The Artful Corporate Warrior

By Bill Saporito Sunday, Dec. 12, 2004
    • Stanley Bing is among our best corporate-war correspondents because he's in the trenches. By day, he toils for a media warlord, sparring with corporate enemies, many of whom seem to be co-workers. He takes names and then, turning to his guise as a columnist at FORTUNE, kicks butt in print. In Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, Bing unloads on the famed Chinese strategist whose treatise, The Art of War, launched a thousand battles in China centuries ago — and a million management books in the past decade purporting to adapt Tzu's sublime Eastern battle philosophy to winning in Western business conflicts. Tzu counseled self-knowledge and restraint. "Subduing the other's military without battle is the most skillful" tactic, says Tzu. Nonsense, says Bing. The traits rewarded in business are "raw, amoral, naked aggression and the will to win." Even at lunch. In the Bingian view, if you want to be a great strategist or win gracefully, that's very nice. And very Tzu. But no one will be willing to expire on your (and the company's) behalf. Instead, Bing provides a wickedly entertaining little guide to remaking yourself into a rapacious, coldhearted s.o.b. In other words, the kind that corporations love and respect.