The Tao of Strategy

Kanokrat Namasondhi, Serge Eygenson, L. J. Bourgeois

Description

The Tao of Strategy combines ancient wisdom from the Eastern world’s great philosophers and lessons from modern-day business leaders to provide readers innovative approaches to unlock strategic breakthroughs for themselves and their organizations.

Today’s organizational strategists—including executives, managers, consultants, and the business students who aspire to join their ranks—will encounter novel ways of solving complex problems. In this engaging examination of the wisdom of Confucius and the strategies of The Art of War, the mindfulness of the Buddha and the perspectives of the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the advice of The Tao Te Ching and the fun of playing the ancient board game of Go, The Tao of Strategy presents alternative, creative ways to open up one’s strategic thinking.

The Tao of Strategy highlights a range of companies, from earth-moving equipment manufacturers Komatsu and Caterpillar to technology providers Infosys and Sun Microsystems to financial institutions Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. Interviews with chief executives from China Steel, PTT Group, Bacardi, Rodale Press, Aston Martin, and other organizations reveal how insights from Eastern philosophy inform the strategic decision-making of organizations and leaders around the world.

By engaging with Eastern philosophy from the perspective of organizational strategy, The Tao of Strategy offers a novel approach to strategic thinking that can help readers navigate today’s increasingly complex strategic challenges and unpredictable global environment.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Strategy, Insight, and Competitive Advantage
2. Warfare in Eastern Philosophy
3. Competitive Dynamics and the Chinese Game of Go
4. Dharma and the Bhagavad Gita
5. The Buddha and His Teaching
6. The Buddha and Mindfulness
7. Zen
8. The Tao Te Ching
9. Energy as a Strategic Force
10. Confucius
11. Strategy as a Call to (in)Action
Afterword
Appendix 1: Executives and Organizations Profiled
Appendix 2: The Contents of The Art of War
Appendix 3: The Four Themes of the Tao Te Ching
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Education
• Economics
• Business
• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: University of Virginia Press
• Date de parution: 14 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780813946559
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Tao of Strategy
The Tao of Strategy
How Seven Eastern Philosophies Help Solve 21 st Century Business Challenges

