Sun Tzu’s The Art of War

This book explores and demonstrates the transformative learning experiences that organizations and their leaders can derive from the arts. It is through the arts that we have always explored our humanity: through dance and music; art and sculpture; theatre and poetry. The arts allow us to explore our own selves and our relationship to others and to the world around us. This central role of the arts is commonly accepted in everyday life, but the implications of this are not typically extended to the world of business.The authors argues strongly that, to the contrary, the methodologies and approaches that are fundamental to performing artists of all kinds can provide exactly the kind of inspirational, people-centred and performance-related techniques that are missing from much of the typically mechanistic, systems-based and process-driven training and development of managers and executives. Technical proficiency and expertise are not enough to deliver an award-winning result; what enables a truly outstanding performance is the elusive but entirely recognizable element of artistry – the spark that transforms a technically good performance into something extraordinary.

In this counter-intuitive book for managers, the author argues that no one is perfect and that success as a leader is not about being perfect and always doing the right thing; it is about accepting your own humanity and adopting a number of down-to-earth attitudes and values. That’s when we achieve true (adequate) success.