SUN BIN ART OF WARFARE - Pivot to change

The teachings of Sun Tzu’s Art of War advocated winning a war without a protracted fight. Sun Tzu said, “There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. When comparing Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” to Sun Bin’s “Art of Warfare” I noticed one major difference. The former advised against siege warfare, while the latter suggested tacticsfor attacking a besieged city. Sun Bin said, “For one who has really mastered the way of warfare, his enemy can do nothing to escape death.” Sun Bin was the advisor to King Wei of the state of Qi, worked and wrote during the mid-fourth century BC during China’s Warring States period. It was a time of unprecedented violence; without a central national authority, nation-states fought fiercely amongst one another. New technologies made fighting more deadly, so that between the mid-fourth and mid-third centuries BC, the number of battlefield casualties increased tenfold. The commercial world we live in today requires competition at some stage. Google fought a bitter battle with Yahoo. GRAB fought a bitter battle with UBER before buying UBER in Asia. Facebook fought a bitter battle with Instagram and Snapchat before buying both.? WhatsApp fought a bitter battle with WeChat and the list goes on. My business journey was a roller coaster ride from a one-man training and consultancy company in 2008, growing enough revenue to be acquired by an Integrated Facility Management (IFM) catalyst listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) in 2016 when I secured the airport construction contract, and transformed it into a multiservice security company of security officers, security managers, security consultants in the aviation, traffic, cargo escort and aviation domain. During COVID, I designed four new corporate brochuresin 2021 in Aviation, Medical, Training and Traffic to signal the new strategic shift in new revenue projects at the start of our third year with COVID in 2022.

There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.?
Sun Tzu (544 BC - 496 BC)        

For one who has really mastered the way of warfare, his enemy can do nothing to escape death.
Sun Bin (400 BC – 316 BC)        

Winning the battle but losing the war

In Chapter 26, I wrote about losing a half million dollars contract to a competitor who undercut price. It was a story about a company Madness (nottheir real name). It was also an exercise which required me to displace four staff in 2016 after the contract defeat. I decided to keep all four headcounts, sought new work, and reassign new responsibilities. The competitor was a start-up and was in its first year of operation. They did not survive their second year. In a twist of events in 2019, the client called to request for the help for the similar work and we returned to serve them.On the surface, this appears to be a story about patience and perseverance, but it was really a story about innovation and creativity and being nimble to survive. We pivoted to transform to become a security agency in 2017 to also provide licensed security officers. This helped to deploy our displaced staff to new roles in contract administration, payroll and finance, roster deployment, and logistic. We lost the battle (then), but we won the war (today). I mentioned in earlier chapters this adage, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”. COVID struck Singapore in early 2020 and persisted for the next three years. Our businesses were badly affected in mid 2020 when the Singapore government announced a circuit breaker (national lock down). All Singaporeans except those providing essential services had to work from home. My business was alreadyemploying over 100 headcounts. As I looked back at quarter one and quarter two (January to June) of 2020, I shuddered, reminiscing the hand of grace on me and the grit I took to keep all employment without retrenchment. The city state was at a standstill, but we swam on quietly, alongside the tide of the pandemic and stayed afloat. 2020 also saw massive retrenchment and layoffs in other business sectors. After the circuit breaker, thegovernment introduced a stimulus package to pay employers salary rebate. Yet cases of corporate layoffs started to appear in the news and the social media. Singapore’s unemployment and retrenchments continued to rise in 2020 especially in sectors hard-hit by the pandemic, such as aviation, hospitality, food and beverage (F&B). In July, unemployment rate for locals and foreigners rose to 3 per cent in July 2020, up from 2.8 per cent in June and 2.4 per cent in March. A total of 78,800 citizens and 10,900 PRs were unemployed as of June 2020.These figures were the highest since the global financial crisis in 2009. In July 2020, Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), which operates casinos, the Universal Studios Singapore (USS) theme park and hotels on Sentosa Island, laid off close to 2000 workers due to the “devastating impact” the COVID pandemic has had on the tourism industry. In August 2020, American aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney laid off 20% of their 2000 workforce, amounting to 400?of its workers in Singapore as part of a retrenchment exercise. A subsidiary of Pratt and Whitney, Eagle also retrenched 140 of their local 829 workforce. In October 2020, Singapore Airlines?reported it would cut 4,300 positions, or around 20% of its workforce. GRAB (Singapore) laid off 5% of their staff strength, amounting to 360 of its employees, while Airbnb (Singapore) laid off 2% of its staff strength, amounting to 36 of their 1900 employees. Rolls Royce Singapore shredded 240 positions from their 1000 workforce. Airbus and Boeing announced a global retrenchment of approximately 15% and 17% of their global workforce respectively in 2020. The global retrenchment affected a combined 30000 personnel. Fortunately, the impact in Singapore was not large. Less than 100 lost their jobs from Airbus and Boeing Asia Pacific offices.

Accelerated organisational change during COVID?

I would like to conclude by sharing two ways which businesses can transform to survive through COVID and beyond. The advice by Vanna Menon, Lead Government Affairs at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020 left me impressions to reflect and I hope sharing them will help you likewise.?

Organisational agility was once desirable but is now central to business survival. Digitalisation should not be seen as an acceptable solution to a problem, but rather grounds to change the business model creatively for the better. Cooperation with previously unlikely partners offers amore effective means to generate collective new gains.

Vandana Menon, Lead, Government Affairs - C4IR, World Economic Forum        

1). Combine speed and stability. Menon stressed that organisational agility was the ability of a company to quickly change or adapt in response tothe tumultuous and rapidly changing market. It encompassed two major dimensions: speed and stability. On speed, a business needs to be nimble and responsive in keeping with the changing times. On stability, a comprehensive back-office support is crucial. While organisational agility was once desirable, it has now become central to survival. COVID had forced agile transformation in several companies worldwide at an extraordinarylevel.

2). Turn digitisation into an advantage. Menon shared that the COVID pandemic has led to a historic implementation of digitisation in ways only imagined previously. WEF data suggests companies accelerated five years in consumer and business digital adoption during this period. The outbreak has led to structural shifts including customer preference of digital engagement and moving to remote working models for employees, which are likely to remain even post pandemic. The digitisation is not just to sustain productivity but a necessary cultural shift, and to refocus on new opportunities spurred by digitalisation for their work and workforce.