The Art of What? QMN011
Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Wednesday, 8 May
(Today’s report is a 5 minute read)
BLUF: Most business is about building relationships, understanding people, and negotiation. It’s about rapport, communication and the exchange of values. Learning the basics of cross-cultural communication will give you more options and approaches than trying to apply warfare maxims.
KSA here. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is one of the most widely read – and wildly interpreted – books co-opted by business and corporate thinkers. The gist is fairly simple: it’s an extension of the aphorism offered by von Clausewitz: “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” Prima facie, it makes sense, especially when coupled with the personas – the corporate raider, the slick insider, the media kingpin, the “angel” investor, the tech billionaire – adopted by those who play the high-stakes games of capital as “warriors,” as self-stylized as they are self-valorized and self-mythologized (see The Wolf of Wall Street, Trump: The Art of the Deal, and Glengarry Glen Ross). An imaginative interpretation of von Clausewitz’ maxim, in which business is also a continuation of policy, can be safely assumed. The von Clausewitz book of the same title seems to be less widely adopted, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps age has granted Sun Tzu more clout.
Most business isn’t about cocaine-fueled plunder and pillage. Beyond the banalities that come with economic survival, most business is about building relationships, understanding people, and negotiation. It’s about rapport and communication. It’s about the exchange of values. Those things aren’t really covered in Sun Tzu.
Interestingly enough, however, there is a book written by warriors for warriors that covers those things. In fact, I would argue that if there’s one book that should be in every executive, sales pro, and job-seeker’s briefcase – and not just collecting dust on their desk or shelf – it’s the innocuously titled TC 31-73 Special Forces Advisor Guide. This training circular has more worthwhile reflections on navigating cultural waters than the entirety of most business sites. The preface unpacks its purpose. The publication is intended to define “the subjective, intangible nuances of human interaction. It is designed to assist the SF Soldier in understanding and navigating the complexities of human behavior as it relates to cross-cultural communication.”
Nearly every interaction between you and a potential client, partner, employer, or employee is an exercise in cross-cultural communication: think of each of those things as a society in miniature. The Guide writes that “culture is the set of opinions, beliefs, values, customs, and mores that defines the identity of a society.” It is incumbent on you to do your due diligence from that perspective: to objectively and dispassionately understand their values, to assess their beliefs and biases, to determine their strengths and weaknesses – in short, to get a grasp on their culture or the culture that exerts the most influence on their identity – and to develop a rapport and ability to communicate with them regardless of your personal opinion of that culture.
The manual takes nothing for granted, taking care to discuss psychological considerations like compartmentalization, perceptions of time and personal space, and the concepts of concession, personal pride, saving face, and honor in negotiation. The lessons taught are as applicable to New England yankee in a southern boardroom as they are to an ODA working alongside tribal leaders halfway around the world. Don’t think so? Consider Colin Woodard’s analysis of the United States as 11 rival regional cultures.
Geographical differences – and all differences – matter. No amount of wishful thinking can change that. That a business culture is inorganic is irrelevant: it nevertheless possesses the same qualities that need to be understood if you are going to operate outside the confines of your cubicle with any social agility. The Special Forces Advisor Guide will, at the very least, provide an OODA-compatible pathway into thinking and acting with the right mindset – adaptive, flexible, open – rather than reaching for your sword. More often than not, the art of business is the art of “what,” and not the art of war.
THE CHANNEL IS THE MESSAGE: The topics that work best on the different platforms (2 min) “Media companies are shifting from relying solely on Google and Facebook for news distribution to relying on other, more niche channels, including private networks. This shift incentivizes media companies to produce higher-quality content to be effective regardless of the platform, rather than create content to game algorithms.” A more purposeful dispersion across channels isn’t a bad thing at all, but what’s driving it? And will this sorting ensure Facebook gets even more politics content and Pinterest gets even more desserts & baking content? (BJM)
ARTIFICIAL ELOQUENCE: Word’s new AI editor will improve your writing. (1 min) As a writer, I should be horrified, but for some reason I find this amusingly novel, particularly the bit about writing “more inclusive texts.” Alas, in the face of tedious feel-good bytes like that, I am given to thoughts like those expressed by the late artist Reginald Marsh, who once exclaimed, “I am not a man of this century.” (KSA)
Implications for a widespread AI editor for business and academic communications are big - if the concept takes hold, how much of what you read every day will be the product of a centralized machine intelligence? And when a machine intelligence is always at hand to help you convey your thoughts, what will happen to writing, and this critical thing, skills in humans? (BJM)
LISTEN, THEY’RE TRYING: Army plans to embed coders with troops (1 min) You read that right - the US Army is thinking about doing a little bit of DevOps to keep some of their most critical battlefield systems running, and working on business intelligence software for budget decisions. Skynet alarmists be comforted: we’re a long, long, long way from battlefield AI. (BJM)
OF COURSE IT IS: Is Chinese-style surveillance coming to the west? (5 min) Thing is, it doesn’t need to. Every person using the Internet or a mobile phone is creating a personal profile the likes of which couldn’t be created by Big Brother himself. Every click, every like, every check-in, every left or right swipe, every purchase, every abandoned shopping cart, every word… is a data point: a pixel in a portrait of the unique and special snowflake that you are. “While we once hoped the internet would deliver us freedom of expression, the ability to communicate freely across borders and even be a channel for dissenting views, we now see the very opposite is occurring.” Hope, once again, proves to a poor substitute for foresight. Any tool with any power – whether a rifle or the internet – threatens the monopoly of power as practiced by the state. (KSA)
Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.
KS Anthony (KSA) & Brady Moore (BJM)