Sun Tzu's strategy is a decision making system based on knowing how to use information. It is the science of creating competitive advantage from the superior use of available information. Totalitarian governments are at a competitive disadvantage in the modern world because they try to control the information that their people receive. This raises an interesting question: what happens to democracies when the mainstream media they trust produces a flow of bad or incomplete information?

As someone who used to go to a movie at least once a week, nothing saddens me more than the fact that Hollywood has decided that politics are more important than entertaining its audience. Last week, we had The Constant Gardner, another crazy conspiracy film where the evil corporations can only make money by killing people.

I am doing a press and media even in NYC in about two weeks, so I spent some time last night thinking about what the news might be in that period of time. Though strategy teaches us that many events can never be forseen, it also teaches us to look for trends that we can use. In looking at the events surrounding Katrina, we can already see some extremely newsworthy trends:

When I was diagnosed with cancer a little over four years ago, I saw fellow patients die because they didn't take responsibility for saving the own lives and because they didn't know how to make strategic decisions. This experience is what motivated me to start strategic training the general public instead of just large organizations.

In a media-driven culture, people are seduced into thinking that reality depends on what we say or how we feel. It doesn't. Strategy says that actions have to respond to two things: changes in climate and conditions on the ground.