The Art Of War Vs. The Art Of Housekeeping
If you didn't read Hillary Johnson's Inc.com article upon publication on how she developed her management style as editor of a small paper, read it now. Brilliant stuff:

One year ago, I became the editor of a small newspaper. I had never managed a staff before; in fact, I had never even worked in an office, and the only people I'd ever been in charge of in any sense were the members of my immediate family. The very term "in charge" implies a military sense of duty, but I ran my small household on a more typically maternal model, relying more on the feminine arts of negotiation, persuasion, consensus building, and reward than on anything resembling force or intimidation.

In my new job, I found an office environment that was about as welcoming and friendly as an encampment of Confederate conscripts in the waning days of the Civil War. The long-established management style at the paper was based on aggressive, militaristic, alpha-male behavior. Staffers told me they were rarely praised (praise, of course, fosters weakness), they were frequently set against one another (divide and conquer), and rudeness and humiliation of one's inferiors were considered the prerogatives of rank (a periodic dressing down was good medicine). One young writer even complained that she had been made to fetch coffee for her female boss every day, a version of KP duty to be sure.

Still, finding myself suddenly in charge of several employees and a weekly production schedule, I dutifully took the advice of a friend who is a veteran manager and picked up a copy of the modern manager's bible, Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Everybody knows that the only valid model for behavior in the workplace is the battlefield, right? Look at the recent popularity of The Apprentice, wherein men and women alike slaughtered each other in the ring to win Emperor Donald Trump's thumbs-up -- a management model that isn't merely militaristic but downright gladiatorial.

Cracking open The Art of War, I expected to find kernels of wisdom translatable to the workplace; what I found instead scared me almost as much as the movie Heathers had back when I was still recovering from high school.

"All warfare is based on deception," I read. So much for the Good Fight. "Speed is the essence of war," I read later on. "Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack him where he has taken no precautions." And my favorite, as a newly minted manager of a staff of six: "Throw your soldiers into a position whence there is no escape, and they will choose death over desertion."

I would never be a general. And really, I thought crossly, why should I be?

But it wasn't until the day I happened to spill mango juice on my favorite Brooks Brothers blouse that I happened upon the tool that showed me I had the power to be a brilliant manager all along, and that all the know-how I needed was to be found even closer than my own backyard.