GSLK
GSLKThe club library

Sun Tzu: know yourself and the other

An event fails a week before the room — on the day nobody checked what else is on at the same time. By the time people arrive, almost everything is already decided.

← The whole library
Sun Tzu (Sunzi), traditionally 6th–5th c. BC; life dates uncertain · c. 500 BC
How it works

The strongest move happens earlier. Sun Tzu asks four things — what your side can do, what the other side wants, the ground and the timing, the cost of dragging on — and holds that by the day of the event it is already decided.

Know both sidesnot 'am I strong' but what the faculty, the sponsor and the students want
Ground and timingthe same event on Friday evening and at Tuesday lunchtime is two events
Win before the fightthree people who each bring five, and a room booked a month ahead
The cost of a long campaignthree months on one conference and the team falls apart from tiredness
Four questions to ask before you plan an event; if you have no answer to the first, you do not need the poster yet.
What you do first

Take your next event and answer three things in one sentence each: who exactly you want in the room; what else is on that day (check a calendar, do not guess); which room and who unlocks it. If any answer is missing, the event does not exist yet.

Who thought of it
Sun Tzu (Sunzi), traditionally 6th–5th c. BC; life dates uncertain — a historical likeness
Sun Tzu (Sunzi), traditionally 6th–5th c. BC; life dates uncertain
c. 500 BC

The full biography is on the public version

Qing-dynasty portrait — a traditional depiction, not from life. Palace Museum, Beijing. PD-art / PD-old-100-1923 — anonymous Qing-dynasty painting

Where this runs in the platform

These screens carry out this specific work. Every published work in the library also has at least an exercise — it is at the foot of this page.

Loading…

What this connects to

These works are related to the one you just read — and not by accident:

Competencies
On your club's competency map

Opens in the member workspace — you need to be signed in.

The public version
Sun Tzu: know yourself and the other

The same work written at length: what it claims and what its evidence is worth.

Check it yourself

This text is freely available, so the links go straight to it rather than to a summary of it.

Links open in a new window.