SIFE is global charity that encourages university and college students to make a difference in their community. These students work in teams to encourage entrepreneurship and community development. There are many times that the advice contained in the Art of War would be helpful to SIFE Teams. This blog post will focus on one particular quote from Chapter three: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

This is definitely one of the more popular passages from the Art of War. For a SIFE team it can be good advice in many situations. For this blog post I would like to focus on participating in the SIFE competition. The co-author of the Learn the Art of War eBook and I were both involved with SIFE. I was a student member, a SIFE Staff member, and now a volunteer judge at competitions. I have seen the SIFE competition many times and from all angles.

For the purpose of this post I would like SIFE Students to think of the judges at the competition as the enemy. This is actually a distortion of the relationship since judges love helping the teams providing feedback. The SIFE Judge is a volunteer that is critical to the success of the program so I hesitate to call them the enemy, but hear me out. When a SIFE Team walks into a room all judges are ignorant of how the team’s projects fit within the SIFE criterion. It is this ignorance that must be attacked. If you do not understand the judge you will not be able to convince them you should win.

So let us first look at how to “know your enemy”… the judges. One thing you might want to do is talk to a representative from your SIFE National office and ask him or her about the judge panels. In some cases the judges might be a mix of seniority levels and experience, in other cases you might find a judge panel is all senior executives, while another is mostly junior business people.

Another important fact to try and find out is what number of the judges are repeating judges. A new judge might need more explanation about how your projects fit the criterion than a repeating judge. This point was very important to consider in the 2010-2011 school year since the SIFE Criterion was completely new, which basically meant that all judges were first time judges.

After you find out about the specific judge panel you will be facing you should think about some considerations that I think hold true for almost all judges.

From my experience in the judging room and talking with many people involved with the SIFE judging process there are two things that a judge needs to see from a presentation, and they are quite different. One is numbers. Judges always complain that teams do not give them enough numbers and relevant measurements. If you put yourself in the position of a judge you can see why. A judge must compare teams that run completely different programs in completely different communities that tackle completely different issues. In some ways it is like comparing apples and oranges. Numbers are one way to help a judge who might be confused.

The second most important thing a team must do is show a personal connection to the project. This is when a team shows exactly how their project impacted the life a specific person or group of people. Often this is done with a testimonial of some kind. When the presentation can make this connection it helps the judge remember the team. It also helps the project and impact seem more real. So many teams have so many great projects that a judge might end up becoming numb to all of the good things being done, when they can make a mental connection between a team and person whose life their helped, it will result in a much stronger affection for the team and its projects.

In most cases the judges will find themselves in a situation where they are making a decision on a topic that they are not an expert in. The SIFE Criterion is both simple and complex at the same time. While every team has been given the same challenge, they all tackle it differently. As mentioned above this difference makes it hard for the judges to decide. One piece of advice I often give teams is that they must walk a fine line between being simple and strait forward in the presentation and not treating the judges like idiots. You must make it simple for them to understand, but at the some time respect that these are often very intelligent people.

These are the main things you must know about your opponent, the judges. The numbers and testimonials that are required to give a good presentation are not automatically collected when a team runs a project. A team must go out of their way to collect them. This leads to the other side of the Sun Tzu quote… know yourself.

If a team does not fully understand what they have accomplished, there is no way a judge will ever know. Measurements are the number one tool for establishing the impact of your program. Measurement of your project must be planned and then executed just like any other part of your program. Teams often neglect to take the most important final step with measurements… follow up.

When you go back to an audience after the project this is where you can really find out what impact you had. Keeping the relationship with your audience alive is also important for getting the testimonials you need later for your presentation.

As a team it is also you responsibility to fully understand the SIFE Criterion. Every year there are students that present that do not fully appreciate how exactly their projects hit the Criterion. If the team does not know, they cannot expect the judges to figure it out on their own.

Some of this advice may seem very simple, but so many SIFE Teams do not seem to understand it. Every year there are teams around the world that have good projects that lose to teams with lesser projects. The fault almost always lies with the losing team not knowing the judges and not knowing their own projects and how they relate to the criterion. This becomes even more important with you get the final round of a National competition or SIFE World Cup. At these higher levels every team is good. The teams that does their homework on the judges and fully understands their own program is the team that will have the advantage.

