Comparing: Advancing the Empty Self
The Art of War 6:3.6-9
This article continues our project explaining each line of Sun Tzu’s work. The English and Chinese are from my award-winning translation, The Art of War and The Ancient Chinese Revealed. Start here for the book’s opening lines.
Competition is comparison. We are constantly being compared to others. We advance our positions in life by advancing our positions in the minds of others who compare us to everyone else.
This is the context as we continue the third Section of Chapter 6 of The Art of War applying the previous lesson of the “empty self” to advancing our positions. This chapter is about “weakness” and “strength,” which Sun Tzu describes as “emptiness” and “fullness.” These lines specifically address how we work to establish ourselves in a new competitive arena, making moves with what I call, our “empty selves.”
Advancing
(In the quotations below, we summarize each Chinese character as a single English word shown in < > brackets. A sentence from my English translation follows.)
<Advance> <but> <no> <can> <defend> <is>
Advance quietly and he can’t defend.
In the previous article, we discussed the value of emptying ourselves when entering new competitive situations. We “empty ourselves” by making ourselves smaller and quieter, into ghosts. Those who pump themselves up are easily deflated by events. We make ourselves smaller because it makes it easier for us to advance our positions. No one expects much from us when we are small. It is easier to move forward when no one is looking. In terms of our positions in the minds of others, the only direction for the smallest is up.
In these situations, we obviously are not trying to move into more valuable positions that someone else currently holds. We know they will defend themselves. Instead, we advance where there is no defense, into an opening. These are openings that we can heave when no one else does because we are listening for them. No one can defend openings that they do not know about. We can see these niches because we are new to the area and small. We can recognize these unmet needs because we are seeing the situation with fresh eyes. Many of these niches are too small for others to notice. Those who have been in an environment a long-time see the status quo as a given.
Will these openings yield rewards? We cannot know before moving, but since most openings consist of unmet needs, it is a possibility. We find out the opening’s value, if any, when we start addressing those needs. We can then make our reward claims in the cycle of listen, aim, move, claim.
<Charge> <this> <empty> <also>
You can charge through his openings.
We are ghosts, moving into positions that are hidden to others. When making such moves, we do not have to ask permission. We only have to be quiet. We aren’t taking over someone else’s responsibilities. We are assigning ourselves to do something that everyone else ignores because they don’t see the need. Others have left these openings for us by not recognizing the possible opportunity.
The rest of this article is available to all. Become a free subscriber for weekly previews and one free monthly article like this. To get full weekly articles become a paid subscriber.
Like all such moves into new territory, we do not know whether addressing these them are really opportunities that we can be rewarded for filling. We must explore them, testing the ground. All moves are experiments. We must do this as ghosts, keeping our experiments hidden. The empty self keeps its activities small and inexpensive.
We only want others to notice us when our work has produced tangible value. Only then do we make our claims. These claims are small. Until we are recognized by someone who can reward us, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves and be compared to others.
<Withdraw> <but> <no> <can> <chase> <is>
Withdraw quietly and he cannot chase you.
What happens if we fail to make these small opportunities pay? We learn much more about our environment from our failures than from our successes. This is the advantage of being a small ghost. If we move quietly, our failed moves go completely unrecognized. If we keep our moves small, quick, and inexpensive, they escape recognition. Even if we make a small claim that fails, the decision-maker involved will chalk it up to our inexperience, and we may even get some small credit for trying.
A small attempt to do something by an new player doesn’t get anyone’s attention. It gets attention only when it succeeds. Such attempts are a win-win proposition for us: ignored if they fail and attention getting, in a small way, if they succeed.
Please feel free to comment on this post.
This process requires ego-control. We cannot promote what we are doing before we know its outcome, even to those we see as friends. To do so is blowing our horn before we own a horn. We do not have to be standoffish to avoid promoting ourselves. We can and should be friendly and willing to talk with anyone about anything. But we should not use these encounters to promote ourselves—yet. We save that for when we have successes and credibility.
<Rapid> <but> <no> <can> <reach> <also>
He may be quick, but he cannot catch you.
In Sun Tzu’s system, size is inversely correlated with speed. Small equals fast. Large equals slow. By making ourselves small, we also make ourselves quick. Others who are small are also quick, and they are the ones to whom we will be compared. Small positions can move faster and change direction more quickly than large ones, but only if we choose tiny moves. We cannot be jealous if other small players attempt bigger moves. They will get a bigger boost if their moves are successful, but they are making a bigger gamble. Those who make bigger moves are investing more time and resources. They learn more slowly and at a greater cost.
Strategy is often a numbers game, a game of probabilities. In these early stages, successful moves are unlikely. If each move is unlikely to reach its target, we can keep trying only if they are small. Many attempts equals eventual success.
In the mean time, we cannot get discouraged. We must expect a large number of failures before success. But, by being a small, empty ghost, these failures do us no damage. As our positions grow, taking chances becomes more dangerous. When we are small, we can take any gamble we want when we are wagering little.
Remember, we learn much more from failure than we do from success. Many losses equals faster learning. We can put those lesson to use. These lessons from failure are much less expensive when we are small than when our positions are bigger and more important.