You must know the art of yin yang balance.

It is dangerous to be extreme.

While it is important that you are courageous when you are fighting a war, you must not go to the extent of becoming reckless. As Sun Tzu points out in The Art of War, “If you’ve decided you must die, you will be killed.”

It does not mean, on the other hand, that you must not be brave.

When you are afraid to die, you would become cowardly. The result is equally back. According to Sun Tze, “if you’ve decided you must survive, you will be captured.”

Be wary of your disposition well. Watch your temper! If you are quick in your temper, your enemy will know how to handle you. They will try all means to provoke you, and you could fall easily into their traps.

Even being upright and uncorrupted can be a weakness. The enemy could find a way to insult you. Being conscious about your integrity, you may lose your senses due to the insult, and do things leading to your disadvantage.

Do you believe it! Loving your people can be a weakness as well. The enemy can fret you with what they would do against your people, leading to you not being able to strike a balance.

As a leader, you must be cool headed.

Never lose sight of moderation!

Thanks angus stewart for the picture.

In these ‘checklists’, Sun Tzu the author would succinctly summarize his thinking in a few words, very often less than ten,  and gives us a clear and useful guidelines.

For example, when he talks about the quality of a good leader – or commander in the military sense – he puts that down in only 5 words:

• Wisdom (智)
• Credibility(信)
• Benevolence(仁)
• Courage (勇), and
• Strictness(严)

Without wisdom, the leader would not be able to see beyond the immediate, and come up with a strategy that would win the final battle.

Credibility, on the other hand, is critical or the leader would not be able to win the trust of his people. The rewards and penalties would become meaningless as nobody believing them, and there is no commitment and spirit are fighting.

Benevolence is important.  The leader has to lead with compassion, and fight for a good cause.  He has to love his people, and appreciate the hard work and devotions from others.

Courage is critical, especially when the leading is in the war field.   The courage of a leader is reflected not only in the way he fights, but also how firm he is when a tough decision is called for, and how swift he acts when an opportunity knocks on the door.

Last but not least, the leader must be strict. Whatever needs to be done has to be done, and to be done in an appropriate manner. This is the only way to instil discipline and command respect — something essential to end efficient army.

Thanks howzey for the picture.

In this context, Tao means The Way — the laws of the universe.  Although the concept is  philosophical, and not easy to explain in a word or two, we may put it simply that the commander must lead his army to fight for a right cause.

This is at the top on his ‘checklist’ for a winning army.

It is easy to see the importance of the moral influence in a war. If the troops are not committed to what they are doing, it is very hard for them to lay down their lives for the battle, and they would be easily defeated by the enemy.

This may be less obvious in management. But if you think more deeply about it, the fighting spirit of the team members is equally important if you want your team to win one battle after another in the fiercely competitive business environment.

If you can have a mission that your people not only would support wholeheartedly, but to die for — your war is half won.  If the mission is so uplifting that every member of the team is so fired up that not only does he want to see the mission accomplished for the sake of completing his jobs, but also to fulfill something he is devoted to, chances of you succeeding in your endeavor will be so much higher.

Thank you Vlasta2 for the picture.

This may sound weird to you. If you don’t love your people, how do you win their trust?  If you do not have their trust, how then are you going to have them fight for you?

To understand this, we have to apply the yin-yang theory.

According to Sun Tzu Art of War, while it is important that you care for your people, you must know where to strike the balances. Going to the extent of doting on them or being too compassionate can be dangerous. Your enemy can attack your soft spot to harass you, making you losing your senses.

A strength used in excess will become a weaknesses. Beware of the ‘dosage’, or you may get carried away.

Beware of the five dangers for a commander:

It can be dangerous if a command is reckless as he can be killed; cowardly as he can be captured; quick tempered as he can be provoked; sensitive to honor as he can be insulted, and doting on his people as he can be harassed.

The Art of War Quotes, Chapter 8

So a good commander should be wise but not reckless. Sincere but not cowardly. Benevolent but not doting. Honorable but does not over-react to insults.  Strict but not quick tempered.

Thanks devos for the picture

Waging a war is expensive. So are many management decisions. Launching a new product in the market, for example, can sometimes make or break a company. It is very similar to waging a war.

