The last skill in deploying troops is to make sure they don’t have a fixed or constant formation and layout. Without testable formations, even the most infiltrated and observant spy will not be able to fathom or understand, and the wisest strategist will not be able to discover his plans or conspire against him. The victory obtained as a result of adaptation to the enemy’s circumstances will never be understood by the troops. Everyone can know the formation I used to secure victory. However, no one will know the ways, methods and reasons behind how I went about creating that victory. Therefore, the victory obtained in each battle occurs because the strategies and tactics are never repeated. Rather, they should vary according to circumstances, with endless possibilities. Chapter Six, Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

From the above sentence we can extract an extremely valuable business lesson. Let’s break the sections into parts and look at them individually to get a good understanding of the lesson.

BUSINESS APP

From the first two sentences, we can interpret it to mean that a business owner should not provide any certainty to his rivals. As I mentioned in my article Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Staying Ahead of Rivals’ Strategies, the part about prevention strategies, I already mentioned that you can use past reaction or strategies that your competitors have used as a guide to formulate your preventative strategy. But keep in mind that what I say here can also be used by your rival. So do you have a fixed way of handling situations or a fixed time to have promotions etc?

These ways of doing business can provide relative ease for rivals to formulate their preemptive strategy. Therefore, do your best to create as much uncertainty under your control, so that your enemy incurs high costs and also slows down your formulation process, as illustrated in more detail in the second sentence, if there is no certainty, you would that his competitors are useless spies and his wisest strategist is unable to discover his plans. Another important point to keep in mind is when you create uncertainty; make a note that you don’t annoy your customers.

Let’s look at the last part of the paragraph.

“Everyone may know the formation I used to secure victory. However, no one will know the ways, methods, and reasons behind how I achieved that victory. Therefore, the victory gained in every battle comes about because the strategies and tactics they are never rather, they must vary according to circumstances, with infinite possibilities”.

Human beings have such a tendency that once you find something that works for you, you tend to stick with it and use it over and over again. But in business, you can’t do that. You have to keep formulating new strategies and tactics, because your rivals will learn from their previous engagements with you and formulate their counter-strategy to gain a victory over you. If you keep using the same strategy with them, sooner or later, they will catch up and beat you. So your strategy, whether it is for marketing, research and development and other areas of your business, should be as Sun Zi said, vary them according to circumstances and strategies with endless possibilities.