The Tactician's guide to the galaxy

An ideal introduction to strategy, the FIRST half of this book includes standard theory that lecturers need to teach military, business and political strategy; plus, many new and advanced tools. The SECOND half details hundreds of historical (Sun Tzu, Machiavellian) and other tactics, ploys and psychological tricks used to manipulate or cause problems for others in politics or business by corporate politicians, master manipulators and con-artists. It details numerous nefarious, insidious, ruthless tactics and business marketing tricks; breaking them down to explain HOW people create strategy, and HOW to identify and block, deflect, flip or defeat these many, invidious, tricks. In comparison, Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ is a school picnic. Everything we do from the time we wake to when we sleep at night adopts exploitable patterns of behaviour. We standardise everything we say, do, use or create; to make things more efficient and effective, but mostly to reduce risk in our, paradoxically, ever increasingly complex lives. If something works EVEN once, we WILL do it again. When repeated it can become a habit - and once embedded it is notoriously difficult to change. Even if one has a quantum computer, a time machine, or an alien oracle that can predict or change the future it WILL struggle to defeat strategy that exploits an individual's deep seated embedded characteristics. If you don't see any benefit provided by this book, its OKAY TO LOSE! You can do that extraordinarily well on your own. Wouldn't you love to be able to pick ‘who-dun-it’, or how to detect, deflect, neutralise or flip malicious tricks and tactics? How about ways to deal with bullies, narcissists, compulsive liars or their BIG lies? Learn how charismatic leaders, salesmen, scammers and con men use reciprocity to entrap you into a master-slave dependency, extort, or to trick you. Not all zero-sum games are zero-sum. Here, we detail sixteen (16) ways to defeat them. Once we know the ploys and tricks others use it’s easier to identify, deflect, block, flip, defeat or beat them at their own game. Here, we show you HOW. This book was never specifically designed to 'take down' narcissistic-pyschopaths like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Xi; they just provide MANY examples from which to cite; but, it helps. Most of the tricks they, and others, use are copied or repeated. The book shows (a) HOW these and other individuals or groups create tactics, (b) HOW their 'Dictator's Playbook' of extortion, zero sum games, reciprocity, and master-slave dependencies works, (c) HOW they escape justice, and (d) HOW to defeat those that adopt the same patterns of behaviour. Once you know HOW to beat one you CAN defeat them all. The central message is that there is no such thing as a 'strategic genius'; nobody is invincible - even AI, alien oracles, or time machines can be defeated. People lose when (a) their tactics are poorly devised or executed, (b) they step into their own clever trap, (b) they overstate their hand or brag of their prowess in advance, or (c) when they don't see a trick coming in time to deflect or neutralise it. This book can help avoid these self-inflicted traps. The alternative is to lose. And, its OKAY TO LOSE. That's a tactical decision YOU are free to make. This must-have book also includes 123 new ‘Sun Tzu’ like rules of strategy. It covers hundreds of political and business tactics to shine a different, practical, light on strategy, organisational change and psychological models, cycles, value chains and game theory. It previews the extremely useful strategic trap (STF) and KEFY ‘Know your enemy, know your friends; but, most of all know yourself’, frameworks. Plus, it covers everything from Economic Business Directional Models (EBDMs) used to identify directional flow of products and cash-flows for business, to how to identify financial scams, causal feedback loops, or flip tricks and traps.