Shi (Propensity of Things)

Shi (勢) is a classical Chinese concept — in Sunzi’s Art of War and the Legalist Han Feizi — usually rendered as the propensity, disposition or potential energy inherent in a configuration: what a situation is inclined to do by virtue of how it is arranged, as water piled high is inclined to rush down. Strategy in this tradition is not imposing a plan on events but reading and adjusting the configuration so that the outcome falls out of the setup. Two uses for us. It is “deep disposition” applied to conditions rather than persons — the nearest classical ancestor of our claim that arrangements carry orientation. And it is the non-Western ground of strategy-as-pattern: François Jullien’s The Propensity of Things and A Treatise on Efficacy contrast this efficacy-through-disposition with the Greek model-then-execute picture — the same contrast our strategy note draws via Mintzberg, made two millennia earlier. Where it exceeds our use: shi’s home contexts include statecraft and war, and Jullien’s East–West contrast has its own critics; hold it as one articulation, not “the Chinese view.” Also see Attractor, Path Dependency and Leverage points