Rule Number One in thinking, via The Art of War, is don’t do things the clever way, nor even the smart way: do them the easy way. Because it doesn’t matter what you’re wondering about, or researching or doing - someone else has probably solved the problem for you already. Flip to the back of the book, find the answer. In fact, the great thing about The Art of War is that it is not a brainy book at all. It is really just unvarnished advice expressed in what was then the plainest language. We need more of that. 

I wouldn't say the Chinese invented the art of thinking, but they certainly produced one of the first books about it when the great Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu (and likely other sages too) complied The Art of War, no less than 1500 years ago. 

Originally, it was very much a guide to military strategy, but don’t be confused by that. This is a book offering insights into all kinds of problems – challenges if you prefer – that we all meet in life. But in terms of 'thinking hats', meaning different strategies for approaching issues, the 'hat' you want to wear here is not so much a tin helmet as the kind of baseball cap favoured by leaders from Trump to Obama, and film directors from John Huston to Steven Spielberg. What's that kind of peaked cap signify? That you're in charge of the situation and managing the details. It's quintessentially the kind of message leaders of all stripes want to send. And so, today, The Art of War has evolved from a guide for generals, to being considered the classic work on action directed towards achieving precise ends. Life strategies, business strategies, military strategies. Hundreds of books examining its insights have been published in many different languages, and its ideas have been applied to fiefs as diverse as business management and training in sports.

Surely one of the most unusual 'book endorsement' quotes ever, was offered by Chairman Mao in the middle of the 20th century when he claimed the book as an inspiration for his guerrilla warfare, saying:

'We must not belittle the saying in the book of Sun Wu Tzu, the great military expert of ancient China, 'Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster.'

Indeed, the advice of Sun Tzu was followed during the Vietnam War when some Vietcong officers are known to have extensively studied The Art of War and to have liked to recite entire passages from memory. General Võ Nguyên Giáp, an avid student of Sun Tzu's ideas, successfully implemented tactics described in classic text during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ending major French involvement in Indochina and leading to the accords which partitioned Vietnam into North and South. Indeed, it was America's defeat there, more than any other event, brought Sun Tzu to the attention of leaders of American military theory and thus to today's business leaders. 

Likewise, the Korean resistance army defeated the vastly better armed United States military by cunning tricks, shortcuts and rigging the odds in their favor – the strategic significance of which has never really been accepted by the U.S. Looking back on the lessons of that war in 2017, in an article for Foreign Policy magazine, Paul Yingling, one of whose roles was as the chief war planner for the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, recalled that he had spent 'considerable time' studying not merely the Korean war but the links to Sun Tzu,'s teachings, including this passage:

'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.'

He realised that the United States should have had a lot to learn from the Ancient Classic but had failed to change its thinking. Worse still, Yingling wrote, Sun Tzu outlined all the options and 'we still picked the worst of the lot'. The options being, at the top, using the highest form of generalship to balk the enemy's plans; the next best being to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next attacking the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all being to besiege walled cities. Despite this advice, Yingling finishes: 'most of my training as a war planner consisted of exercises devoted to attacking the enemy's army and besieging walled cities (or at least prepared defences)'

Put another way, one of the factors that make a general great, and therefore rather a rare creature, is the willingness to withstand the desire of most people to rush headlong into direct engagements and instead to work patiently out how to go around rather than through his opponent… choosing the course of least expectation and the line of least resistance. ‘Doing things the easy way’ is perhaps the core message of The Art of War, and it is advice which, like much Chinese wisdom, is both wonderfully simple and somehow impenetrable. 

It is also known that during the Cold War years the KGB studied – and used - the strategy of deception at the heart of the book. Sun Tzu's words: 'I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness' rang true for the Bolsheviks. 

Maybe that’s why Douglas MacArthur, 5 Star General & Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, is reputed to have always kept a copy of The Art of War on his desk, although it may have been more of a fashion statement than a practical resource as the general is also remembered for wearing a Japanese ceremonial kimono, cooling himself with an oriental fan, and smoking cigarettes in a jewelled cigarette holder. On the other hand, in the early 1990s, American Gulf War generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell are known to have adapted ideas from the book to ruthless and deadly effect on Saddam Hussein's desert battalions. For them, the ‘easy way’ involved ideas like 'outmanoeuvring' and using 'overwhelming force' – which is why Saddam's conscripts were killed in their tens of thousands by bombs dropped from planes invisibly high in the sky. 

