Chapter 1: Part VII - Deception

兵者，诡道也。

Sun Zi mentioned that deception is also part of war. The reason is, as Sun Zi mentioned in the first line of the chapter, war can determine the survival of the nation and its people. So it is of great importance to gain as much advantages over the enemies as possible. Deception would be able to achieve that. Thus the wisdom of the generals comes into play. He must be able to execute his deception well so that the enemy will be completely taken into it and gain advantages or attack the enemies where he least expect it. Note that your enemies can also use deception on you as well.

From my opinion, the deciding factor whether a deception is well executed is the wisdom of the general. Wise generals would be able to come up with a fool proof plan, avoid being deceived by enemies and change his plan accordingly when the enemies are not deceived at all.

BUSINESS APPLICATION: In business, deceptions can also be used but I am not going to go into that. But what we can use here for business is the word ‘secrecy’. As we all know, corporate strategies must be kept secret in order to reap the full benefits after execution of it. If these strategies are leaked out, your business rivals would be able to at least prevent damage or in a worse case scenario, come up with a counter strategy and all your effort would be loss.

With the proliferation of computers and internet, companies should have a computer security policy that employees strongly adhere to. All employees should be informed of any breach of security and how the breach is made as well so precautions can be set up ASAP.

There used to be a study where most of the breach actually comes from employees. They are unknowing victims of corporate spies, providing them passwords that they can use. (Cannot remember where I read it though).

So secrecy and security is very impt to a company, please take note of it.