Hello everybody, I’m Sam Hua, from Shanghai, I’d like to introduce my new book, a modern exposition of SunTzu’s ‘Art of War’ to you. In the previous videos, I’ve said that the Art of war was not primarily art of war, but the art of peace. In this video, I will talk about the most famous saying in Art of War: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is best.” And what can we learn from it in our business.
How do you subdue the enemy without fighting? Sun Tzu said: “The highest form of generalship is to disrupt the enemy’s plans. The second best is to break the the enemy’s alliance relationship.” And only if these two fail, you have to fight.
Now we talk about the first way, balking the enemy’s plans.
Now we talk about the first way, disrupting the enemy’s plans.
First ,to disrupt the enemy’s plans, just like that hollywoo movie, INCEPTION, Leonardo Di Caprio slipped into the guy’s dream, and changed his idea. That’s just like what SunTzu meant. Somebody who is your enemy could be pereparing to launch a war against you. You discover this, and find a way to change his mind, and then he gaves up.
There is a famous Chinese acient story, which is kown as “A banquet to kreak the attack”.
It was 2500 years ago, at that time, China was divided into tens of countries. Jin kingdom and Qi kingdom had a peaceful relationgship. But the king of Jin wanted to invade Qi. So, he sent a envoy to Qi, to see if it’s possible.
When the envoy came, the king of Qi was very happy, because the Jin was a powerful country. So, he hold a huge banquet, and all his ministers joined.
After they became a little bit drunk, the envoy said to the king:”May I drink from your cup?” The king said happly:”Of couse!” and asked the waiter to give him the cup. The envoy drank and gave back the cup, but at that time, one of the minister said:”Replace the cup! A king should not share a cup with a minister!”
After a while, the envoy asked for a special music, but another minister quickly stopped him, and said:”That music is only for the empror, we are only a kingdom.”
When the envoy got back to Jin, his homeland, the king asked him:”So, how about the Qi? Can we invade?”
“No, we had better not.” The envoy said:”Their king may be stupid, but the ministers are not.”
Then, the king of Jin gave up his plan.
In this story, the ministers of Qi knew exactly why the envoy came, and they gave him a clear message:”Don’t play games with us!”
Yes, it’s all a game, nowadays, it’s called Game Theory, and the theorists say, the Art of War was the first Game Threory book in history.
Another way to subdue the enemy without fighting is to have much more foresight and forethought. There’s a story was about Caocao, the most famous histoyical figure during the period of the Three Kingdoms. He was the prime minister of Han dynasty. There was another man, a warlord named Zhanglu, who controlded the west of China, and who planned to crown himself king. One of his adviser, named Yanpu stoped him. Yanpu said: “Why do you want to crown yourself king? You are just like a king now. Nobody can order you around. But if you crowned yourself, it would be treason, and the imperial court would attack you. To be a king, there is no benefit, only danger. The best thing ot do now is to keep status quo, after 10 or 20 years, if we are the strongest, we can conquer the whole China and become emperor, not just a king. If Caocao is the strongest, You can surrender and be a noble.”
Zhanglu listened to Yanpu, and he finally surrendered to Caocao. Caocao awarded Zhanglu as a Marquis and awarded Yanpu as a Marquis too. So, Yanpu was the same noble as Zhanglu, why? Why did Caocao do this? It’s exactly a story about “subduing the enemy without fighting”, at that time, there were a lot of warlords in China, everybody wanted to be a king, or maybe the emperor. By awarding Yanpu, Caocao sent a message to every advisers of warlords, if your boss wants to crown himself, stop him! Someday I will award you.
As I said earlier, it’s all about sending the right message. It about you doing what I want you to do without knowing, and thinking it for your benefit. It’s Game Theory, still widely applied in political, diplomatic, military, economic, and commercial area. In business competition, it usually happen in disrupting new competiters from joining an industry. Some companies keep prices low and have overcapacity. However, imagine someone invests a new factory they don’t need. Just so they can let everybody know:”Don’t join in my game, there is no money for you here!
I’m running a brand and marketing consulting company in China, I’m the founder and the owner. and my company is one of the TOP 3 in China. How do I disrupt the new competiters? First, I must find out who would be the most dangerous opponents to me, they are close at hand, my partners. If I don’t share enough money with them, mayba they will be a founder of a new company. So, just like Caocao, I think about them, and the others, like Zhanglu and Yanpu who convinced the warlords not to become kings.
So, the unity of my company is the strongest in my industry, much stronger than the others. And if you remember what I said in my first chapter of Art of war, calculation, first you must calculate, and what you should caiculate first--- is unity.
This is my art of war. In the next video I will talk about the second way, to break the the enemy’s alliance, that will be very interesting and funny!
Thank you for watching! Stay tuned for more in the upcoming videos.