The Art of War by Sun-Tzu (Translated by Thomas Cleary) w/Jesan Sorrells & Zac Stucki

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the

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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. Episode

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number one fifty. Yeah, that’s

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right. We’ve cranked out 150 of these. It’s, it’s.

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I’m quite frankly shocked myself. So. But that means

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that we’re well on our way to our penultimate, our next

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penultimate 200th episode, which I would

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recommend sticking around the next couple of years for that.

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So we’re going to do something a little bit different today. Normally

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for a bonus episode, we

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would have on a special guest and there wouldn’t necessarily be any

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book reading on that episode. But today we’re going to

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go in a little bit of a different direction. So instead of doing a bonus,

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a completely, totally pure bonus episode format, we’re going to

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combine a regular episode with a bonus episode and make a 150th

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episode. Right. That’s what we’re going to do today. And I’m joined today

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by our guest, Zac Stucki, who is the CEO

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of Ignition Point Strategies.

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Now, I’m going to pull directly from the Ignition Point website.

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Zach is of course going to correct us all on this, but I’m

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going to pull from the text from the copy on the site and read to

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you directly from that. And I quote, Zach is a growth

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strategist who specializes in helping B2C companies acquire and retain

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their ideal users through deep customer insights. As the co

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founder of Ignition Point Strategies, he unearths the often overlooked functional,

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emotional and social dimensions that shape user behavior,

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allowing them to develop the full customer experience around

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delivering true value. In addition to writing, Zach is also

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a speaker and a workshop facilitator.

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It’s that last part, more so than the first

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pieces there, that are interesting to us today because I’m a workshop

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facilitator and a leadership development

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professional. Right. Been facilitating and been engaged in leadership

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development for about the last almost 20 years.

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And the insights that we can get from leadership development

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that come through non traditional books are part of what we

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are exploring on this podcast and part of what we’re going to explore today with

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Zach. Zach is a reader, a leader and a lifelong

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learner. He and I connected on LinkedIn probably about six months ago at

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the end of 2024 and after circling around for a little

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while and having him ping me on email,

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we talked about our shared interest in the value of

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leadership and the need for leaders to be informed by more

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insights than yet than those that yet another business

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book could bring. Kind of goes along with the theme of this show.

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We settled on the book we were reading today. The text we are looking at

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today because of Zach’s interaction with the culture that influences

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the content, and culture always

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influences content. Zach brings

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a unique insight into the book we are going to talk about today, A book

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we covered previously on episode number 22

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in the first season of the show, which I thought I did not

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do as well a job at as I probably could

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have. And so we’re going to recover this book

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and we’re going to cover it a little more in depth. The book

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we’re going to be looking @ for our 150th episode today is

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the Art of War by Sun Tzu. Now, the

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translation that I have, you can see this on the video or you can listen

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to it on the audio and look at it in the, in the show notes.

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Below the player is the version that is translated by Thomas

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Cleary. Zach

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copy, which you can see right there on the video is translated by

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Ralph B. Sawyer. And Zach brings

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a certain level of understanding to this as a

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Mandarin speaker. So this is going to be very, very interesting.

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And a person who had a. And we’ll

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maybe we’ll talk about this on the show as well today, an engaging missionary

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journey throughout. Throughout Taiwan. Is that

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correct? Yeah, yeah. Taiwan, yep. And so we’re going

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to, we’re going to talk about that today.

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So leaders, I usually give you a little tip here at the beginning in the

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intro. Leaders, prepare for the next

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great moment which is right on the horizon.

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Welcome to the show. Zach. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Hy

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son. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I’m,

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I’m really excited to cover this material because there is so much here. We

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were talking, you know, before we started recording this. There is so

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much here that is applicable even today. When

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you boil it down to first principles or, or what a mentor of mine

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called lowest common denominators. And that, that

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just apply that we, we often miss because we in our

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arrogance think, oh, you know, this is the first world. We have the Internet. We

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have generative AI now. And we don’t need

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those lessons. Oh, believe me, you do. As a leader, you

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need these lessons. Well, and we sometimes make

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very egregious and we don’t really think about it too much, but we egregious. I’ve

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been thinking a lot about this lately category errors, right? We,

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we confuse one thing for another or

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we merge two things together in our heads and then we speak to

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other people and we expect that they’ve done the same merging and they haven’t.

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And so our, our analysis and our criticality is all off.

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And now we’re in a space where there’s a lack of understanding between

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two people. And sometimes this can happen in, I mean, this can happen in

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families, this can happen in organizations, this can happen in

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institutions. It’s most egregious, of course, when it happens

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in families. But I would say the second level where it’s pretty egregious

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is in the workplace, particularly between leaders and

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followers. And so

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category errors, over complicating things,

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not understanding the lowest common denominator. These are all factors that

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come in to our book today. And this book has been around for a while.

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We could talk a little bit about the history of it. We could talk a

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little bit about the background of it today as, as well. But before I

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jump into all that, so why don’t you tell the listeners, tell everybody listening and

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watching our show today, what is it

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that you do exactly? I read from the, I read from the Ignition

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Point web Strategies website, but I’m sure there’s way more to it

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than that. Yeah. You know, if

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talking about first principles, thinking, what I do is I help businesses

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understand why high intent sales prospects still walk away

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even after the sale. Right. So it deals with

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improving customer retention and it deals with

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helping businesses make sure that they

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capture more of those high intent sales prospects before they

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close as well. When you say high intent sales prospects,

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what is. Break that down for me. What does that mean? Yeah. So

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high intent sales prospects, typically we would define it as

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someone who has a problem that you solve. They know

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they have a problem that, that you solve and they have a

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budget to solve it and a timeline in which they need to get

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it solved. And if they have those four things,

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we would consider them a high intent prospect, someone who’s actively

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looking to solve that problem as soon as possible. And so in looking

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at the Art of War, in looking at sort

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of. Well, kind of break this question

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down because now we’re going to go off script. So let me break this question

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down a little bit. So in thinking about, thinking about those

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high intent sales prospects. Right. And you said they had four, they had four

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things in common. So they have a budget.

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Yeah. And then what were the other, what were the other three?

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So they have a problem that you solve, they’re

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aware of the problem. They have a budget and they have a timeline to

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solve that. Right. So they have a budget, they have a problem, they have awareness

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and they have A timeline. Right. What do you

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think in your reading of the Art of War? What do you think Sun Tzu

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would have to say about folks like that?

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This is. This is. I love this question because this

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is something that I have been shouting from the rooftops.

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So when we talk about business strategy, and when we talk about

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business strategy, typically what we do is we take

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business strategy and we confuse it with

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military strategy. I mean, we’re reading the Art of War, for goodness sake,

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right? But. But when we do that,

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we’re influenced by who we define as our competition.

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Now, in military strategy, your competition

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is someone who’s competing over the same turf that you’re competing for

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same resources. In business strategy,

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it’s similar, but it’s actually someone who’s competing for the

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same dollar in your customer’s wallet. Now, what

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we typically do is we misidentify our competition

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and we say, you know, Burger King is competing with McDonald’s, is competing with

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Wendy’s. There’s a really interesting bit of research that was

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done by a professor out of Harvard named Clayton Christensen,

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who is kind of my dashboard saint. Like, I love the guy. And

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in. In this research, he showed that actually

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McDonald’s at certain times was not

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competing with Burger King or Wendy’s. It was competing with bananas,

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donuts, bagels, Snickers bar

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smoothies. Right. And so,

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but. But the military strategist would say, no, your

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competition is Wendy’s, Burger King, McDonald’s.

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And so when we do that, we fail to position ourselves

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appropriately, which is some of the stuff that Sunza talks about.

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Sunza talks about positioning. He talks about understanding who

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you are. He talks about understanding your competition. He talks about the

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terrain. He talks about spies. He talks about what you

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should and shouldn’t respond to. But unless you have that.

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And. And I’m going to read from my translation here because it’s going to give

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some really good insight. Yeah, absolutely. If I

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can find it. Let’s see here.

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Well, I like. Oh, go. Well, while you’re looking for the piece that you’re looking

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for, let me do this. So the way that

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my copy with my translation is divided is

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it’s divided into a number of different parts. With the translator’s

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introduction by Thomas Cleary. We covered a lot of that on

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episode 22, and we talked a little bit about Thomas, clearly, who actually

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passed away in 2021, just before we launched the PODC.

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The way that he has it divided up, he. He puts it into different parts.

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So we have strategic assessments doing battle

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planning, a siege formation,

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Adaptations, Armed Struggle, Emptiness and

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Fullness. So he’s force. So he has these. Is divided up

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into all these chapter sections with these titles. And in the first chapter

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section around Strategic Assessments, which I, I suspect is probably where Zach

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is going to again, the way that he divides this

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up is he names the individuals who give these Twitter like

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quotes around military strategy.

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What the Ancient World, the Ancient world’s version of tweets. Right.

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According from Master Soon Lee Kuan, Dumu,

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Jialin, Mei Yoshin.

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And he’s pretty much keeping this order throughout the book.

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So that’s the order that he’s got the folks listed in. And so right at

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the beginning, in Strategic Assessments from Master soon,

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he quotes this. Military action is important to the nation. It is

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the ground of death and life, the path of survival and

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destruction. So it is imperative to

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examine it. Yes,

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and I, I will build on this because this is actually from the third

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section. So in my translation, this, this

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translator really tried to keep it more

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tied to its roots. So he included things like the three armies, terms

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that are archaic that we wouldn’t comprehend. He

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includes words like da, which have very deep cultural meaning.

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In the Da Jing, which is the, the scripture of Daoist

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religious philosophy, the first thing that it says is the

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da that cannot, the da that cannot. The da that

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can be written is, is not the true dao.

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And when you boil that down and look at its deeper meaning, what it’s saying

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is dao is a state of being.

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It is a state of moral rectitude. Because you have to synthesize this with

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Confucianism, the two borrow back and forth. So it’s a state of moral

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rectitude. So when in my translation he’s talking

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about the dao of the general or the dao of victory,

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it’s this state of being that will create victory.

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Interesting. Okay. And part of what he talked about in section

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three, which is planning

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offensives. Oh no, Section four, excuse me. Which is military

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disposition. He says, as for military

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methods, the first is termed measurement. The second,

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estimation of forces. The third, calculation of numbers

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of men. The fourth, weighing relative strength. And the

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fifth, victory. Now this is, this is the important part.

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Terrain gives birth to measurement.

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Measurement produces the estimation of forces. Estimation of forces

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gives rise to calculating the numbers of men. Calculating the

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numbers of men gives rise to weighing strength. Weighing strength

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gives birth to victory. So if we’re setting this in a cause and effect sort

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of thing, the very first thing that you have to get right in order

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to be victorious is understanding the Terrain that you’re competing on.

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And all too often in general business strategy. And you know,

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circling this back to my point, all too often in general business strategy, we

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say that our competition is our market or the people who

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are delivering like services because that is the, the

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terrain that we perceive. The actual competition or

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competitive space is the wallet of your customer. And

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because businesses get that wrong, businesses fail all

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the time. This is

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an incredible insight because you’re right in business strategy. And

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even my myself have fallen into this. Into this trap. Right.

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I mentioned before category errors. Right. We make this error.

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Right. Of presuming that the position is the

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terrain. Right. Which, by the way, I love the book positioning.

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I love that book. Found that book back in the 19. From the 1970s

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that was written by a couple of guys who. A couple of marketers

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who were seeking to create a brand for

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7Up and couldn’t really figure out a way to.

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To move the. The market, such as it were, but really about

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moving people’s perceptions from really thinking about Coca

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Cola and Pepsi to thinking about 7 up. Right. And. And

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the, the brilliant sort of idea that they came up with

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was that there are quadrants in your brain and each one of these

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brands occupies a quadrant. And so if you want to

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successfully launch something else, you need to move into a different

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quadrant in a person’s brain. Right. Positioning. Right.

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We now have folks that are floating around on Facebook and other places that are

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talking about depositioning, which is a whole other idea.

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This sounds a lot to me like Blue ocean. It is. It comes out. It

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comes out of blue ocean strategy. It comes out of. Out of a different interpretation.

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You mentioned Clayton Christensen. A different interpretation. Interpretation of Christensen. And so it comes

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out of the merging of a bunch of different ideas together. But

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that’s depositioning. But I like the. I like the og I like positioning

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because. And to your point about, about Sun Tzu,

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we don’t understand the terrain very often that we’re on. And

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by the way, in. In my translation, I found the exact same thing that you

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quoted. It’s in chapter four, but it’s at the end underneath

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formation. Yeah. And it says the rules of the military are

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five Measurement, assessment, calculation, comparison, and

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victory. The ground gives rise to measurements. Measurements

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gives rise to assessments. Assessments give rise to calculations.

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Calculations give rise to comparisons. Comparisons give rise to

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victories. That’s a subtle difference.

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And there is a distinction inside of that difference. And yet

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the core idea there, speaking of the Dow, the core idea

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there is still the same. If you don’t understand the terrain

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you’re on, or if you’re confused about the terrain you’re on, then you will not

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have. Well, you won’t even be able to set yourself up for

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victory. And by the way, I see this in my background as

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a conflict management and negotiation person.

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Most, well, professional. Most people

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are amateur negotiators for a whole variety of

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reasons. But the biggest one is they don’t understand

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the ground, the psychological ground they’re negotiating

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on. Yeah.

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You know, it’s interesting because

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just a couple paragraphs up above in, in my translation, it says, for

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the victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory,

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then seeks to engage in battle. And there’s a lot there to

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understand, like to realize the conditions for victory. It’s not just

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setting goals, right? It’s like, no, how do you define

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your conditions of victory so that you can say we are

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victorious? And then how do I plan in

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advance to set up those conditions? How do I make sure that

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my team actually does those things that I ask them to

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do that will bring about victory? How do I make sure that we’re all on

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the same page? This is all part of the dao of being

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a good leader and the dao of creating victory,

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Right? This is all part of what has to. And, and I say it that

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way because dao is a state of being.

