William Wu Personal Blog

Aesop Fables is a book of timeless collection of wisdom,  It includes a good story on how to constrain our own ego and have the self-discipline against flattering and temptations.

The Fox and the Crow
Aesop
A coal-black crow once stole a piece of meat.  She flew to a tree and held the meat in her beak.
A fox, who saw her, wanted the meat for himself, so he looked up into the tree and said, “How beautiful you are, my friend!  Your feathers are fairer than the dove’s.
“Is your voice as sweet as your form is beautiful?  If so, you must be the queen of birds.”
The crow was so happy in his praise that she opened her mouth to show how she could sing.  Down fell the piece of meat.
The fox seized upon it and ran away. 

In his book “How To Become CEO“,

Jeffrey J. Fox advocates a list of “rules” for people to follow to rise to the top of their organizations.  There are a few of them regarding self-discipline that are particularly meaningful for entreprenuers:

Keep Physcially Fit. The better your physcial condition, the greater your capacity for productive, unrelenting work. In a typical established company, 90% of all people climbing the corporate ladder are out of shape.  Being physically fit gives you the entreprenuer the edge to be able to start earlier, pause less often, work more effciently and end your day with a wind spirit.  You will be energetic and tire rerely.  Your spirits will be up, and you will not get depressed when facing challenging situations.

Do Something Hard and Lonely. Self-elitism is what drives so many entreprenuers to start their own business so they can control their own destiny and free from management and mediocrity.   Do something you know very few other people are willing to do, this will give you a feeling of toughness, a certain self-elitism. It prepares you to be able to focus on the battle of business mentally.  For example, running long, slow distances early in the morning (vs. jogging at lunchtime with a mob).  All great and successful athletes remember the endless hours of seemingly unrewarded toil.  So do the successful leaders in many organizations. 

Think for one hour every day. Spend one hard hour every day planning, dreaming, scheming, thinking, calculating. Review your goals.  Consider options.  Ponder problems.  Write down ideas.  Mentally practice your sales call or big presentations.  Figure out how to get things done with less and quicker.  Take mental stock.  Do this every day, preferrably at a scheduled time.

Add one big new thing to your life every year. To be a great leader of an enterprise, you must be broad-gauged, widely read, and have many diverse interests.  You need to see solutions to your problems in the ways of other cultures, nature, music, how beavers build dams, anything.  Accomplish this by restless learning.  Never feel too old to learn as it implies you don’t have the capacity to grow, expand, or run an enterprise.  If you don’t have the time, how will you ever get the time to handle a bigger job with twice the reponsibility.

Always Take Vacations. This sounds hard for entreprenuers.  However, I have found that some of my best innovations and strategic changes came immediate after my vacations.  Vacation is an occasion to observe other ways of life, new fashings and trends, different ways business is done, and literally to broaden your horizons.  It gives you a chance to step out of the box and the daily routine and look at your venture with a fresh eye that it deserves.  Do so judiciously and always plan your vacation far in advance.  A planned vacation forces you to work incredibly hard before you leave and finish lots of work. As an entreprenuer, you must be able to establish your organization so it can function smoothly without you.

Practice “WACADAD”.  Dont’ talk about how good your are in the past.  Prove with action, over and over.  Put the energy in creating new things and planting for the next innovation that will help you leapfrog your competitions. That is the main reason why you start your ownbusiness.  Remember “Words Are Cheap And Deeds Are Dear.” 

Treat your family as your number one client.  Startup demands a big part of your dialy waking hours.  You need the support of your family.  You need an enthusiastic spouse who understnds that some sacrifice is necessary.  Your family must be an ally in your business plan.  Put your family on your calendar.  Give them high priority. Respond to your family as you do to your job, or to that big, important client.  Quality time with your family will reward you a thousandfold.

We can also borrow some anicent wisdom from Chinese philosopher Confucious regarding the self-disciplines.  Confucious’ teaching in this subject can be summarized as the Three Temptations and the Nine Considerations:

The Three Temptations
There are three things a gentleman must abstain from;

• In youth, when the vital fluids have yet to stabilize, the abstention is lust;
• In middle age, when the vital fluids are fully potent, the abstention is contentiousness;
• In old age, when the vital fluids have subsided, the abstention is acquisitiveness.

