3. Recognize the tradeoffs and advantages of illegibility and informality. It can be harder to map, manage, and communicate – but it just might work better. For people of certain Western management traditions, this can be very hard to get your mind around. You might consider looking at how some non-Western companies or pre-Industrial Western governments did things for inspiration. It can genuinely work much better in many cases.
4. Recognize when illegibility is killing you. Perhaps differing from Rao, I think legibility can be very valuable in the right circumstances. The failure cases are numerous and potentially disastrous, that’s true. But after a certain point of scale in many domains, it becomes impossible to do quality control or get predictable results without some enforced legibility. Toyota has done of the best work in this regard, by simultaneously having a number of informal and illegible processes around respect and culture and information flow, and having highly legible flowcharts of how Toyota automobiles are made and relentlessly working to improve all the components of them.
Since at least Roman times, organizations, societies, and individuals swing back and forth between more legibility and more illegibility in how they do things.
If anything, the opposing forces of legibility and illegibility will cycle even after with today’s technology and entrepreneurship cycles. You should study and understand the roots and instincts of both, the advantages and disadvantages of both, and harness and utilize both appropriately to reach your goals.
Dubious Battle #7: The Three Paths to Power
JAPAN'S MASTER SWORDSMAN ON HIS DEATHBED
The calligraphy is still beautiful, but if you look at the 370-year-old scroll, you can tell it was written by the hand of a dying man.
21 precepts are written vertically top-to-bottom along the ancient scroll.
Each starts with strong and bold brushstrokes, but each fades as it gets towards the bottom.
The last of the precepts – Never stray from the Way – is written in the lightest ink of all, the most erratic in the brushstrokes… this great man, undefeated in over 60 duels, the heralded master artist, the founder of the Niten Ichi-Ryu school of swordsmanship, he is dying.
The wisdom and power in those hands is still visible today, nearly four centuries later, but studying the original handwriting brings to heart a mix of sadness and reverence.
Ah, but were he alive, he would chastise one for feeling sadness!
The first precept –
Accept everything just the way it is.
The second precept –
Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
The third precept –
Do not give preference to anything among all things.
The fourth precept –
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Within a week of writing The Way of Walking Alone, Miyamoto Musashi would die at 61 years old. It was his final testament.
***
A SHARP LIGHTNING ROD AS A POLITICAL STATEMENT
He would have been 40 or 41 years old when he first came across electrical experiments in 1746. Right away, he became obsessed by them, and within four years, he would theorize that electrical batteries were possible, that electricity was lightning, and – most importantly – developed potential experiments for testing the idea.
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin tested the idea himself – looking to see if a kite could draw lightning into a Leyden jar, a primitive sort of battery.
It worked.
He also drew up specifications for a lightning rod to protect buildings from damage by lightning.
Hilariously – and this is telling of this final chapter to come – the issue became politicized when the King of England advocated a blunt-tipped lightning rod, and Franklin and the Americans disagreed.
From Idea Finder: The History of the Lightning Rod –
“Franklin began to advocate lightning rods that had sharp points. His English colleagues favored blunt-tipped lightning rods, reasoning that sharp ones attracted lightning and increased the risk of strikes; they thought blunt rods were less likely to be struck. King George III had his palace equipped with a blunt lightning rod. When it came time to equip the colonies' buildings with lightning rods, the decision became a political statement. The favored pointed lightning rod expressed support for Franklin's theories of protecting public buildings and the rejection of theories supported by the King. The English thought this was just another way for the flourishing colonies to be disobedient to them.
“Franklin's lightning rods could soon be found protecting many buildings and homes. The lightning rod constructed on the dome of the State House in Maryland was the largest "Franklin" lightning rod ever attached to a public or private building in Ben's lifetime. It was built in accord with his recommendations and has had only one recorded instance of lightning damage. The pointed lightning rod placed on the State House and other buildings became a symbol of the ingenuity and independence of a young, thriving nation, as well as the intellect and inventiveness of Benjamin Franklin.”
***
THE BETRAYAL
He was 29 years old when he left to accompany the expedition.
10,000 Greek mercenaries had joined Cyrus the Younger’s side side of the Persian Civil War against his brother, serving under the command of Clearchus the Spartan.
The Greek mercenaries overpowered and wrought havoc on the Persians in the key opening battle of the campaign, but Cyrus had lead a desperate – perhaps foolish – heroic charge against his brother’s position, and had been cut down by his brother’s bodyguards.
10,000 Greeks thus found themselves stranded in the middle of Persia.
Rejecting calls for surrender, they began to fight their way out of Persia – and won their first engagements after Cyrus’s death as well.
Seeing they could not defeat the Greeks by direct force, the Persians offered a truce and to peacefully escort the Greeks out of Persia.
Some weeks into the march out of Persia, all seemed peaceful and the Persians were friendly enough. When an invitation came to the senior officers of a banquet helped by the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, they accepted.