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It has to be a part of who you inherently are as

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a leader in order to actualize that

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victory. And that’s the thing that we, we

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often think about, or fail to think about, I suppose, because we get so

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busy going through the motions of these things that we’re not

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actually embodying them. So the

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leadership culture that we’ve had and the business culture, the business strategy

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culture that we’ve had over the last

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hundred years, let’s go back to Henry Ford, right? And,

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and that, that, that, that Horiel gentleman of measurement all the way at

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the bottom, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Let’s, let’s go back to, let’s go

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back to him, right? Because again, I’m an OG guy, right? I like to go

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back to root causes. I’m a root cause guy. It does us

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no good to. It does us no good to try to fix the

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tree by trimming a few branches. Sometimes you got to go all the way to

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the root, right? And at the

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bottom of all of Henry Ford, no, at the bottom of

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modern assumptions around leadership. And again, the last hundred years in the west,

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at the basement of all those assumptions has just been

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that

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people don’t need to be led.

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Strategy does not need to be defined.

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As long as the founder is the North

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Star, which that’s fine.

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It works just fine. We see this, by the way, in the startup founders

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that we have now. We were just talking about, before we hit record, we were

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just talking about Mark Zuckerberg. Right. I think Facebook will be fine as long as

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Mark Zuckerberg continues to roll Jiu Jitsu. And,

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you know, well, you know, he’s, he’s a blue belt like me. So, you know,

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hey, roll Jiu Jitsu. To roll Jiu Jitsu, choke people and it’ll keep you young.

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Right. You know, most you’re doing, you’re doing

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Jiu Jitsu. I’m doing. All right. Continue to, continue to roll. Because

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you do all that, you’ll stay young forever. But at a certain

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timeline, on a long enough timeline, everybody’s survival rate, to

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00:20:45,460 –> 00:20:48,670
paraphrase in the movie Fight Club, drops to zero. Right.

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00:20:49,390 –> 00:20:53,150
So what do you do when the founder’s gone? We see this with

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00:20:53,150 –> 00:20:56,430
Apple Computers. I always bring up Apple Computers. Right. So

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00:20:56,910 –> 00:21:00,350
Microsoft. Right. Or Microsoft. Right. Like Bill Gates isn’t gone, but he might as well

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be, for all intents and purposes, with that company. So

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the assumptions that the founder is the North Star and that somehow

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the founder is going to just via

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00:21:12,350 –> 00:21:15,790
osmosis, give this strategy to his, to his followers

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00:21:16,870 –> 00:21:20,510
is a, is a, is a dangerous strategy that we have all bet on in

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business. Yeah. And, and I don’t see

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this is a comment. I don’t see a way out of it. I don’t see

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us, I don’t see us backing away from that anytime soon.

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We. Well, and I think you’re right, because we, as, as

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America going back to root causes, 1890s

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up to the 1920s, America changed culturally. We

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changed from a culture of character. And you can

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look at this in the materials, the, the, the books and the, the,

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the things that were popularized from the pop culture up to, like the

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1890s, it talked about character. So you would talk about

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the pyramid of character. That man is a man of character.

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1920s come around. 1890s to 1920s come around, and

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it changes. It changes from

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character to personality.

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And we become a culture that’s driven by personality. And I

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would even argue that after the advent of social media, we

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enter into a culture of hyper personality,

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where you take the personality and you ramp it up to

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00:22:25,340 –> 00:22:29,060
100. Right? It’s. This isn’t Spinal Tap. This one goes to 11. This

361
00:22:29,060 –> 00:22:32,780
is. We’re going to 100. And, and the problem with that,

362
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I’m glad you like that. The problem with that is that

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it creates.

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It don’t think deeply about anything. All they have to do is be

365
00:22:46,660 –> 00:22:50,500
hyper personalities in order to gain fame. And this is all

366
00:22:50,500 –> 00:22:54,260
social media influencers do. They take their personality,

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ratchet it up, and then they focus on one thing.

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I’m the book person, I’m the makeup person, I’m the movie person.

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And that’s all they are. And culture loses its

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complexity. And so we’re putting these personalities on a pedestal

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and we’re trained to do that culturally. And the only thing

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00:23:13,470 –> 00:23:17,270
that’s going to change that is the culture. And the problem with that

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is that you were highlighting, and I think correctly, the problem with

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that is that it doesn’t create

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longevity because you have

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a company like Apple that is one of the largest

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companies in the world, in the history of the world.

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00:23:35,050 –> 00:23:38,690
Right. Like it is larger than the

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00:23:38,690 –> 00:23:41,850
economy of the nation of Poland to give some

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00:23:41,850 –> 00:23:44,890
perspective. Like it’s massive.

381
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And Steve Jobs dies

382
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and they try and put in Tim Cook.

383
00:23:53,610 –> 00:23:57,280
Right? Tim Cooks. You try and put in Tim Cook. Tim

384
00:23:57,280 –> 00:24:00,920
Cook is supposed to be Steve Jobs protege. And the

385
00:24:00,920 –> 00:24:04,640
last real unique thing that

386
00:24:04,640 –> 00:24:08,320
Apple put out was innovated by Steve Jobs.

387
00:24:08,400 –> 00:24:11,520
Oh, yeah. I mean, they’re just moving buttons around on the iPhone.

388
00:24:13,120 –> 00:24:16,880
Absolutely. There is no real innovation. The thing that I saw that,

389
00:24:16,880 –> 00:24:20,520
that was like, oh, this is a Steve Jobs level innovation was

390
00:24:20,520 –> 00:24:24,360
the, the, the digital AI assistant pin

391
00:24:24,360 –> 00:24:28,000
had. I’ve seen these. Yeah, Yep. That was the,

392
00:24:28,000 –> 00:24:31,840
the last thing that I saw that was even close to a Steve Jobs level

393
00:24:31,840 –> 00:24:35,000
innovation. And it came from a former Apple

394
00:24:35,000 –> 00:24:37,959
engineer. It didn’t even come from their own ecosystem

395
00:24:38,520 –> 00:24:42,360
because we’re built around these, these, this cult of personality

396
00:24:42,520 –> 00:24:46,320
when we should be built around a cult of customer. So it’s interesting

397
00:24:46,320 –> 00:24:48,840
that you bring up character. Two things, two data points. One,

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00:24:50,270 –> 00:24:53,710
I just saw on LinkedIn that former

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00:24:54,110 –> 00:24:57,870
former four star general and White House chief of staff

400
00:24:57,870 –> 00:25:00,750
member Stanley McChrystal is

401
00:25:02,110 –> 00:25:05,950
out there promoting a book talking about character.

402
00:25:06,590 –> 00:25:10,270
And I didn’t read the whole post on LinkedIn. I didn’t, I didn’t really

403
00:25:10,270 –> 00:25:13,630
need to because. And here’s why I didn’t need to.

404
00:25:15,230 –> 00:25:18,910
When. When we talk in military terms about character and ethics and

405
00:25:18,910 –> 00:25:22,710
integrity, there’s something that undergirds that conversation

406
00:25:22,710 –> 00:25:26,550
about character that doesn’t exist currently in our larger culture, which is why

407
00:25:26,550 –> 00:25:30,270
we’ve replaced it with a cult of personality. And the thing that undergirds that

408
00:25:30,270 –> 00:25:33,750
conversation in the military is a

409
00:25:33,750 –> 00:25:37,470
concept of tradition and ritual. And

410
00:25:37,550 –> 00:25:41,350
we unfortunately live in a time. I was just ranting to somebody about

411
00:25:41,350 –> 00:25:45,160
this the other day. But we unfortunately live in a

412
00:25:45,160 –> 00:25:48,720
time when we struggle

413
00:25:48,800 –> 00:25:52,480
as a national body to hold on to

414
00:25:52,480 –> 00:25:56,040
national rituals, national traditions. So about the only

415
00:25:56,040 –> 00:25:59,880
shared national tradition we have, but the only shared one we have is July

416
00:25:59,880 –> 00:26:02,800
4th. And even that’s getting chipped at the edges, right?

417
00:26:04,880 –> 00:26:08,490
Because if you can remove that, if you could pull

418
00:26:08,490 –> 00:26:10,570
that, the tradition out, right,

419
00:26:13,290 –> 00:26:16,930
Then you can do all kinds of other things with the edifice. You can. You

420
00:26:16,930 –> 00:26:20,650
can shape it and mold it and turn it. Right. And so

421
00:26:20,730 –> 00:26:24,330
it’s interesting you brought up the 1890s to the 1920s, because we just read,

422
00:26:25,530 –> 00:26:29,290
before this episode, we just read Tender is the Night by F. Scott

423
00:26:29,290 –> 00:26:32,850
Fitzgerald. And I’m a big fan of the

424
00:26:32,850 –> 00:26:36,610
books that come out of that post World War I and even

425
00:26:36,610 –> 00:26:39,960
pre World War I sort of European

426
00:26:40,200 –> 00:26:44,040
American zeitgeist. Right. Because I do think

427
00:26:44,840 –> 00:26:48,680
fundamentally, we still don’t understand exactly what World War I did to us as a.

428
00:26:48,680 –> 00:26:52,040
As a. As a. As a set of nation states around the globe. We’re still

429
00:26:52,040 –> 00:26:55,840
not fully. We still haven’t fully wrapped our arms around that war or

430
00:26:55,840 –> 00:26:59,640
the consequences of it. That’s number one. Number two, the lost

431
00:26:59,640 –> 00:27:03,480
generation, which mirrors, quite frankly, the nomad generation, of which

432
00:27:03,480 –> 00:27:07,060
I’m the youngest. End of that generation I feel a lot

433
00:27:07,060 –> 00:27:10,380
of affinity for, because they saw the

434
00:27:10,380 –> 00:27:14,220
edifice fall down and they had particularly Intender as a knight. But

435
00:27:14,220 –> 00:27:17,940
you see it even previous TO World War I in parades end by Ford Maddox

436
00:27:17,940 –> 00:27:21,540
Ford, and then later on in Movable Feast by Tom by Ernest

437
00:27:21,540 –> 00:27:25,340
Hemingway, and of course, A Farewell to Arms, John Dos Passos’s

438
00:27:25,340 –> 00:27:28,300
USA Trilogy, all of which we cover here on the podcast. You should go list

439
00:27:28,300 –> 00:27:31,720
all those episodes. It’s like a. It’s like a feast for the years. It’s like

440
00:27:31,870 –> 00:27:35,510
eight hours of listening. But we’re trying to

441
00:27:35,510 –> 00:27:39,270
find the answers to why the edifice

442
00:27:39,270 –> 00:27:42,990
fell down and that if it didn’t just fall down in men and material,

443
00:27:43,230 –> 00:27:46,710
it fell down. To your point about character, I think you’re right. I think that

444
00:27:46,710 –> 00:27:50,550
as a society, particularly as Western civilization,

445
00:27:50,550 –> 00:27:54,310
we’re still processing the. I mean, you look

446
00:27:54,310 –> 00:27:57,990
at it, and when you talk about a lost generation, it literally was

447
00:27:57,990 –> 00:28:01,790
a lost generation. And then when you compare that with Russia, I

448
00:28:01,790 –> 00:28:05,430
mean, Russia after World War II, it lost

449
00:28:05,430 –> 00:28:09,110
like one out of every three men. Like, it was a complete

450
00:28:09,270 –> 00:28:12,790
shift in demographics that they have not

451
00:28:12,790 –> 00:28:16,390
recovered from. And arguably the Ukraine war is partially a

452
00:28:16,390 –> 00:28:19,430
result of that. And so we’re looking at

453
00:28:20,390 –> 00:28:23,030
this complete collapse of

454
00:28:24,150 –> 00:28:27,950
societies, not a Collapse. But yeah,

455
00:28:27,950 –> 00:28:31,070
collapse in trust in society’s institutions.

456
00:28:31,630 –> 00:28:34,950
Because In World War I, we had the

457
00:28:34,950 –> 00:28:38,790
ultimate faith in society’s institutions, particularly

458
00:28:38,790 –> 00:28:42,390
as Western nations. And those institutions led to the

459
00:28:42,390 –> 00:28:45,870
slaughter of millions of young men. And so

460
00:28:45,870 –> 00:28:49,710
society is, is like processing.

461
00:28:49,870 –> 00:28:53,390
I trusted you, government. I trusted you, king,

462
00:28:53,470 –> 00:28:56,990
I trusted you, emperor, and you let me down.

463
00:28:57,070 –> 00:28:59,790
And so it creates this modernist

464
00:29:00,270 –> 00:29:03,510
interpretation of the world which then leads to

465
00:29:03,510 –> 00:29:07,230
postmodernism, which is sort of the children of modernists

466
00:29:08,190 –> 00:29:11,510
trying to make sense of what happened to mommy and Daddy as a result of

467
00:29:11,510 –> 00:29:15,150
World War I. And, and it’s, it’s created this,

468
00:29:15,150 –> 00:29:18,670
in my opinion, negative downward spike spiral of

469
00:29:19,070 –> 00:29:22,790
complete lack of faith in any institution. So

470
00:29:22,790 –> 00:29:26,430
you often see, and, and this is just anecdotal and I’d love your

471
00:29:26,510 –> 00:29:29,310
insight on this, but I think that you often see

472
00:29:29,950 –> 00:29:33,710
nihilism and postmodernism go hand in hand

473
00:29:34,270 –> 00:29:37,910
because postmodernism gives birth to nihilism.

474
00:29:37,910 –> 00:29:41,270
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you could even say, you could even assert. And we’ve

475
00:29:41,270 –> 00:29:43,790
covered. Oh, gosh.

476
00:29:44,910 –> 00:29:48,710
Well, I mean, we’ve covered books from the communist writer Milan

477
00:29:48,710 –> 00:29:52,500
Kundera on here, who

478
00:29:52,500 –> 00:29:55,820
wrote in the. In the face of.

479
00:29:57,420 –> 00:30:00,860
Who wrote in the face of communism, sort of. What do we do now?

480
00:30:01,740 –> 00:30:05,419
We’ve covered, we’ve covered Sartre on this

481
00:30:05,419 –> 00:30:09,260
podcast, we’ve covered Camus, and we’re going

482
00:30:09,260 –> 00:30:12,620
to cover Camus again this year on the podcast

483
00:30:14,060 –> 00:30:16,780
or the Stranger. You know, we’re going to talk about that

484
00:30:17,830 –> 00:30:21,110
and even you can even see it in our popular culture. So Robert

485
00:30:21,110 –> 00:30:24,630
Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Frank

486
00:30:24,630 –> 00:30:28,470
Herbert. And we’ve covered Dune, covered Dune last year on the podcast.

