Why did Japanese companies deliver better, faster?

Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” is Chinese in origin, however it would be nearly impossible to find a Japanese company that is not driven by it's teachings. The book offers many lessons on leadership and people management, and some believe that it was adopting the strategies in this book that enabled the quality of American products to finally rival that of the Japanese.

Think about it: if you can create a situation where people are willing to follow you into battle and die for you, there must be valuable motivation and leadership practices in place.

Following Sun Tzu's teachings, Japanese businesses are group-oriented and make decisions on that basis, but for years American companies made decisions solely based on the opinions of upper management.

Eventually, American corporations realized that—although decisions were made much faster in the states—their Japanese competition was delivering at an equal or better pace—and with better quality. This was due to staff compliance, goal-commitment, high morale, and the company's avoidance of unproductive conflict—a problem that was rampant in American business culture for years.

It wasn't until American business leaders realized that employee "buy-in" was worth more than employee dissension that we started besting our Asian counter-parts, and—ironically—we may owe it all to a non-business study of military strategy written in the 6th century BC.