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Strategy and competition

Han Xin

The middle state

Han Xin (Han · 231–196 BC) — The middle state.

Strategy and competitionPre-Qin and classicalThe middle state

What actually happened?

Liu Bang once asked him how many troops the emperor himself could command. No more than a hundred thousand, said Han Xin. And you? For me, the more the better. Liu Bang laughed and asked why, in that case, he was the captive. Because your majesty cannot command troops but is very good at commanding commanders, he said, and that is heaven's gift rather than anything a man learns. It is the most honest thing he ever said, and read back from the end, the least careful.

Dead ground, and its two conditions

Throw them onto dead ground and they will live is the famous half. The half he added is that these were men levied off the market who would have run from open ground, and that two thousand horse were meanwhile changing every flag in the enemy camp.

A hard deadline can weld a team that has just formed. The same move on people who could already fight destroys a better rhythm.

Repair the plank road, cross at Chencang

He made a show of rebuilding the burned mountain walkways, which was slow, visible and exactly what the other side expected, and took his main force out through Chencang instead. Engage with the orthodox and win with the unexpected, executed once and cleanly.

The announcement everyone can see is usually not the move. Ask what the same team is quietly doing in the same week.

Neither revolt nor hand over

His error was not failing to rebel. It was holding an army that frightened his king while having no intention of using it, for years. Threat is assessed on capability, never on sincerity, and the middle carries both risks at once.

The only person who can run the one critical system is a risk however loyal they are. The answer is a second person, not a protestation.

He reviewed every battle

He went from an unknown drifter to the best general of the age in a very short time, and what he did after each engagement was go back over it. The gap between an expert and everyone else is not how few mistakes were made but how much came out of them.

After the next project ends, write the three real reasons it went the way it did. Not the presentable reasons, the actual ones.

How do I use it today?

Find the one place where you hold something other people depend on and cannot replace. Then pick a side this month: either use that position for something, or deliberately make it replaceable. Do not stay in the middle for another quarter.

Deep read

With the river at their backsTake the retreat away firstThe move has preconditions. Without them it is suicideNeither revolt nor retireThe middle is the dangerous placeRefuse both roads and you have chosen the worst one

Read alongside

Zhang LiangThe same court, the same victory, opposite endings: Zhang Liang stepped all the way out and died old, Han Xin kept the power and the loyalty both and lost everything. Huo QubingTwo kinds of military genius. Han Xin wins by arrangement and misjudges his own position; Huo Qubing wins by pure speed and never lives long enough for the position to matter. Guo ZiyiThe same impossible position: Han Xin kept proving he was a threat and his clan was destroyed, Guo Ziyi kept proving he was harmless and died in bed. Su YuTwo commanders who made a habit of winning outnumbered: Han Xin by putting his own men where retreat was impossible, Su Yu by choosing what the enemy had to come and save. Wang JianIdentical achievements, opposite endings: Wang Jian made himself look greedy and died in bed, Han Xin held on to his standing and did not.

Further

Liu Bang Sun Tzu Xiang Yu Zhang Liang Guo Ziyi Mao Zedong Huo Qubing Su Yu Wang Jian Records of the Grand Historian

Lines to keep

He whose valour overawes his lord stands in danger.

The hares dead, the hounds are cooked; the birds gone, the bow stored.