487
00:30:28,550 –> 00:30:31,750
A book that I had never successfully actually read through before.

488
00:30:32,710 –> 00:30:35,270
I had to read it for the reading, for the show.

489
00:30:36,550 –> 00:30:39,310
Great book. Actually. I found out what I was. What I was. Well, the first

490
00:30:39,310 –> 00:30:42,310
time I encountered doing, I was eight and it was in the, it was in

491
00:30:42,310 –> 00:30:45,630
the edition had like 8 point or 10 point type. It was really tiny and

492
00:30:45,630 –> 00:30:48,510
it was. Book was really thick. And I’m eight years old. I’m like, this is

493
00:30:48,510 –> 00:30:50,850
nonsense. I read like four pages. I was like, I’m done. I don’t know what

494
00:30:50,850 –> 00:30:54,570
they’re talking about. I was gone from it. And that was always

495
00:30:54,570 –> 00:30:57,490
my Dune story until last year. And then I finally read it and I was

496
00:30:57,490 –> 00:31:01,050
like, oh, this is actually not, this is actually not

497
00:31:01,050 –> 00:31:03,730
horrible. There’s some, there’s some really deep insights in here.

498
00:31:05,009 –> 00:31:08,050
It’s a libertarian treatise on the dangers of. Of

499
00:31:08,930 –> 00:31:12,730
savior. It is, it is. And then you read Orson Scott card.

500
00:31:12,730 –> 00:31:16,530
You read Andrew’s Game, which is the book we’ve talked about, where you kind of

501
00:31:16,530 –> 00:31:20,180
go in the opposite direction of that. And so

502
00:31:21,860 –> 00:31:25,300
the nihilism and the postmodernism have to walk hand in hand

503
00:31:25,620 –> 00:31:28,820
because if you, if you believe in,

504
00:31:29,940 –> 00:31:32,980
if you believe in nothing but you gotta laugh in order to get through it.

505
00:31:33,780 –> 00:31:36,740
Laughter only works for certain, a certain type of person,

506
00:31:37,460 –> 00:31:41,300
interestingly enough, at a certain type of class level, which is why most nihilists

507
00:31:41,300 –> 00:31:44,820
are Marxists and only works at a certain

508
00:31:44,820 –> 00:31:48,480
type of a sort of intellectual status level,

509
00:31:48,480 –> 00:31:52,160
which is why most post modernists come out of

510
00:31:52,160 –> 00:31:55,800
academia. I’ve never met yet a

511
00:31:55,800 –> 00:31:59,360
blue collar postmodernist. I have met people

512
00:31:59,360 –> 00:32:03,080
who operate on, on postmodern assumptions and happen to do blue

513
00:32:03,080 –> 00:32:05,880
collar work and don’t understand where those assumptions come from.

514
00:32:06,760 –> 00:32:10,440
So yes, the blue collar guy

515
00:32:10,440 –> 00:32:14,290
who’s driving a tractor or picking up garbage

516
00:32:14,370 –> 00:32:17,850
and is on his second divorce and doesn’t understand why he’s

517
00:32:17,850 –> 00:32:21,650
operating in a society that’s driven by postmodernist assumptions

518
00:32:21,730 –> 00:32:25,330
around freedom and hedonism and libertinism.

519
00:32:26,050 –> 00:32:29,570
And he hasn’t examined any of those power structures.

520
00:32:29,650 –> 00:32:32,130
Correct. And he hasn’t examined any of those because no one’s helped him examine any

521
00:32:32,130 –> 00:32:34,090
of those, which is part of the reason why we do this podcast. We could

522
00:32:34,090 –> 00:32:37,890
talk about it, but. But, but,

523
00:32:38,660 –> 00:32:42,180
but he’s not a postmodernist. He’s not educated enough to be a

524
00:32:42,180 –> 00:32:45,580
postmodernist. However, I’ve run across many folks in

525
00:32:45,580 –> 00:32:48,900
academia who will claim to be postmodernists.

526
00:32:49,300 –> 00:32:53,060
And here’s the rube. Here’s or here’s the rub. They will claim

527
00:32:53,060 –> 00:32:56,420
to be postmodernists. They will claim to be in favor of

528
00:32:56,420 –> 00:33:00,020
hedonistic licentiousness, and yet

529
00:33:00,020 –> 00:33:03,300
they’ve been married to the same person faithfully for 30 years.

530
00:33:08,270 –> 00:33:12,030
That is interesting. That is utterly fascinating to me. Something doesn’t

531
00:33:12,030 –> 00:33:15,790
match, and it’s because.

532
00:33:16,350 –> 00:33:20,190
It’s because of the cynicism that’s inside of these systems. And when you can be

533
00:33:20,190 –> 00:33:24,030
cynical, but your economic status keeps you safe

534
00:33:24,030 –> 00:33:27,550
from the results of your cynicism. This is Rob Henderson and

535
00:33:27,710 –> 00:33:31,190
luxury ideals, right? You can afford to hold all these luxury

536
00:33:31,190 –> 00:33:34,560
ideas that have no absolute, no consequence on your real life.

537
00:33:34,880 –> 00:33:37,760
However, when luxury ideals

538
00:33:38,560 –> 00:33:42,160
transpose down through a society in which

539
00:33:42,320 –> 00:33:45,840
institutions are fractured because of a lack of character, going back

540
00:33:45,840 –> 00:33:49,400
100 years or going back 80 years, and no one’s bothered to explain that to

541
00:33:49,400 –> 00:33:53,120
anybody, including, quite frankly, the Christian church, which should have

542
00:33:53,120 –> 00:33:56,800
completely, should have explained that specifically in the west, but I’ll leave that

543
00:33:56,800 –> 00:34:00,640
aside for just a moment. But even they were captured by these ideas. So.

544
00:34:00,960 –> 00:34:03,920
But you know, you go all the way down and these ideas are not explained.

545
00:34:04,480 –> 00:34:07,520
These luxury ideals now have deleterious

546
00:34:08,080 –> 00:34:11,800
consequences for people who don’t have the status

547
00:34:11,800 –> 00:34:14,080
to survive. The consequences of these ideals.

548
00:34:15,840 –> 00:34:19,480
Right, if. You’Re a garbage man, I’m sorry, look, you may be

549
00:34:19,480 –> 00:34:23,160
making 80, 80 to $120,000 a year to pick up my

550
00:34:23,160 –> 00:34:26,820
garbage, but that’s not enough security to be on your

551
00:34:26,820 –> 00:34:30,100
second marriage and have four kids that hate you from two different women.

552
00:34:32,260 –> 00:34:35,940
And that’s, that’s really hard, right? Like, and that’s the thing

553
00:34:35,940 –> 00:34:39,740
when we, that is why postmodernism, nihilism is

554
00:34:39,740 –> 00:34:43,500
so dangerous, but also why it’s a reaction

555
00:34:43,500 –> 00:34:47,260
to the First World War and that lack of character, right? Because the

556
00:34:47,260 –> 00:34:50,180
First World War, we had been lied to, we had been

557
00:34:50,180 –> 00:34:53,500
propagandized to believe that our leaders were as

558
00:34:53,500 –> 00:34:56,749
morally righteous and upright as we thought we were.

559
00:34:57,389 –> 00:35:00,189
And then it exposes that, that dark,

560
00:35:00,669 –> 00:35:04,349
chaotic, hedonistic, licentious underbelly. Like,

561
00:35:04,589 –> 00:35:08,069
read the Last Lion. It’s, it’s a three

562
00:35:08,069 –> 00:35:11,229
volume biography of Winston Churchill that is just

563
00:35:11,629 –> 00:35:15,389
amazing. And one of the first things

564
00:35:15,389 –> 00:35:18,829
that it talks about is the ideals of Victorian England

565
00:35:18,989 –> 00:35:22,760
as opposed to the actualities, particularly for the

566
00:35:22,760 –> 00:35:26,560
royals. Like the royals, it was morals for thee,

567
00:35:26,560 –> 00:35:30,320
but not for me. Like, King Edward

568
00:35:30,880 –> 00:35:34,000
had a chair made so that he could have threesomes.

569
00:35:35,520 –> 00:35:39,200
Like the. Winston Churchill’s mother

570
00:35:39,520 –> 00:35:43,280
was a darling because she was really good in bed and

571
00:35:43,280 –> 00:35:46,880
she was sort of like this exotic beauty from across the ocean

572
00:35:46,880 –> 00:35:49,960
and all these of men tried to woo her, like,

573
00:35:50,440 –> 00:35:54,200
and, and she allowed them to. That’s, you know, so

574
00:35:54,200 –> 00:35:57,840
you have this, this sort of understanding

575
00:35:57,840 –> 00:36:01,320
that all of a sudden all of that comes out and now these

576
00:36:01,320 –> 00:36:04,520
postmodernists are saying, well, all power structure is inherently

577
00:36:04,840 –> 00:36:08,520
stupid and needs to be questioned. And, and it leads to this

578
00:36:08,520 –> 00:36:11,960
lack of, like to your point, lack of trust in institutions.

579
00:36:13,000 –> 00:36:16,320
Institutions make up society. You cannot have a

580
00:36:16,320 –> 00:36:19,960
functioning society and you cannot have a functioning business.

581
00:36:20,200 –> 00:36:23,800
You cannot have a functioning church. You cannot have a functioning

582
00:36:23,800 –> 00:36:27,560
organization if every member, or at least the majority of

583
00:36:27,560 –> 00:36:31,200
the members involved in it, question the very fabric of

584
00:36:31,200 –> 00:36:34,960
the, the rules of conduct. Right? And that’s

585
00:36:34,960 –> 00:36:38,400
we’re experiencing right now at a larger level in our

586
00:36:38,400 –> 00:36:39,960
culture. And

587
00:36:41,800 –> 00:36:43,960
yeah, I mean, it is

588
00:36:45,350 –> 00:36:48,990
poison. It is absolute poison. And that garbage

589
00:36:48,990 –> 00:36:52,510
truck driver that, you know, you know,

590
00:36:52,510 –> 00:36:56,350
UPS driver, whoever that, that’s making $120,000 a

591
00:36:56,350 –> 00:36:59,870
year, they’re they’re doing pretty good. They have been lied to by

592
00:36:59,870 –> 00:37:03,510
society. And the women who that man was

593
00:37:03,510 –> 00:37:07,350
married to who divorced, have been lied to society.

594
00:37:07,350 –> 00:37:11,030
Lied to by society as well. Right. Like, there

595
00:37:11,030 –> 00:37:14,830
are so many different aspects of this, because third

596
00:37:14,830 –> 00:37:18,630
wave feminism is really just a diaspora product of postmodernism.

597
00:37:18,630 –> 00:37:22,310
Oh, oh, hold on to that thought. We’re

598
00:37:22,310 –> 00:37:25,990
gonna go back to the book. Hold on to that

599
00:37:25,990 –> 00:37:29,510
thought. Back to the book. Back to at least my

600
00:37:29,510 –> 00:37:33,270
translation and. And Zach’s translation of the Art of

601
00:37:33,270 –> 00:37:36,950
War. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m going to

602
00:37:36,950 –> 00:37:40,670
dive into strategic assessments.

603
00:37:40,750 –> 00:37:44,590
It’s actually called strategic assessments in my book. I’ve marked this up quite ext.

604
00:37:46,510 –> 00:37:48,990
What number B in my book is marked number one.

605
00:37:50,830 –> 00:37:54,670
But it may be marked differently in. In your book. I. I

606
00:37:54,670 –> 00:37:58,350
have. I have the same number of sections as you. The titles are different,

607
00:37:59,070 –> 00:38:02,310
but the sections, if you look at the base, they’re the same. So. All right,

608
00:38:02,310 –> 00:38:06,110
cool. So I’m going to pick up in Strategic Assessments, I’m

609
00:38:06,110 –> 00:38:09,710
going to go through four pages in. I’m going to start the.

610
00:38:09,950 –> 00:38:12,810
Figure out the ground you’re on. Yeah, I have this right here. So. So

611
00:38:13,610 –> 00:38:17,290
master soon. Right. Therefore, use these assessments for comparison

612
00:38:17,370 –> 00:38:20,890
to find out what the conditions are. That is to say,

613
00:38:21,050 –> 00:38:24,890
which political leadership. You talk about, the dao, which political leadership

614
00:38:24,890 –> 00:38:28,489
has the way, which general has ability,

615
00:38:28,730 –> 00:38:32,410
who has the better climate and terrain, whose

616
00:38:32,410 –> 00:38:36,010
discipline is effective, whose troops are

617
00:38:36,010 –> 00:38:39,570
stronger, whose system of rewards and punishments is

618
00:38:39,570 –> 00:38:42,900
clearer. This is how you can know

619
00:38:43,140 –> 00:38:46,940
who will win. One

620
00:38:46,940 –> 00:38:50,700
of the points I want to make on that is that. And we

621
00:38:50,700 –> 00:38:53,580
sort of have a jog through, as we do usually on this podcast, we start

622
00:38:53,580 –> 00:38:55,860
with something very narrow, and then we broaden it, and then we go back to

623
00:38:55,860 –> 00:38:58,660
the narrow thing, sort of the flow of what we’re doing here.

624
00:39:00,740 –> 00:39:04,260
One of the things that Jocko Willick, very famous Jocko Willick, right.

625
00:39:04,500 –> 00:39:08,300
Says on his podcast, the Jocko Podcast, all the time. He’s become notorious for.

626
00:39:08,300 –> 00:39:11,990
It is. And it’s a titular line because

627
00:39:11,990 –> 00:39:15,550
it’s. It’s. It’s amazing, actually. Discipline equals

628
00:39:15,550 –> 00:39:18,550
freedom. Yes.

