Xiang Yu
Break the pots, sink the boats
Everything on one throw
Records of the Grand Historian, Annals of Xiang Yu
Julu was the high point of his life. This is about why the thing that won it so completely never changed afterwards.
What actually happened?
Zhang Han had Zhao besieged and a dozen allied armies were camped nearby, not one of them willing to fight. Xiang Yu killed the commander Song Yi, took the army across the river, and then sank the boats, broke the cooking pots, burned the huts and carried three days of rations, to show the men they would die there and had no thought of return. The Chu army fought nine engagements and won nine. Afterwards he summoned the allied generals, and they came through the gate of his camp on their knees, not one daring to look up. He was twenty-seven.
All in works only while nobody else will move
The setting at Julu was a dozen armies waiting and nobody willing to be first. Where everyone is conserving strength, the one side that commits everything collects a return far larger than the input. The identical move on a field where everyone is straining is only expenditure.
When an industry contracts and everyone waits for someone else to move, one heavy counter-cyclical bet takes several times the usual share. In a boom it only raises the price.
The more complete the win, the harder it is to change
Julu convinced him that overwhelming frontal attack answers everything, and a belief confirmed by an enormous success is nearly impossible to revise. Every deadlock afterwards was met the same way, all the way to Gaixia. The most successful experience is usually the least falsifiable one.
A company founded on one wildly successful method keeps running it after conditions change. Not for failing to see the change: the success was too large to doubt.
What you do after winning decides the rest
He won at Julu, and what he then did with the surrendered Qin troops, and later at Xianyang, spent down the position the victory had bought him. A battle is settled once. How you place the defeated and the allies afterwards decides how long the victory keeps.
How you treat the losing side's team and channels after a commercial win matters more to the next round than the win. Win ugly and everyone lines up opposite you.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you want to put every resource you have into one decisive push.
Ask first: is everyone around me holding back right now, or is everyone already charging?
Where it goes wrong: treating one successful method as permanently correct; and not thinking about how the thing gets settled once you have won.
Lines to keep
They sank the boats and broke the pots, with three days of rations.
The generals came through the gate of his camp on their knees.
The most successful experience is the hardest one to overturn.
Same situation, other people are asking
If this is wrong, is there a way back?It starts on Monday and I'm bracing myself. Is that the problem?I think I know them well enough. Do I know my own side?There is no undo on this one. How long should I stand at the edge?A decision I can't undo · all 11 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.