You launch a product with an aim  to dislodge your competitors’ position in the market for your advantage. It incurs costs, from development, market test, production to advertisements and promotions. However well prepared you are, where you are in the market, there could be response from customers and competitors that catch you unprepared.  The management of a product launch is, therefore, not unlike managing a war.

Like doing strategic planning in other areas of business, it is important that you consider your chances of success from all crucial angles, so that you can be better prepared to win the war.

In the framework of Sun Tze’s strategic planning, the five critical elements that he’ll have to take into consideration are:

• The Tao:  Whatever you do must follow the laws of the universe, which is known as the Tao. Even when you are waging a war, you must not neglect the moral values.  In this respect, it is very important that whatever you do is meant to benefit the customers. Only then that your army will be with you, thick or thin.
• Climate: Simply put, the timing must be right.
• Terrain:  You must know the terrain.  In this case, the marketplace.
• Leadership: You need good leadership to see things through.
• Discipline: You need a system of control to ensure that every member of your team does what is required of him.

The Art of War quotes:  Chapter 1

Thanks malczyk for the picture

This is something pretty confusing, especially for beginners of the Chinese language. You often see the words being used interchangeably.  There are also occasions when they are used together, describing the language has Chinese Mandarin.

The question is: do they mean the same thing?  Is Chinese Mandarin?

The answer is yes and no.

First of all, you should be aware that Mandarin is to be spoken. To be more specific, it is the official spoken Chinese.   In this context, speaking Mandarin is akin to speaking the Chinese language, and Chinese is Mandarin.

The Chinese  language, however, can be spoken in many ways. Mandarin is only one of them.   From this perspective,  Mandarin is not Chinese, it is only one of the ways to speak Chinese.   In addition to Mandarin, Chinese is also being spoken as dialects, including Cantonese, which is spoken widely in Hong Kong and many Chinatowns in the West.

Read more about Mandarin and dialects.

What I like to add here is that if you have to decide  what spoken Chinese to learn,  I would without doubt recommend Mandarin, rather than other dialects including Cantonese. This is because Mandarin is the only Chinese spoken language that can be understood throughout China, wherever you go.

It is not how hard you try in talking, but how effective your message is received that matters.

There is no point to even start talking, if you are not talking the language that your target audience can understand.

In this sense, there is a widely used idiom in Chinese that would come in useful:  duo4 niu2 tan2 qin2 对牛弹琴.  Literally translated, it is Playing Zither to the Cow.

The cow is a lovely animal. It is docile, demure and hard-working. As someone who is good in music, you would assume that the cow would appreciate your performance on the zither, for which you have toiled and moiled for years to master the playing skills.

Unfortunately, even when it is well-intentioned, the cow will not be able to understand you.

Talking to the cow, you have to use another language.

Thanks mountainbread for the picture.

Well, you can translate it DIY.

How wonderful!  You can also hear how the Chinese characters that you have translated are pronounced as well.

The secret?  The Google Translate.

This is how you can do it – and see the results in seconds.

1. Go to http://translate.google.com/#.
2. Choose the language of you want.   There are more than 50 languages for you to choose from.  If you want the original text to be in English, go to the ‘Translate from’ column and choose ‘English’.
3. Then, go to the ‘Translate into’ column, choose ‘Chinese (Simplified)’ or ‘Chinese (Traditional)’.
4. Enter in the text box the text that you want to translate.  For example, ‘I am happy.”
5. Almost immediately, the text is translated into Chinese as “我很高兴“ .  In this case, it is a good translation.
6. Click the audio icon, and you can hear the phase being read.  In this case, it is quite in good pronunciation as well.
7. You can improve the translation or the pronunciation, contribute to the community by click ‘contribute a better translation’.

Enjoy translating!

While I like to do things online, as far as learning Chinese is concerned, the most effective way of learning the language is still immersion.

To immerse yourself in Mandarin, put yourself in an environment where Chinese is the primary tool for communication.

In this way, you get to hear how the language is spoken, and respond to it in a spontaneous way.  It is ‘live pinyin online’.  There are ample opportunities for you to make mistakes and grow.  Practice makes perfect. When you are forced into the situation where you’d have no choice but to open your mouth and speak Mandarin most of the time, the learning process becomes proactive.  This is extremely powerful. Some of the best cities to immerse in Mandarin  are Beijing and Shanghai.  Other cities to consider are Taipei and Singapore. It will be more effective if you can sign up a language course when you are there.