As a reward for reading the entire blog post, here is a special discount code for 10%: SIFE

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In Chapter 13 of the Art of War, Sun Tzu focuses on “The Use of Spies”. In spy movies like Casino Royale, it is easy to draw parallels between Sun Tzu’s concepts regarding the types of spies and the characters in the movie.  The five types of spies outlined by Sun Tzu are:

1. Local Spies
2. Inward Spies
3. Converted Spies
4. Doomed Spies
5. Surviving Spies

Local spies are people from the area your conflict is in. These could be locals who can tell you about the weather in the region or guides that can explain the terrain. In the movie most of the “local spying” would happen in the background and would remain unseen, but one clear example is when James Bond arrives at the resort in the Bahamas. He needs to find a criminal that sent a secret message to a bomb maker and he uses the people and technology at the resort to gain this information.

First the technology, he knows when and where the criminal was based on his cell phone record, so he uses the security footage to find out what the person looked like. From the footage he knows what the criminal looks like, but also what type of car he drives. Next Bond uses a resort employee as a local spy. To do this he talks to a woman at the check in desk and asks who owns the car he saw in the security footage, which she is able to tell him. Thanks to local spies, James Bond now knows who he is looking for and where to find him.

Inward spies are people employed by your opponent that are willing to share information with you. Many times this type of person is referred to as an informant. A major motive for James Bond to attend Le Chiffre’s poker game was to make him lose.  If he were to lose he would need protection from Bond’s organization and in return for that protection would provide them with information on his criminal network. This would make him an informant or inward spy. It is important to note that inwards spies are usually still employed by the enemy, as opposed to Le Chiffre who would no longer be part of the criminal network that he once was.

There are a lot of similarities between inward spies and converted spies. Both are employees of your enemy that are willing to help you gather information. The difference is that the converted spy is someone who was a spy for your enemy, whereas an inward spy could be anyone from your enemy’s organization. Converted spies were a big part of the Casino Royale plot. The movie starts with James Bond killing a corrupt MI6 agent named Dryden. In this situation Dryden was a converted spy working for the enemy.

The much bigger converted spy in the movie was Vesper Lynd. She was actually not a spy by trade but an accountant, but her position as part of the plan to bankrupt Le Chiffre made her an important part of the intelligence operation. The criminal network represented by Mr. White was able to make Vesper work for them by tricking her into believing her boyfriend was in danger. When she began to work with the criminals she became one of their greatest weapons since she knew James Bond’s plans and had access to the money from the poker game. When looking at the critical role she played in the outcome of the plot, you can easily see why Sun Tzu says that the converted spy is the most important spy and the one that you must use to build the rest of your espionage network around.

A doomed spy is someone that is used to spread false information amongst the enemy. The importance of doomed spies is that they allow for you to trick or fool your opponent by spreading lies. In this movie there was no major character that played the role of a doomed spy, but the main tool of the doomed spy, deception, was common throughout the movie. The closest example of a doomed spy would be the character of Rene Mathis. He was able to use false information to get two of James Bond’s opponents in trouble with the law. In the first instance the local police chief was being bribed by the Le Chiffre so Mathis used Photoshop to create evidence again the chief so that the deputy would arrest him. That way the police chief would not be able to bother James Bond. In the second instance Mathis placed a dead body in the trunk of a car owned by one of Le Chiffre’s henchmen, once again hindering Le Chiffre, and helping James Bond.

The last type of spy is the surviving spy. This is the type of spy that is most commonly thought of when discussing espionage. The surviving spy’s job is to infiltrate the enemy and bring back important information. James Bond would be a surviving spy. In this movie and 20 others he succeeds in getting close to his enemies and learning their secrets. Much of the Casino Royale movie is centered around James Bond in the role of the surviving spy.

A big difference between James Bond and the classic surviving spy described by Sun Tzu is that he routinely does more than just collect information. A surviving spy’s main role should be to enter the enemy’s camp, watch, learn, and then return with the gathered information without anyone noticing. This is often what James Bond starts out doing, but he ends up beating someone up or killing someone from the enemy which often draws attention and makes the plot more interesting.

In conclusion, the James Bond Movie Casino Royale has elements of all five types of spies that Sun Tzu discussed in chapter 13 of the Art of War. Not all of them match Sun Tzu’s description exactly, but that is understandable since counter terrorism in the 21^st century is a little different than warfare in China 2500 years ago.

As a reward for reading the entire blog post, here is a special discount code for 10%: Bond

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