36 Strategies Vernacular Full Translation

Chapter 33
The original code destroys its strength, seizes its crown, and breaks its body.When the dragon fights in the wild, its way is poor.

Translation Destroying the enemy's backbone and capturing the enemy's leader can disintegrate the enemy's entire army.This is like a dragon fighting in the wilderness, bewildered and unable to win at all.

Interpretation of the poet Du Fu said: "Shoot people first, shoot horses, and capture thieves first, capture the king." The king refers to the leader or core figure of the country, the army and other organizations. A hub or key of strength.Therefore, to destroy and disintegrate an organization, the center of the attack is its core figures. Once they are knocked down, the organization will have no leader.

This meter has the following two meanings.

One, hit the nail on the head.As the saying goes: "It takes seven inches to hit a snake."Seven inches away is the snake's heart.Once the snake's heart is broken, it will naturally not be able to survive.In the same way, everything has a key point and a crucial part. Only by grasping the key point and key point can we get twice the result with half the effort.In war, the leading and cohesive role of the leader in his organization cannot be underestimated.Grabbing its leader will not only deter the rest, but the remaining forces will also face difficulties because they don't know where to go. This is an extremely beneficial condition for one's own side.

Second, outline the key points.People who are good at stretching the net can always grasp the main steel rope of the net; experienced housewives can always hold the collar of the fur coat and shake it up and down, and the fur will naturally be straightened out.Everything has "guidelines" and "collars".As long as we grasp the essentials, we can control complexity with simplicity and control more with less.This is the beauty of outline.

The principle of capturing the thief and the king is very simple, but it is not so easy to do it.To capture the king is not only to capture the leader of the opponent, but also to destroy its main force.Although the two have similarities in understanding, they need to be flexibly changed according to the specific situation when they are used.Generally speaking, capturing the leader will inevitably shake the morale of the army and disintegrate the whole; but destroying its main force will naturally lose the leader's support and do nothing.Therefore, to capture the head first, and then kill the main force, is like hitting a snake seven inches, and get twice the result with half the effort; but to kill the main force first, and then capture the head, you can easily capture it, which is just as wonderful.

In business warfare, the commonly used methods are "brain digging" and "headhunting".It is to pull the opponent's backbone power for your own use; or to squeeze out the opponent's leader or supervisor, so that it loses its foundation.In the Western economic circles, the strategy of catching thieves and catching kings will also be used to implement various benefits to sway government heads and officials in charge, allowing them to provide various conveniences and shelters for enterprises to obtain huge profits.

When dealing with the enemy's capture of the thief and the king, the following items should be paid attention to.

[-]. It is important to guard against the enemy.Be careful to guard against the enemy's attack, but it is impossible to guard against everywhere.If you are on guard everywhere, you will be distracted, and you will be easily attacked by the enemy.The so-called "everything is omnipotent".Therefore, the focus of prevention should be on your own "king".Just as a boxer wears a helmet and a soccer player wears knee pads, the head and knees are both vulnerable and uninjured.When we are guarding against the enemy, we should also distinguish between priorities, focus on protecting our "king", and don't be caught by the enemy.Only by keeping the core of command can we win.

Second, there must be sufficient backup support in case of accidents.Just like when working with a computer, files are often backed up and saved, there is also a "redundant technology" in engineering technology.It is a spare part installed in advance to ensure the normal operation of the machine. Although it will not be used for the time being, once some key vulnerable parts suddenly fail, the spare part will be replaced automatically, which is extremely important.We must also be prepared in this way in the competition. If a "king" is unfortunately captured, another new "king" should appear immediately, so that the "king" position will never be vacant, the organization will never be loose, and the command will never be broken. Always maintain a strong vitality, so that the enemy has no choice but to look at the "king" and sigh.

[-]. For the small benefits and small benefits of the enemy, we must have a firm mind, so that "the poorer you become, the stronger you become, and you don't change your ambition."You must know that the enemy's sugar-coated shells often only work on the weak-willed.If we have a strong will, so that "wealth and honor should not be promiscuous" and "drinking and sex should not be messed up", then no matter how cunning and treacherous the enemy is, we will not fall for them, and their plans will only be in vain.

