In recent years critical thinking skills has become an essential tool for employees and leaders to deal with the ever-changing market forces. Organizations where staff are able to think clearly and systematically can improve their work performance and the way ideas and solutions are expressed. To become an excellent critical thinker requires the application of the right mindset, thinking skills and strategies that will allow staff to develop the ability to assess any situation and provide solutions to meet the best-case scenario. Sun Tzu’s Art of War stratagem will be an excellent metaphor and parable to direct one’s thinking into a critical thinking mode to overcome “business wars”.

Objective

In this Sun Tzu’s Art of War stratagem workshop, you will gain and learn:

• To appreciate the underlying meaning of the Sun Tzu’s Art of War stratagem aligned to critical thinking skill
• To become a better problem solver, finding solutions and making more effective decisions when dealing with obstacles in the business battlefields
• To hone one’s critical thinking skill and gain confidence by learning to build productive and effective work performance that can enhance one’s career

Outline

This workshop strives to allow participants to gain guidance towards outmanoeuvring rather than fighting the problems by looking at the application of relevant Sun Tzu’s Art of War stratagem within the business domain. This will require critical thinking skills as Sun Tzu said “The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus, do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.”

Program outlines

Essentials of Sun Tzu’s Art of War Stratagem – 13 Chapters made easy

• The Sun Tzu Art of War “Warring Concepts”
• Identifying key concepts used to act as metaphors in critical thinking

Defensive strategy is the essence to critical thinking in solving problems

• Understanding foreknowledge, foresight, actioning, positioning in Sun Tzu’s Art of War concepts to identifying problems
• Reducing chances of failure with concepts of surprise prevention, siege prevention, pre-empting and doing battle

Offensive strategy as a critical thinking for hard and difficult decisions

• The use of “Intelligent” as a tool to create options to solve problems
• Reducing and cutting losses to recoup and reorganize for future wins and sustainability

Movement to “battle” strategy to implement workable business solutions

• Momentum in execution of solutions to gain success as an advantage
• Forecasting the outcome of “business war” that attributes towards success

Who should attend

This workshop will be useful for Supervisors, Managers, Directors in all business functions, particularly for staffs that are involved in business areas that require deep thinking as well as agility to solve problems.

Methodology

Interactive and engaging training with key concepts shared with examples and cases to reinforce learning objectives. Attendees are encouraged to actively participate in discussions and raised questions as part of facilitation.

Testimonial

- Knowledge and strategic is applicable to my real life
Heraeus Materials Singapore Pte Ltd

- Clear, Concise
- Interesting content and activities
- Related real life experience
Heraeus Materials Singapore Pte Ltd

- Very relevant process of critical thinking that can be apply to my work
- Good Learning material with example
- Give good example of case study
Singapore Institute of Technology

Good breakdown of material and explanation with relevant examples. On slides detailing what Sun Tzu said and its applications in business, trainer tended to elaborate a lot but it is slightly harder to follow as online half day training, this is the limitation
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Had read some parts of Sun Tzu's and practiced in my life and work. This workshop expounded on his theories which are very applicable to our constantly changing environment especially now
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Alan Go's Profile

About Alan Go, Founder RISE Education Management is an independent consultant. He is also the Team Lead with Eduvalue, a regional education quality assurance firm, where provides management advisory and turn-around strategies. Concurrently, he is also Principal of Hanbridge Institute in Singapore, the International campus of XiJing University, Xi’an China. For over 25 years, he has worked in the capacity of Regional Senior Management, Entrepreneur, Trainer, and over the last 12 years as an Educator of which 8 years he spent with ERC Institute, a regional Private Education Institute and was appointed CEO Singapore and COO(Asia) overseeing Singapore and Vietnam campuses. He is highly passionate about education and learning, and has conducted hundreds of seminars, workshops and conferences. He has also mentored many executives to better their management and leadership skills focusing on entrepreneurial-thinking, design-thinking and critical-thinking approaches to inculcate the right attitudes, skills and knowledge towards participations and contributions to companies and organizations.

Alan is often engaged as speaker and trainer and has conducted many seminars, conferences and corporate in-house training over the past 20 years in Singapore and the Asia Region on leadership, entrepreneurship, strategic planning, marketing and personal branding, he is a proponent of Blue Ocean Strategy and Sun Tze Art of War where he is able to bring concepts to applications. Recent speaking include Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2019, K.L., Malaysia 27 to 29 Jan 2019 where spoke on “Entrepreneur Intelligent, is That Necessary?”, Education Investor Asia Summit 2019, Singapore 15-16 May 2019, as a Keynote speaker on “Asia Rising – The transformational power of education for ASEAN nations” and Future Leader Congress 2019, Youth Action in 4.0 Challenge, Bangkok Thailand 4 to 6 August 2019, United Nations Conference Centre on the topic “Business Leadership challenges in the Changing Industry 4.0 – Trends & Perspectives”.

Alan has an Advanced Certification in Training and Assessments (ACTA) has a Bachelor of Arts (distinction) in Journalism (Advertising) from University of Oklahoma, USA and a Masters of Business Administration (International Business) graduating within top 15% of cohort from Edith Cowan University, Australia.