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.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

IT Manager vs. Security Officer - using "kill with a borrowed knife" & "let him have it and regret!"

A true story.

In a mid size company, its IT department manager has discovered that the security (SO) officer of the company is trying to gain some more power in the company. In this case - come control over the IT department. To this end the SO persuaded CEO of the company to allow him to conduct some security analysis of the company's network. He considered it to be a good opening for gaining some control over IT.

You bet, the IT dept. manager didn't like the idea. The IT manager (ITM) tried to dissuade first the SO, then the CEO, but couldn't win the argument. The CEO - having already given the permission to the security officer - didn't want to change it, even though he was explained that bringing in an external company that will run intrusive tests presents a security risk in itself.
The IT manager seemed to have lost the battle, when on one of the following days he wrote an e-mail to the CEO, saying that he will give all the help required to the SO and the security analysts, yet cannot, under the circumstances, be responsible for the security risk from the actions of the external company (he cited the risks).

Now the CEO didn't like it (if anything happens - he is to blame). The next day he gave the IT manager the power to control and supervise the testing, thus giving the IT manager control over the SO actions. Just the opposite of what SO wanted to achieve! IT manager won!

Strategy-wise - the IT manager withdrew all the resistance ("rolled back" as in tomoe nage), but now the CEO will get all the responsibility for the risk ("flip and crash").

Here two strategies were involved.
1. "Kill with a borrowed knife" (definition to be added)- the IT manager used the CEO to fend off the the SO's attack.
2. "Let him have it and regret!" - the secondary, ensuing conflict with the CEO was won by using the sudden withdrawal of resistance - and thus leading him into undesired position.
See definition of the "Let him have it and regret!" strategy and other examples of it's use here.

Posted by dailyStrats at 10:44 AM

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