Five Ways to Win- Part 3: Uniting the Upper and Lower Ranks

If you work for an employer who has about more than 5 employees you would probably have experienced some aspect of today's topic in one way or another.

You may otherwise have noticed when shopping how the owner of a shop is extra friendly when greeting customers and you get received really well- and then there is that change when he calls one of his employees out of their hiding place and you get handed over to that employee...

Now you hear the one excuse after the other and you get told to come back another day etc...

Well- at least this does not happen in all workplaces.

While the shop's owner wants to see his business grow and make profit the employee often just wants to get his salary at the end of the month with the minimum hardship.

Sun Tzu has obviously seen that the armies of his time had similar conflicts of interests.

Leaving these conflicts unresolved led to a disorganised army, delays in carrying out of instructions and in worst cases- treason.

Sun Tzu describes in other chapters ways in which troops get motivated to give their all to a cause. The one way that first comes to my mind is rewarding the best performer in the group instead of the whole group. This does really well to whip the whole group into a frenzy to succeed and may be all well if all members have the same task to perform, but you probably want to reconsider that if you have different staff working in different departments...

I mean- giving a bonus to the rep that gets the most sales is not going to benefit the receptionist at all now, is it?

As with all things in Chinese philosophy- what happens macrocosmically also happens microcosmically. This means that we can somehow apply the principle of uniting upper and lower ranks to an individual as well.

In the case of an individual fighter the upper and lower ranks refer to the mind and the body.

In order for one to fight effectively a focused mind is not worth anything if it does not have a body with which to fulfill its intent.

It is for this reason why a lot of time goes into conditioning the body in martial arts training. The ultimate objective is to have the body and mind work together as a unit. Any delays in carrying out a decision, responding to an attack or executing an attack can lead to defeat.

Before I conclude this post I want to add that many of us may find that we have trained for years to function effectively as an individual, but at work or at home struggle at being part of a team or a family.

It is one kind of mastery to get your body to do the right thing at the right time when your mind tells it to, but I have a lot of respect for the All Blacks- the world's No.1 Rugby team.

What we see on the field is the result of all members playing their part in the team without fail. From the correct guidance by coaches and good leadership by captains we have each player in the lower ranks not needing to be told what the goal is.

https://youtu.be/l0O_x2CD4Og

This brings me to the end of today's post. I have finished it early today so that I can head off to celebrate a late Chinese New Year festival with my friends in Johannesburg!

Have a good weekend and train hard!