Implementing To Kill with a Borrowed Knife - 36 Strategies
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Implementing To Kill with a Borrowed Knife - 36 Strategies
"To Kill with a Borrowed Knife" is actually using another people’s hand to achieve the objective that you want. Usually it means that the other person has the resources, that you do not have, which is needed to achieve the objective, a form of leveraging. This allows one to achieve an objective without incurring high costs.
What are the factors that would lead to the successful implementation of "To Kill with a Borrowed Knife"?
- Alignment of Goals and Lender’s Gain
- Possession and Nature of Knife
Alignment of Goals and Lender’s Gain
You must choose a lender base on whether his goals are aligned with yours and also does he gain a lot to compensate for his effort. If his goals are not aligned with yours, no matter how much resources he has, he would still not lend you his ‘knife’.
If the lender does not gain or gain little from achieving the objective, that you want him to capture, he would not do it. He would rather choose an opportune time where he can gain more. Take note that it must be gain, the lender cannot have a loss unless it is a choice of which loss is smaller.
Using the illustration, Tian Chang has only gain and nothing to lose by making his political enemy attack State of Wu instead of State of Qi. If there is a chance that he might lose his official position or being punished, he would not have persuaded Lord of Qi to change target. The other states that Zi Gong persuaded carried out what Zi Gong planned because the chances of loss are eliminated for most of them.
Possession and Nature of Knife
There is a need to determine if the person’s resource is adequate enough to achieve your objective. If his resources are limited or worst he does not have much control of it, he cannot do much to achieve the objective. In the illustration, if the State of Wu does not have the strength to match that of State of Qi, Zi Gong would not have use Wu. Or for instance if the control of the army is not in Lord of State of Wu, Zi Gong would not have achieved his objective as well.
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