Strategy and competition
Xiang Yu
Unbending
Xiang Yu (Chu · 232–202 BC) — Unbending.
What actually happened?
Surrounded at Gaixia, hearing the songs of Chu coming from every side of the ring, he broke out with eight hundred riders. By the time he reached the Wu River twenty-eight were left. A boatman offered to take him across, and said the lands east of the river were small but enough to be king in, enough to begin again. He refused. Eight thousand sons of the east crossed westward with me and not one is going back; what face could I meet their fathers with? Then he turned and fought until he cut his own throat.
Force without design
His generalship is not in question: sinking the boats at Julu, thirty thousand cavalry breaking a force many times the size at Pengcheng. But he only ever used force. He destroyed the enemy in front of him while Liu Bang was destroying the threat that had not arrived yet.
At the Hongmen banquet Fan Zeng signalled to kill Liu Bang and he would not. Not mercy: in his logic enemies are beaten on a battlefield, not stabbed at dinner.
The win too large to revise
Julu proved to him that overwhelming frontal attack answers everything, and a belief confirmed by an enormous success is close to unfalsifiable. Every later deadlock got the same treatment, right through to Gaixia. The most successful experience is the hardest one to overturn.
A company built on one spectacularly successful method keeps running it after the conditions change. Not blind to the change: the success was too big to doubt.
He could not use people
He had one first-rate adviser in Fan Zeng and repeatedly ignored him, and Han Xin left him to go and serve the other side. Placing your own judgement above everyone else's has a predictable result: the capable go, and the ones who stay cannot act.
The seal is worn smooth in his hand because he cannot bear to hand it over. Reward withheld is read by everyone watching, not just by the person who did not get it.
Deciding in order to be seen
Urged to keep Guanzhong, defensible and rich, he went home to Pengcheng instead, because to be rich and not go home is to wear brocade at night. The strategic gap was obvious. Recognition simply outranked it, and the man who said so out loud was boiled.
Choosing the visible path over the one that compounds, with reasons ready, and the actual reason being who will see it.
How do I use it today?
Look at your own team for the Fan Zeng: the person who has been right and whom you have been discounting. Then take the decision you are closest to making and ask whether you would still make it if the result were invisible to everyone you know.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
Heaven is destroying me. It is no fault of my arms.
Not one of the eight thousand is going back. What face could I meet them with?