Examples of Wisdom
The main force of the Soviet army
Germans in the trenches
The strategy of "capture the thief and capture the king" has been tried and tested repeatedly in war.Under the premise of having certain strength and the spirit of daring to fight, if you seize the opportunity and use this plan well, you will definitely receive miraculous results.

In April 1944, the Soviet Red Army launched a battle to attack Perekop on the Soviet-German battlefield.Perekop is the only way to the Crimean Peninsula. The terrain here is dangerous and easy to defend but difficult to attack.The German army attempted to rely on such a favorable natural barrier to hold on for a long time with a force of 4 to prevent the counterattack of the Soviet army in an all-round way.

In order to know themselves and the enemy and ensure victory, in the preparation stage of the battle, the first task of the Soviet army is to find out the equipment of the German army.Therefore, the Soviet army decided to first spend a week or even longer to conduct reconnaissance on the enemy.This means that even if the Soviet army's future plans can be successfully realized, the battle will take about half a month to end at the fastest.To everyone's surprise, an accidental discovery by the Soviet commander allowed him to inadvertently grasp the situation of the enemy's main position, which greatly accelerated the progress of the battle.

On the evening of April 4, the weather changed suddenly, and there was a sudden heavy snowfall in Perekop.In the morning, the artillery commander of the Soviet Army was lying in a warm bunker.At this time, his eyes suddenly fell on the shoulders of the chief of staff of the group army who had just come in from the outside.A thin layer of snowflakes fell on the chief of staff's shoulders, because the edges had melted a bit, and the drops of water clearly outlined the outline of the epaulettes.This small discovery made the artillery commander suddenly think that due to the warmer weather, the snow in the enemy bunkers was about to melt.In order to avoid muddy roads, they will definitely clear the snow in the bunkers, and the wet soil with snow will be thrown out, which will expose the enemy's troop deployment.If you observe carefully, you should be able to find the enemy's main defensive position, and then capture the thief first, and capture the king first, and you will definitely disrupt the enemy's position in the end.

The artillery commander immediately ordered his subordinates to strengthen the investigation.As expected, the German army happened to be clearing the snow in the bunker at this time.Using uninterrupted reconnaissance and aerial photography, after just over three hours, the Soviet army found out the specific deployment of the enemy: the front of the first German trench was completely white, and only a few places had traces of wet soil. It is inferred that the enemy has only sporadic observers on duty here; the second and third trenches are covered in brown with a large amount of wet soil, so it is concluded that the main force of the enemy is in the second and third trenches; There were many false targets because the ground around many of the targets that had been exposed had not changed in any way.

The Soviet army identified the formation of the enemy's defense and found the location of the enemy's main force.Therefore, before launching the general offensive, artillery fire was used to bombard the enemy's main defensive positions fiercely and accurately, completely destroying the enemy's main force.Then, the Soviet army broke through the enemy's last line of defense in just over eight days, captured more than [-] enemies, and liberated the Crimean Peninsula.

War is an extremely complex contradiction.It requires a commander not only to be able to observe and command operations according to the usual laws of war, but also to have extraordinary discrimination and judgment, to be good at discovering the relationship between things from small or common changes in things, and to realize their significance to war. positive effect.The artillery commander of the Soviet Army got the inspiration from the very common phenomenon of "snowflakes on the epaulets", so that he could accurately extend outwards, think of cleverly finding the location of the enemy's main defense force, so as to carry out effective artillery attacks on the enemy's main force, and finally The goal of "capturing the thief and capturing the king" has been achieved.

Little Onassis "Capture the King"

"Catch the thief and capture the king" is a method of firmly grasping the main key points of things to solve problems.The extension of this methodology to commercial warfare is also very valuable and very effective.

Aristotle Onassis

The world-famous Greek ship magnate Aristotle Onassis was born in a poor Greek refugee family. At the age of 17, he bid farewell to his family and came to work as a helper on an old cargo ship alone, in exchange for a free boat ride to America to find a living.

When the freighter arrived in Argentina, he left the old ship he was on and worked as a welder for the telephone company in Buenos Aires.Because Onassis was hardworking and frugal, he soon had some savings.So he quit his job at the telephone exchange to start his own business.

