"What enables the enlightened rulers and good generals to conquer the enemy at every move and achieve extraordinary success is foreknowledge."
- Sun Tzu

We are taught today that success is a matter of willpower – of persistence, of grit, of continuing when failing.

For Sun Tzu, however, the most critical factor in your success is the quality of your information. The more you know about the area you’re trying to win in, the more aware you are of the opportunities – the strengths to avoid, the weaknesses to exploit, the options for mobility.

Want to land that new job? Research the company! Find out who their distributors and competitors are, their unique advantage, markets they are trying to break into.

Want to date that girl? Find out what her interests are. What does she like to do for fun? Which countries has she traveled to? What TV shows does she like?

Want to start a business? Find out as much as you can about your customers. What quality of product do they want? What inside jokes do they use? What’s going to make them talk about your new product?

Want to invest in a company? Find out as much as you can from their financial statements, their management, their competitive advantage.

Intelligence marks the critical difference between playing to compete and playing to win. You can be confident, persistent, charming all you want, but those qualities just help you to compete.

​To win, you need to know where, when, and how to make moves. That requires intelligence.

“In this way, the skilled warrior stands on undefeated ground, and does not miss the enemy's defeat. Therefore, the winning army first wins, and later seeks to do battle. The defeated army first battles, and later seeks to win.”
– Sun Tzu

This is one of the most important quotes from Sun Tzu that I can recommend. So many times, we think only about competing. About taking action, about starting, about moving forward.

But probably one of the most important questions you can ask yourself before starting an endeavor is: What are the conditions that would lead to success? 

For example, let’s say you are a singer-songwriter and you want to create a popular, high-selling album.

You could start by just writing songs and building an album from there. But that is just taking action. It doesn’t at all guarantee that you’ll have a popular, high-selling album.

Instead, you have to ask yourself: “What conditions will lead to a successful album?”

One condition is an audience – a large group of people who would be interested in buying what you have to sell. Another condition is promotion, in particular, word of mouth. Another condition is a place – a store, a website – to sell your album.

As a strategy, then, one thing you can do is to start by building an audience. You can start creating little videos of songs you can sing to get people interested.

Then, as you start building an audience, you can start writing little songs of your own. See which songs get the most interest, use feedback to improve the songs, and then put an improved version of that song on the album.

Next, find a place where you can sell your album, preferably somewhere that makes sampling and buying the album easy and gives you a good royalty.

Lastly, develop a promotional strategy. With your audience, think about what concept or idea will make your audience not only be interested in buying your album, but in sharing it with other people.

Once you have these conditions in place, then you can start developing the album, getting album artwork, doing press releases, booking shows, and more heavily promoting the album.

This is, of course, an overly simplified strategy, but hopefully the point is clear: find out what conditions need to be in your favor in order to win, and then seek to obtain those conditions first. Then you can take direct action towards winning.