The Gulf War showed that the book had plenty of fans amongst real life generals However, as I say, in crucial ways, the text is only superficially about military tactics. Like all great books, it is at heart about human needs and values. As too, ultimately are thinking skills. It is for this reason that an otherwise actually rather impenetrable and obscure (impeccably Chinese) ancient text contains insights, even for some of today's busiest business leaders.

Mind you, I suspect Sun Tzu's wisdom often gets rather lost in translation. Take one of his favourite metaphors about the leader being the 'hub at the centre of the wheel'. Today's business gurus habitually say that this is in contrast to the Western view of leadership, where leaders are at the top of the organization with the workforce serving them in ever more remote 'layers'. They insist that in Sun Tzu's model, leaders position themselves at the centre and actively control the whole organization. These active CEOs are like the centre of a wheel in that they connect to everything just as all of the spokes meet at the hub. The only problem is that if the hub is not strong enough 

the wheel will inevitably collapse. 

However, fine point though this may or may not be, it is not Sun Tzu's one. Indeed, his is rather the opposite! And this is because The Art of War is also a work of Taoist philosophy and there is an old Taoist saying that we see the spokes in the wheel but it is 'the empty center that lets the wheel move'. It is the empty quality of the center that matters, not its 'strength', far less any notion of directing the spokes. Disciples of Taoism will know that this is a school that just loves 'emptiness', indeed the whole philosophy compares itself to the space contained by an empty bowl. 

'Like a bowl, it may be used, but is never emptied, it is bottomless, the ancestor of all things, it blunts sharpness, it unties knots, it softens the light, it becomes one with the dusty world. Deep and still, it exists forever...'

Work that one out, General! But perhaps one message is clear: rather than having strong leaders directing everything, in Sun Tzu's model invisible leaders quietly coordinate. Power comes from this subtle role. You no longer have to 'own things' to coordinate them. 

Despite such misconceptions and misreadings (or maybe a bit because of them) the book has become a modern business favourite. Nowhere more so than in Japan. Here, companies make the book required reading for their key executives. One result could be that the CEOS of their giant corporations tend to ‘encourage and facilitate’ rather than conduct themselves like little kings as CEOs so often do on the West. Another surely is that Japanese business follows Sun Tzu's advice about the importance of research. Rather than invent products from scratch, they take a long and careful look at whatever is currently successful, and, well, copy it. Or 'build on it', if you prefer.

Given the advice of The Art of War, it is perhaps not entirely a coincidence that both Japanese and Chinese corporations should be regularly accused of 'spying' on Western companies and copying their innovations. Not fair! But learning from what others have already done is a very effective strategy. ‘Not fair’, and yet one of the best kept secrets of US business is that a vast amount of US tax dollars are directed by the National Security Administration specifically to do much the same thing. Let’s pause a moment and look at one much under-reported way in which a piece of Sun Tzu's military wisdom has been absorbed into civilian life in America. Today, the NSA (the National Security Administration) spends billions of dollars every year to eavesdrop, not on the Ruskies but on everyday exchanges between businessmen, including the conversations of allies in countries like Germany and Japan. The links between talk about military tactics and company plans seems almost inevitable when you consider that the US security establishment itself today is a giant business made up of huge defence contractors: corporations like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and Endgame via less well-known companies like Booz Allen and Hamilton, who employed not only the now famous whistle-blower Edward Snowden but also one Mike McDonnell. What's so interesting about Mike McDonnell? Yet he is himself a former head of the NSA. Scarcely surprising then that Booz has been entrusted with so many juicy defence contracts out of a NSA 'secret-defense' budget estimated at around $10 billion a year. The NSA's centre for stocking computer records at Bluffdale, Utah cost on its own $2 billion at 2019 prices.

Pause for a moment to think about the size of these sums. How can information from 'spying' be worth anything like this? Yet particularly in today's high-tech world it very easily can be.

The official title of the Utah center is 'Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center' but the reality is, as the French newspaper, Le Figaro, put it on July 5 2013, quoting an unnamed senior figure in the French defence department who had been entertained at secret briefings in Fort Meade (the ones that Snowden leaked the Powerpoints of), ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 'the NSA has been 80% preoccupied with economic intelligence.' Actually, it goes back well before that too. On 8 August 1975, NSA Director Lt General Lew Allen admitted to the Pike Committee of the US House of Representatives that: 'NSA systematically intercepts international communications, both voice and cable'.

