Thus, there are five dangers that will lie in wait for any general. If he is reckless, he can be killed. If he is cowardly and desperate to live, he can be captured. If you get angry easily, you may be provoked. If you are sensitive to honor, you may be insulted. If you are too compassionate towards people, you may be disturbed and harassed. These five characteristics are the biggest pitfalls and mistakes of a general and the cause of disasters in any military operation. The destruction of an army and the death of generals are caused by these five dangers, so they must be thoroughly examined. – Sun Tzu The Art of War, Chapter Eight
Tea five The characteristics mentioned in the previous section are:
- Imprudence
- cowardly
- Gets angry easily
- sensitive to honor
- too compassionate
And Sun Tzu briefly mentioned the consequences of such features if they are found in the generals.
BUSINESS APP
So, in business, what are these five characteristics analogous to what Sun Tzu mentioned?
- Recklessness would still be recklessness
- Coward would be indecisive and risk averse.
- Getting angry easily would still be easily angered
- Sensitive to honor would be selfish
- Too compassionate would still be the same
IMPRUDENCE
As I mentioned a moment ago, many people focus on the favorable factors without considering the unfavorable factors, so they become reckless and make a decision too soon. Such quick decisions often result in fatal mistakes that could cause a company to incur huge costs. For example, seeing that most of its customers moved their factories to China, it also started to move its factories to be close to them, without considering the infrastructure, manpower, regulations, etc. before you decide to set up your factory. A factory with equipment and land costs a company a lot. Furthermore, such assets are not easily liquidated. Such a reckless decision would deal a serious blow to the company’s financial strength and could leave it insolvent.
COWARDLY
As mentioned, this would be analogous to being indecisive or overly risk averse. Often these people have what we call analysis paralysis. They overanalyze data and information so much that they cannot make decisions quickly. If a leader spends too much time making a decision, he or she will be reduced to inaction and ultimately unable to capitalize on opportunities or limit the damage caused by competitor moves. Once again, the damages, if not limited, would once again be fatal to the company.
GETS ANGRY EASILY
Have you ever tried to do your planning in a state of anger? Were you able to see many gaps in your plan after going back and reviewing it in a calm state? Anger will block a lot of information from our brain and we won’t be able to think straight either. So if you get angry easily, you are often not able to think and plan thoroughly and will miss out on a lot of details. And we have seen in Chapter One of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, how much emphasis Sun Zi places on detailed assessment and planning, such a general would be a danger to his own troops.
SELFISH
Having a certain amount of self-esteem is good as it builds confidence, and with confidence people can perform their tasks. But for someone who is selfish, thinking that he is the best and that the company would be dead without him. Such a person is blind to the benefits for the company of a certain project and will always be on the lookout for his own benefits. He is likely to be very protective of other people’s comments about him and is unlikely to change and learn from the lessons. Such a person can easily get angry and also be reckless in his decisions. The consequences would be the same as those of an easily angered person and a reckless person.
TOO COMPASSIONATE
As I mentioned earlier, if a leader is too compassionate towards his staff, it will weaken their fighting spirit and give the staff the idea that they are in control. The leader would not be able to get his team members to carry out the instructions he passed on, which would cause a collapse of the department. If a department is no longer functional, similar to a breakdown in a body organ, the entire company cannot function properly. Having an overly compassionate leader in the organization is equivalent to having a cancerous tumor in the company. Sooner or later, the tumor will cause the death of the entire company. As mentioned before, there must be discipline. Usually, a leader who is too compassionate is not able to instill discipline in his teams, not because he didn’t set an example, but because the leader would not punish them even if they misbehave.
