Sun Tzu's Art of War Strategic Playbook

Competitive Arenas: 

To make Sun Tzu's work on Golden Key Strategy easier for today's decision-makers to use, we developed this complete Playbook bringing together all his key concepts.

The Playbook was designed to make a given lesson from Sun Tzu easy to find when you need it. 80% of Sun Tzu's principles apply to specific situations. Even when you read the best works applying his system to a specific modern competitive arena (see our Product Shop), most of what you read will not apply to your current situation. This information is largely forgotten by the time  you need it. 

The Playbook was written to address this problem. It consists of over two hundred and thirty articles. Each article explains a single strategic principle, the situation to which it applies, and the methods by which you can act on it. Each of these methods is illustrated with an example from modern competition. The Playbook also explains how each of these methods are guided by related principles in the Playbook. These interconnections are very important in Sun Tzu's work and the basis for developing these methods. 

You can see the complete list of topics and situations address by clicking here.   These articles are organized into nine different type of competitive challenges: 1) understanding strategic positions, 2) developing perspective on your position, 3) discovering opportunities, 4) using probability to choose the best options, 5) avoiding common mistakes, 6) selecting the right responses to common situations, 7) using creativity to generate momentum, 8) winning rewards, and 9) protecting or attacking vulnerabilities. Within these nine volumes, articles are organized into logical hierarchy. A number identifies where each article appears in Playbook structure. For example, the article:2.1.3 Strategic Deception is in the second volume (Developing Perspective) in section 2.1 on Information value. 

The Play Book is the culmination of over a decade of work breaking down Sun Tzu's principles into a series of step-by-step processes. This work was done primarily by the Institute's multiple award-winning author and founder, Gary Gagliardi. Much of this work came out of his work training leaders from some of the world's largest organizations. 

Book Access

  • A Play Book article is published on our front page, allowing site guests to learn Sun Tzu's Golden Key by visiting regularly. 
  • Each of the nine volumes of the Playbook can be purchased as an eBook for download. They are also available in printed form from Amazon. 
  • To access all articles on-line, you can become a SOSI Member.  This gives you access to new articles and the most recent updates 
  • Get the complete Playbook eBook download with a SOSI membership here.
  • You can also purchase individuals Playbook articles for download for only .87 cents each.

 

To see a graphical outline of all the articles in the Playbook, click here.

To learn more about the skills taught, click here for a short flash presentation.