The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

You may have brilliant ideas, you may be able to invent unbeatable strategies—but if the group that you lead, and that you depend on to execute your plans, is unresponsive and uncreative, and if its members always put their personal agendas first, your ideas will mean nothing. You must learn the lesson of war: it is the structure of the army—the chain of command and the relationship of the parts to the whole—that will give your strategies force. The primary goal in war is to build speed and mobility into the very structure of your army. That means having a single authority on top, avoiding the hesitancy and confusion of divided leadership. It means giving soldiers a sense of the overall goal to be accomplished and the latitude to take action to meet that goal; instead of reacting like automatons, they are able to respond to events in the field. Finally, it means motivating soldiers, creating an overall esprit de corps that gives them irresistible momentum. With forces organized in this manner, a general can adapt to circumstances faster than the enemy can, gaining a decided advantage.