The 36th Chinese Stretegem: "If everything else fails, retreat"

[Hans-Peter Korn]

This is the most famous one of the 36th strategy, immortalized in the form of a Chinese idiom: "Of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, fleeing is best." (三十六計，走為上策 - sānshí liù jì, zǒu wèi shàng cè)

This seems to me similar to the SF-principle: "If it don't work - try something different"

What's about the other 35 strategems? How do they fit to SF?

Well, looking in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems or (in German) in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/36_Strategeme I become a bit uncomfortable: Nearly all of them sound for me as advices to fool the others using tricks and hiding the real intention. Or is my reaction a consequence of a thinking based on "western" ethics?

In http://www.strategeme.com/HSml/etmo.htm I found a "top of the iceberg" for an answer to that question:

Rolf Dobelli, founder of getAbstract wrote in his review on: "The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge" by Kaihan Krippendorf:
...this is an excellent introduction to a neglected classic. Its strategies (an ethical minefield if you take them too literally) are not limited to battlefields or businesses. We recommend this book to business strategists, policymakers and those struggling with competition. It is also valuable for anyone working in or facing competition from East Asia, where these strategems are already well known and widely used.

Maybe I have to understand those 36 strategems not as "advices" but as a variety of possibilities how others (and also I) may act to get a better awareness for the traps by cooperating with others?
BUT: is this "SF"? Or is it more "problem focused" to increase my awareness for behaviours like: "Kill with a borrowed knife" (the 3rd strategem: Attack using the strength of another (in a situation where using one's own strength is not favourable). Trick an ally into attacking him, bribe an official to turn traitor, or use the enemy's own strength against him.)

And at the same time I read in http://www.strategeme.com/HSml/36strat.htm such things which also are referred in a SF-context quite often:

Kaihan Krippendorff splits the stratgems in die this four groups:

YING YANG / POLARITY 1-9
Westerners believe they can pursue good and banish bad, but this assumption runs counter to the Taoist understanding which doesn't judge anything. There is no "good" or "bad" -- they are simply two sides of the same coin.

WU WEI / GO WITH THE GRAIN 10-18
Westerners equate yielding with weakness and overcoming adversity with strength. Taoists view the contrary: They value "going with the grain," which often leads us to the opposite answer to the same question.

WU CHANG / CONTINUOUS CHANGE 19-27
Westerners believe the past determines the present and that change connects static moments. If Westerners assumed instead that the present determines the present, and that change is continuous, as the Taoist perspective suggests, Westerners would choose different courses of action.

SHANG BING WU BING / INDIRECT ACTION 28-36
Westerners prefer to meet an adversary head-on; the Eastern preference for indirect action often seems impractical, deceitful, or indicative of weakness. Embracing indirect action puts powerful new tactics into Western hands.


So, my question to those in this community which are very familiar with "Eastern Thinking" is:

How do you deal with this 36 stretegems - which seems to be very important for Chinese people and maybe for most asian people also - out of a "SF-view"?

For me this is an important question to understand better the connection between SF and "Asian Thinking", because: "Chinese culture possesses the richest and most systematic knowledge of stratagems, It easily functions as the best mirror for the strategic behaviour of all people on earth." (Chio Chien, Former Head of Departement of Antropology, Chinese University of HongKong)

[Hans-Peter Korn]

One more idea about summing up problem focus vs. SF:

"Problem focused solution orientation" (which is broadly used e.g. in management) means "to make sound in the west to strike in the west".
"Solution focused problem handling" means "to make sound in the east to strike in the west".

Cheers,
Hans-Peter

[Paolo Terni]

Hi Hans-Peter!
Funny you mention the 6th stratagem: it is very important in Nardone's approach, I sensed it was very important in SF too, but I could not quite put the finger on specifically how.
You did a great job in coming up with a working example.
I loved the way you summed up problem focus vs. Sf!

Definitely something to talk about in Texel!

Cheers,
Paolo

[Hans-Peter Korn]

Interesting view, to see "the enemy" as that part which is keeping the problem going, Paolo!

I checked the 36 strategems how it is possible to apply this view. For some it is very easy and helpful - and leads me to some new ideas how SF also can be seen... for some it seems for me to be more difficult... but as a consequence I became very motivated to spend more time to reflect on it...

((How would it be to spend at Texel some time for such reflections? I think, the "36 strategems" fits good to the SOL'09 lead topic "connections".))

Here a working example:

"Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west" (the 6th strategem) for me stands for this:
To reach a specific goal it may be useful to pull the awareness away from "reaching the goal".
We know, magician use this. And also in SF (as a specific magicians discipline) we do this e.g. with the scaling.
Asking: "Oh - a three! What does it make that it is a three and not a two or one? How did you manage it?" we "make sound in the east". And at the same time we support the client to collect a lot of insights about success-patterns which are useful to "strike the west". And at the end we ask him to "strike the west" saying: "Oh - that's a lot of already working stuff! What of all this stuff can you use to go from the three to a four?"

So, "problem focus" is "to make sound in the west to strike in the west". SF is "to make sound in the east to strike in the west".

Cheers
Hans-Peter

[Paolo Terni]

What an interesting question, Hans-Peter!

Giorgio Nardone, who trained with Watzlawick, has been using the 36 stratagems as guidelines for handing out paradoxical instructions in his interventons, which he calls "strategic dialogue".
He also wrote a book about it, "cavalcare la propria tigre", "riding your own tiger".
Definitely a different kind of beast from SF.

However, as always, we can read our presuppositions in everything we see.
For example, "killing with a borrowed knife" to me is a perfectly good example of "making use of what is there" (in the book of the 36 stratagems, the "borrowed knife" is the adversary's weapon).
Stratagem #5, "calmly wait for the enemy to exhaust himself" can be seen as the initial phase of a SF conversation, where you let the client sort of vent, until he / she feels heard (Insoo Kim Berg), and we can then move on to a solution-focused conversation.

IN a way "the enemy" is the part that is keeping the problem going, even though it has a positive intention (this is my own interpretation of O'Hanlon's Integrative Therapy); if you see things from this perspective, I think the whole thing can make some sense even in SF settings.

Just some random thoughts, the topic would require years of research!!

Thanks again for asking a very intriguing question!

Cheers,
Paolo