it’s just that simple. 

Sarah: No, exactly. And I, and I think that all of this, it is just like in Switzerland, all of these small tribes were not strong by themselves, but you put them all together.

You have this, the strength.

Michael: Interesting. Okay. We said earlier about an army and Sun Tsu actually said the principle in which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage. Which all must reach. All must reach, yeah. No [00:34:00] bots, no ifs, nothing. The reason that the two ladies lost their heads, I’m pretty sure Tsu knew that exactly.

That was gonna happen. I’m pretty sure he did. 

Sarah: That was part of the preparation. This is what I would’ve thought. So the following, 

Michael: I’m with the emperor, he’s brought me in as this al advisor. There, there’s an issue here. My credibility or the credibility of his advisor have to, this happens to be me.

Let’s do a little experiment. They’ll mess their around, don’t take it seriously. They’ll get to see, the emperor will see that his military advisor is somebody who will not back down when it comes to integrity. So 

Sarah: brutal. 

Michael: But yeah. Okay. But since Tsu would, he would’ve said, he would’ve said, if I don’t do that, if I don’t do this one thing, you will lose, that emperor will probably lose every bloody thing going.

Thousands and tens of thousands of other people might die. That’s what he would’ve said. I, yeah, it is brutal. I just see that as completely necessary and his position. 

Yeah, 

Michael: I would do exactly the same. Exactly the same. And in fact, I would’ve just let it happen. If it didn’t happen, great. I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen, [00:35:00] but I would’ve done it.

And if need be, I would’ve decapitated them myself. So there, would 

Sarah: there be another way to get to the same result? I’m curious if anyone else I. There. 

Rob: I I can’t see it. When we are looking at those times, I just 

don’t like decapitation, yeah. But I think when you’re looking at those times, 

if someone displeased again, 

that was standard behavior. 

Sarah: Yeah. I guess it’s a different time too, right? 

Rob: But it’s saying whatever the price is, this will be it.

Yeah. And that is the basis of what people can trust. 

Sarah: I’m curious what Tony thinks about it. 

Tony: I agree with Michael’s principle entirely. In some ways it’s a little like Manchester United offloading Marcus Rashford, who’s what their flagship player at a time when he is just not towing the line and there’s no alternative for a new manager, but to cut.

Some people would see it as don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. We need him right now to, it’s no, I’ve got a bigger war to win here. I’ve got a bigger battle to fight. And this is a short-term pain for some long-term prosperity. And I think it’s like that, that a couple of people 

Sarah: [00:36:00] for the mass 

Tony: Key people who are perceived to be, in other people’s eyes, critical to what we need right now. It’s not about right now. What we need right now is to set the standards. 

Rob: I think a lot of new managers face that. The star performer is responsible for maybe 50, 60% or a couple of one or two. And yet they’re disruptive. 

I remember Pep Guardiola I’m not sure if you into football, but probably the greatest manager ever.

And, everyone says he had great teams, but actually he started with Barcelona’s third team. They’d just been relegated. It was the equivalent of the third division in our league. And his best players weren’t towing the line. And he went to his mentor, Johan Cruyff and he said what do I do?

 He said, I’m reliant on these players. And he said, cut, whatever. And he cut them. He started with new young players and those players actually developed into his team. That became probably the best team ever. 

Sarah: Actually when you say it like that, I’ve decapitated before. I have gotten rid of explicitly the Einstein in the team.

Where everyone was afraid. It had to be done. [00:37:00] And just like you said, the entire team rose up, became knowledgeable, accountable. It, it made a powerful team. So in, I guess that’s today’s time capitation. 

Rob: Yeah. It’s, it is, yeah. I think often we have to look back at, like everyone says Machiavellian and Atilla of the HA is another one, but actually, or Genghis Khan.

Actually they were some of the most empathic, because Genis Kahan was like, you can carry on with your religion. You can carry on with your culture. This is the standard. And I think today the standard is not necessarily courage, but it’s whatever characteristics are important for the team, your performance has to match that.