Spying – or shall we say more neutrally ‘obtaining good information before acting’ – is the strategy at the heart of The Art of War. Those of us accustomed to thinking of warfare as being something to do with guns and battles struggle to see how eavesdropping on businessmen fits in But the activities are intertwined, even if, , of course, so secretive that what goes on is rarely made public. However, in the 1990s, concern about eavesdropping on private American citizens led to the curtain being tweaked to some extent. 

It was at this time that a hefty supply contract with Saudi Arabia negotiated by the European business Airbus instead ended up ended up with McDonnell-Douglas, the rival of the Airbus consortium, because the former was privy to the financial terms offered by Airbus thanks to the electronic interception system. A well-informed press report in the Baltimore Sun in 1995 noted that: 'from a commercial communications satellite, NSA lifted all the faxes and phone calls between the European consortium Airbus , the Saudi national airline and the Saudi government. The agency found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official. It passed the information to U.S. officials pressing the bid of Boeing Co and McDonnell Douglas Corp., which triumphed last year in the $6 billion competition.'

Similarly, the French electronics giant, Thomson-CSF lost a 1.4-billion-dollar contract for a satellite surveillance system for monitoring drug trafficking and deforestation in the forests of the Brazilian Amazon to Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based company that makes the famous Patriot and Sidewinder missiles.. This, after the Americans intercepted phone calls and details of the negotiations and passed them on to the corporation - which announced appreciatively that 'the Department of Commerce worked very hard in support of U.S. industry on this project', which is a nice way to look at it. 

This spying is just a snapshot from a period in which the media discovered the story and public bodies started investigating. But the year before, that is in 1993, President Clinton extended US intelligence support to commercial organisations by creating a new National Economic Council, paralleling the National Security Council. The nature of this intelligence support was widely reported. As the Baltimore Sun again put it in 1995: 'Former intelligence officials and other experts say tips based on spying ... regularly flow from the Commerce Department to U.S. companies to help them win contracts overseas.' The same newspaper obtained reports from the Commerce Department demonstrating intelligence support to US companies.

One such document consists of minutes from an August 1994 Commerce Department meeting intended to identify major contracts open for bid in Indonesia in order to help U.S. companies win the work. A CIA employee spoke at the meeting; and five of the 16 people on the routine distribution list for the minutes were from the CIA!

Other accounts published both by reputable journalists as well as some firsthand witnesses, cite occasions on which the US government has utilised covertly intercepted communications for national commercial purposes. These included data about the emission standards of Japanese vehicles; trade negotiations concerning the import of Japanese luxury cars; French participation in the GATT trade negotiations in 1993 - and the plans of the Asian-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC), in 1997

After such triumphs of US communications intelligence came to light, and most particularly those detailing the derailing of trade deals for European companies like Airbus in favour of US contractors, a delegation of MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) was sent to Washington - but they returned empty-handed. The matter was simply 'too secret' to even talk about, they were told.

So it was left to an American Civil Liberties Union Report, ‘The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society’, to identify the close, not to say incestuous relationship of large corporations with the security agencies within the US five years later, in August 2004. And if, of course, I can't prove that Sun Tzu's book helped point the United States security apparatus in this direction, well, it would be hard to find another book that makes the point so firmly. Forget fighting battles: information is power.

I myself first wrote about the extensive network of US spy stations in 1999 in a book called No Holiday. At the time, I lived near one, in fact, called Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire. This is a surreal installation, of geodesic domes resembling giant golf balls dropped into a gently undulating moorland landscape of purple heather. Yet here’s the thing about information: almost invariably it is already out there, available for you to discover and make use of – if only you know where to look for it. However, there’s a kind of mini-industry in persuading us that everything important has to be invented or discovered afresh. That’s why, in June 2013, even this thoroughly researched and much debated issue of NSA spying had to be 'revealed' as if it was a brand new thing by the editor of the London Guardian, Alan Rusbridger and his US deputy, Janine Gibson as part of a show with Charlie Rose on PBS in America unveiling the revelations', as the paper put it on the website.

