Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 7: 21 "Weigh the situation carefully before making a move."

This will never be the most famous verse Master Sun wrote. But sometimes I wonder if we don't miss the tree for the forest. Perhaps today's verse should stand tallest of all, while most of us skimming, read right past it.

I've shared before, and will again in the future, that situation analysis breaks down to four simple parts:

1) Your Weakness
2) Your Strength
3) My Weakness
4) My Strength

If you do not know these factors about yourself and your enemy, you should not make a move.

I propose the sequence itself is instructive. Begin with your enemy's weakness, move on to your enemy's strengths. Follow suit with self. What are your weaknesses? Do you know the term "searching inventory?" It comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. Can you search your own weaknesses?

It is also tempting, so very tempting to believe that your strengths will win the day. And, when we do win, it is almost impossible to protect against faith in our own strength as the source of victory. Yet, this is often simply false. Did you win? Or did your enemy lose? Or?

Sometimes your greater strength does in fact win the day. But other times, it really is your enemy's greater weakness that determines the outcome, and you didn't so much deserve your victory as your enemy granted it to you. I know, hard to parse, but work at it!

This derivative set of points will help you see the differences, and deepen your ability to weigh the situation:

1) My Virtues
2) My Vices
3) Your Virtues
4) Your Vices

Was victory the result of my superior virtues? Or was it your vices that gave me victory, in spite of the weakness of my own virtues? Reverse scenario. You won, I lost. Was it your superior virtues that gave you victory? Or, was it my overwhelming vices that set up my own defeat?

Please note that the two sequences are mirror images of each other. As you weigh the situation, you want to be able, following both sequences in order, to measure every element of relative strength and weakness at play. Don't merely read this. Put it into execution.

Here's a professional example. I serve CEOs who always have enemies on their board of directors, executive team, and yes, within the ranks of their followers. I have not encountered a single CEO who knew how to complete these 8 questions when we first met.

We have to back up. Most souls, CEOs or not, struggle hellaciously with the first two preparatory questions:

1) Who are your friends?
2) Who are your enemies?

Let's see if we can't go coldly analytical in defining this question.

The first image is friendship. You're A, your friend is B. Not all your interests align, but some do. The second is enmity. Your enemy is B, and there is no intersection of interests. That's as simple is it can be made.

The eight questions above apply to EITHER friend or enemy. The assessment of strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, applied to friend, enemy, and self, this is the most basic layout of weighing the situation, at the smallest level possible.

I know, this is the simple stuff, right? Why does the simple break your brain so that the complex seems utterly out of reach? The complex stuff? Go back to verse 1: 2. The Way, Heaven, Earth, Command and Discipline. That's complexity. Then we factor today's work in?

What are my enemy's strengths, weaknesses, virtues and vices relative to The Way, to Heaven, Earth, Command, and Discipline? What are my own? That's overwhelming, isn't it? And that's why time spent in the temple calculating is so fundamentally important.

Meditate with me on the final verses of chapter 1, now, verses 17 - 20: "Victory belongs to the side that scores most in the temple calculations before battle. Defeat belongs to the side that scores least in the temple calculations before battle.

"Most spells victory; least spells defeat; non, surer defeat. I see it this way, and the outcome is apparent."

You might add, he was weighing the situation carefully before he made a single move, might you not?

174 verses completed, 248 to go.

To return to previous sections in our #WarForAmerica2020 and #SunTzuForMAGA series, don't forget to head over to @WarForAmerica21. You'll find the digital table of contents for this series, there. Please retweet each entry you enjoy.