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昨天开始读ego is the enemy. 做33 war strategies 摘要如下:
17. Defeat Them In Detail: The Divide-And-Conquer Strategy
When you look at your enemies, do not be intimidated by their appearance. Instead look at the parts that make up the whole. By separating the parts, sowing dissension and division, you can weaken and bring down even the most formidable foe. In setting up your attack, work on their minds to create internal conflict. Look for the joints and links, the things that connect the people in a group or connect one group to another. Division is weakness, and the joints are the weakest part of any structure. When you are facing troubles or enemies, turn a large problem into small, eminently defeatable parts.
Understand: rational argument go in one ear and out the other. No one is changed; you are preaching to the converted. In the war to win people’s attention and influence them, you must first separate them from whatever ties them to the past and makes them resist change. You must realize that these ties are generally not rational but emotional.
A joint is the weakest part of any structure. Break it and you divide people internally, making them vulnerable to suggestion and change. Divide their minds in order to conquer them.
Stalin prevent any single chain of command from making major decisions without confronting other arms of the state’s bureaucracy and thus bringing the issues into the open at a high level.
The divide-and-isolate strategy was also used to great effect by Napoleon and the guerrilla forces of Mo Zedong, among many others.
The divide-and-conquer strategy has never been more effective than it is today: cut people off from their group—make them feel alienated, alone, and unprotected—and you weakens them enormously. That moment of weakness gives you great power to maneuver them into a corner, whether to seduce or to induce panic and retreat.
People who feel isolated will often overreact and do something desperate—which of course just makes them more isolated. So Mao created the impression that Lin was losing his connections. Had he attacked Linbiao directly, he would have gotten bogged down in an ugly fight. Dividing the minister from his power base, and in the process making him appear to be on the decline, was much more effective.
Divide and rule is a powerful strategy for governing any group. It is based on a key principle: within any organization people naturally form smaller groups based on mutual self-interest—the primitive desire to find strength in numbers. These subgroups form power bases that, left unchecked, will threaten the organization as a whole. The formation of parties and factions can be a leader’s great threat, for in time these factions will naturally work to secure their own interests before those of the greater group. The solution is to divide to rule. To do so you must first establish yourself as the center of power; individuals must know they need to compete for your approval.
The temptation to maintain a favorite is understandable but dangerous. Better to rotate your stars, occasionally making each one fall. Bring in people with different viewpoints and encourage them to fight it out. You can justify this as a healthy form of democracy, but the effect is that while those below you fight to be heard, you rule.
The film director Alfred Hitchcock: he put himself in the middle of every aspect of production, he kept all the departments a little out of the loop; information about every detail of the film was kept in his head. No one could bypass him; every decision went through him. In essence, he was like Rome: all roads led to Hitchcock.
Within your group, factions may emerge quite subtly by virtue of the fact that people who are experts in their area may not tell you everything they’re doing. Remember: they see only the small picture; you are in charge of the whole production. If you are to lead, you must occupy the center. Everything must flow through you. If information is to be withheld, you are the one to do it. That is divide and rule: if the different parts of the operation lack access to all the information, they will have to come to you to get it. It is not that you micromanage but that you keep overall control of everything vital and isolate any potential rival power base.
Think of the people in your group who are working primarily for their own interests as insurgents.
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