16. Let loose in order to capture
“Let loose in order to capture” is a phrase where you let your enemies loose in order to capture them without wasting more energy and resources. By exhausting your enemies’ energy by letting them escape, they will start to surrender when they know it is fruitless. Leave them a path to run so they will only focus on that option. When they are exhausted from even their final option, they will eventually surrender and be captured by you.
The reason why it is better to capture than to kill is because you will have to waste more men and resources killing than capturing. Trapping your enemies with no hope of escaping will force the enemies to fight to the death (further wasting your own men and resources). Give the enemies some hope of escaping and then shatter their dreams to wipe out their morale. This strategy is used in order to have a higher success rate of capturing an enemy that can become a part of your own. That is what it means to “let loose in order to capture“.
2 Comments
When this works it works, it usually brings the ultimate voctory. But this is a risky approach because when it does not work out it there may not be a way back … It is important not to underestimate the competition.
Few years back we were more less a sole supplier for X mas promo for one international cosmetic company. They managed the project centrally for several countries in as the years went we were adding more and more countries to the project. At the height of the project we had all our capacity full and then client came with 2 more products for production. If we really wanted we could have done it, but there was eager competitor trying to sneak in. We thought the guys has no exprience with this tough client, so let him do it, burn his fingers and be gone for good .. What happened ? He did well and from next year the project turned into a tender product by product between us and the competitor. It came down to personal tastes of the brand manager, some very ridiculous price war that we refused to fight … That year we ended up doing roughly 50% of the project, a year later we only picket up the peanuts, year later we were out … we simply underestimated the “enemy” as you like to call them here
Yea, you did. You fail to observe and research the enemy. You basically let a wolf snuck into your farm! Every failure has a lesson to be learned so it’s okay since you will come back stronger in the end