19. Remove the Firewood Under the Cooking Pot
“Remove the firewood under the cooking pot” is a phrase where you try to interfere your enemies day to day operation in order to win, for how can one cook when the firewood is gone. Hinder your enemy’s daily routines, duties, supplies and equipments in order make your enemies weak and vulnerable. Sabotage their business indirectly in order to throw confusion and weaken the enemy to a state where you can directly compete against them.
Remove things that can hurt the enemy. Steal the enemy’s resources to hinder the enemy. Seize the enemy’s morale in order to slow down the enemy. Take the enemy’s most able people to stop the enemy. This stratagem is all about removing things that can turn against your enemy. That is what it means to “remove the firewood under the cooking pot“.
8 Comments
Yes, the best way in doing this is of course courting their employees away to work with us! That always work, plus you’ll get valuable insider information too..
David,
I have always enjoyed your content, but I’ll admit I’ve had a hard time becoming engaged by the recent stratagems with respect to getting rid of and beating enemies.
Wouldn’t a great way to defeat the enemy (or competition) be just to be aware of what their doing, and then to focus primarily on yourself and how you can provide a better business to the consumers in that respective niche.
I have never been a proponent of making any enemies, though I suspect it’s bound to happen, but other than studying what makes them successful (provided they are), I just think much of the energy spent utilizing some of these stratagems would be put to better use building a better business for yourself.
I think after you remove the fire, you are supposed to burn something up… I read that somewhere, I think in the Pyromaniac’s Bible perhaps.
Ryan- You must look at the 36 stratagems defensively and offensively. If you don’t want to execute them you must at least now about them to prevent them.
“If you immediately know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.” In which case, it’s too late to remove the firewood!
Dude,may I suggest you place your posts in a date/month/year sorta format.So that your readers won’t haveta keep clickin’ on “older posts” vigorously in order to read the rest of ‘em.Thanks.
Michelle- sounds interesting. There’s a pyromaniac bible!?
Dcr- Yea, but there’s always breakfast, lunch and dinner which occurs everyday
YT- I want to make my old post look refreshing and new
There’s a Bible for everything… I am sure there’s one out there for pyromaniacs too.