Onassis found that the price of local tobacco leaves was not only higher than in the Middle East, but the quality was not as good.He brought a batch of tobacco leaves from the Middle East to Argentina through his family in Greece.People who know him are worried about him: it is a good way to sell so many tobacco leaves in batches to cigarette manufacturers, but how can a foreign boy like him have no way to sell the goods to big manufacturers? get?If so many tobacco leaves are retailed, when will they be sold?

Onassis has his way.Every day, he goes early to wait in front of the office of the chairman of the famous Hogan Tobacco Company in Argentina.Onassis always looked sad and silent, watching Chairman Hao Gen go in and out.For several days, Hao Gen found that this young man with a sad face seemed to be looking for him, but he didn't say a word.Hao Gen didn't pay attention at first, but after doing this every day, he gradually became familiar with the young man's face, and then he was surprised by his behavior.

Three weeks passed.Finally, one day, Hao Gen was in a good mood and happened to be free, so he couldn't help asking Onassis: "Young man, why are you standing here these days? Are you looking for me? What's the matter?" Onassis replied respectfully: "I have some high-quality Middle Eastern tobacco leaves in my hand, and I want to sell them to your company. But I am not familiar with your company at all, so I don't know what to do." Onassis paused, then continued : "I've been looking for you, but I'm afraid you're busy, so I'm sorry to disturb you. So I haven't found a suitable opportunity." Collect the tobacco leaves." After Hao Gen finished speaking, he wanted to turn around and leave.The young man still stood there motionless, so Hogan asked again, "What's the matter with you?" Onassis still stood silently, looking at Hogan, obviously expecting something.

"Ah, I see." Hao Gen suddenly realized that he stood here and waited for three weeks, not waiting for him to say such a harmless sentence.So he politely said to Onassis: "Young man, please come into my office and wait a moment. I'll call the shopping department." The person in charge of the shopping department rushed to the chairman's office immediately after receiving the call. .

We can imagine what will happen in the future: Will the business introduced by the chairman himself fail?Since then, a steady stream of Onassis leaves has flowed from the Middle East into Hogan's warehouses.Three years later, the 20-year-old Onassis bought his first seagoing ship with the $5 he earned from tobacco business, and started his career as a ship king.

Onassis' success is due to his strategy of "capturing the thief and capturing the king". The 17-year-old Onassis knew that if he wanted to make the first big deal with Hogan Cigarette Company and continue to do so, he could only be sure of success if he found the key decision-maker of the company—the chairman, so he came up with specific actions above.Hao Gen was moved by Onassis' sincerity, and was successfully "captured" by Onassis.Onassis' victory came as a matter of course.

The Little Wisdom of "Capturing the King"

If a person wants to be transferred, get a salary increase, or receive awards for meritorious service, it will not work without the approval of the main leader.This requires people to work hard at ordinary times, but also firmly "hold" the main leader in their hands, so that he can't leave you.

But to "hold" the leader in your hands, you must first consolidate his dependence on you, and make him feel that it is difficult to carry out his work without you.There are many ways to do this.Someone summed up the following experience.

[-]. Cooperate well with the main leaders, always consider the main leaders, provide the leaders with information that is beneficial to the unit in a timely manner, and faithfully implement the orders of the main leaders.

[-]. Make full use of the existing power and make decisive and underground decisions based on your own judgment.Don't always ask the leader for instructions because of matters within the scope of authority, because this is tantamount to reducing authority.

[-]. Don't think that only leaders can praise people.You should understand that your boss is human in a way and needs encouragement.Praise the leader's performance in a timely manner to make the leader happy, and many opportunities that are beneficial to you will come across unexpectedly.

Fourth, strengthen the study of the latest book knowledge and other people's experience, and consolidate professional knowledge.Once you find that the time is right, immediately show your leaders what skills you have.Let him understand that in addition to having a correct working attitude and good management skills, you also have skills that others cannot replace.

[-]. In addition to this, the leaders also attach great importance to the extensive network of relationships, good popularity, and a shrewd and capable image.Therefore, only by continuously strengthening the experience in these areas and doing everything well can we gain the attention of the leaders.

Due to the development of modern society, "catching the thief and capturing the king" in the workplace has also shown more and more characteristics, and there are more and more ways to gain the attention of leaders.As long as you are willing to use your brain and use strategies, it is not difficult to find a shortcut to success.

(End of this chapter)