Sun Tzu taught that organizations grow until their protected, internal elements are divided from their external competitive elements. In their internal region of control, planning works, creating stable hierarchies of elites. These elites gradually raise the costs of external competition so that the organization can no longer support itself. The chaotic, independent, creative action of the common people required for successful external competition is controlled out of existence and the organization fails.

We often say that strategy is the opposite of planning. Strategy starts by realizing that control of the environment is impossible. The mistake of planning is assuming that internal control can be extended everywhere. Even if it could, the picture isn't pretty, even in a comic book. The only addition that I would make is that during a war internal planning is necessary because of the uniting focus on the external threat. Only in a crisis of survival do everyone's desires become one.

The Art of War is a technical description about how competitive systems (literally bing-fa) work. For Sun Tzu, systems balance opposing forces to create a cycle. For example, our breathing system has two opposing set of muscles for inhaling and exhaling that create a cycle of incoming oxygen and out-going carbon dioxide. OUr circulatory system balances the pressure from the heart against the resistance of the capillaries to bring oxygen to the cells and remove waste products. Systems interact with other systems to create larger systems with more complex cycles.

Two year ago, I posted on the real tragedy of Katrina:

In listing his five key elements to a strategy, Sun Tzu noted that "methods" must always conform to "the way," that is, your goals. or mission. Why was this warning necesssary? Because our methods, what we call systems, tend to take on a lfe of their own, expanding and growing well beyond their original purpose. This is famously true of government operations, but it is also true of most other organizations as well. They all lose their way. Not only that, but Sun Tzu's Principle of Reversal tells us that missions can reverse themselves: what was once the goal becomes the enemy.