Volume 2: Sun Tzu’s Art of War Playbook: Perspective

This is Volume Two (27 articles) of our Art of War Playbook. This section of the Playbook focuses on Sun Tzu’s concepts for using information in competition, specifically, getting a more complete and useful picture from competitive information. In Sun Tzu, key strategic information is a combination of objective facts and subject opinions that changes dramatically with a shift perspective. The Playbook itself is the culmination of over a decade of work breaking down Sun Tzu’s principles into a series of step-by-step practical articles by the Institute’s multiple award-winning author and internationally recognized Art of War expert, Gary Gagliardi. Unlike most of Gagliardi’s other books on The Art of War, this work does not follow the original work’s structure, verse by verse. Instead, it explains the concepts described the quoted verses in a manner more familiar to modern readers. The original Art of War was originally written for military generals who understood the philosophical concepts of ancient China. Our Art of War Playbook is written for today’s reader with enough descriptive material so that Sun Tzu’s principles can actually be used in everyday competition. It puts Sun Tzu’s key methods into everyday, practical language as a book of instruction. Because of its size and detail, the Playbook is published in nine volumes. This is just the second volume. The topics covered in this volume are listed below: Playbook Overview About Perspective 2.0.0 Developing Perspective 2.1 Information Value 2.1.1 Information Limits 2.1.2 Leveraging Uncertainty 2.1.3 Strategic Deception 2.1.4 Surprise 2.2 Information Gathering 2.2.1 Personal Relationships 2.2.2 Mental Models 2.2.3 Standard Terminology 2.3 Personal Interactions 2.3.1 Action and Reaction 2.3.2 Reaction Unpredictability 2.3.3 Likely Reactions 2.3.4 Using Questions 2.3.5 Infinite Loops 2.3.6 Promises and Threats 2.4 Contact Networks 3 2.4.1 Ground Perspective 8 2.4.2 Climate Perspective 3 2.4.3 Command Perspective 8 2.4.4 Methods Perspective 3 2.4.5 Mission Perspective 8 2.5 The Big Picture 3 2.6 Knowledge Leverage 8 2.7 Information Secrecy 3