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Make Victory the Only Option |
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Lead your forces into situations where they cannot retreat. |
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Underlying Sun Tzu's comments is the idea that the need to survive can force everyone to achieve goals. The pressure here is of two types: personal or corporate survival. |
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Personal Survival: The threat of either getting your job done right or losing it has been used by aggressive management at all levels. At companies like Pepsi, it has historically been common knowledge that you make your numbers or you leave. |
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Competition for personal survival is also keen at the real-world management schools within corporate America such as Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, and Disney. Although renowned as training grounds for leaders, the survival process of managers within these organizations ranges from tough to brutal. The Disney system pits strong division managers against a strategic planning group that acts as a check on their power. In this system, conflict is built in. To survive, you must fly under the radar as long as possible.
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Corporate Survival: We have seen dramatic success caused by a common understanding of the need for corporate survival. This was particularly true during the early days of the quality revolution when higher quality imports threatened lower quality domestic products. Then the rallying cry was to improve quality in order to stay in business. |
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A Survival Solution: The personal opportunity is to build the kind of career strength that makes you marketable. Says Intel's Andrew Grove, "No matter where you work, you are not an employee. You are in a business with one employeryourselfin competition with millions of similar businesses worldwide...Nobody owes you a careeryou own it as a sole proprietor. And the key to survival is to learn to add more value every day."4 |
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With each job change or promotion, you increase your career knowledge and your value to the next employer. If you aren't moving up in your organization, then consider moving on. |
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In hiring people, I have always been impressed when the background indicates that one of the prior employers had a reputation for thorough screening of new hires. After selection comes training. If your company isn't training you, then you should be sending yourself to trainingand that includes training inside and outside your profession. |
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