The Book of Five Rings

You probably have not heard of The Book of Five Rings. It was written by a 17th century Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, who held the legendary record of being undefeated in over 60 duels with other swords masters. So why am I writing about this book? Well, this book is often highly regarded as a classic treatise on strategy, along with Machiavelli 's The Prince and and Sun Tzu's Art of War.

Like those two books, The Book of Five Rings, has some good insight that is useful to Young leaders. However, Musashi writes for the purpose of training young samurai warriors, so very often readers have a tough time understanding what he is talking about or how they can apply this text to their lives. I will go over some of the themes that I found in The Book of Five Rings and attempt to explain them in context for Young Leaders.

Early on in the book Musashi calls the Way of the Warrior, the "way of death" and that when faced with the choice between life and death, the warrior should always choose death. Some people might take this as just something that sounds bad-ass. But if you take it another way, it could mean throwing your entire heart into whatever it is you are doing. You shouldn't go half-way, when instead you can take the plunge, going all-out.

Musashi later on has a brief discussion about carpenters building a house. He comes to the conclusion that the way of the carpenter is to have lesser skilled workers work on the simpler tasks, while master carpenters work on the finer details. This reminds me very much of "getting the right people on the bus" in Good to Great. You need to find the right people for the job, in order to have the job done right and your resources properly allocated.

In the main section of The Book of Five Rings, the Book of Fire, Musashi espouses many truisms that we might already be familiar with:

• Know your environment - Only by understanding the environment can you determine where you want to go (goals) and the best course of action to get there.
• Become your enemy - Leadership sometimes involves overcoming a human obstacle. Don't merely "know your enemy", see things from his/her perspective. Maybe you can think win/win and create a third solution.
• Never repeat a strategy more than twice - In college I studied quite a bit of Game Theory essentially the science of strategy. I would liken this piece of advice to running a "mixed-strategy". An overly simple example could be playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. You can't expect to always play "Rock" and always win. You need to learn to be flexible and to adapt.

Musashi is also known to have developed a sword fighting style which uses two swords. Samurai traditionally carried two swords, one long and one short, however typically fought with only one sword at a time - holding it with two hands. Essentially, he tries to get across the point that we need to learn how to make use of all our resources, even when it may be difficult at first to wield them all. In the end, tapping all of your resources, whether they be skills, contacts, energy, or etc... may make the difference between success and failure.

So if you get the chance, check out The Book of Five Rings. It's a short book that you can read in one sitting... though take a life-time to understand and master. Until next time!
-Jason