Intangibles

There is an ancient Chinese saying, “Build ships in a drought, and wagons in the event of a flood.” Normal commercial logic dictates the exact opposite: You build wagons in a drought, and ships in the event of a flood, since there is a demand for wagons in a drought, and a demand for ships in the event of a flood. This old saying, however, takes account of the vagaries of the market, and encourages a longer-term perspective. As the proverb has it, “The fool is earning today: The wise man will earn tomorrow” (Zhang, p. 44). You should look beyond the immediate market situation to the opposite shore, take note of the “fire” of future consumer needs, and adjust your business strategy accordingly. For droughts and floods will assuredly come and go, and if you produce only wagons during the droughts and ships during the floods, then you will get into difficulties. Though profitable in the short term, your business will go up in smoke as soon as the market changes. If, on the other hand, you take into account how the market will change after the drought or the flood, then you will prosper.

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Stratagem 11:

Letting the plum tree wither in place of the peach tree

You save your own skin, or someone else’s, and, in so doing, you let someone else take the responsibility.

With or without their knowledge or consent, someone is designated as the fall guy. You eliminate a peripheral character, so as to save the skin of an important one.

In order to shift the responsibility, you can also blame things or facts: “tradition,” “the spirit of the age,”

“globalization,” “the facts,” “the press,” “the market,”

“the devil,” “the stars,” that sort of thing. Chinese government officials blame their own mistakes on

“red-tape,” meaning that they personally are not to blame: It is the fault of something more general and intangible (Workers’ Daily, Beijing, February 9, 1988, p. 2).

Scapegoat or sacrificial-lamb stratagem.

In a more abstract sense, this stratagem’s goal is to make a substantial profit by accepting a comparatively minor loss. It is, as such, a hybrid stratagem, a means of both escape and exploitation. It is the sacrifice of something unimportant in order to gain something important; the surrender of a tactical advantage in order to achieve a strategic victory; the sacrifice of a part to preserve the whole.

Fall-guy stratagem.

Stratagem radius

One way of applying this stratagem is to limit the blame for any inappropriate conduct to those directly responsible. This obviates any consideration of wider responsibility, and preserves the culprits’

superiors, as well as the company itself, and any of its structural or organizational inadequacies, from any share of the blame. So it was

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that all the crimes committed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) were blamed on the so-called Gang of Four, thus saving Mao Zedong’s tarnished reputation. In the People’s Republic of China, criticism is always very carefully directed at

“individual people” and “individual phenomena” (gebie xianxiang):

The political system itself is never actually denounced.

The late Pope John Paul II apologized for crimes committed by Catholics in the past, but claimed that only individual Christians were to blame. Thus, he endeavored to present the Church as a body that could not be held accountable for the “sinful behavior of its members” (NZZ, August 11, 2000, p. 54). In other words, the whole was untainted by the sins of the parts, and the Church emerged in the best possible light. Arthur Andersen’s attorneys adopted the same approach to the Enron scandal, claiming that “the misconduct of individual members in the Houston office—where most of the files were destroyed—did not justify the prosecution of the entire firm”

(NZZ, March 15, 2002, p. 21).

In the late seventies, China justified the liberalization of its foreign-trade policy to the Chinese public by presenting it as a shrewd application of stratagem 11, though it was never explicitly described as such. They used quotations from Lenin about the “New Economic Policy” of the Soviet Union. He said that the Soviet economy could not be rebuilt without technical assistance from capitalist countries;

that any agreements with capitalist countries would have to be subject to very tight controls; but that, in order to receive any foreign help, the Soviets would have to allow the capitalists to make their profits.

He made these concessions in order to make a far greater gain, in the guise of a strong Soviet economy (Strategeme 1, 11.18).

The West German national soccer team also employed stratagem 11 in their victorious 1954 World Cup in Bern, Switzerland. In their group game against Hungary, the West German coach, Sepp Herberger, left seven first-choice players on the sidelines. His weakened side was humiliated, losing 8–3. This is a pretty

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spectacular defeat in a soccer game, but it meant that the rested players had a huge physical advantage over Austria in the semifinal, as the Austrians were exhausted after their dramatic 7–5 victory over the Swiss in the previous round. The Germans cruised to a 6–1 victory, and went on to meet Hungary again in the final (NZZ, November 7, 2003, p. 58), which they won 3–2.

Stratagem prevention

Either one must avoid getting into a precarious situation—in which one may have to take the blame for someone else’s mistake—in the first place, or one must act quickly to get out of it. By careful global analysis, one can avoid responsibility being shifted onto an individual scapegoat.

Stratagem risk

“A study shows that managers are very rarely self-critical. They act as if they were made of Teflon: Nothing ever sticks. Other people are always to blame. It is only human to try and shift the blame onto factors beyond your control; but, in a rescue operation, this is a fatal mistake” (Handelsblatt, August 22/23, 2003). If you let things get so bad that you can only employ stratagem 11 to save your skin, then you are in pretty serious trouble. There is a risk that no “plum tree”

can be found. If you panic and look for a scapegoat, rather than conducting an honest review of your situation, your business will surely fail. Why not be a bit more cunning, and act as a “whipping boy” yourself ? (See stratagem 34.)

Examples