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Stratagem No. 11 - Sacrifice the Plum Tree In Place of the Peach
Stratagems: The art of Chinese trick. Stratagem = Artful, extraordinary approach. According to the Duden Synonym dictionary an "Instrument to reach a goal, which would be out of reach using normal ways."

"We can't make everyone happy" …you don't have to say "agree or disagree"
Tony Blair, prime minister of UK

Cao Cao and Stratagem No.11

Regine Ricka Jong (See picture), Sales Manager and trouble shooter, Amsterdam, Netherlands, compiled and shared the following historical background.

The Emperor Ling Di (168-189) as I wrote above has a lot of problems and after the collapse of the Han dynasty…there were a period of time where its name from the three states into which China was divided.
Wei State occupied the north, South of Wei State were Shu in the west and Wu state in the east. Each State has its King, General and warriors of course…and so was the state/kingdom of Wei as it is known as north of China who was under the control of Cao Cao, the imperial secretariat to the last Han Emperor. It all started with his new title as Wei Gong (Duke of Wei) and he had 10 cities under his authority…later on when the southern part was divided into two areas and being controlled by warlords…which called The Kingdom of Shu and The Kingdom of Wu.
In 216 Cao Cao was promoted to Wei Wang (Prince/King of Wei) and in 220 he died.

This one is one of the famous story of roman of The Three Kingdom with Stratagem No. 11.

Sacrifice the Plum Tree In Place of the Peach
In this life we live...there are circumstances in which you must sacrifice short-term objectives in order to gain the long-term goal. They called this... The scapegoat strategy whereby someone else suffers the consequences so that the rest do not...a long-term perspective?

Three Kingdoms Period China
On one of his campaigns Cao Cao was running short of food. He asked his supply sergeant what he could do. The sergeant suggested reducing the rations by secretly using a smaller cup to parcel out the rice. Cao Cao praised the sergeant and gave his consent to use the smaller measuring cup. After a few days the soldiers began to complain and accused their commander of cheating them. Cao Cao again called in the supply sergeant and told him the situation.
"I will do anything I can to help but what would you have me do?" asked the sergeant.
"I'm afraid I am going have to borrow your head." replied Cao Cao and he had the sergeant decapitated and his head stuck on a tall pole with a banner that read "Caught cheating on supplies by using a smaller measuring cup.

You find that a lot in today's business too, that managers gather clercs and supervisors around. In case something goes wrong, they can easily sacrifice one of them to keep their position.

But . . . apart from those examples . . . let's have a look at less dramatic business cases that work fine without harm, o.k. ?

Case one from the real life of the internet: 1999 I started my first website which is still running: www.arow.de.

2004 www.arow.biz was set live with a content management system and is running fairly well. Since in Germany the day has only 24 hours I faced the challenge to get up on search engines pretty fast based on good SEO ethics. See SEO tips from Rob Collyer here !

So I sacrificed my arow.de in favour of arow.biz to get best results.

2nd business example: Same with the choice of networks . . . today I'm focussing on 2 networks (Sign up beonit today and become part of my network there !) and 2 websites that work pretty well in terms of google performance (Seminar-shop.com and - of course - arow-biz itself).

Many, many other so-called networks and websites that even offered low-cost or free membership I sacrificed over the last years. Today I don't even sign up anymore those special offers that come up almost daily. Although I might still be listed there I didn't even spend the time to delete my profile there.

It was a week ago…trains station…early in the morning…those friendly people stood in front of the station with smile as always… every morning passed a METRO to each of passenger in morning rush catching their train.
Main Page and indeed it was big news in The Netherlands, still warm and gladly I present this news too here on this thread to all of you… about NedCar or officially Nederland's Car BV, the only series producer of cars in The Netherlands which was established by Mitsubishi and the Sweden's AB Volvo in 1991.
Mitsubishi became the sole shareholder of NedCar since 2001 and Monday…last week…in Tokyo…Mitsubishi Motor Corp and Tim Tozer (European Director of Mitsubishi) said "It is essential that NedCar will become an efficient producer with low-costs"…and only after…it is possible to talk about the future. These all was caused by undesired result of new colt and SMART ForFour which are selling slowly.
It was no longer a surprise…especially to some Economy and Business analyst; NedCar is expected to slash "a few hundred jobs" in order of cutting production costs.

Another Example is what IBM has announced last year with their worker in Europe, up to 13, 000 Job Cuts which they said as one of their set in order of facing the stiff competition from Dell Inc. and EMC Corp.

Check these links to read more about the IBM story . . . IBM I, IBM II.

Sam Palmisano, CEO of the IBM was criticized by many analysts…each with their point of view about Palmisano's strategy about the need to "lower the center of gravity" of the company by eliminating administrative layers and putting more authority and resources in the hands of employees who deal directly with customers.
Some of Firm had seen such decision as a short-term perspective but some as a long-term and some seen as both perspectives.
Stratagem number 11 is clear about its point…in order to save the "greater" sacrifice the "lesser", how do you deal yourself with such decision and action?

One of those reasons why Stratagems was wrote and nowadays are used is to points out the right attitude and ways for dealing with crisis and loose, seeking to avoid one, preparing and empowering to handle any future crisis.

Regine Ricka Jong and Andreas Wiedow © 2006 all rights reserved. You can quote if you indicate the source.

You got interested and want to stay in touch send your email !

graphic by arow-publishers © 2005 all rights reserved

Literature:

Soweit Sie in manchen Bereichen lediglich Fragezeichen sehen sollten liegt das unter Umständen daran, dass Sie auf Ihrem Computersystem die entsprechenden Zeichensätze der jeweiligen Originalsprache nicht aktiviert haben.

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