Although it is very difficult to quantify the scale of industrial espionage, the European Parliament report mentioned above estimated that even in the 1990s, globally, about 15-20 billion euros.- say 25 billion dollars - was being expended annually on the interception of communications and related activities. That's a lot of money but it isn't just about countries not trusting the Soviets, or even about companies grabbing contracts, it's about nations vacuuming up ideas too.

Because, which of these do you think is the most important factor for business success? A great idea – or having lots of money? Humble folk tend to think it is the latter, but the fact is, there's plenty of businesses that started off with millions in the bank, but quickly burnt through it and ended up with nothing. In fact, great ideas are worth more than money, or at the very least, potentially worth 'a lot' of money. And where do ideas come from? From talking to interesting people? Sure. From TV and radio? Why not. Of course, lots of ideas can be found in the form of articles, reports and books. But some big, 'ready made' ideas can be obtained by spying.

So, although the thirteen chapters of The Art of War include such things as 'using the lie of the land in your advantage' and tips on deploying 'fiery weapons' that look not only hopelessly dated but rather nerdish, I would say it the advice about the importance of information that is the key part of the guidance on how to achieve your goals. And all the other advice comes back to this too.

Sun Tzu, after all, was a master of 'soft power' and the father of 'agile warfare.' Whenever possible, he preferred to win without fighting or, at the very least, to win the easiest battles first. Which is why he also writes, 'In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won.' He advises his troops to 'make your way by unexpected routes and attack unguarded spots.' And he further states, 'Military tactics are like water. For water, in its natural course, runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So, in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.'

This principle, so obvious and yet so often neglected, is essentially to find the easiest way to achieve a specific goal. And it puts information first and foremost.

Consider scientific research. A shocking amount of research time, energy and money is quite simply wasted because researchers produce papers on matters that have already been studied extensively, published and even patented. Not because they are rechecking or finessing the work, but because they are simply ignorant of it. Straightforward duplication of earlier work simply due to ignorance of it has been estimated at around 20%, and of course you only need to flick through your local bookstore to see books broadly repeating themselves because human memories are short and anyway there is an engrained tendency to assume everything in the past is irrelevant. 

The reality, though, is that in almost every field of human endeavour, checking what others have already done and benefiting from their ground-clearing, and seeing what lessons can be drawn is just commonsense. Hey, NSA, spying is usually not even necessary!

In fact, a lot of Sun Tzu's book is commonsense when you think about it: advice that seems obvious when put plainly. However, this is actually the best sort of advice, not least because it fits logically with other things we believe. The kind of advice that seems really odd and counter-intuitive needs to be treated very cautiously. It might be brilliant – but it might be wrong.

That tip of Sun Tzu to pick the 'easier route' for example, may seem to be hardly worth saying: nonetheless, often we don't do it. For example, if we are trying to eat healthily, we fail to buy lots of healthy foods for the cupboard and fridge, but instead try to 'go without' – go hungry while living surrounded by the snacks that we had in the cupboards as a relic of previous bad habits. That ain't a wining strategy… Or take a humble author's battle to finish a piece of writing. Surely, it would be easier without other people in the room, without a telephone ringing, without a TV. Yet often we don't take even these easy steps and instead battle against unnecessary odds.

As James Clear, one contemporary aficionado of The Art of War has put it, in an article on his own website entitled 'Applying Lessons from Sun Tzu':

'And when we fall off course and fail to achieve our goals, we blame ourselves for 'not wanting it badly enough' and for not having enough willpower. In many cases, however, failure is not a result of poor willpower, but a result of poor strategy.'

This is what Sun Tzu is getting at when he says that an army never fights where the terrain is not to its advantage. Nor does it begin by attacking the point where the enemy is strongest. 

Linked to this is another one of The Art of War's commonsense, yet in this case also a little bit counterintuitive, messages, very much in keeping with Taoist principles of yielding, which is that warfare is essentially undesirable and to be avoided. Sun Tzu writes: 'Those who are not fully aware of the harm in waging war are equally unable to understand fully the method of conducting war advantageously'. Rather, Sun Tzu says: 'He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.' And that is why: 'He who is skilled in war … captures the enemy's cities without assaulting them. He overthrows the enemy's kingdom without prolonged operations in the field.' Sun Tzu calls this the method of attacking by stratagem.' Real generals don't actually seek battles against their equals – that's for the sporting enthusiasts. Rather, they take on weaker opponents, and make sure if possible that they catch them when they are additionally at a low point, and maybe not even expecting the fight. It's not sporting, but it's effective. The smart general only attacks much weaker opponents. The only problem is that some smart opponents sometimes only pretend to be weak!

