May 10
18
Just finished Sun Tzu For Success by Gerald Michaelson (and Sun Tzu) at the recommendation of one of my colleagues and I have to say, it’s a fantastic motivational tool. As the title suggests, it’s about applying the general’s military wisdom to help you accomplish the goals that you’ve set in life.
The first section of the book is about personal success characteristics; be moral, listen well, practice discipline, etc. The main takeaways of this first part, for me, were two fold: seek sound counsel, and know yourself. While these both may seem obvious, they’re worth stressing.
I always like the idea of having a personal advisory board, like a Jedi Counsel, at my disposal; those who have experienced similar career paths, those who have done what I want to do. What motivated them to make the choices they made? What made them want to make changes in their career paths? A Jedi Counsel is invaluable.
Even more important is the concept of knowing yourself. “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle.” This is key; who are you as a person? What motivates you? Without having a “self” compass, how can you track your progress?
Sections Two and Three are titled Strategies for Success and Tactics for Success and are applicable to industries across the board. In Strategies, my two favorite chapters were Avoid the Avoidable, which speaks to preparedness, and Go for a Breakthrough, which is very Seth Godin, Purple Cow-esque. Go for a breakthrough, be different, be amazingly unique; it’s the only thing that will keep you relevant.
Tactics for Success contains more great chapters including Move Rapidly, which warns against analysis paralysis, Occupy the High Ground, which insists on a positive state of mind, and Build on Your Successes, my favorite chapter and the one that I feel is the most actionable take-away. The idea behind Build on Your Successes is that each individual victory allows you to leverage it into another victory, and that one into another victory, and so on as you approach your ultimate goal. How can I leverage this great news into the next step towards the end game? Once you stop leveraging these small victories, you lose all your momentum, and it makes getting to the next level all that more difficult.
What does this post have to do with marketing? Nothing really, but this is a marketing blog, and I get to name the posts whatever I want. Sun Tzu For Success is a valuable read for anyone with goals. That sounds like you, doesn’t it?
Some of the wisdom literature of scripture also stresses this, like Prov 15:22, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed,” and an even more famous one, Eccl 4:9-12, which ends with “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