629
00:39:19,190 –> 00:39:22,870
And again, he comes out of a military tradition with strong

630
00:39:22,870 –> 00:39:26,150
rituals, strong orientation towards character

631
00:39:26,150 –> 00:39:29,990
ethics, all that, even though things are framed at the edges there, too,

632
00:39:29,990 –> 00:39:32,710
but still a strong orientation towards that. Right.

633
00:39:34,070 –> 00:39:37,320
And being a good leader,

634
00:39:39,160 –> 00:39:42,800
being able to not only understand the terrain that

635
00:39:42,800 –> 00:39:46,520
you’re on, but being able to engage in the discipline of doing

636
00:39:46,600 –> 00:39:49,160
things and making assessments

637
00:39:50,280 –> 00:39:53,560
that may not

638
00:39:53,560 –> 00:39:57,080
necessarily, for lack of a better term, be sexy or be

639
00:39:57,080 –> 00:39:59,960
popular, and then committing

640
00:40:00,690 –> 00:40:04,210
Directly to that, to that strategy, to that forward direction,

641
00:40:05,090 –> 00:40:08,650
is the hallmark not only of a good leader, but it’s also a hallmark of

642
00:40:08,650 –> 00:40:12,410
a leader with character. Now, that doesn’t mean that that leader is flexible.

643
00:40:12,410 –> 00:40:16,210
What it means is the reed bends in the wind, but

644
00:40:16,210 –> 00:40:19,810
it never breaks, Right? Or another way to frame it in a more

645
00:40:19,970 –> 00:40:23,690
Western context. I kind of always tell the story from the great Zig Ziglar,

646
00:40:23,690 –> 00:40:27,450
the great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. If Zach and I are on a

647
00:40:27,450 –> 00:40:31,300
plane, right, and we have bought a ticket to Denver, let’s

648
00:40:31,300 –> 00:40:34,220
say we’re flying to Denver from, I don’t know, St. Louis, right? Let’s just pick

649
00:40:34,220 –> 00:40:38,060
a random place, right? If I’m going from St. Louis to Denver and it

650
00:40:38,060 –> 00:40:41,860
says on my ticket, I’m going to Denver, Zach and I get on the plane,

651
00:40:42,580 –> 00:40:46,299
pilot, you know, takes off, we’re going, and all of a sudden

652
00:40:46,299 –> 00:40:50,100
a storm pops up. If the pilot comes on the radio and says,

653
00:40:50,260 –> 00:40:53,660
listen, listen, we’ve hit some

654
00:40:53,660 –> 00:40:56,740
turbulence and we’re turning and going back to St. Louis,

655
00:40:57,500 –> 00:41:01,220
Zach and I will riot on the plane. We’re not going back to St.

656
00:41:01,220 –> 00:41:05,060
Louis. We’re going to Denver. Denver is where it says on my

657
00:41:05,060 –> 00:41:08,900
ticket that I’m going to be at. I made commitments in Denver. Zach made

658
00:41:08,900 –> 00:41:12,300
commitments in Denver. Doesn’t matter if we still share the same commitments. We need to

659
00:41:12,300 –> 00:41:15,180
go to Denver. And by the way, the pilot knows this. So what does the

660
00:41:15,180 –> 00:41:18,500
pilot do? The pilot doesn’t turn around and go back to St. Louis. The pilot

661
00:41:18,500 –> 00:41:22,340
just adjusts his flaps, he raises or lowers the

662
00:41:22,340 –> 00:41:26,170
plane, and we keep going to the destination. This is the Western

663
00:41:26,170 –> 00:41:29,570
way of thinking about the reed bending but not

664
00:41:29,570 –> 00:41:33,170
breaking. This is still discipline, though. It

665
00:41:33,170 –> 00:41:36,970
requires discipline to be inside of the turbulence of the wind or

666
00:41:36,970 –> 00:41:40,730
the turbulence of the turbulence and be able to

667
00:41:40,730 –> 00:41:44,370
maintain discipline when everyone around you and

668
00:41:44,370 –> 00:41:48,130
everything around you is, for lack of a better term. And to mix a

669
00:41:48,130 –> 00:41:51,890
bunch of metaphors together, which I love doing on my own show, when everything

670
00:41:51,890 –> 00:41:55,490
around you is on fire, right? One of the

671
00:41:55,490 –> 00:41:58,210
challenges we have today. Here’s a question. I do have a question embedded in here.

672
00:41:58,210 –> 00:42:01,770
One of the challenges we have here today in our time, and you’re a

673
00:42:01,770 –> 00:42:04,610
native Mandarin speaker, and I want to explore this a little bit here,

674
00:42:06,050 –> 00:42:09,730
is we are currently in an era of business

675
00:42:09,890 –> 00:42:13,730
turbulence and terrorists is a symptom of a much

676
00:42:13,730 –> 00:42:17,570
larger disease. The

677
00:42:17,570 –> 00:42:21,130
larger disease is the breakup of the global order established after

678
00:42:21,130 –> 00:42:24,730
World War II. The Bretton woods agreement is basically

679
00:42:24,730 –> 00:42:28,210
over, but we don’t know what comes

680
00:42:28,210 –> 00:42:32,010
after that. And so, for lack of a better term, in

681
00:42:32,010 –> 00:42:35,050
a multipolar world, we’re throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, trying to see

682
00:42:35,050 –> 00:42:38,890
what sticks. Our biggest spaghetti thrower is Donald Trump. Whether you like it or not,

683
00:42:38,890 –> 00:42:42,610
that’s the biggest spaghetti thrower. But also Xi Jinping is in there.

684
00:42:42,610 –> 00:42:45,730
Vladimir Putin is in there. Edge Organa. Turkey is in there.

685
00:42:46,660 –> 00:42:50,340
Mbs. Saudi Arabia is in there. You know,

686
00:42:50,340 –> 00:42:53,580
Modi in India is in there. Macron. Oh,

687
00:42:53,580 –> 00:42:57,260
absolutely. Care Stamar. By the way, we did a whole job,

688
00:42:57,260 –> 00:43:00,780
a whole geopolitical jog when we were reading

689
00:43:00,780 –> 00:43:04,420
Parade’s End. You should go listen to that episode where I basically put

690
00:43:04,660 –> 00:43:08,180
forth my theory that

691
00:43:08,180 –> 00:43:10,740
France will wind up running the EU in the next 20 years.

692
00:43:12,590 –> 00:43:16,430
Oh, that’s 100. Because I don’t see anybody else. I don’t see anybody

693
00:43:16,430 –> 00:43:19,270
else on that continent that’s gonna, that’s gonna mount up to be able to control

694
00:43:19,270 –> 00:43:23,110
that entire entity. Well, in Germany, Germany

695
00:43:23,110 –> 00:43:26,870
has, has. The demographics aren’t solid enough. France is the only nation that

696
00:43:26,870 –> 00:43:30,670
has solid enough demographics, and the UK is cozying up to the United States.

697
00:43:31,870 –> 00:43:35,510
So there’s no one in that sphere who is strong enough to

698
00:43:35,510 –> 00:43:38,510
stand up to a. A rising Turkey and a

699
00:43:39,250 –> 00:43:42,970
potentially militant Russia. Right. And. And, and you

700
00:43:42,970 –> 00:43:46,450
talk about the Brits cozying up to the Americans. The Brits can only cozy up

701
00:43:46,450 –> 00:43:48,850
to the Americans if the British can figure out what it means to actually be

702
00:43:48,850 –> 00:43:52,610
British. And if they can’t figure out

703
00:43:52,610 –> 00:43:55,290
how to do that, if they can’t figure out what that, they can’t wander back

704
00:43:55,290 –> 00:43:59,050
to what that means. One of my buddies believes

705
00:43:59,050 –> 00:44:02,690
that there will be a lot of internal strife and potentially

706
00:44:02,690 –> 00:44:06,450
a civil war in, in England. I don’t know

707
00:44:06,450 –> 00:44:09,530
that it’ll go that far, but I think, I think they’re going to have a

708
00:44:09,530 –> 00:44:13,050
very vibrant conversation about what it means to be British for about the next decade,

709
00:44:13,130 –> 00:44:16,090
and they’re going to have to come to some conclusions about what that actually means.

710
00:44:16,890 –> 00:44:20,610
My point is this. My question is this. You’re a native Mandarin

711
00:44:20,610 –> 00:44:24,210
speaker. You have some insight into, by knowing the

712
00:44:24,210 –> 00:44:27,690
language, you have some insight into the mind of. Of at least,

713
00:44:27,850 –> 00:44:31,300
if not, if not Chinese culture, at least

714
00:44:31,460 –> 00:44:33,300
a glimpse more than maybe I’ve got.

715
00:44:35,460 –> 00:44:39,220
What should we be thinking about in the west in terms

716
00:44:39,300 –> 00:44:43,060
of strategy in relation to

717
00:44:43,540 –> 00:44:46,340
and relative to China in a

718
00:44:46,420 –> 00:44:50,140
multipolar world? And you can speak from Sun Tzu in

719
00:44:50,140 –> 00:44:53,300
relation to strategy around this? I think that there’s an open door there.

720
00:44:55,620 –> 00:44:58,460
Yeah, you know, I, I think that’s A really good question. I think that one

721
00:44:58,460 –> 00:45:02,260
of the things that we don’t understand because we don’t have the same cultural roots,

722
00:45:02,640 –> 00:45:06,440
to remember that China was separated from Europe for a really

723
00:45:06,440 –> 00:45:10,160
long time. And so they have two different cultural upbringings, right?

724
00:45:10,480 –> 00:45:14,000
China, Asia, arguably Asia ex,

725
00:45:14,080 –> 00:45:17,560
excluding Japan, has a Han sort of

726
00:45:17,560 –> 00:45:20,960
ethnic Han cultural root the same way that

727
00:45:21,120 –> 00:45:24,320
the west has a Greco Roman cultural root.

728
00:45:25,840 –> 00:45:29,000
And so it means that people like Sunza and

729
00:45:29,000 –> 00:45:31,830
Confucius or, or Kongzi as they call him,

730
00:45:33,420 –> 00:45:37,020
and, and Taoism are to them

731
00:45:37,580 –> 00:45:40,940
what Plato’s Republic and Stoicism

732
00:45:41,660 –> 00:45:44,540
and you know,

733
00:45:45,340 –> 00:45:49,180
a Periclean democratic thought is

734
00:45:49,500 –> 00:45:53,220
to us. And because we don’t understand that

735
00:45:53,220 –> 00:45:56,300
root, we, we enter into this sort of

736
00:45:57,020 –> 00:46:00,200
ethnocentrist state of, of thought.

737
00:46:01,240 –> 00:46:04,640
And what I mean by that is that we think that our way is the

738
00:46:04,640 –> 00:46:08,080
right way. We’re unwilling to acknowledge the things that we don’t know that we don’t

739
00:46:08,080 –> 00:46:11,680
know. We’re unwilling to acknowledge. Hey, maybe China has some ways that they do it

740
00:46:11,680 –> 00:46:15,320
that are better. China isn’t that way.

741
00:46:16,200 –> 00:46:18,360
China right now is,

742
00:46:20,360 –> 00:46:24,160
if you believe the, the demographics that are coming out and what the analysis on

743
00:46:24,160 –> 00:46:27,830
those demographics are, it’s could be terminal.

744
00:46:27,830 –> 00:46:31,550
Could. Could, right? And, and yeah, you have to go like this because

745
00:46:31,550 –> 00:46:35,270
it’s a could be. But, but China is very much

746
00:46:35,270 –> 00:46:36,550
at a place of, of

747
00:46:38,470 –> 00:46:42,150
inflection, let’s say. And so as we move into

748
00:46:42,150 –> 00:46:45,710
a multipolar world, there are a couple of, of things that you need to be

749
00:46:45,710 –> 00:46:49,270
aware of that are cultural roots for the Chinese

750
00:46:50,230 –> 00:46:53,870
and for Asia in general. One is face. The concept of

751
00:46:53,870 –> 00:46:56,430
face. We don’t have that concept here.

752
00:46:58,270 –> 00:47:02,070
The closest thing I would say is like, honor, right? And when

753
00:47:02,070 –> 00:47:05,550
we talk about honor, we, we kind of go in our minds to like the

754
00:47:05,550 –> 00:47:09,390
glove slap. And you, sir, have impugned my honor. And

755
00:47:09,390 –> 00:47:12,670
like, that’s not at all what it is. Faces

756
00:47:12,830 –> 00:47:16,390
deeply, deeply ingrained in their culture, such that if a young

757
00:47:16,390 –> 00:47:19,820
person does not get the right source score on a test, they will commit

758
00:47:19,820 –> 00:47:23,660
suicide because it’s a loss of

759
00:47:23,660 –> 00:47:27,180
faith for themselves and their family. And

760
00:47:27,260 –> 00:47:30,940
so that’s one thing that, that we don’t understand

761
00:47:31,180 –> 00:47:34,980
because we go in and we don’t have that concept of face. In

762
00:47:34,980 –> 00:47:37,820
fact, we don’t have the same level of familial

763
00:47:39,500 –> 00:47:43,140
piety or loyalty that

764
00:47:43,140 –> 00:47:46,290
they do. Found found family, which,

765
00:47:47,010 –> 00:47:50,690
you know, has its merits, but found family

766
00:47:50,690 –> 00:47:54,410
is a constant and massive part of

767
00:47:54,410 –> 00:47:58,130
our cultural zeitgeist right now. It is not

768
00:47:58,290 –> 00:48:01,970
in Asia. The found family is like, what are you

769
00:48:01,970 –> 00:48:05,610
talking about you can hate your family, but they’re still your family and you’re still

770
00:48:05,610 –> 00:48:09,410
going to do whatever it takes to help them. Like, that’s part of their

771
00:48:09,410 –> 00:48:12,980
cultural zeitgeist. And so like that.

772
00:48:12,980 –> 00:48:16,700
That whole concept of face is really

773
00:48:16,700 –> 00:48:20,540
important to them. And so when we come in and I’ll

774
00:48:20,540 –> 00:48:23,660
just give you an example of contract,

775
00:48:24,140 –> 00:48:27,980
business contracts. So when we come in, our typical thing is that we’re

776
00:48:27,980 –> 00:48:30,780
going to write up a contract and we’re going to say, these are the terms

777
00:48:30,780 –> 00:48:33,820
of the contract. I expect you to abide by these contracts.