L. J. BOURGEOIS III, SERGE EYGENSON, AND KANOKRAT NAMASONDHI
University of Virginia Press
Charlottesville and London
University of Virginia Press
© 2021 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
First published 2021
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bourgeois, L. J., author. | Eygenson, Serge, author. | Namasondhi, Kanokrat, author.
Title: The tao of strategy : how seven eastern philosophies help solve twenty-first-century business challenges / L.J. Bourgeois III, Serge Eygenson, and Kanokrat Namasondhi.
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020058654 (print) | LCCN 2020058655 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813946542 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813946559 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Strategic planning. | Management—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC HD30.28 .B6844 2021 (print) | LCC HD30.28 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/012—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058654
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058655
To Maggie, my lifelong companion, collaborator, intellectual challenger. It has been an exciting run. You always had your bags packed.—J AY
To Irina, Polina, Sergey, and Yakov, the wisest philosophers I’ve yet to meet.—S ERGE
To my grandmother, Ponsri; my parents, Suwanna and Kitsana; and my uncle, Boonchai, all of whom brought me up with Buddhist philosophy and Chinese words of wisdom.—M INT
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Strategy
1 Strategy, Insight, and Competitive Advantage
2 Warfare in Eastern Philosophy
3 Competitive Dynamics and the Chinese Game of Go
Part II. The Inner Mind
4 Dharma and the Bhagavad Gita
5 The Buddha and His Teaching
6 The Buddha and Mindfulness
7 Zen
Part III. Relationships
8 The Tao Te Ching
9 Energy as a Strategic Force
10 Confucius
Part IV. Lessons for Strategists
11 Strategy as a Call to (in)Action
Afterword
Appendix 1. Executives and Organizations Profiled
Appendix 2. The Contents of The Art of War
Appendix 3. The Four Themes of the Tao Te Ching
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Although this book has three authors’ names on the cover, it is the product of countless others who have taught us and otherwise influenced how we view strategy. Forty years of students at Darden and Stanford have taught the senior author more than he expected. Generous and forthcoming clients have taught us how strategy really works, and produced the seeds of recognition that strategy is much more than an analytical process.
The executives who contributed to this volume allowed us to see the strategy process at work and how contemplative practices such as those covered here are valuable strategic tools when confronting corporate crises. In particular, several senior executives gave us their time and advice as we developed the book, especially Steve Hansel, Maria Rodale, Naresh Kumra, Nok Anulomsombut, and Sumeth Laomoraporn.
We would like to thank Eric Brandt, our editor, who invited us to initiate this venture and coached the writing team along the way. Our two reviewers helped us to mold this work into a final product, and our copyeditor, Lynne Bonenberger, was instrumental in adding professional polish. Finally, we would like to thank our families and friends, who not only put up with our long hours spent poring over source materials and drafting and editing our manuscript, but also served as our sounding boards, coaches, and cheerleaders.
Jay: Thanks to my Darden MBA students—especially coauthors Mint and Serge—who joined me in this exploration by taking the risk of enrolling in the inchoate venture that was the Strategic Intuition and Eastern Philosophy elective. Many of the ideas expressed here were developed with the executives and management teams that allowed me to copilot with them in the intricacies and discoveries of actually getting strategy to happen. I thank my friend William Purvis Bane, who introduced me to the Tao Te Ching many years ago; VN Dalmia, who supported my exposure to India and its history; Mary Parrish, my first Vipassana meditation teacher; and Robert Hodge, who welcomed me into his sangha and opened my eyes to the vast wisdom of the Buddha.
Serge: Thank you to Jay and Mint for allowing me to join them on this adventure; to my parents and grandparents, who blessed me with an upbringing rooted in intellectual curiosity; to the many wonderful teachers and mentors who showed me the power of mindfulness, yoga, and contemplative practices; and to Madeline for her unshakeable faith, support, encouragement, and patience.
Mint: I thank my Uncle Boonchai, my tutor in Buddhist philosophy, and Jay, who invited me on this journey. I also appreciate those who referred us to our Thai interviewees: Patcharanan Khomsan, Walee Wangthira-umnuay, Puree Tantivirasut, and Ratanasiri Tilokskulchai.
The Tao of Strategy
Introduction
Imagine yourself in any of the following situations: 1. On the heels of a successful turnaround, the chief executive officer (CEO) of a major regional bank receives notice that an aggressive bank consolidator is about to acquire his closest and largest competitor. 2. The CEO of the commodities division of Southeast Asia’s largest conglomerate learns that his recent trade in the rice market just lost more than USD200 million due to an unexpected change in Thai government policy. 3. The CEO of a global exporter of residential air conditioners based in Hong Kong finds that a recent change in Amazon’s large-item packaging requirements has caused a huge drop in sales, just days before the company is to launch a game-changing fundraise. 4. The chief marketing officer of a high-growth cyberwarfare software provider is disappointed that the company’s sophisticated data-driven strategic planning effort produced only incremental changes relative to its current strategy.
In the first three situations, the companies and their CEOs face an existential challenge. In the fourth, management has failed to come up with an innovative strategy to capture additional share in a fast-growing market.
In all of these cases, leaders must make a tough call. Their decisions and actions will dramatically affect the future of their companies and their careers.
Now, consider the following scenarios describing how you might have reacted under the circumstances: 1. Because of the high stakes, you are anxious. You can’t sleep at night. Indeed, your self-identity will probably be defined by the outcome. Will you be remembered as a corporate hero or a failure? Although you may not admit it, your ego and identity are inextricably invested in the success or failure of your decision. 2. You sleep well at night. You have little or no anxiety about the outcome—whether successful or not—and you have disengaged your ego from the results. You are calm, emotionally detached, and prepared to either celebrate a positive result or to deal with unpredictable events as they unfold. You find equanimity in the acceptance of how little control anyone actually has over external events.
The second scenario describes our intention for this book. The Tao of Strategy is not simply about Taoism and strategy. The word “Tao” in the title has a variety of meanings—the Way, “the nature,” the origin of all things—while also connoting Eastern wisdom. The book presents the nature of strategy and the way of strategic thinking through the lenses of seven Eastern philosophies: warfare and the game of Go, Hinduism, Buddhism, mindfulness, Taoism, chi (energy), and Confucianism. Our observations of institutions facing strategic challenges, plus recent research positing strategic intuition as the source of novel strategies, led us to explore how Eastern philosophy complements Western strategy-making.
While we believe that sophisticated strategy analytics are essential to informing consequential strategic decisions, we encountered Eastern philosophies as powerful partners to conventional strategy frameworks. As we will see in the stories we chronicle, the calming of the mind can open it to insightful intuition and novel strategies.
Our initial exploration led to the design of an elective, Strategic Intuition and Eastern Philosophy, as a follow-on to our advanced strategy seminar in the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. The new course’s purpose was to introduce the wisdom of the ancients to modern business leaders, and to cultivate presence of mind—what Austrian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz pointed out as the necessary ingredient for a strategist to experience the “aha” of discovery. The course garnered some publicity, leading to the invitation to write this book.
To bring as many of the philosophical principles to life as possible, we populated the book with scores of examples and stories from consulting experiences, case research, and other sources. In order to make the lessons as contemporary as possible, the authors traveled to China, India, and Southeast Asia in July 2018 to interview senior executives who shared three characteristics—an Asian cultural and/or religious upbringing; an MBA or engineering degree earned in a Western institution; and major responsibilities, preferably at the C-Suite level—and who had experienced a recent corporate crisis, challenge, or wicked existential problem that they addressed using both their Eastern heritage and perspective and Western strategic tools.
Our question was simple: How do executives exposed to both traditions reconcile or build on them when making tough choices?
We also included stories from Western companies and executives whose decision processes exemplified our Eastern philosophical concepts. Some of t