 If it doesn’t match that then you have to be held accountable. 

If we wrap up with everyone key takeaways. 

There’s so much.

One of the things that was most striking, I love the five. There are five, heaven, earth, the way, morale, all of that stuff. I love the idea that it’s down to us. I

love the discipline the lessons on this is what you have to be a leader.

But I also love of course the Chinese way [00:38:00] of, be like water, formless. Which I think is that Bayesian thinking, the power of momentum, there’s so much. 

I also pointed out a few key points is that he talks about to have organization that we turn order into disorder, and about how it’s disorder leads to order leads to disorder.

Courage, which will turn to cowardice, which will turn to courage, and that’s about momentum. 

We’ll have strength, which will turn to weakness, which will turn to strength. And that’s about the changing of formations. I love it.

It’s one of the most powerful books I think I’ve ever read. So short and yet so much to take from it. Distinct, 

Sarah: Yeah. To the point. 

Rob: Sarah? 

Sarah: So strategy over strength. Know yourself, know your team, and leadership is influenced, not Control.

Michael: There was a lady called Tallulah Bankhead. She was an actress. She’s a feisty lady, a serious actress, but she got a bit of a bad image ’cause she liked drinking and I can understand that. Anyway, she went to a play one night and in the intermission somebody asked her opinion of the play.

She said, [00:39:00] there’s less to this than meets the eye. 

Not with Sun Tsu. The isn’t the guy’s absolutely a consummate master of his discipline. I see books on a weekly basis where there’s a lot less to this than meets the eye. Not with this guy. He knows his discipline backwards and I would recommend the book to anybody with a pulse.

It’s a couple of hours reading time at the most. It’s certainly utterly applicable to warfare. 

A lot of it’s applicable to management, quite a bit is applicable to your normal life managing, but certainly in warfare, if you heed what he says, chances are you’ll win. If you do what he says not to do, you will certainly lose.

Sarah: Damn, that’s a summary. Now. Mine feels a little bit empty. I’ve

Rob: Rise to the performance or we’ll decapitate you? 

Tony: Yeah. No worries. No turn. Turn left in March. Yeah, March. Right out. 

Look, go right back to what I said originally. Originally I was applying it to my own work in football and it did give me a lot of insight into how to prepare for a game [00:40:00] tactically.

How to develop a game plan, how to anticipate what the opponent may be thinking or may be trying to do, how they’re gonna deploy their troops metaphorically. 

So there’s three takeaways for me. 

One is planning before engaging. 

The second one is you’ve gotta make your decisions based on what’s actually happening rather than the rigidity of what the plan was in the first place.

It’s gotta be adaptability and flexibility. Yeah. Adaptability 

Sarah: all the way. 

Tony: And the last one is that to be successful, happens before the war takes place, before the battle commences. So you win in preparation, basically. 

Sarah: Yeah. Strategy. Yeah. 

Tony: Yeah. 

Sarah: Strategy, adaptability and knowing yourself and your team.

Tony: I tried to apply that yesterday and we’re still lost. So what did I learn from some, Tsu? Bloody, I better get back to you again. 

Rob: It is so relevant to football. Because there’s certain managers, where they have a set, set way of playing, and then it works for a few seasons and then they get found out.

And then people know how to play against them. And there’s some managers, you have to be 

Sarah: able [00:41:00] to change your ways with your team Yeah. And with their needs and Yeah. It’s, yeah, exactly what you say Rob. 

Rob: And some managers can’t change mid game. They’ve one 

Sarah: play and they do it over and over again.

Yeah. And then suddenly it doesn’t work. But they don’t have the thinking going on up here to be able to shift. 

Rob: That I think is also relevant for managers is that this worked. So I’m going to use this everywhere. And no way, which is why it’s so difficult. 

Sarah: Yeah. You really need to be able to think.