What is this all about?:

Military strategies are for wars and martial arts techniques are for fighting - right?
Well, don’t we fight our little wars and conflicts daily? At work, at home, in the shop, in the street, with kids or parents, you name it. Sometimes even putting a kid to bed turns into a sizeable conflict!
And don’t we waste tons of nerves and energy in these little fights?
Shouldn’t the ideas from the strategies and techniques be applicable to our daily conflicts? And make it easier to win and live?

Well, I think - "yes"! And I am trying to put together here a sizable amount of examples to show this. Below I present these examples together with the underlying ideas taken from military or martial arts. Sometimes their application looks like plain psychology, sometimes as office politics, and sometimes just as little tricks that you can use. And, you bet, at times it is not that pretty, but hey, who said that warfare is pretty?

As with martial arts, you can use it just to fend off attacks or to hurt people. Some ideas are aikido/judo like – soft. Some are hard. You can be gentle or play it rather ugly – it depends on you - hope not - but sometimes the circumstances dictate that too.

If you live in a violent area – it is a good idea to take some form of karate-like training, right?
By the same measure “if you live in a world of conflicts – it is a good idea to learn some techniques to handle them”.
Or you may go on and fight them “head on”.

I would be happy to hear your comments or examples – just go ahead and add a comment anywhere – I will re-post it if necessary.

Sun Tzu said: "..to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

On the right there are links to previous posts - strategy definitions and examples of use.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

"Carrot, rather than the stick"

Sometimes carrot works better then the stick.
Well, may be even most times.
Here are two examples of ingenious use of the "carrot".
I believe they where given by a professor at Boston University.

1. A secretary, due to various problems at home with a kid, was
arriving late to the office on a regular basis.
Every time she was "terribly sorry", but it continued.
Since it was the only problem with her and otherwise she
was very valued by the boss, he didn't want to use the "stick".
So, he decided to use the carrot. From that day on,
whenever she showed up for work on time - he would be
a bit extra nice to her, while if she was late - just
"neutral". After just a couple of weeks she started to arrive
on time!

2. At some small company an office manager started to dress
a little bit more provocative then it was comfortable for the
others. It was such a little bit too much that the boss really
didn't want to make an issue out of it. So, instead of commenting
negatively on the way she dresses, he started paying her
little compliments (obviously within the limits) on how well
she looks each time when she dressed less provocatively! Within a couple of weeks she changed her
dressing style to a tolerable level.

Posted by dailyStrats at 11:50 AM

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