778
00:48:34,460 –> 00:48:38,260
The Chinese culture is really good at finding the liminal space,

779
00:48:40,420 –> 00:48:43,700
and so they will do just about anything

780
00:48:44,900 –> 00:48:48,740
but what’s in the contract sometimes. And

781
00:48:49,540 –> 00:48:53,140
so if you go in there and you start telling them, how dare you

782
00:48:53,140 –> 00:48:56,340
violate the terms of the contract, I’m going to sue you, and blah, blah, blah.

783
00:48:56,340 –> 00:48:58,980
That’s causing a loss of face for them.

784
00:49:00,180 –> 00:49:04,010
And it means that they have to culturally plant in their

785
00:49:04,010 –> 00:49:07,730
heels because if they give any ground, it’s a further loss of

786
00:49:07,730 –> 00:49:10,530
faith face. So, you know,

787
00:49:11,330 –> 00:49:14,970
love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s approach to handling

788
00:49:14,970 –> 00:49:18,770
the negotiations with North Korea were probably pretty

789
00:49:18,770 –> 00:49:22,290
good because he was coming in, he was

790
00:49:22,370 –> 00:49:26,090
giving Kim Jong Un face and saying, yeah, we’re buddies, blah,

791
00:49:26,090 –> 00:49:29,730
blah, blah. He doesn’t believe that. He’s just giving Kim Jong Un

792
00:49:29,730 –> 00:49:32,290
face so that he can get what he wants out of him.

793
00:49:34,450 –> 00:49:38,250
And that’s, that’s what we overlook. So you

794
00:49:38,250 –> 00:49:41,330
have to think about this and you have to give them face. You have to

795
00:49:41,330 –> 00:49:45,130
think about this strategically. In what can I do to preserve their

796
00:49:45,130 –> 00:49:48,890
mobility, preserve my mobility in, in the art

797
00:49:48,890 –> 00:49:51,530
of war, it talks about. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to find

798
00:49:51,530 –> 00:49:53,890
it here. Here it is.

799
00:49:56,130 –> 00:49:59,860
Maybe it talks

800
00:49:59,860 –> 00:50:03,660
about controlling. Here it is

801
00:50:03,820 –> 00:50:07,660
thus. And this is section four. It says thus, one who excels

802
00:50:07,660 –> 00:50:11,380
at warfare first establishes himself in a position where he cannot

803
00:50:11,380 –> 00:50:15,140
be defeated while not losing any opportunity to defeat

804
00:50:15,140 –> 00:50:18,980
the enemy. So it’s about preserving your own

805
00:50:18,980 –> 00:50:22,620
mobility and boxing in the enemy. And that’s what the Chinese

806
00:50:22,620 –> 00:50:26,400
are really good at. And we like, as leaders,

807
00:50:26,400 –> 00:50:29,480
we don’t think that way because it’s not a part of our cultural tradition,

808
00:50:30,120 –> 00:50:33,880
but it would be an incredibly beneficial tool to have in our tool belt.

809
00:50:33,880 –> 00:50:37,560
Well, and we can’t get there because the thing that would have

810
00:50:38,840 –> 00:50:41,640
helped us understand that

811
00:50:43,240 –> 00:50:46,920
is the one. And I remember I said I was going to get back to

812
00:50:46,920 –> 00:50:50,700
Christianity in a minute. Here we go. Well, here we

813
00:50:50,700 –> 00:50:54,180
go. So to paraphrase through the New

814
00:50:54,180 –> 00:50:56,740
Testament. From my buddy Paul.

815
00:50:57,940 –> 00:51:01,780
From my buddy Paul, a little leaven gonna work through the whole loaf, right? You

816
00:51:01,780 –> 00:51:04,900
know, like we’re gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna work through, right? And so

817
00:51:08,900 –> 00:51:11,540
the Western mind, shorn of Christianity

818
00:51:12,340 –> 00:51:15,820
hears what you just said and goes, well, that’s just

819
00:51:15,820 –> 00:51:19,450
deception. Crush those people. Like, that’s just the pagan

820
00:51:19,450 –> 00:51:22,930
Roman approach to that is, oh, you break contract,

821
00:51:22,930 –> 00:51:26,730
I, I kill you, I put an ax in your face. And

822
00:51:26,730 –> 00:51:29,810
not only that, I burned down your house and I burned down, like,

823
00:51:30,930 –> 00:51:34,730
enslave your children and your wife and then I salt the

824
00:51:34,730 –> 00:51:38,530
ground of your crops. Yes. The

825
00:51:38,530 –> 00:51:42,370
only reason we don’t do that to each other now is because of a

826
00:51:42,370 –> 00:51:46,200
guy who died on a cross and rose again three days

827
00:51:46,200 –> 00:51:49,560
later. And that entire story, which no one has ever

828
00:51:49,560 –> 00:51:53,400
denied, has gone out like leaven through the loaf

829
00:51:53,400 –> 00:51:57,120
over the course of 2,000 years throughout the entire West. And it

830
00:51:57,120 –> 00:52:00,360
is only in the last 200 years, with some success

831
00:52:00,920 –> 00:52:04,360
that we’ve managed to drain, we talked about postmodernism

832
00:52:04,440 –> 00:52:08,160
and nihilism, we’ve managed to drain some of that leaven out of the

833
00:52:08,160 –> 00:52:11,960
loaf and replace it with stuff that is closer

834
00:52:11,960 –> 00:52:15,760
to the paganism of the past rather than

835
00:52:15,760 –> 00:52:19,280
a perception of Christianity in the future. Okay? So the

836
00:52:19,280 –> 00:52:22,800
neo pagan mind of the 2000s and of the

837
00:52:22,800 –> 00:52:26,600
2000s hears that and goes, oh, those people just aren’t trustworthy.

838
00:52:26,600 –> 00:52:30,360
That’s just deception. The Christian

839
00:52:30,360 –> 00:52:33,720
mind hears that and goes, well, okay,

840
00:52:34,040 –> 00:52:37,860
so we’ll just deal with those folks with an open hand and they

841
00:52:37,860 –> 00:52:41,660
will perceive us as suckers. But that’s okay, because

842
00:52:41,660 –> 00:52:45,460
Christian charity will convert them. We will convert them by our deeds.

843
00:52:46,100 –> 00:52:49,540
We will show our belief by our acts, right? And

844
00:52:50,820 –> 00:52:54,660
over the long course of time, over a 2000 year

845
00:52:54,660 –> 00:52:58,380
long stretch, which who knows if we have another 2,000 years, but

846
00:52:58,380 –> 00:53:02,180
let’s just say we do. Over 2,000 year long stretch, we’re going to

847
00:53:02,180 –> 00:53:05,900
get those people. And this is why when

848
00:53:05,900 –> 00:53:09,740
I hear, and I do hear of Christian

849
00:53:09,740 –> 00:53:12,980
missionaries going to China, you do hear about

850
00:53:13,380 –> 00:53:16,980
the challenges that they have in that country. You do hear

851
00:53:16,980 –> 00:53:20,620
about folks being locked up in gulags and house

852
00:53:20,620 –> 00:53:24,260
churches, you know, being the communists, try to find house

853
00:53:24,260 –> 00:53:28,100
churches, as many as they can, but they can’t stomp it out. And

854
00:53:28,180 –> 00:53:31,940
here’s the interesting thing, they don’t know why. They

855
00:53:31,940 –> 00:53:35,020
don’t know why they can’t stomp it out. And I would tell them, but they

856
00:53:35,020 –> 00:53:38,860
wouldn’t listen. They’re not listening anyway. But I’ll just tell the

857
00:53:38,860 –> 00:53:42,700
communists, who are basically atheist Confucians. Let

858
00:53:42,700 –> 00:53:45,780
me, let me tell you why it’s not working. It’s not working because

859
00:53:47,060 –> 00:53:50,900
there’s a power called the Holy Spirit. I fundamentally believe

860
00:53:51,300 –> 00:53:55,140
that’s working through the prayers of about.

861
00:53:55,480 –> 00:53:57,720
And doesn’t have to be a billion. This is why I sort of waved my

862
00:53:57,720 –> 00:54:00,440
hand a little bit. Let’s say it’s around 850 million people.

863
00:54:01,320 –> 00:54:04,960
That’s a lot of prayers. Even if it’s just 1%. That’s a

864
00:54:04,960 –> 00:54:08,600
lot. And God, I fundamentally believe from a Christian

865
00:54:08,600 –> 00:54:12,440
perspective, will answer those prayers regardless of what the

866
00:54:12,440 –> 00:54:15,280
state does. And by the way, we have a perfect example of this happening in

867
00:54:15,280 –> 00:54:18,440
the 20th century. That was the fall of the Berlin Wall.

868
00:54:20,200 –> 00:54:23,720
What crushed the Berlin Wall was a combination of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald

869
00:54:23,720 –> 00:54:27,120
Reagan, and here’s the third guy that everybody forgets about, the Pope,

870
00:54:28,640 –> 00:54:32,320
JP too. So, you know, my, my process brothers and sisters are going

871
00:54:32,320 –> 00:54:36,000
to rebel and send me a bunch of nasty Graham letters. And that’s

872
00:54:36,000 –> 00:54:39,440
okay. You can send me a bunch of emails, it’s fine. We could have a

873
00:54:39,440 –> 00:54:42,560
chat about Billy Graham and how he had to struggle to get on board with

874
00:54:42,560 –> 00:54:46,160
the anti abortion train. And then you can go away and leave me

875
00:54:46,160 –> 00:54:49,840
alone. You can just go away and leave me alone

876
00:54:49,840 –> 00:54:53,550
after that. We all have our foibles and sins. No

877
00:54:53,550 –> 00:54:57,110
one is perfect. And see, I’m a Latter Day Saint. I’m a Latter Day Saint.

878
00:54:57,110 –> 00:54:59,670
So I just sit on the sidelines and just eat. That’s okay. You sit there.

879
00:54:59,670 –> 00:55:03,470
You sit there and you eat popcorn. We’ll get to you in a minute. I

880
00:55:03,470 –> 00:55:07,230
know, I know, I know. I know my churches. So

881
00:55:07,230 –> 00:55:10,550
my point is, if you, if you have that,

882
00:55:11,110 –> 00:55:13,670
if you have that dynamic, right?

883
00:55:14,710 –> 00:55:18,470
But we’re approaching the very secular moment of

884
00:55:18,470 –> 00:55:22,190
trade, right? In a multipolar world, I don’t know how

885
00:55:22,190 –> 00:55:25,990
you can negotiate in a way

886
00:55:25,990 –> 00:55:29,310
that saves face without having some sort of,

887
00:55:29,710 –> 00:55:33,550
for lack of a better term, transcendent belief system back there that

888
00:55:33,790 –> 00:55:37,150
gives you the cultural confidence to negotiate with them with face,

889
00:55:38,750 –> 00:55:42,150
you know, And I. Would say that when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

890
00:55:42,150 –> 00:55:44,920
Face is not faces. Like

891
00:55:45,960 –> 00:55:49,400
it’s brown nosing, but it’s a lot more subtle than that. It’s like,

892
00:55:49,960 –> 00:55:53,720
you know, so I’ll give you an example. Anytime I go into

893
00:55:53,720 –> 00:55:57,520
a Chinese restaurant and I, I know how to pick them because

894
00:55:57,520 –> 00:56:01,320
the good names are not run by Chinese people and the food is always

895
00:56:01,320 –> 00:56:05,160
terrible. If it’s like the Lotus Garden at Emperor’s Way,

896
00:56:05,160 –> 00:56:08,120
you know, all right, this. Is not going to be terrible. Chinese food.

897
00:56:09,090 –> 00:56:12,890
Oh, yeah. But if it’s something like China Magic Noodle, you’re like, all right,

898
00:56:12,890 –> 00:56:16,450
that’s my jam. This is going to be good. And so,

899
00:56:17,810 –> 00:56:20,850
and so I’ll go in and one of the things that I learned

900
00:56:22,290 –> 00:56:26,090
when I was in Taiwan is that one of

901
00:56:26,090 –> 00:56:29,650
the best things you can do to give someone face in a

902
00:56:29,650 –> 00:56:33,330
very short amount of time is to call them shinku, which means

903
00:56:33,330 –> 00:56:37,020
burdened. Oh, you’re so. Shinku. You’re working so

904
00:56:37,020 –> 00:56:40,700
hard. You’re so burdened. You have so much responsibility on your shoulders.

905
00:56:40,940 –> 00:56:44,700
You must be very trusted. And there’s all of this cultural context

906
00:56:44,700 –> 00:56:48,100
that goes in with just calling someone Shinku. You’re

907
00:56:48,100 –> 00:56:51,820
burdened because you are trustworthy, you’re responsible,

908
00:56:51,980 –> 00:56:55,740
you’re working hard. The boss sees what you’re doing, and man, he knows that

909
00:56:55,740 –> 00:56:59,580
you can, you, you can really deliver. Like, there’s all of that wrapped into one

910
00:56:59,580 –> 00:57:03,030
word. And we don’t understand that because

911
00:57:03,190 –> 00:57:06,950
our language is a, a semi

912
00:57:06,950 –> 00:57:09,670
phonetic Alphabet. Right. You know, it’s weird. But

913
00:57:10,390 –> 00:57:13,910
theirs is a pictograph system, and their pictographs,

914
00:57:14,710 –> 00:57:18,470
I’ll give you an example. Their pictographs have deeper meaning. So

915
00:57:18,470 –> 00:57:22,190
the character for man means it has two, what they

916
00:57:22,190 –> 00:57:25,960
call radicals, which are sub pictographs. One is a field, and

917
00:57:25,960 –> 00:57:29,480
I write on my hand because that’s what they do. They’ll write the character out

918
00:57:29,480 –> 00:57:33,240
on their hand. One is a field, and then they partner it with power. So

919
00:57:33,240 –> 00:57:37,000
men have strength in the field. I’ll give you another example. The

920
00:57:37,000 –> 00:57:40,560
character for good is a radical of a woman and a

921
00:57:40,560 –> 00:57:44,160
child. Because women have strength in childbirth. Yeah, okay.