The Nine Considerations
There are 9 considerations a gentleman must keep in mind:

• When looking, be mindful of clairty;
• When listning, be mindfl of acuity;
• For facial expressions, be mindful of geniality;
• For demeanor, be mindful of deference;
• When speaking, be mindful of sincerity;
• When taking action, be mindful of reverence;
• When confused, be mindful of inquiring;
• When angry, be mindful of the consequences;
• When seeing the change for gain, be mindful of what is right. 

Everyone knows Rome wasn’t built in one day.  Pope John Pual II told us, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.“  It is important to know that self-discipline is about developing habits one day at a time that eventually helps making great long-term achievements possible.  Some of the disciplines may require fundamental changes of how you think and approach things.  These changes are possible, but difficult and they will not be finished today, but it can start today!  

“If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else. To triumph over self is the perfect victory.” - thomas Kempis

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I don’t play chess, but I am a chess fan.  I learn to appreciate the complexity and compeitive dynamics that exist in the chess world over the years.  Chess principles make excellent advice in the business world.  Seize the initiative.  Play with a plan.  Look at your opponent’s moves.  Don’t waste material.  Seek small advantages.  Everyone who wants to succeed at business or chess must follow these precepts.

In his book Every Move Must Have a Purpose, 

Bruce Pandofini, the famous chess coach featured in the Searching for Bobby Fischer book and film, shares many of these chess strategies for life and business.  Â

One of the key principles is: Always Play with a Plan. 

Always play with a plan.  As Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Roman Philosopher, once said, “Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know which harbor he’s making for, no wind is the right one. Like Alice wandering through Wonderland:

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where .
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

As with Alice, search for the road to a success ending is pointless when we don’t know our destination.

Practically, any plan is better than no plan.  “You don’t need to plan if you can afford to fail.”, as Bruce wrote in the book.  He continues, “…Play without a plan, and many things could happen.  Most of them are bad.  We can’t just move pieces and hope for the best, not if we want to win.”

How do you plan? Bruce advised us that great Grand Masters know to make their plans small and adaptable.  The best plan is memorabel in its simplicity, compelling in its logic, versatile in its application.  This “orderly flexibity” concept is key (see my previous blog - On Competition) as flexibility counts.  It is especially true if you are an entreprenuer trying to grow your business. Since the very nature of business and compeition is intrinsically unpredictable.  , we can at best hope to determine possibilities and probabilities.  Because we can’t eliminate the inherent uncertainty, we must reply on simple and flexible plan.  Small and direct plans assure players their ability to adjust quickly, without losing sight of the big picture.  Great chess players try to do a few things over the span of no more than several moves, they hope to link these schematic blocks into a grand strategy leading to checkmate. 

Of course we must plan.  As commonly said, by failing to plan, you plan to fail. Planning is bringing future into the present so that you can do something about it now.  Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensible. ”

The great success of our time are not just extraordinary people on whom fate smiled.  They get where they are by following a strategic plan.  They learn what it takes to get ahead. Like building a house, it takes a plan, a blueprint, but we sometimes forget that to build a success life and business, it also takes a blueprint.  So let’s remind ourselves, winners are made, not born. Remember the saying, “Today’s planning determines tomorrow’s success.”

“The general who wins a battle makes many calculations… here the battle is fought.  The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand.  Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few to defat.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The entreprenuer or player who plans carefully before entering the competition understands how to leverage his own stregnths and his resources.  With careful plans, one can predict which alternatives for action offer greater opportunities.  With superior execution, one can turn these greater opportunities into ultimate victory.

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The nature of business everywhere today is such that you must constantly be ready to compete for customers, markets, and resources.  The Book of Five Rings by the greatest Japanese samurai swordsman Miyamoo Musashi over 350 years ago is a classical book that teaches the important principles in winning competitions.Â

Musashi tells us that while smurai warriors are expected to face challenges and competition in their lives, so too do merchants, farmers and craftsmen.  Everyone is facing competition of some type everyday; the real question is whether you are prepared for it. 

