Sun Tzu’s The Art of War Series: The first stratagem — Cross the sea without the emperor’s knowledge
The series about how the Ancient Chinese war strategy can be used in modern business strategy
Series Introduction
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is a book about military strategy written by Sun Tzi in approximately 2500 years ago. It is one of the most widely read work from Ancient Chinese up until today. A book that has endure more than 2 millennia, there must be something in the book that still worth to know about for us as a modern reader. In fact, the strategies discussed in the book had also been widely known to be commonly used in modern business strategy by the Chinese community. Perhaps, despite our technology had changed a lot since 2 millennia ago, since business involve peoples from multiple parties and human behaviour had not changed a lot, the strategy can still be applied in the modern world with a little bit of modification.
This is a series about how Thirty-Six Stratagems in Sun Tzu's The Art of War can be used in modern business strategy.
This series will be available in 2 languages, Chinese and English. The Chinese version of this article is available at 孫子兵法系列： 第一記 瞞天過海.
In the original text,
The author said that people will be less guarded when they think they are well prepared. He also added that people tend not to question things that they had seen very often. Besides, he also mentions in the book where darkness is not the opposite of light like what most people think of, instead they are from within.
The backstory of the title
Let’s go back in time to the time before the Goguryeo-Tang War. During that time, there is a military conflict between the Tang Dynasty and Goguryeo. Tang Emperor wanted to start a war with Goguryeo. At that time, Tang Dynasty wanted to attack Goguryeo by crossing the sea between the Tang Dynasty and Goguryeo. Before the battle, Tang Emperor refused to get onboard to the ship. This trouble the General as they cannot proceed with the original plan.
One of the General came up with a good idea. They prepare a wooden banquet room and a long dark tunnel into the room. They then lead the Emperor into the room and feast the emperor for a few days. Little did the emperor know that the room is within one of the ships. It is only after a few days where the emperor realize that he is in a ship, in the middle of the ocean heading towards Goguryeo and have a war.
Faking the actual intention
The core message behind the first stratagems is to fake the actual intention. As we can see above, the general above fake his actual intention of getting the Emperor onboard to the ship but acting as if he is inviting the emperor to a feast. This lower down the guard of the emperor as he only refuses to get onboard to the ship, not to a feast. Hence, this leads to the success of the general plan.
Let’s look at one famous story that uses this stratagem perfectly.
Trojan War
Trojan War is a very good example. Before the War began, the Greek build a huge wooden horse and let some of their armies hide inside the horse. They then bring the horse to the battlefield with their enemy, Troy. During the battle, they pretend as if they are fighting the losing battle and forced to retreat from the battlefield by abandoning the Trojan horse. This gives Troy the impression that they had won the battle and they bring the Trojan horse into their city as the prize of winning the war. After that, they had a celebration. Midnight had come, the Troy army had been exhausted due to the long battle in the morning and the celebration in the evening. The Greek army that hidden in the Trojan horse take this opportunity to come out from the wooden horse and open the gate from within so to allow the army from outside to go into the city and bring this long battle between the Greek and the Troy came to an end.
It is difficult for Greek to win a head-on battle with Troy due to similar military capacity. The battle had also lasted for quite some time. So, in order to secure the victory, they need to attack from their weak point and attack them when they had lower down their guard, which bring us to our next point.
Illusion of safety
People are less guarded when they are in a place where they deem as safe. People are also less cautious when they think they are very well prepared and nothing to scared of. These lead to weaknesses. From the example, we had seen that the Troy had lower down their guard because they thought they had won the battle.
In the real world, we tend to do the same thing. We tend to lower down our guard against stranger when we are in places where it seems to have good security. In a MOBA game, we had also seen our friend who lost a game which they are leading at the beginning due to their reckless decision after thinking that they will win the game for sure. This is a human weakness that had often been exploited by the enemy, which leads to one lost.
Besides the illusion of safety, there is also another factor which can also lower down people guard, which is our next point.
