Trained strategic reflexes is a decision-making tool for competitive situations where information about the future is limited. This is often because there is so much information from so many sources that finding the critical information that you need is like finding a needle in a haystack. The value of classical strategy is that its methods are designed to work where we know we can never have all the key information we need. It methods are like a magnet pulling a few of the critical pieces of information from that haystack.

In a controlled environment, inside an organization, good information, especially about the plans of others, ensures good information about the future. However, in the larger, competitive environment, you cannot predict the future. In a marketplace, for example, customers are free to decide what they do. This means that while you may be able to predict that you can make a cake, you cannot predict that anyone in the marketplace will buy it.

In competitive environments, we operate with incomplete information as a matter of course. Competitive environments are filled with misinformation. They are filled with outdated information. The limitations of information affect buyers as well as sellers. Our only guide to the future in competitive environments is the past. And while there is some continuity with the past, new alternatives are constantly being offered.

People can make decisions based only upon their subjective impressions. The less information we have, the more our subjective impressions differ from the physical reality. In chess, opposing players have access to all relevant information except each other's plans. In real-life competition, some people have information that others don't have. No matter how good our inside information, by definition we are outsiders to most of the world.

The methods of Sun Tzu first gather as much relevant information as quickly as possible. They then quickly filter that information so that actions can be taken safely, but each move is a probe designed to test our information and gain additional information that we could not have gotten without action. The final step is recognizing both our successes and failures.