922
00:57:44,160 –> 00:57:47,920
Or goodness in childbirth. Or it’s good. Women.

923
00:57:48,320 –> 00:57:52,050
It’s good for a woman to have a child. I’ll give

924
00:57:52,050 –> 00:57:55,610
you another example. The character for relieve is a

925
00:57:55,610 –> 00:57:58,490
cross and three radicals for power.

926
00:58:03,210 –> 00:58:06,970
Okay. So their, their language

927
00:58:07,050 –> 00:58:10,650
is 5, 6, 7, 8,000 years old

928
00:58:10,890 –> 00:58:14,570
and buries the cultural weight of 8,000

929
00:58:14,730 –> 00:58:18,260
years of societal teaching. And they see it

930
00:58:18,740 –> 00:58:22,500
every day. So fundamentally

931
00:58:22,900 –> 00:58:26,660
then. And

932
00:58:26,660 –> 00:58:29,380
we’ll get, we’ll get back to the book here in a minute because I’m working

933
00:58:29,380 –> 00:58:32,579
on an idea here. No, no, this is good because these are things that normally

934
00:58:32,579 –> 00:58:34,900
we don’t, we don’t, we don’t talk about on the show. Normally we don’t have

935
00:58:34,900 –> 00:58:37,940
a guest that’s versed in this, that’s versed in this space and can, can at

936
00:58:37,940 –> 00:58:41,220
least introduce some of these ideas to our listeners. So

937
00:58:45,070 –> 00:58:47,830
how would. Okay, let me frame it this way. So thinking about what you do

938
00:58:47,830 –> 00:58:51,470
with ignition point strategies. Right? Thinking about those high intent sales, right.

939
00:58:52,510 –> 00:58:56,190
How would that model. This is something that’s, that’s interesting to me

940
00:58:56,510 –> 00:59:00,350
in a multipolar world, right? How would that model or would

941
00:59:00,350 –> 00:59:03,070
that model translate into a,

942
00:59:04,670 –> 00:59:07,950
into a Han cultural

943
00:59:08,030 –> 00:59:11,740
context? How would, how would that work? Or is there a one to one

944
00:59:11,740 –> 00:59:15,260
translation? Or is it just not possible because too many of the

945
00:59:15,260 –> 00:59:19,100
assumptions that exist underneath, like your actual core

946
00:59:19,340 –> 00:59:22,620
of the business are too, are still too Western?

947
00:59:22,860 –> 00:59:26,660
How does, how would that work? I would say

948
00:59:26,660 –> 00:59:30,420
that it does translate because the, the thing that we do is we focus

949
00:59:30,420 –> 00:59:34,180
on human nature and we focus on causal mechanisms. So

950
00:59:34,180 –> 00:59:35,580
what we’re looking at is,

951
00:59:38,420 –> 00:59:42,060
we’re looking at where do, like does your process call, think,

952
00:59:42,060 –> 00:59:45,780
cause things to stall? Does your, your people cause things

953
00:59:45,780 –> 00:59:49,460
to stall? Is there a lack of understanding? Like there’s a whole, whole thing

954
00:59:49,460 –> 00:59:53,220
that we do to really get to the root of

955
00:59:53,380 –> 00:59:56,580
where are your high intent sales prospects walking away?

956
00:59:57,380 –> 01:00:00,500
And I’ll give you an example. I was reviewing a phone call,

957
01:00:01,300 –> 01:00:05,120
a sales phone call the other day and this person brings

958
01:00:05,120 –> 01:00:08,840
up something that was really important to them, that they had

959
01:00:08,840 –> 01:00:11,760
achieved preferred status from a business partner.

960
01:00:12,720 –> 01:00:16,520
And they didn’t bring it up once, they brought it up twice. And

961
01:00:16,520 –> 01:00:20,120
the salesperson missed was

962
01:00:20,120 –> 01:00:23,760
obviously important to the prospect because they brought it up twice.

963
01:00:24,320 –> 01:00:28,040
And so when that is called out, now you

964
01:00:28,040 –> 01:00:31,520
can say, okay, why does that matter to the client or to the prospect?

965
01:00:32,090 –> 01:00:35,930
How are we failing to give them those same outcomes that,

966
01:00:35,930 –> 01:00:39,570
that, that preferred status gives them? How

967
01:00:39,570 –> 01:00:42,850
can we give them those same outcomes? And so it

968
01:00:42,850 –> 01:00:46,530
strengthens your position in the market because we’re focused

969
01:00:46,530 –> 01:00:50,250
on outcomes, we’re not focused on product features and benefits,

970
01:00:50,490 –> 01:00:53,930
we’re not focused on specific objections

971
01:00:54,010 –> 01:00:57,840
or, or anything like that. We’re just coming in with a completely agnostic, agnostic

972
01:00:57,840 –> 01:01:00,920
perspective and saying, what is this person trying to create?

973
01:01:01,480 –> 01:01:05,240
So when they go to China Magic noodle, what is the experience they’re

974
01:01:05,240 –> 01:01:07,240
trying to create when they hire?

975
01:01:09,640 –> 01:01:13,000
Geez, send,

976
01:01:14,040 –> 01:01:16,440
send, shoot. What is it?

977
01:01:19,240 –> 01:01:23,000
I don’t know. We’ll make up a company syntax when they hire syntax,

978
01:01:24,030 –> 01:01:27,750
why are they hiring syntax? What is the overall outcome that

979
01:01:27,750 –> 01:01:31,550
they’re trying to create? And that outcome has social,

980
01:01:31,630 –> 01:01:35,190
emotional and functional implications. And

981
01:01:35,190 –> 01:01:38,910
often we focus on the functional and overlook the social and

982
01:01:38,910 –> 01:01:42,430
emotional implications. So if I have preferred status

983
01:01:42,430 –> 01:01:46,190
with a business partner, that is not a functional thing

984
01:01:46,510 –> 01:01:50,270
other than yeah, maybe it allows me to do this thing better or faster or

985
01:01:50,540 –> 01:01:53,940
get easier access, but there’s also the social and emotional

986
01:01:53,940 –> 01:01:57,420
implications that was something like that bear a lot more weight.

987
01:01:57,740 –> 01:02:01,500
And so we’re coming in and we’re helping these sales teams realize those

988
01:02:01,500 –> 01:02:05,260
tiny, subtle, underlooked things that are actually major

989
01:02:05,340 –> 01:02:08,540
stall points for their, for their sales

990
01:02:09,180 –> 01:02:12,740
and that, you know, they, the clients think,

991
01:02:12,740 –> 01:02:16,060
oh, this is going to be there. Then they get involved in the product

992
01:02:16,380 –> 01:02:20,140
and they experience the service and it doesn’t align. And so they churn

993
01:02:20,140 –> 01:02:23,890
out. We clarify and highlight those

994
01:02:24,130 –> 01:02:27,570
so that firms can then act on that. Okay,

995
01:02:27,730 –> 01:02:31,570
no, that, that makes sense. And I could see how, how that would

996
01:02:31,570 –> 01:02:35,010
translate because. Because again, these are things that are going to be.

997
01:02:36,290 –> 01:02:39,730
To your point about human nature, term we often use on the show is

998
01:02:39,730 –> 01:02:43,410
universal. Right. These are things that are going to be universal across

999
01:02:43,490 –> 01:02:46,770
all times and climes.

1000
01:02:48,300 –> 01:02:51,900
Something you brought up that, that reminded me of something in the book around

1001
01:02:51,980 –> 01:02:55,220
emptiness and fullness. I want to go to the chapter on that for just a

1002
01:02:55,220 –> 01:02:58,820
second here. Yeah, my translation. It’s

1003
01:02:58,820 –> 01:03:02,660
vacuity and substance. Oh, there we go. I kind of like that better. Vacuity and

1004
01:03:02,660 –> 01:03:05,660
substance. So

1005
01:03:09,500 –> 01:03:13,260
couple of different ideas in here. And it goes directly

1006
01:03:13,260 –> 01:03:16,580
to the tie in of face finding the liminal space,

1007
01:03:18,340 –> 01:03:22,060
absence and presence, which is something that unless you’ve really taken

1008
01:03:22,060 –> 01:03:25,780
an art class in America, which is why the decline of art education is

1009
01:03:25,860 –> 01:03:28,420
a real tragedy, you’re not sensitive to,

1010
01:03:29,780 –> 01:03:33,300
you know, we over index for. We over

1011
01:03:33,300 –> 01:03:36,860
index for the verbal in our society, which is, which is fine as a person

1012
01:03:36,860 –> 01:03:40,100
who makes their living saying stuff that works for me.

1013
01:03:40,950 –> 01:03:44,590
But we under index on things like

1014
01:03:44,590 –> 01:03:48,190
body language, tone of voice, pacing, vocal

1015
01:03:48,190 –> 01:03:51,510
intonation, and of course the magic of,

1016
01:03:51,830 –> 01:03:54,470
well, that right there.

1017
01:03:56,310 –> 01:04:00,070
The magic of the pause, the magic of silence. And so there’s a

1018
01:04:00,070 –> 01:04:03,670
couple different ideas in here that I think relate to what you’re talking about,

1019
01:04:04,070 –> 01:04:06,150
particularly in that absence and presence space.

1020
01:04:08,350 –> 01:04:11,510
And I, again, I relate to this as a jiu jitsu and a martial arts,

1021
01:04:11,510 –> 01:04:15,110
you know, practitioner. But it does apply as well

1022
01:04:15,110 –> 01:04:17,870
to, to business. I’m going to read a couple of different things from here

1023
01:04:19,630 –> 01:04:23,270
for master soon appear where they cannot go. Head for where they

1024
01:04:23,270 –> 01:04:26,870
least expect you to travel hundreds of miles without fatigue. Go over

1025
01:04:26,870 –> 01:04:30,590
land where there are no people. Interesting. Here’s another

1026
01:04:30,590 –> 01:04:34,270
one. To unfailingly take what you attack, attack where there is no

1027
01:04:34,350 –> 01:04:38,040
defense. For unfailingly secure defense.

1028
01:04:38,360 –> 01:04:40,600
Defend where there is no attack.

1029
01:04:42,200 –> 01:04:45,320
So in the case of those who are skilled in attack, their opponents do not

1030
01:04:45,320 –> 01:04:48,840
know where to defend. In the case of those skilled in defense, their

1031
01:04:48,840 –> 01:04:52,680
opponents do not know where to attack. Or here’s

1032
01:04:52,680 –> 01:04:56,320
another one. People are familiar with this if they’re familiar with Bruce Lee. Be extremely

1033
01:04:56,320 –> 01:04:59,400
subtle, even to the point of formlessness.

1034
01:05:00,040 –> 01:05:03,720
Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.

1035
01:05:04,480 –> 01:05:08,080
Thereby you could be the director of the opponent’s fate.

1036
01:05:09,360 –> 01:05:12,840
Or here’s another one. To advance irresistibly, push through their

1037
01:05:12,840 –> 01:05:16,000
gaps, to retreat elusively, outspeed them.

1038
01:05:17,200 –> 01:05:20,920
And finally, therefore, when you want to do battle, even if the opponent

1039
01:05:20,920 –> 01:05:24,600
is deeply entrenched in a defensive position, he will be unable to avoid

1040
01:05:24,600 –> 01:05:28,000
fighting if you attack where he will surely go

1041
01:05:28,160 –> 01:05:29,600
to the rescue.

1042
01:05:31,770 –> 01:05:35,290
Drawing people out. Yeah, the faint, the slip.

1043
01:05:35,290 –> 01:05:39,130
Drawing people out. In. In my jiu jitsu game, I’m a big

1044
01:05:39,130 –> 01:05:42,850
fan of setting traps and doing one thing in one area or

1045
01:05:42,850 –> 01:05:46,650
over, over indexing in one area and then going and doing

1046
01:05:46,650 –> 01:05:49,890
something else in another area. I’m also a big fan of the game of chess.

1047
01:05:49,890 –> 01:05:52,890
I taught my kids how to play chess. All my children and

1048
01:05:53,690 –> 01:05:57,280
all of them, except for the youngest one, are at a stage where they can

1049
01:05:57,280 –> 01:06:00,680
beat me. Now, which is, which is good, actually, it’s really good.

1050
01:06:01,720 –> 01:06:05,360
And, and how I tend to play the game of chess is I

1051
01:06:05,360 –> 01:06:09,000
use traps, I use pincher moves, I use subtle attacks. I hide

1052
01:06:09,000 –> 01:06:12,720
behind things I don’t. You know, I tend not

1053
01:06:12,720 –> 01:06:16,440
to telegraph my movement as much as. As much as

1054
01:06:16,440 –> 01:06:19,560
maybe, you know, someone who’s less experienced might.

1055
01:06:21,000 –> 01:06:24,690
But I also have a good holistic sense of. To a point early

1056
01:06:24,690 –> 01:06:27,410
about terrain. Look at sense of what I can do with the terrain. Like I’ve

1057
01:06:27,410 –> 01:06:31,130
been experimenting recently with if anybody knows how the

1058
01:06:31,130 –> 01:06:34,970
chess pieces move. I’ve been experiencing recently with how the knight moves and

1059
01:06:34,970 –> 01:06:38,450
how you can put. And put some. An opponent in

1060
01:06:38,450 –> 01:06:42,250
check. Because increasingly I’m noticing

1061
01:06:42,250 –> 01:06:45,930
this. People can’t do geography in their own or not geography or geometry in their

1062
01:06:45,930 –> 01:06:49,610
own head. They can’t draw shape of an L, they can’t reverse that, they can’t

1063
01:06:49,610 –> 01:06:52,160
flip that around, they can’t turn it around. And so if you could do that

1064
01:06:52,160 –> 01:06:55,560
a couple of times in a game, boom. You can go where they’re not,

1065
01:06:56,120 –> 01:06:58,800
or you can set up a faint and use it to do something else. And

1066
01:06:58,800 –> 01:07:02,160
now you can go in a different direction. So thoughts on that though?

1067
01:07:02,160 –> 01:07:04,680
Formlessness and absence and presence.

