Strategy and competition
Strategies of the Warring States
Persuasion
Strategies of the Warring States (Warring States · 453–221 BC) — Persuasion.
What actually happened?
Pang Cong was about to leave as escort to a hostage prince and asked the king of Wei a question first. If one man tells you there is a tiger in the marketplace, do you believe it? No. If two do? I would begin to doubt. If three do? Then I would believe it. There is no tiger in the marketplace, said Pang Cong, and three men can produce one; I am going far away and more than three will talk about me. He went. The talk came. He never got an audience again.
Three men make a tiger
Repetition does the work that evidence cannot. A claim heard from enough separate mouths stops being assessed and starts being assumed, and the person it is about is usually the last to hear it and the least able to answer. The mechanism needs nobody to be lying deliberately.
A version of events that circulates while you are away on a long project is settled before you return. Answering it then costs ten times what noticing it early would have.
Three people praise you, three motives
Zou Ji was told by his wife, his concubine and a guest that he was better looking than Xu Gong. When Xu Gong turned up he saw it was not true, and worked out that one favoured him, one feared him and one wanted something. The words were identical; only the relationships differed.
Your report, your supplier and your investor all say the plan is good. Three different reliabilities, one identical sentence.
Buying what the ledger cannot hold
Sent to collect debts at Xue, Feng Xuan checked the bonds against the people and then burned them, and told his lord he had bought righteousness, since the house lacked nothing else. A year later, out of office, that lord was met a hundred li from the town by the whole population.
Over-compensating early users is pure loss in the accounts and the only asset that speaks for you when something goes publicly wrong.
Persuasion is not argument
Almost every piece in the book has the same structure: find what this particular ruler is most afraid of or most wants, present your proposal as the only route to it, and leave him feeling he reasoned his way there. An argument makes the other person lose. A persuasion lets him win.
Su Qin never said the alliance is good for everyone. To each king he said this is your only way out, and named the thing that king lay awake over.
How do I use it today?
Take the last decision that was praised by everyone around you and write, next to each name, what that person stands to gain or lose from you. Then go and find one reference point that owes you nothing: a rival's real numbers, a user talking when you are not in the room. Xu Gong has to walk in.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
There is no tiger in the marketplace, and three men can make one.
A cunning rabbit has three burrows, and only just escapes with its life.