The Book of Five Rings For Executives by Donald G. Krause does a great job explaining Musashi’s competitive success principles.Â

Some of the highlights from both Musashi’s original book and Mr. Krause’s book can be summaized as the following  key Principles:

• Keep Orderly Flexibility - this can be roughly translated into “positioning without position.”  As soon as your opponent recognizes your tactical approach, he can defeat it.  Therefore, excessive order and structure lead to brittleness and defeat.  Musashi compares the ideal attitude for executing successful competitive tactics to the nature of water:

“Water is both ordered and flexible at the same time.  It maintains its own identity, but conforms as necessary to the circumstances around it…. Balance order with flexibility.  Flow like water around obstacles. Move slowly when conditions are unfavorable; move powerfully when the right course opens up.  Everyone knows that water in a stream seeks the sea (water is ordered in its objectives), but who can tell how it will get there (water is flexible in its approach)? Think of winng, not of position.” 

The objective or ordered flexibility is to allow the warrier to determine the most appropriate opportunity or response in a fight. Business should also direct its strongest attacks on its competitors’s weakest spots.

• Ready to Execute.  Musashi says:

“Be prepared to act when the opportunity arises.  This requires both courage and patience, order and flexibility. “

General George S. Patton once said:

“It is the historians that make generals into geniuses.  In the midst of a battle, with all the unknowns and uncertainty present, a general can only do his best based on the information he has at the moment.” 

He also said,

“A good idea executed promptly today is worth a dozen perfect ideas executed next week.”

Similar to the concepts in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, Musashi advises samurais to master the following things:

• Be Resourceful. Musashi says,

“Gather information from every possible source.  Leave no stone unturned.  Use spies, consultants, informants.  Perceiving the enemy’s strategy allows you to defat it.  Knowing the enemy’s position and movement prevents unpleasant surprises.  Information is the fabric of tactics.  You can never know too much about your enemy, yourslef, or the situation.“

• Understanding Your Environment.  Careful analysis of the evnironment is important as Musashi puts it,

“Determining an initial approach depends on your assessment of environment.  Relative strength is a matter of fact.  Approach derives from circumstances.  Ask yourself this: Given the resources, environment, and attitudes involved in the competitive situation, is it better for me to adopt an offensive, defensive, or neutral approach to the conflict?  No approach is better than another except in light of specific resource and environmental conditions.”

• Timing is Important  Musashi constantly emphasizes the importance of timing and rhythm.  Acting at the appropriate moment assures the best opportunity.  He says:

“When you engage in competition, you should neither move too quickly nore too slowly.  It is not speed in itself, but rhythm and timing, which are cirtical.  The appropriate moment is that point in time when the sacles are tipped in favor of the tactics you have chosen.  concentration and timing work together.  If you do not concentrate both thoughts and resources at the appropriate moment, your tactics will probably fail.”

• Keep Great Attitude.  You must be confident and competent, aware, and ready, neither afraid nore careless.  According to the samurai code, fear is the greatest enemy you face, far greater than any physical opponent.  Your own fears magnify danger and obscure reality.  But fear exists only within your emotions and your perception.  It is a choice you make and it does not change the facts of the situation.  Musashi teaches:

“During competitive situations, your mind will be as you have conditioned it.  In every moment, train yourself to be calm, expectant, observant.  See things as they are.  Do not be taken by surprise.  Let your senses be open, your mind relaxed, your spirit balanced.  Meet every challenge with a firm, yet flexible, attitude, centering your attention on determing reality. “ 

Neither imagend fear nor false optimism can change your real position and circumstances.  He adds:

“If you face a tiger in the competitive jungle, it is in fact a tiger, neither something greater nor something less. You stand a far better chance with your eyes open and your spirit calm.”  

A Hindu saying put the competition in its true essence,

“There is nothing in being superior to someone else.  The true noblity is in being superior to your previous self.”  

Most of competition we face day by day is really about competing against our own craving for excess pleasure, personal bad habits, unwillingness to learn and prolonged inactions.  This is the highest form of competition as Anna Jameson (1797-1860) put it,

“The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.”

If we can overcome our weaker self, we are sure to become a stronger competitor externally.  A. A. Vandergrift describes this best,

“Positions are seldom lost because they have been destroyed, but almost invariably because the leader had decided in his own mind that the position cannot be held.”

Final thought, careful planning ensures competitive success, more on this later.

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