1068
01:07:06,840 –> 01:07:10,520
I think that what sun is highlighting here is what I talked about with the

1069
01:07:10,520 –> 01:07:14,080
contract earlier in, in my

1070
01:07:14,080 –> 01:07:15,400
translation. He says,

1071
01:07:18,770 –> 01:07:22,570
thus, when someone excels in attacking, the enemy does not know where to mount his

1072
01:07:22,570 –> 01:07:26,410
defense. When someone excels at defense, the enemy does not know where to attack. Subtle.

1073
01:07:26,410 –> 01:07:30,090
Subtle. It approaches the formless spiritual. Spiritual it

1074
01:07:30,090 –> 01:07:33,810
attains the soundless. Thus he can be the enemy’s master of

1075
01:07:33,810 –> 01:07:37,490
fate to affect an unhampered advance. Strike their

1076
01:07:37,490 –> 01:07:41,210
vacuities to effect

1077
01:07:41,210 –> 01:07:45,030
a retreat that cannot be overtaken. Employ unmatchable speed.

1078
01:07:45,270 –> 01:07:48,870
Thus, if I want to engage in combat, even though the enemy has high

1079
01:07:48,870 –> 01:07:52,470
ramparts and deep moats, he cannot avoid doing battle because I attack

1080
01:07:52,470 –> 01:07:55,430
objectives he must rescue. So to me,

1081
01:07:57,190 –> 01:08:00,950
remember how I said that they will do just about anything that’s not in the

1082
01:08:00,950 –> 01:08:04,790
contract. The liminal space. Like the liminal

1083
01:08:04,790 –> 01:08:08,590
space. That’s what he’s talking about there. And they have, you

1084
01:08:08,590 –> 01:08:12,090
know, I forget how old this work is, but they have literally

1085
01:08:12,090 –> 01:08:15,570
thousands of years of being trained to look for the liminal

1086
01:08:15,730 –> 01:08:18,610
space. We don’t.

1087
01:08:19,490 –> 01:08:22,690
We see what’s there. We don’t see what’s not there.

1088
01:08:24,690 –> 01:08:28,130
We are trained from childhood. Look at this picture.

1089
01:08:28,130 –> 01:08:31,890
Compare these two pictures. What’s here that should not be here?

1090
01:08:33,250 –> 01:08:36,860
We’re never asked what’s not here that should

1091
01:08:37,180 –> 01:08:40,860
be here? And

1092
01:08:40,860 –> 01:08:44,460
that’s a huge cultural difference. But as a leader,

1093
01:08:44,700 –> 01:08:48,140
if you can master both of those skills,

1094
01:08:48,540 –> 01:08:52,260
all of a sudden you become very valuable. Because what’s

1095
01:08:52,260 –> 01:08:56,100
not in my sales messaging that should be here. What’s in

1096
01:08:56,100 –> 01:08:59,660
my sales messaging that shouldn’t be here? What’s

1097
01:08:59,820 –> 01:09:03,410
in my competitive set that should not be

1098
01:09:03,410 –> 01:09:06,530
here? And what isn’t here that should.

1099
01:09:07,010 –> 01:09:10,210
I call it Mastering the Art of. Of the unknown

1100
01:09:10,210 –> 01:09:13,570
Unknowns. And this is something that I get from Werner Earhart,

1101
01:09:14,130 –> 01:09:17,929
who talks about, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s

1102
01:09:17,929 –> 01:09:21,730
exactly what this is. In a macro context. The

1103
01:09:21,730 –> 01:09:25,450
Chinese are trained to look for what is not here that should

1104
01:09:25,450 –> 01:09:29,090
be here. What don’t I know that I don’t know? And

1105
01:09:29,090 –> 01:09:31,810
we’re trained for what do I know that I know?

1106
01:09:34,130 –> 01:09:37,770
And so it creates a difference. But if you can. Can learn and

1107
01:09:37,770 –> 01:09:41,570
train to look for that liminal space, there is literally an

1108
01:09:41,570 –> 01:09:45,410
infinite number of moves that you could take in that liminal space. That’s

1109
01:09:45,410 –> 01:09:49,050
why we were so shocked when China went out and they started dredging

1110
01:09:49,050 –> 01:09:52,690
up islands for remote air bases in the middle of the South

1111
01:09:52,690 –> 01:09:56,330
Pacific. And why we were so surprised when they went out and

1112
01:09:56,330 –> 01:09:59,990
started doing the. The Belt, the and Road initiative in Africa and

1113
01:09:59,990 –> 01:10:03,830
South America, because they were looking and they were saying, what’s not here

1114
01:10:03,830 –> 01:10:07,630
that should be here? Well, there’s harbors that should be here that aren’t

1115
01:10:07,630 –> 01:10:11,190
here. There are trains that should be here that aren’t here?

1116
01:10:11,430 –> 01:10:14,950
Well, let’s Go give these countries, these developing countries, money

1117
01:10:15,110 –> 01:10:18,630
with earmarks so that they will do what we want them to do.

1118
01:10:19,110 –> 01:10:21,910
Well, and, and I, I looked at all that, I got to admit, I looked

1119
01:10:21,910 –> 01:10:25,650
at all of that sort of behavior over the last, now 25

1120
01:10:25,650 –> 01:10:29,250
years from, from China. And I got to

1121
01:10:29,250 –> 01:10:33,010
admit I’m one of the rare people who sort of went,

1122
01:10:33,010 –> 01:10:36,650
oh, okay. Well, I guess they’ve decided to behave like old school colonialists.

1123
01:10:36,650 –> 01:10:39,890
I guess they’ve picked up that lesson because they’re doing

1124
01:10:39,890 –> 01:10:43,050
exactly what the British would have done

1125
01:10:43,450 –> 01:10:47,210
between the, you know, 15th century and the

1126
01:10:47,210 –> 01:10:50,930
17th century across every land mass they could

1127
01:10:50,930 –> 01:10:54,630
land a ship on. They’ve done what they’re

1128
01:10:54,630 –> 01:10:58,430
also doing. The opium wars against us, correct? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

1129
01:10:58,430 –> 01:11:01,710
With fentanyl this time. Oh, yes. Huh? Oh, yeah.

1130
01:11:02,430 –> 01:11:05,630
And so some of this is,

1131
01:11:07,710 –> 01:11:11,150
and it’s interesting so we talk about, and we even have fallen into this sort

1132
01:11:11,150 –> 01:11:14,950
of paradigm in, in this conversation here. You know, we,

1133
01:11:14,950 –> 01:11:18,350
we sort of fall into an east versus west kind of dynamic.

1134
01:11:19,190 –> 01:11:20,550
And the real,

1135
01:11:23,510 –> 01:11:27,270
for lack of a better term, the real insight is it’s not east

1136
01:11:27,270 –> 01:11:30,990
versus west to your point, it’s east and West. Right. We

1137
01:11:30,990 –> 01:11:34,749
both need each other. Right. You know, as you’ve been, as you’ve

1138
01:11:34,749 –> 01:11:38,470
been talking, I’ve been thinking repeatedly about the yin and Yang

1139
01:11:38,470 –> 01:11:42,230
symbol, right. Which is a visual representation of

1140
01:11:42,390 –> 01:11:44,550
this sort of idea, but also

1141
01:11:46,890 –> 01:11:50,690
thinking about the, the nature of, and you talk

1142
01:11:50,690 –> 01:11:53,610
about human nature, the, the nature of

1143
01:11:54,250 –> 01:11:57,850
how human nature molds itself

1144
01:11:58,490 –> 01:12:02,090
to certain perceptions of power

1145
01:12:02,090 –> 01:12:05,850
and status. Right. When you’re high enough off, high enough

1146
01:12:05,850 –> 01:12:09,130
up in a hierarchy. Right. And so

1147
01:12:09,450 –> 01:12:12,410
I do think part of the creation of the multipolar world

1148
01:12:13,130 –> 01:12:15,930
that we are getting into, I think that’s going to be happening over the next,

1149
01:12:16,760 –> 01:12:20,280
I would say conservatively, the next 60 years is,

1150
01:12:20,520 –> 01:12:24,360
is, well, at least another generational four, generational cycle. We have

1151
01:12:24,360 –> 01:12:28,000
to go through another four turnings on this, I think, is going to be a

1152
01:12:28,000 –> 01:12:31,680
state of the elites. And this is the

1153
01:12:31,680 –> 01:12:35,280
people who are most impacted by this news at

1154
01:12:35,280 –> 01:12:38,920
11. The elites who have made all of

1155
01:12:38,920 –> 01:12:42,740
their bones and their status and their billions based

1156
01:12:42,740 –> 01:12:46,340
on certain rules, in a certain

1157
01:12:46,340 –> 01:12:50,100
order just working, are the ones most upset right

1158
01:12:50,100 –> 01:12:51,860
now because they cannot

1159
01:12:53,140 –> 01:12:56,940
successfully figure

1160
01:12:56,940 –> 01:13:00,180
out how to strategize for a future they don’t understand

1161
01:13:01,140 –> 01:13:04,980
and they never expected, interestingly enough, I don’t think they ever

1162
01:13:04,980 –> 01:13:08,800
expected this to happen to

1163
01:13:08,800 –> 01:13:12,600
them. I think you’re right. And, and

1164
01:13:12,600 –> 01:13:15,120
you can look at the things that are sort of the

1165
01:13:17,680 –> 01:13:21,320
hangouts of the elite, like Davos and things like.

1166
01:13:21,320 –> 01:13:25,000
Yeah, what, what you can see is that. And I,

1167
01:13:25,000 –> 01:13:28,800
I don’t really like the term elites because they’re like, to me,

1168
01:13:28,880 –> 01:13:32,640
elite is like, that’s the term they set for themselves. I

1169
01:13:32,640 –> 01:13:36,460
have a different context on, on elite, but let’s call them that,

1170
01:13:36,460 –> 01:13:40,140
right? So the elites. And I know it’s

1171
01:13:40,140 –> 01:13:43,940
semantics, the elite, they’re, they’re

1172
01:13:43,940 –> 01:13:47,340
over at Davos and they recognize

1173
01:13:47,580 –> 01:13:51,020
exactly what you talked about. And so what are they doing?

1174
01:13:51,260 –> 01:13:54,620
They are actively working to shape the future

1175
01:13:55,340 –> 01:13:58,140
through things like esg, dei,

1176
01:14:01,280 –> 01:14:03,680
you know, what is it,

1177
01:14:04,640 –> 01:14:08,280
cbdc, Central banking, currencies, things like that.

1178
01:14:08,280 –> 01:14:12,080
They’re actively working to preserve it. And the thing that

1179
01:14:12,080 –> 01:14:15,840
threw the huge wedge the, into the, the wrench

1180
01:14:15,840 –> 01:14:19,480
into the machine here, people think it was covet. It

1181
01:14:19,480 –> 01:14:23,240
wasn’t Covid. Covid was a. Covid was right on track, I

1182
01:14:23,240 –> 01:14:26,840
think, with what they had planned for. I don’t think it was a deliberate release

1183
01:14:26,840 –> 01:14:30,490
like other people do. But, but they

1184
01:14:30,490 –> 01:14:33,370
had planned for it the eventuality of a pandemic.

1185
01:14:36,090 –> 01:14:39,130
And the thing that stands out to me is that

1186
01:14:42,410 –> 01:14:46,130
generative AI is the one that has thrown the

1187
01:14:46,130 –> 01:14:49,850
biggest wrench into everything that they are doing. Because

1188
01:14:49,850 –> 01:14:52,970
if you notice now, 10 years ago,

1189
01:14:54,500 –> 01:14:57,700
nuclear energy was the worst thing

1190
01:14:58,100 –> 01:15:01,540
possible. Now that generative

1191
01:15:01,540 –> 01:15:04,740
AI has come on board and these elites

1192
01:15:04,740 –> 01:15:08,540
recognize what they can use it for. They can use it to

1193
01:15:08,540 –> 01:15:12,100
control people’s thoughts. They can use it to, to

1194
01:15:12,260 –> 01:15:16,100
make more money. They can use it to preserve their status

1195
01:15:16,100 –> 01:15:19,830
and their, their livelihoods and their way of living while keeping

1196
01:15:19,830 –> 01:15:23,350
everybody else down. And that’s obviously conspiratorial talk,

1197
01:15:23,350 –> 01:15:27,030
but they can at least preserve their lifestyles. Oh,

1198
01:15:27,030 –> 01:15:30,750
I don’t think it’s conspiratorial talk. I think they don’t have any better ideas than

1199
01:15:30,750 –> 01:15:34,390
neo feudalism. I don’t think they have any better ideas than that. They’re not,

1200
01:15:34,390 –> 01:15:37,870
they’re not geniuses like we, we, we attach elite to this idea of maybe

1201
01:15:37,870 –> 01:15:41,390
intellectualism. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

1202
01:15:41,390 –> 01:15:45,150
they’re not. I’ve said this before on the show. We’ll say this again.

1203
01:15:45,890 –> 01:15:47,090
They are not smart.

1204
01:15:49,330 –> 01:15:52,690
They’re D level students who graduated from Harvard.

1205
01:15:54,050 –> 01:15:57,810
A D level student from Harvard is the same as a land grant student who’s

1206
01:15:57,810 –> 01:16:01,569
a B level student. It’s just they had enough

1207
01:16:01,650 –> 01:16:05,490
money to provide a cushion to cover up

1208
01:16:05,490 –> 01:16:09,330
the fact that they’re not that bright. Right? That’s

1209
01:16:09,330 –> 01:16:13,130
all. That’s all. They’re really not that bright. And so we’re not bright

1210
01:16:13,130 –> 01:16:16,410
person can only really ever do or

1211
01:16:16,410 –> 01:16:19,930
repeat in new ways old things that haven’t

1212
01:16:19,930 –> 01:16:23,690
worked. They can’t actually innovate to the future. Neo feudalism

1213
01:16:25,050 –> 01:16:28,690
or feudalism with AI or feudalism with ESG or

1214
01:16:28,690 –> 01:16:31,610
feudalism with DEI is still at the bottom.