Of course, Sun Tzu knew about that problem. He writes:

'War is a game of deception. Therefore feign incapability when in fact capable; feign inactivity when ready to strike; appear to be far way when actually nearby… When the enemy is greedy for gains, and out a bait to lure him,; when he is in disorder, attack and overcome him; when he boasts substantial strength, be doubly prepared against him; and when he is formidable, evade him. If he is given to anger, provoke him. If he is timid and careful, encourage his arrogance. If his forces are rested, wear them down. If he is untied as one, divide him. Attack when he is least prepared.'

Again, don't get distracted or focus too much on all the military-speak. Forget the 'enemy army', and instead think for a moment of 'your own bad habits' and you can see the applicability of the guidance. The first bad habit to change is the one that is easiest to. For example, if, like me, you have limited willpower and your life is a series of projects begun with enthusiasm but abandoned regretfully a little later, Sun Tzu reminds us that there is an alternative approach which is to change the 'rules of the game' so that we will win. The evergreen example here is New Year health resolutions to eat a better diet. In such personal health matters, if you've set yourself a demanding target, well… don't. Set yourself an easy target instead. Stack the odds in your favour! 

Don't give up all sweet foods, just give up, say, chocolate waffles and Banofi pie. For a week! Similarly, if you're surrounded by people who don't think you can make the change, or maybe don't believe in our project, leave them out of the conversation and find people instead who share your enthusiasm and goals.

As I say, if it all sounds a bit too simple, don't discount the advice for that. In reality not only do most of us spend most of our time fighting losing battles, we are losing easy battles too. Forget good intentions, ignore gushing accounts of the lives of 'great people' that may actually be fiction. It is better to regularly take small steps forward in everyday life than to fail to make a giant leap in an imagined other existence.

In fact, the great thing about The Art of War is that it is not a brainy book at all. It is really just unvarnished advice expressed in what was then the plainest language Starting with that central idea: knowledge is power. As Eric Barker put it, in an article for Time Magazine in 2014 (called 'Sun Tzu's Art of War: How Ancient Strategy Can Lead to Modern Success'), the crucial theme throughout The Art of War is the value information. Accurate, timely, relevant information. Eric says that in reading and re-reading the book he was struck by how Sun Tzu hit this one idea again and again and from so many angles. (I'm doing a bit the same thing in this chapter! And for the same reason: often we think we know something but when the same problem or issue arises from an unfamiliar angle we find we don’t recognize it and don’t know what to do.)

But perhaps, these days, the importance of information seems to have become something of a cliché. After all, ever since the arrival of computers some seventy or so years ago, we are relentlessly reminded this is the 'information age'. 

And it's certainly true that, today, Google brings us a library of millions of books all full of data and available just with a few keystrokes. It even often seems that if anything we are drowning in too much information, so maybe getting it is no longer a problem. However, the real problem is that not just any information will do. It has to be good information, clearly expressed and available at the right time.

Likewise, as we all know from fruitless internet key term searches, easy access to vastly more information doesn't guarantee that it will be relevant or even accurate. So what do the smart keyboard warriors, just like smart CEOs and generals spend much of their time doing? Sorting information. Picking out the key ideas like this is the above all the leader's job and responsibility. In this vital sense, nothing has changed since Sun Tzu's era.

Nor have the real problems changed. For generals, for CEOs, for researchers in laboratories too pleased with their new ideas to check whether it has already been done (a hundred times), the real obstacle to finding the right information is the conviction that you have it all already.

As Harvard Business School’s Gautam Mukunda, author of 'Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter' (2012), says, an essential part of hubris is 'thinking you know everything'. It's such a common mistake, even though so easy to correct. Or as fellow Harvard professor, Richard Tedlow, puts it:

'I have been teaching and writing about business history for four decades, and what is striking about the dozens of companies and CEOs I have studied is the large number of them who have made mistakes that could and should have been avoided, not just with the benefit of hindsight, but on the basis of information available to decision makers right then and there, in real time.'

