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The War Zoo
My first book, The Business Zoo was a primer for people moving up in business. We used animals and wizards to help tell the stories and lessons learned. Then in my second book, The People Zoo, we went into more depth on how people deal with organizations and each other. It included the personal impact of crises, failures and exits. To help tell these stories we used the guidance and wisdom of our country’s Native Americans or First People.
Which brings us to The War Zoo . The Latin word for war is bellum , meaning struggle or strife. Online, the question, “why war?” is answered “to increase power and wealth”. These descriptions relate to life and certainly business, not just war.
War or conflict has been around forever. In fact, after religion, war has been the most studied and written about topic in all languages over the history of humankind.
In recent decades there has been a renewed interest in “corporate warfare”. This has led to an increased focus on the ancient Far Eastern and European philosophies of military strategies and tactics. Many recent management books draw comparisons to the writings of people like Machiavelli to business today. In this book, we will refer to these ancient experts for insight.
One of the most acclaimed, but lessor known, experts on war was the 19th century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who said that war is a larger duel and stressed both its political and moral aspects. Duels can be deadly like Aaron Burr and our favorite musical guy, Hamilton. Corporate duels like Microsoft’s Gates versus Apple’s Jobs can also be deadly. And for sure, nowadays, corporate duels always involve lawyers!
The often-quoted Chinese author of The Art of War, Sun Tzu, pointed out that war is the greatest affair of state and the basis of life versus death, and often survival versus extinction. Very strong extremes, yet it is true in business as well. Walmart essentially caused the downfall and eventual bankruptcy of Sears.
With all these comparisons, it almost seems like business is the latest and, in most aspects a much safer version of war. We are not trying to minimize the horror of war which sadly is still with us. What we are trying to do is see what we can learn from war and some of its historic experts and to draw similarities to the world of business.
Because, you see, War is all of this and more, and is very hard to define.
Thus, this third book, like the nature of war, will have some chaos and will not move in a straight line. At times we will relate to war, with business stories, or concepts like negotiations, managing stress, finding empathy and even HR issues. At other times we will reverse this by relating more warlike themes to business or life. In the heroes’ chapter, I outline my criteria for one’s personal heroes. The chapter on hiring and developing troops starts with Sun Tzu’s unique method to train a harem. My personal favorite chapter follows and deals with mercenaries, spies, and saboteurs, from history, literature and today.
And throughout The War Zoo there will be countless people issues and the importance of leadership (an overriding theme in all my books.) Or more specifically, good leadership which is always at a premium and is too rarely found in war, business or life.
Hopefully readers will find this unique subject and approach interesting. Along the way some of my favorite people from the earlier books show up, like my boss George or the indescribable Branco. And as always, all my stories are told in a short, usually fun manner and are all true!
To conclude, war occurs not just between nations but in business, between people and, of course, in a zoo. Thus, The War Zoo!
Which brings us to The War Zoo . The Latin word for war is bellum , meaning struggle or strife. Online, the question, “why war?” is answered “to increase power and wealth”. These descriptions relate to life and certainly business, not just war.
War or conflict has been around forever. In fact, after religion, war has been the most studied and written about topic in all languages over the history of humankind.
In recent decades there has been a renewed interest in “corporate warfare”. This has led to an increased focus on the ancient Far Eastern and European philosophies of military strategies and tactics. Many recent management books draw comparisons to the writings of people like Machiavelli to business today. In this book, we will refer to these ancient experts for insight.
One of the most acclaimed, but lessor known, experts on war was the 19th century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who said that war is a larger duel and stressed both its political and moral aspects. Duels can be deadly like Aaron Burr and our favorite musical guy, Hamilton. Corporate duels like Microsoft’s Gates versus Apple’s Jobs can also be deadly. And for sure, nowadays, corporate duels always involve lawyers!
The often-quoted Chinese author of The Art of War, Sun Tzu, pointed out that war is the greatest affair of state and the basis of life versus death, and often survival versus extinction. Very strong extremes, yet it is true in business as well. Walmart essentially caused the downfall and eventual bankruptcy of Sears.
With all these comparisons, it almost seems like business is the latest and, in most aspects a much safer version of war. We are not trying to minimize the horror of war which sadly is still with us. What we are trying to do is see what we can learn from war and some of its historic experts and to draw similarities to the world of business.
Because, you see, War is all of this and more, and is very hard to define.
Thus, this third book, like the nature of war, will have some chaos and will not move in a straight line. At times we will relate to war, with business stories, or concepts like negotiations, managing stress, finding empathy and even HR issues. At other times we will reverse this by relating more warlike themes to business or life. In the heroes’ chapter, I outline my criteria for one’s personal heroes. The chapter on hiring and developing troops starts with Sun Tzu’s unique method to train a harem. My personal favorite chapter follows and deals with mercenaries, spies, and saboteurs, from history, literature and today.
And throughout The War Zoo there will be countless people issues and the importance of leadership (an overriding theme in all my books.) Or more specifically, good leadership which is always at a premium and is too rarely found in war, business or life.
Hopefully readers will find this unique subject and approach interesting. Along the way some of my favorite people from the earlier books show up, like my boss George or the indescribable Branco. And as always, all my stories are told in a short, usually fun manner and are all true!
To conclude, war occurs not just between nations but in business, between people and, of course, in a zoo. Thus, The War Zoo!
215 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2023
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