1215
01:16:33,450 –> 01:16:37,090
Feudalism. Yeah. Well, and I

1216
01:16:37,090 –> 01:16:40,410
agree with that. And my point is, is that if you look at it,

1217
01:16:42,010 –> 01:16:45,050
their plan

1218
01:16:46,090 –> 01:16:49,610
all of a sudden shifted because of generative AI. They were

1219
01:16:49,610 –> 01:16:53,170
winding down electricity consumption in the United States. They were

1220
01:16:53,170 –> 01:16:57,010
telling people, get ready for rolling brownouts because renewable

1221
01:16:57,010 –> 01:17:00,410
energy is where we have to go because climate change is the problem.

1222
01:17:00,970 –> 01:17:04,210
They knew the whole time that nuclear energy was a viable

1223
01:17:04,210 –> 01:17:07,960
option, that it’s the cleanest, safest form of energy we have

1224
01:17:07,960 –> 01:17:11,800
created to date. But they decided to ignore it

1225
01:17:12,040 –> 01:17:15,640
because they couldn’t monetize it as well as they could monetize other

1226
01:17:15,640 –> 01:17:19,440
things. But now that AI has come out, look at

1227
01:17:19,440 –> 01:17:23,120
what’s happened. France and Germany, all of a sudden, oh, we’re

1228
01:17:23,120 –> 01:17:26,760
renuclearizing. Yeah. China

1229
01:17:26,840 –> 01:17:30,520
is building thorium based nuclear power plants. The United

1230
01:17:30,600 –> 01:17:34,280
States. We’ve got to cut bureaucratic red tape so that we

1231
01:17:34,280 –> 01:17:37,780
can input nuclear energy so that we can meet the

1232
01:17:37,780 –> 01:17:40,300
growing energy demands of generative AI.

1233
01:17:41,580 –> 01:17:45,300
That’s, that’s what’s coming. And that’s the biggest thing

1234
01:17:45,300 –> 01:17:48,540
that threw their wrench into the plans. And they were not

1235
01:17:49,180 –> 01:17:52,580
agile about it. Right. So now they’re having to

1236
01:17:52,580 –> 01:17:55,500
scramble. And that’s one of the things that he talks about. You know, he talks

1237
01:17:55,500 –> 01:17:59,220
about be subtle so that it approaches like it’s

1238
01:17:59,220 –> 01:18:02,950
formless. Be spiritual so that it’s soundless. He’s

1239
01:18:02,950 –> 01:18:06,510
not talking about like be very quiet and

1240
01:18:06,510 –> 01:18:09,950
subtle. What he’s talking about is understand

1241
01:18:10,110 –> 01:18:13,470
the subtleties of the movements that you have to make and

1242
01:18:13,870 –> 01:18:17,390
don’t draw attention to them. It’s like what

1243
01:18:17,390 –> 01:18:20,590
Napoleon says, don’t interrupt your enemy when they’re making. Correct.

1244
01:18:20,910 –> 01:18:24,550
That’s right. So we

1245
01:18:24,550 –> 01:18:27,880
talked, we’ve talked a little while here and I want to, I want to thank

1246
01:18:27,880 –> 01:18:31,680
you for coming on the show today. This has been amazing. We found out

1247
01:18:31,680 –> 01:18:35,480
more about, about, not only about

1248
01:18:35,480 –> 01:18:39,200
your, about your, your work at Ignition Point Strategies, but also

1249
01:18:39,200 –> 01:18:42,880
just how, but also just how we, how we, how

1250
01:18:42,880 –> 01:18:46,280
we integrate. And so I want to close out our show because we are, we

1251
01:18:46,280 –> 01:18:48,920
are winding around towards the end here. I want to take,

1252
01:18:50,280 –> 01:18:53,920
maybe we could do it in two minutes, maybe three, and talk

1253
01:18:53,920 –> 01:18:57,740
a little bit about. Because we were talking before we even hit the, we

1254
01:18:57,740 –> 01:19:01,300
hit the record button. Talk about generative AI. So

1255
01:19:03,780 –> 01:19:07,460
I guess my 30 second rant is this. I’m not worried about generative AI,

1256
01:19:07,540 –> 01:19:11,180
like stealing my mind or starting World War III. I’m really not worried about

1257
01:19:11,180 –> 01:19:15,020
that. I’m worried about human beings engaged in that process and human

1258
01:19:15,020 –> 01:19:18,620
beings starting World War III because of human foibles and human

1259
01:19:18,620 –> 01:19:21,220
failings. But I’m not worried about an algorithm

1260
01:19:22,080 –> 01:19:24,640
convincing people to. No, I’m not worried about that.

1261
01:19:26,960 –> 01:19:29,280
I am fascinated in that

1262
01:19:30,800 –> 01:19:34,560
prompt thinking. Let’s, let’s, let’s leave it, let’s put it this way. Prompt thinking

1263
01:19:34,560 –> 01:19:38,160
is different than search thinking. So search thinking is based off

1264
01:19:38,160 –> 01:19:41,840
of the idea that I have to go out and

1265
01:19:41,920 –> 01:19:45,280
seek something, bring it in, and whatever I bring in,

1266
01:19:45,600 –> 01:19:49,140
then I have to somehow make work for me. Prompt thinking is

1267
01:19:49,140 –> 01:19:52,740
based in the idea that I don’t have to seek.

1268
01:19:53,060 –> 01:19:55,860
I instead have to curate what is already there

1269
01:19:56,660 –> 01:20:00,220
and from that curation, edit, put things

1270
01:20:00,220 –> 01:20:03,780
together, build, and then boom, I have this new

1271
01:20:03,780 –> 01:20:07,220
thing. So we have prompt thinking and we have search thinking. Most people for the

1272
01:20:07,220 –> 01:20:10,980
last 20 years in small, medium large sized businesses, corporations, organizations,

1273
01:20:10,980 –> 01:20:14,780
all the way up to our institutions have engaged vociferously. And because

1274
01:20:14,780 –> 01:20:17,700
it works in search based thinking, that’s what Google brought us.

1275
01:20:20,050 –> 01:20:23,170
AI systems and all the large language models are now bringing this

1276
01:20:23,490 –> 01:20:26,770
prompt based thinking. This is causing a lot of consternation

1277
01:20:27,330 –> 01:20:31,010
among many people. If

1278
01:20:31,570 –> 01:20:34,209
you were advising a

1279
01:20:34,930 –> 01:20:38,770
22 year old college graduate, what would you tell them to do?

1280
01:20:39,650 –> 01:20:43,170
What would you tell them to look at or pursue? And even better,

1281
01:20:43,480 –> 01:20:46,200
this is get to the book Congress will get to the book piece too. What

1282
01:20:46,200 –> 01:20:49,480
books would you tell them to read to be able to

1283
01:20:50,120 –> 01:20:53,560
influence their thinking around this

1284
01:20:53,560 –> 01:20:57,360
prompt based sort of mindset that is probably

1285
01:20:57,360 –> 01:20:59,160
going to dominate for the next 20 years.

1286
01:21:01,160 –> 01:21:04,920
Yeah, you know, I think the

1287
01:21:04,920 –> 01:21:08,560
first thing that I would tell them is get grounded in your

1288
01:21:08,560 –> 01:21:12,310
humanity. Get grounded in your

1289
01:21:12,310 –> 01:21:16,150
humanity because that is the one thing that AI can never duplicate.

1290
01:21:17,270 –> 01:21:20,910
They claim that they’ve been able to create AI that passes the Turing test, which

1291
01:21:20,910 –> 01:21:24,750
means that it’s indistinguishable from a human. But I don’t, I, I

1292
01:21:24,750 –> 01:21:28,510
don’t believe that there, you can always sense that

1293
01:21:28,510 –> 01:21:32,110
something’s off. Even with AI generated images at this point, you can always sense

1294
01:21:32,110 –> 01:21:35,960
it’s the, the saturation in the color is wrong or something like that. Like

1295
01:21:35,960 –> 01:21:38,880
we just don’t have the words to put to it. So I would say get

1296
01:21:38,880 –> 01:21:42,480
deeply grounded in your humanity because to me

1297
01:21:43,840 –> 01:21:47,520
that is the thing that is going to separate you and make you

1298
01:21:47,520 –> 01:21:51,480
incredibly

1299
01:21:51,480 –> 01:21:55,160
valuable in the church. So I would. To that point, I would recommend

1300
01:21:55,160 –> 01:21:58,920
reading things like A Tale of

1301
01:21:58,920 –> 01:22:02,370
Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Deeply grounds in

1302
01:22:02,370 –> 01:22:05,450
humanity. What. What does it mean to love?

1303
01:22:06,890 –> 01:22:10,690
You know, Les Miserables is an. Is another example of that. What does

1304
01:22:10,690 –> 01:22:13,930
it mean to love? To love another person is to see the face of God.

1305
01:22:14,170 –> 01:22:17,450
Like, oh man. Another one. The great

1306
01:22:17,530 –> 01:22:20,170
divorce by C.S. lewis.

1307
01:22:21,050 –> 01:22:24,810
Because C.S. lewis points out he

1308
01:22:24,810 –> 01:22:28,330
wasn’t trying to make an accurate exegesis of heaven and hell.

1309
01:22:28,820 –> 01:22:31,860
What C S Lewis was trying to do was show us how we create heaven

1310
01:22:31,860 –> 01:22:35,380
and hell right now and how

1311
01:22:35,700 –> 01:22:39,540
we are choosing to isolate ourselves or

1312
01:22:39,540 –> 01:22:43,300
to move closer to our humanity and our divine potential

1313
01:22:43,780 –> 01:22:46,020
as sons and daughters of. Of God.

1314
01:22:47,700 –> 01:22:51,380
I think another one is Alas,

1315
01:22:51,380 –> 01:22:55,220
Babylon, which is

1316
01:22:55,300 –> 01:22:57,780
a 1960s World War III book.

1317
01:22:59,150 –> 01:23:02,110
But the reason I love it is it’s very much a

1318
01:23:02,990 –> 01:23:06,750
ensemble piece and it talks about how humanity and how you

1319
01:23:08,030 –> 01:23:11,390
working with your neighbors to preserve your humanity

1320
01:23:11,870 –> 01:23:15,670
will allow you to weather any storm, regardless of

1321
01:23:15,670 –> 01:23:18,830
how difficult it is. And you have this compare and contrast

1322
01:23:21,310 –> 01:23:24,890
and. And then just my. The last

1323
01:23:24,890 –> 01:23:28,570
recommendation I would have. And obviously there are business books like Competing

1324
01:23:28,570 –> 01:23:32,170
against Luck or the End of Competitive Advantage that just shape my

1325
01:23:32,170 –> 01:23:35,770
business thinking. But. But Grant and

1326
01:23:35,770 –> 01:23:39,130
Sherman, the Friendship that Won the Civil War, or

1327
01:23:39,130 –> 01:23:42,410
alternatively Team of

1328
01:23:42,410 –> 01:23:46,250
Rivals. Because what those books show is

1329
01:23:46,250 –> 01:23:49,490
that great accomplishments are never done

1330
01:23:50,030 –> 01:23:53,710
in isolation. There’s a. There’s a. An

1331
01:23:53,710 –> 01:23:56,710
African proverb that says if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want

1332
01:23:56,710 –> 01:24:00,270
to go far, go together. And I think that’s what those books highlight,

1333
01:24:00,510 –> 01:24:04,190
is that people who do business and focus on their

1334
01:24:04,190 –> 01:24:07,950
humanity and bring in other people who focus on their humanity and who

1335
01:24:07,950 –> 01:24:11,790
have strengths that make up and complement their weaknesses are the people

1336
01:24:11,790 –> 01:24:15,470
who will find success in the end. And so that list of

1337
01:24:15,470 –> 01:24:18,910
books is what I would recommend. Focus on your

1338
01:24:18,910 –> 01:24:22,350
humanity, your authenticity, and focus on

1339
01:24:22,350 –> 01:24:26,190
finding other people who do the same thing. And then you can do amazing

1340
01:24:26,190 –> 01:24:29,670
things. You’ll understand how to use tools like generative

1341
01:24:29,670 –> 01:24:33,430
AI for the best. Awesome. But you will firmly grounded

1342
01:24:33,430 –> 01:24:37,150
in your humanity. I like that. Stay firmly grounded in your humanity and

1343
01:24:37,150 –> 01:24:40,350
find other folks who are also firmly grounded in their humanity.

1344
01:24:40,910 –> 01:24:44,390
Join hands across the aisle and start building

1345
01:24:44,390 –> 01:24:48,110
your, for lack of a better term, tribe. And the

1346
01:24:48,110 –> 01:24:51,630
tools will come along and be in their

1347
01:24:51,630 –> 01:24:54,310
appropriate place, as they should be.

1348
01:24:55,590 –> 01:24:59,390
Awesome. Yes, Awesome. I want to thank Zach Stuckey for

1349
01:24:59,390 –> 01:25:03,070
coming on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast. This was our 150th

1350
01:25:03,070 –> 01:25:06,470
episode. Great episode. Real barn burner. I’d recommend

1351
01:25:06,550 –> 01:25:10,160
you check out his book list that we’re going to have

1352
01:25:10,160 –> 01:25:13,960
in the show Notes. I recommend you pick up those books. And of course,

1353
01:25:14,200 –> 01:25:17,760
we have episodes featuring C. S Lewis and Charles

1354
01:25:17,760 –> 01:25:21,360
Dickens, not A Tale of Two Cities, but we definitely have covered some of

1355
01:25:21,360 –> 01:25:24,360
Dickens’s books on here, as well as

1356
01:25:24,759 –> 01:25:28,480
C.S. lewis. A book that I would add, maybe in addition to that

1357
01:25:28,480 –> 01:25:31,480
list, is the Abolition of Man, which.

1358
01:25:31,800 –> 01:25:35,600
Yes. Which tells us men without chests, which.

1359
01:25:35,600 –> 01:25:39,450
Tells us all men without. What the result will be if you keep going

1360
01:25:39,450 –> 01:25:43,130
down the road that you’re going down. And who wants to have

1361
01:25:43,130 –> 01:25:46,930
that? Once again, I’d like to thank Zach for

1362
01:25:46,930 –> 01:25:49,730
coming on the podcast. And with that, well,

1363
01:25:50,930 –> 01:25:51,650
we’re out.