Five Rings – Wind Book Essay, Research Paper

The wind book

The wind book focuses on the faults of other schools in combat. In this section Musachi evaluates other schools and their styles. He points out the faults of the various styles. There are three main teachings of these schools. The first is to rely on an extra long sword. Secondly, is to how to fix your eyes. The last strategy or teaching Musachi evaluates how to use your feet.

Relying on the extra long sword in order to strike from a distance is an errand teaching of other schools. This can be a fault as your flexibility can be hindered. In business this relates to your operation flexibility. Operational flexibility is an internal trait that allows a business to operate effectively. An example of this would be having decision makers in the correct place, whether it is directly on the production line or in the office. It may be cross training people in various job functions to add flexibility.

Other schools teach to fix your eyes on the either the enemies long sword, hands, face or feet. This can also be a fault because your will focus on one aspect of your opponent and not fully evaluate his moves or his potential moves. This relates to modern day strategy by identifying the need to fully evaluate you competition. This would include various aspects of their business such as marketing, financial strength, leadership, product strength, and pricing.

Other schools also focus on various methods of using the feet. The problem with picking specific footwork is the lack of agility to react to opponents. Again this same theory can be related to specific business situations. Business must be agile in order to not only react their competition but also their environment. Competition may introduce new marketing campaigns, productions, or more aggressive pricing. By maintaining an agile business can react to the competition. Environments also change regularly. The environment can be new laws put in place or environmental conditions. This section relates to external forces and the ability to react whereas the first section focuses on internal operations.

Overall, one must understand their strengths and weaknesses. Once you strengths are identified and your opponents weaknesses are identified, it becomes much easier to develop a winning strategy. In business, one must understand their core competencies. Once these core competencies are identified, they can be exploited to beat the competition.

The strength in this section is the ability to easily relate the weaknesses in other schools to needed strengths in business strategy. The items put forth are key business principles. A distinct weakness of this section is the lack in innovative means to beat your opponent. The means given are very simple and lack innovation or specifics. The book inherently focuses on strategies and philosophies that are at times vague. This leads to the lack of any quantitative methods to evaluate and the above strategies.

I did like the fact the book was though provoking. The book used many sword fighting techniques provoke thoughts. However, as mentioned above they did not teach specifics as they relate to business. The book left it up to the reader to develop his or her own specific examples. This book and its concepts would be well suited for a classroom setting provoking discussion. However, for individual reading and development, the book lacks specific business fundamentals.