“Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.”
You can assemble force from far away only if both the when and where are fixed; ambiguity scatters you.
Chapter 6 reveals why its knowledge discipline matters: knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight. Convergence — the gathering of scattered strength — is only possible against a fixed coordinate. The enemy who keeps time and place unknown keeps you scattered, which is why the previous verse hid them.
A product launch keeps slipping in public ("coming this year") while three teams’ work waits on it — docs, partnerships, support training all held in a loose readiness that decays. A rival fixes the date and hour a quarter out, tells no one outside, and works backward: every dependency gets a countdown instead of a vague alignment. On the day, its scattered strength arrives as one body. The other company is still "aligning."
Fixing the when and where is not waterfall rigidity — the coordinate can be revised by the decision rules of Chapter 1, as circumstances prove favorable. What cannot be lost is the existence of a coordinate. Teams that keep everything open to preserve flexibility pay for it in permanent dispersion, and meet their decisive moments arriving piecemeal.