leadership: the moral and intellectual advantage

If strategy wins wars, leadership is the driving force behind the conception and execution of strategy. I am quite fascinated by Sun Tzu’s practical  qualification of effective Generalship – sincere, courage, humane, wisdom and strictness.  Wisdom would mean the quality of being “circumspect”; cautious and demonstrating right judgment over being reckless.  Much can be learned from history pertaining the quality of “leadership”.  From the First Punic War to the Battle of the Bulge to the C2 annex of Philippine bottled ice tea market , leadership is the first manifestation of the principle “ moral and intellectual faculty of man will remain decisive in battle” The Art of War. Equipped with creative thinking and decisiveness applied on market opportunity with  right mix of business management competence, entrepreneurs are a new breed of business people mastering the market place and competing head on with Multinational giants. When we only read about great exploits and grand maxims as “ wars are not won by numbers or strength, its won by strategy”,  this new breed of businessman live it by the hour. They are Attitude, Competence, and Passion personified. By their leadership, their organization thrives in challenges.  There organization possess the characteristics which makes them immune to the supposed advantages of market giants as Coca Cola and Philip Morris – true to Darwin’s survival of the fittest – they have developed a unique cluster of competence that equips them with survival skills against numerically superior brands. 

Under the leadership of skilled entrepreneurs, strategy and tactics work fluidly and complements each other as the situation requires. Lean and mean, entrepreneurs are able to dodge bullets and competent in conforming to the form of the ground making use of the opportunity an incumbent situation presents and avoid its weaknesses and threats.  “like water which avoids the heights and hastens to the lowland, so an army avoids strength and strikes the emptiness of the enemy. And as water shapes its flow in accordance with the ground, so an army manages its victory in accordance with the situation of the enemy” The Art of War. A maxim espoused by skilled entrepreneurs whose drive for victory is driven by a contagious passion for excellence and growth. Never losing the initiative, they chose their battles carefully and invest their strengths where it will provide the biggest pay-off at a manageable risk. 

A leadership fueled by a self sustaining drive whose only source is an internal universe constructed by years of self awareness ;  supported by an emotional and mental commitment honed by choice and fate whose cause poets attribute to the gods.  More than poetry, religion provides us an answer to this mystery where it is written that “we were made in the image in likeness of God”  equipped with the power to create and to rule over nature.  If we seek further, our reason would point us to our human capacity to conceptualize complex designs using basic structures and shapes. 

Strategy, tactics, processes, technology, equipments and other  concepts are manifestation of man’s genius. Leadership is the driving force in every human enterprise. Our internal universe and the universe we see in the heavens are manifestation of our human imagination. All of which man made animate. It is man’s imagination that makes order in a supposed chaotic world.  Thus, “moral and intellectual faculty of man will remain decisive in battle” The Art of War. Leadership will remain a key element in any human enterprise.  Beyond form and substance of any concept is the man who will carry on the mission.

Rene Bitara, Prometheus Consultants