Liu Bang
The three men he was not the equal of
Saying out loud who is better than you
Records of the Grand Historian, Annals of Emperor Gaozu
At the victory banquet he asked why he had won, then answered himself. The answer is not modesty. It is an exercise of power.
What actually happened?
At a banquet in the southern palace at Luoyang he asked his officers why the empire had come to him and not to Xiang Yu. Someone said he was generous where Xiang Yu was grudging. He said they knew only half of it. In the tent, planning what settles a victory a thousand miles away, I am not the equal of Zhang Liang. For the state, the people, the supply lines, not the equal of Xiao He. For an army of a million, not the equal of Han Xin. These three are exceptional men, and I could use them. Xiang Yu had one Fan Zeng and could not.
Naming who is better puts a price on a seat
Saying in public that a man beats you at one thing does two jobs at once. It fixes the value of his seat, and it makes plain who did the fixing. Handing out valuations is not handing over power; the man who prices the others is standing above them.
Naming, in front of everyone, the one thing a colleague does better than you settles his standing faster than any bonus, and settles yours at the same time.
He defined his own skill as the using
His account of himself was not that he was good at everything. It was that he could use these men. That one move takes a leader off the track where he competes with his own staff, and on that track the ceiling is whoever is the weakest person he can bear to keep.
If hiring somebody stronger than you produces unease rather than relief, the height of the team is already decided, and it is your height.
One Fan Zeng, and he could not use him
Xiang Yu's problem was never a shortage of talent. It was talent he would not let decide anything. Recognising ability is common and cheap. Actually letting the recognised person make the call is rare, and it is the rare half that determines the outcome.
You brought in the specialist and then rewrote every recommendation to match your own reading. Present or absent, that specialist changes nothing.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: somebody on your team is plainly better than you at something, and it sits badly.
Ask first: can you say out loud, in front of everyone, exactly what he is better at? If the sentence will not come, that is the thing to look at.
Where it goes wrong: treating the admission as weakness and avoiding it; or making it and then still making every call yourself, which is Xiang Yu's version.
Lines to keep
In the tent, settling a victory a thousand miles off, Zhang Liang beats me.
These three are exceptional men. I could use them. That is all.
Xiang Yu had one Fan Zeng and could not use him.
Same situation, other people are asking
When people near me do well, something in me goes cold.Is he better than me, or just three years earlier?He's a step ahead of me on everything.Am I doing the work, or proving something?Someone is ahead of me · all 14 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.