This is the point that Sun Tzu made exactly this point all those centuries ago when he wrote: 'He who makes full assessment of the station at the pre-war council meeting in the temple is more likely to win. He who makes insufficient assessment is less likely. This being the case, what chance has he of winning if he makes no assessment at all?'

To draw this chapter to a close, let’s keep these wordsof the Chinese guru in mind but consider a recent real-life example of a battle between two 'metaphorical' generals and their Silicon Valley armies. In this war, one side followed Sun Tzu's playbook and the other stomped all over it. This is the clash between Facebook led by Mark Zuckerberg ( likely in a Facebook–branded baseball cap) and Snapchat, led by Evan Spiegel (also a keen cap wearer), a battle in which Colonel Zuck had all the divisions but General Spiegel had a carefully considered strategy, and one that, it seems came, at least in part, from reading the advice of Sun Tzu.

I'll tell you who wins in a moment. But first, we all know about Facebook, the social media site where people 'share' updates with their friends, however Snapchat may need a brief introduction. It's more cult: a revenue-less app that makes photos disappear. Okay, the story starts with Zuvkerberg's invitation, delivered to Spiegel's personal e-mail account: 'Come to Menlo Park and let's get to know each other'. Spiegel, then just 23 and, as J.J. Colao has put it, 'the brashest tech wunderkind since, well, Zuckerberg', responded coolly: 'I'm happy to meet you... if you come to me'.

Which, armed with the excuse of having another (rather grand) sounding) meeting with the architect Frank Gehry about designs for Facebook's headquarters, Zuckerberg did, flying to Spiegel's hometown, Los Angeles, and arranging for a private apartment to host the secret showdown. When Spiegel showed up with his cofounder Bobby Murphy, who serves as Snapchat's chief technology officer, Zuckerberg had a specific agenda ready. He tried to draw Spiegel and Murphy's vision for Snapchat, and he described (boasted might be the better world) Facebook's new product, christened 'Poke'. This too was a mobile app for sharing photos and making them disappear. It would debut in a matter of days. And finally, just in case there was any nuance missed, Zuckerberg would soon change the large sign outside its Silicon Valley campus from its iconic thumbs-up 'like' symbol to the Poke icon. Remembers Spiegel: 'It was basically like, “We're going to crush you”.’ 

As Business Insider reported it, after Zuckerberg and Spiegel first met, the latter left the meeting feeling deeply unsettled. Because what do you do if your business is about to be gobbled up by a $200 billion company? Well, what did Spiegel and Murphy do? On their return to the office they immediately ordered a book for each of their six person team. And that book was Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Quite what the team would have made of it is a moot point. Because on the surface The Art of War is, as the title suggests, all about fighting wars and it is only by implication and metaphorical allusion about business. That hasn't stopped it being a popular purchase (I suspect a less popular read) in business circles. Anyway, I don't know quite what they made of it all, but in fact when Zuckerberg, the richest twenty something in history, reached out to Spiegel, and put all his cards on the table, he already committed the worst error in the Chinese general's playbook. Because, remember, information is power. However, Zuckerberg was so confident that he held all the cards that he didn't care.

For General Zuck, 'It was basically like, “We're going to crush you”, as' Spiegel told J.J. Colao, of the US business magazine, Forbes.

Indeed, when Poke debuted, on Dec. 21, 2012, it shot immediately to the top of the charts. Zuckerberg gleefully e-mailed Spiegel, telling him that he hoped he enjoyed it. It didn't' seem a friendly wish… Spiegel, who had deactivated his Facebook account, frantically called Murphy for his review of the rival app. It was, Murphy responded glumly, a near-exact copy.

But then Zuckerberg saw their relationship as 'zero sum' stuff: either Facebook or Snapchat. The upstart photo-sharing app represented to him an existential threat yet to Facebook. And the reason why was all to do with the power of information too. Because what had emerged rapidly online was that sharing personal info is often not quite so cool the day after: what you post on social media--the good, the bad, and the ugly-- is there forever. You can delete it maybe, but you can't delete the copy that someone made in the 30 seconds it took you to realise that just maybe sharing the thing wasn't such a good idea. Even if, of course, sensible grown up rarely do anything silly, and happily provide Facebook with photographs of their allotments and news of Bridge tournaments, edgy teenagers fell on Snapchat, with its 'Mission: Impossible' style detonation technology, in droves. Within months, Forbes estimated that Snapchat had 50 million youthful users with a median age of 18. Facebook, meanwhile, had an average user whose age was closer to 40. That's ancient, in social media terms.

