The Annals of Lu Buwei
What you know is last season's water level
Wading by old markers: the homework was done and it expired
The Annals of Lu Buwei, 'Examining the Present', in the surveys on prudence in great matters
I never got the full picture and the deadline is here. This chapter says stale beats incomplete for danger.
What actually happened?
Jing meant to raid Song, so they sent men ahead to mark the fords of the Yong and measure where it could be crossed. Then the river rose suddenly and Jing did not know. At night they waded by the daytime markers and more than a thousand men drowned, the army breaking up as if a quarter of the capital had fallen in. The homework had been done. They set those markers themselves and the markers were right when set. What changed in between was the water, while the markers stood where they were, looking as reliable as ever.
Expired information looks exactly like live information
With nothing in hand a person is careful; with one old survey in hand a person relaxes. The markers will not fall over to tell you the river has risen. They stand there looking identical to the day they were set, which is what makes them worse than a blank.
You are still working from the customer research you did last year.
The notch was accurate; what it was cut into was not
A man of Chu crossing the river dropped his sword and cut a notch in the boat where it went in. When the boat moored he went down from the notch to look. A judgement matters less by its own accuracy than by what it is attached to.
Your expertise is bolted to an old employer's process and does not travel.
Keeping the law unchanged is its own disorder
Without law a state falls into disorder; keeping the law and never changing it falls into perversity, and neither can hold a state. Times shift, so laws should. Having no rule and never revising one are two illnesses, and the second is the quieter.
The rule set three years ago now needs a weekly exception.
It hands you the illness, not the prescription
Like a good doctor: the illness changes ten thousand times, so the medicine changes ten thousand times. So the laws of former kings are not to be copied. Ask instead why that one was made, and whether the reason still holds.
Before copying another firm's practice, ask what problem it solved for them.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the deadline is on you, you never got the whole picture, and you have to decide on what is in front of you.
Ask first: when was this gathered, and has anything happened since that would move it - incomplete and out of date are different holes and take different patches.
Where it goes wrong: read as a demand to research everything again. It has no quarrel with old experience; it wants the reason behind it dug out. If the reason holds, use it. If it is gone, the most careful notch is still cut into a moving boat.
Lines to keep
A blank makes you careful; an old file makes you comfortable.
However exact the notch, look at what it is cut into.
No rule fails loudly; an unchanged rule fails late.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time the data is in, will it be too late?Everyone I know is in this. I don't actually understand it.I keep listing reasons this will work. Should I do the other list?Everything I know about this came up one reporting line.I don't have enough information · all 13 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.