The Institute simplifies, organizes, and explains Sun Tzu's Rules for winning in competition. Read more about our Rule Book here.
The Institute simplifies, organizes, and explains Sun Tzu's Rules for winning in competition. Read more about our Play Book here.
This outline follows the nine strategic skills that advance our positions: 1. understanding positions, 2. developing perspective, 3. identifying opportunities, 4. leveraging probability, 5. minimizing mistakes, 6. responding to situations, 7. creating momentum, 8. winning rewards, and 9. defending vulnerabilities. Each article describes a general principle broken down into four to nine related rules. Articles are organized in their outline by skill number, with "understanding positions" as the primary skill. Articles beginning a new section appear number as 1.0, 2.0, etc. Sub-articles appear as 1.1, 1.2, etc. Our competitive skills assessment system (a free beginning test is here) uses these skill numbers to break down our analysis of people's strengths and weaknesses in competitive understanding.
SOSI Members can access these articles through their links. Non-members can get see the problems addressed by the rules using our Rule Tool.
Play Book Structure
Play Book articles are arranged in a logical structure to make it easy to find the rules you need. Nine categories of strategic skills define cycle that advances our positions: 1. understanding positions, 2. developing perspective, 3. identifying opportunities, 4. leveraging probability, 5. minimizing mistakes, 6. responding to situations, 7. creating momentum, 8. winning rewards, and 9. defending vulnerabilities. These categories flow logically from through the Progress Cycle of listen-aim-move-claim (see illustration). You can see a outline of Play Book articles here or a dynamic list of articles here.
Play Book Numbered Links
A number identifies where each article appears in Play Book Structure (example: 2.1.3 Strategic Deception). When you see a link preceded by a number, it connects to a Play Book article. Unfortunately, these links work only for SOSI members. We provide them because the interconnection of concepts is extremely important in learning Sun Tzu's system.
Graphic Outline
Below is a graphic outline of Sun Tzu's Play Book. Click on outlines below to view the expanded graphics.
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