Zhang Liang
Lend me the chopsticks
Take the plan apart into conditions
Records of the Grand Historian, Hereditary House of the Marquis of Liu
A proposal sounds entirely right. How do you show that it is wrong? This is the method he ran at the table, in one sitting.
What actually happened?
Chu and Han were deadlocked and Liu Bang was shut up in Xingyang. The adviser Li Yiji proposed re-establishing the heirs of the six old states, who would be grateful, so that the empire would come over. Liu Bang liked it and ordered the seals cut. Zhang Liang came in, was told, and said let me borrow the chopsticks in front of you and lay this out for Your Majesty. Then eight items, each one a question about whether it could be done now. Liu Bang stopped eating and had the seals destroyed.
Do not argue the conclusion, audit the premises
Li Yiji's conclusion, that enfeoffment buys allegiance, is nearly impossible to refute head on. Zhang Liang never tried. He broke it into the conditions it requires and asked of each whether it was available today. A plan that collapses at the condition layer stays collapsed.
We should build our own channel is unanswerable. Who runs it, where does the content come from, what catches the repeat buyer, what does month one cost? Three questions in, it shows itself.
Put a physical object where the abstraction was
Borrowing the chopsticks turns a strategy into pieces on a table that people can point at. The value of that move is that it shifts the room from whether this is sound to how this would run. Almost every bad plan is sound. Very few of them run.
Lay the plan out against a calendar as weeks of work. The weeks it will not fit into are exactly where the hole is.
If it is wrong, turn round now
The one who is really tested here is Liu Bang. He had already ordered the seals cut, heard eight objections, and destroyed them the same hour. Finding the flaw in a plan is the easy half. Withdrawing something you personally approved an hour ago is the other one.
The direction was announced publicly and two weeks later the flaw is visible. Pulling it costs a bad day. Not pulling it costs the quarter.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a proposal sounds convincing and you cannot name what is wrong with it.
Ask first: what has to be true for this to work? List the conditions, then go down the list asking which of them you can meet this quarter.
Where it goes wrong: fighting at the level of the conclusion; or finding the flaw and then running the plan anyway to avoid looking changeable.
Lines to keep
Let me borrow the chopsticks in front of you and lay it out.
Take that man's advice and Your Majesty's cause is finished.
He stopped eating, swore, and ordered the seals destroyed.
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 12 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.