And so something unexpected happened to the Facebook Panzer division called Poke. Instead of crushing Spiegel's infantry underfoot, instead of snapping 'Snapchat' in two, by Christmas day, December 25, within days of its launch, it was Snapchat that was number one on the iPhone app store, having been boosted by the publicity of its battle with Poke, and it was the Facebook app that was routed, disappearing from the top 30. 

Which helps explain why, when Zuckerberg reengaged Spiegel, he was basically ready to surrender, The Facebook founder now offered Spiegel terms that, on the face of it, seemed impossible to refuse: $3 billion in cash. Forbes estimated that Spiegel and Murphy each owned about 25% of Snapchat at the time, which meant they were both looking at a $750 million windfall This for a two-year-old app which (even if it already had a multibillion valuation) not only made no money but didn't have a timetable for ever generating revenue.

And here is where the advice of Sun Tzu again comes back in. From a logical, Western point of view, Zuck's offer was unbeatable. But from the point of view of The Art of War, Zuck had just made another strategic error. And so, Spiegel turned Zuck and his measly $3 billion down. Crazy? But chapter 6 in The Art of War specifically addresses the need to attack an enemy where and when he displays weakness. 'There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this,' says Spiegel. 'I think trading that for some short-term gain isn't very interesting.'

Spiegel is described by Colao, the Forbes contributor, as 'lanky' and habitually dressed in a button-down shirt, designer jeans and white sneakers. He not only looks like an overgrown teenager, but behaves like one too. At the time of their meeting Spiegel still lived in his Dad's house. Colao recalls that during this interview he would abruptly shift from raucous laughter to icy glares, while constantly grabbing fistfuls of gummy bears and Goldfish crackers (fish-shaped cheese crackers that contain a small imprint of an eye and a smile!). His conversation was far from rapier like, but instead opinionated and rambling, punctuated with plenty of examples of 'like' and 'whatever.' But Spiegel followed these key strategic principles that can all be found in Sun Tzu: 

Research the issue. Time spent digging out background material can pay back handsomely.

Find out what people are saying. Maybe don't eavesdrop on their private calls, but try picking up the phone to talk!

Keep your ego in check. Confidence is much admired but over-confidence paves the way for error.

Keep asking questions. Ask them of yourself, or better, have someone smart cross-examine you about the plan.

And don't give up too soon! Who knows what will happen next – or what errors the other side may be about to make. As Sun Tzu said, great leaders don't just gather information, they actively exploit and manipulate the assumptions of the other side.

In short, ‘thinking like a general’ means using information to gain an advantage. Information is power – and money. Zuckerberg, whose whole business revolved around persuading millions of people to give him their personal details and preferences for free, should have remembered that.

BOX:

Timeless Advice on the Art of War

 Sun Tzu lived some 2500 years ago in the State of Qi in what is today Shandong Province in eastern China (and was roughly contemporaneous to the European philosopher, Pythagoras, who inspired so much of Plato's ideas and writings on the other side of the world, in Ancient Greece. Like, the Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, which consists of approximately 5000 characters, The Art of War is very short and precise. Nonetheless, within it is considered to be the definitive discussion of the arts of strategy, tactics, planning and intelligence gathering, as well as insights into politics , economics and, of course, military tactics. Sun Tzu has an alarmingly severe line on 'bad advice' saying: 

'Today, there are a veritable plethora of advisors and experts offering advice on how to get rich, be successful impress people generally. More than that, there are expensive business school or university courses promising pretty much the same, and last but not least, there are the books. When their advice is good, well, the advisors, the professors, the entrepreneurs and (why not), the authors deserve to be celebrated, paid highly, and feted with garlands. When it is not so good, though they deserve to be rewarded, and these days they often are, both in financial terms and in prestige. Yet when it is not, they deserve to unceremoniously pickled, sawn in half, boiled, minced, and torn apart by chariots.'

Smart authors match their books to the prevailing times, and this was during what is knows as the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Period which was no passing fashion but stretched from 770-221 BC. This was a time of great philosophical advancement, but also of social upheaval and military conflicts, as different states within China vied for supremacy. At the end of the period it was the State of Qin that would energy triumphant and unify the whole country under one emperor. And it was definitely a time when generals ruled the roost.

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