Acceptance of the common
When something is common, regardless if suspicious, people tend to just accept its existence. The truth is, it is difficult to question and doubt everything. Our brain had wired in a way that if something is common and had yet done any harm, the energy will be spent on other brain activity instead. In a world before civilization, our ancestor who does not doubt the fragility of a tree before climbing it when chased by a bear had survived better than one who questions it.
A good example would be slavery. During the time when slavery is still legal, there is slave everywhere. Some working on a farm, some selling bread in a bakery, some even teach in a school. As slave are common, and people see them around since they were born, they just accept the existence of a slave without questioning them. Even the great mind such as Aristotle goes as far as to justify their existence.
How can it be used in business?
This stratagem can be tricky when it comes to business. Due to the risk and reward nature of the business, securing a business deal does not necessary means a victory, nor the opposite means a defeat. For an example, selling fake merchandise as if it is real does not necessarily bring profit in a long term as there are people who are well informed about the fake merchandise and is able to separate them, thus giving bad reviews and leave your business a bad reputation. Another example would be running a scam. Running a scam might be able to earn you a relatively large amount of money in a short period of time, but doing so would simply put you in legal risk. Assuming you live in a country with a corrupted government and you know it’s very easy to get away with money, it still does not guarantee the rare cases where there is uncorrupted personnel get in your way. A failure in that would mean getting into jail for years with a fine that potentially well exceeds the amount you had scammed thus far. Compare to the potential gain where you live a relatively wealthy life, the downside is perhaps just too big.
So, the question arises should be under what circumstances should you practice the said stratagems? My personal opinion would be when there are way more upside and practically no downside.
Assume you are a programmer and you are quite good at your work. You had 2 years of working experience. You left your old company and looking for a new job. You came across a very attractive senior developer job offer which has a list of requirement which include 3 years working experience. You realize that you fit into every single requirement except the number of years in experience. Here, you can choose to modify your resume to pretend as if you have 3 years experience, or you just give up and look for another job offer that has a less attractive offer.
If you pretend as if you have 3 years of working experience and apply for the job, you might or might not get the job. The gain is high, the employer might never found out that you do not have 3 years of working experience, and as you fit into every other job requirement, it is also not going to affect the work you deliver. However, there is almost no downside. You might not get the job in the end simply due to someone else who is better than you also applying for the same job. Assume the HR department of that company do perform some background search and do find out that you added 3 months to the beginning and the end of your previous 2 jobs (a total of 1 year had been added), they will simply ignore your job application, which the outcome is not going to change if you gave up from applying for the job in the very first place.
To this example, I would even go as far to say that assume not only did you not have the amount of experience in years required for the job, there are also some skills which you are lacking (perhaps a certain tool required for the job), you might still want to consider pretending as if you are good at it. There can only be 2 outcomes from applying for the job, which you will either be invited to a job interview or get ignored. If you are invited to the interview, you can try to pick up some basic of the skill which you are lacking for the job so that it assist you to pass the interview. After getting the job, you can further master the skill with the help of Google Search. The downside of doing this is if the HR or interviewer do find out that you are lacking in the requirement, you will simply not get hired, which the outcome would have no difference from if you do not apply for the job in the first place. There is virtually no lost with a lot to gain from.
A lot of online gurus are doing exactly that. They become an actual successful businessman by pretending to be one and persuade you into signing up to their course. This is where I do not agree with a lot of people opinion, whereby becoming a successful online guru in the first place, they had shown that they indeed can run a successful business (an online course business). Online guru is actually providing more value than what a lot of people think they do.
Lastly, before I end this article, I want to end with a famous aphorism:
Fake it till you make it
I personally think this is a piece of legit advice, which as long as you had weight the pros and cons, and deliver what you had promised upfront in order not to affect the future prospect.
Disclaimer: The view expressed from the article is fully the personal opinion of the writer and is practised by the writer as well. It does not represent the view of any individual or organization other than the writer himself. The reader bears full responsibility in interpreting the writer opinion as well as practising it.
