I’ve started reading The Art of War recently. It’s a classic that almost everyone has heard of before. I hadn’t read it yet. So I thought I might as well give it a go.
It’s an old book. Still around (and being printed) to this day. That’s an easy way to know whether a book is worth reading.
If an old book is still around. There’s something in there that makes it worth reading. Consider books like The Art of War, Meditations, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Odyssey, Plato's writings, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, and so on.
Anyway, it’s been a great read so far. There’s one concept that stuck out to me above all else. Sun Tzu makes a distinction between what he calls Cheng and Ch’i.
Ch’i operations are always unexpected, weird, and unorthodox; A Cheng operation is straightforward. Sun Tzu said that great generals should attack with Cheng, but win with Ch’i. Implying that the final blow for victory should always rely on distractions and diversions. To attack them where the enemy won’t expect it and is least prepared for.
It gets trickier as you dive deeper into the topic. Some attacks can start as Cheng and end up as Ch’i, while others will start as Ch’i and end up as Cheng.
Sun Tzu describes these two concepts as running into each other like two sides of a circle. Nobody knows where one begins and the other ends. They can blend into each other depending on what the situation requires.
Two other comments go:
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1) “We must cause the enemy to regard our straightforward attack as one that is secretly designed, and vice versa; thus CHENG may also be CH`I, and CH`I may also be CHENG.”
2) “A CH`I maneuver may be CHENG, if we make the enemy look upon it as CHENG; then our real attack will be CH`I, and vice versa. The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy so that he cannot fathom our real intent. To put it perhaps a little more clearly: any attack or other operation is CHENG, on which the enemy has had his attention fixed; whereas that is CH`I, which takes him by surprise or comes from an unexpected quarter. If the enemy perceives a movement which is meant to be CH`I, it immediately becomes CHENG.”
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I won’t act like I’m an expert and understand everything completely. I don’t. But this is how I interpret it: focus on using a combination of Ch’i and Cheng operations. Make straightforward strategies look unorthodox and make the unorthodox seem straightforward. Confusion is your biggest ally on the battlefield.
That being said. I probably won’t find myself leading an army on the battlefield any time soon. But that doesn’t mean I can’t regard business as my battlefield.
Every piece of content. Every email, every tweet, every sales page. They’re all individual battles that make up my war. And it’s my duty as a great general to attack with a Cheng and win with a Ch’i operation.
So now that I’ve got your attention fixed on this CTA (my Cheng operation). Reply to this mail to see if you can figure out what my underlying and unexpected Ch’i operation is. I’ll respond to you with the correct answer.