“After this conversation Tissaphernes, with kindliest expression, invited Clearchus to remain with him at the time, and entertained him at dinner. Next day Clearchus returned to the camp, and made no secret of his persuasion that he at any rate stood high in the affections of Tissaphernes, and he reported what he had said, insisting that those invited ought to go to Tissaphernes… […] Some of the soldiers protested: the captains and generals had better not all go; it was better not to put too much confidence in Tissaphernes. But Clearchus insisted so strongly that finally it was arranged for five generals to go and twenty captains. These were accompanied by about two hundred of the other soldiers…”
It was a trap.
“On arrival at the doors of Tissaphernes's quarters the generals were summoned inside. They were Proxenus the Boeotian, Menon the Thessalian, Agias the Arcadian, Clearchus the Laconian, and Socrates the Achaean; while the captains remained at the doors. Not long after that, at one and the same signal, those within were seized and those without cut down; after which some of the barbarian horsemen galloped over the plain, killing every Hellene [Greek] they encountered, bond or free. The Hellenes, as they looked from the camp, viewed that strange horsemanship with surprise, and could not explain to themselves what it all meant, until Nicarchus the Arcadian came tearing along for bare life with a wound in the belly, and clutching his protruding entrails in his hands. He told them all that had happened. Instantly the Hellenes ran to their arms, one and all, in utter consternation, and fully expecting that the enemy would instantly be down upon the camp.”
“The generals who were thus seized were taken up to the king and there decapitated.”
***
THE AWAKENING
The 29-year-old continues,
“After the generals had been seized, and the captains and soldiers who formed
their escort had been killed, the Hellenes [Greeks] lay in deep perplexity—a prey to painful reflections. Here were they at the [Persian] king's gates, and on every side environing them were many hostile cities and tribes of men. Who was there now to furnish them with a market? Separated from Hellas by more than a thousand miles, they had not even a guide to point the way. Impassable rivers lay athwart their homeward route, and hemmed them in. Betrayed even by the Asiatics, at whose side they had marched with Cyrus to the attack, they were left in isolation. Without a single mounted trooper to aid them in pursuit: was it not perfectly plain that if they won a battle, their enemies would escape to a man, but if they were beaten themselves, not one soul of them would survive?
“Haunted by such thoughts, and with hearts full of despair, but few of them tasted food that evening; but few of them kindled even a fire, and many never came into camp at all that night, but took their rest where each chanced to be. They could not close their eyes for very pain and yearning after their fatherlands or their parents, the wife or child whom they never expected to look upon again. Such was the plight in which each and all tried to seek repose.”
And then, for the first time in this most famous work – The Anabasis – we meet our narrator:
“Now there was in that host a certain man, an Athenian, Xenophon, who had accompanied Cyrus, neither as a general, nor as an officer, nor yet as a private soldier, but simply on the invitation of an old friend…”
Xenophon, too, lay in a confused and broken state.
They were paralyzed – surrounded – facing hopeless odds. Their veteran generals and captains had been seized and killed by treachery, and everyone was feeling bad for themselves.
Xenophon was trying to sleep, and failing to do so, until a dream comes to him –
“And now in this season of perplexity, he too, with the rest, was in sore distress, and could not sleep; but anon, getting a snatch of sleep, he had a dream. It seemed to him in a vision that there was a storm of thunder and lightning, and a bolt fell on his father's house, and thereupon the house was all in a blaze. He sprung up in terror, and pondering the matter, decided that in part the dream was good: in that he had seen a great light from Zeus, whilst in the midst of toil and danger. But partly too he feared it, for evidently it had come from Zeus the king. And the fire kindled all around—what could that mean but that he was hemmed in by various perplexities, and so could not escape from the country of the king? The full meaning, however, is to be discovered from what happened after the dream.”
And something clicks inside the 29-year-old Xenophon; death is hand unless something is done. He rouses awake and moves –
“This is what took place. As soon as he was fully awake, the first clear thought which came into his head was, Why am I lying here? The night advances; with the day, it is like enough, the enemy will be upon us. If we are to fall into the hands of the king, what is left us but to face the most horrible of sights, and to suffer the most fearful pains, and then to die, insulted, an ignominious death? To defend ourselves—to ward off that fate—not a hand stirs: no one is preparing, none cares; but here we lie, as though it were time to rest and take our ease. I too! what am I waiting for? a general to undertake the work? and from what city? am I waiting till I am older myself and of riper age? older I shall never be, if to-day I betray myself to my enemies.
“Thereupon he got up, and called together first Proxenus's officers; and when they were met, he said: "Sleep, sirs, I cannot, nor can you, I fancy, nor lie here longer, when I see in what straits we are. Our enemy, we may be sure, did not open war upon us till he felt he had everything amply ready; yet none of us shows a corresponding anxiety to enter the lists of battle in the bravest style.
“"And yet, if we yield ourselves and fall into the king's power, need we ask what our fate will be? This man, who, when his own brother, the son of the same parents, was dead, was not content with that, but severed head and hand from the body, and nailed them to a cross. We, then, who have not even the tie of blood in our favour, but who marched against him, meaning to make a slave of him instead of a king—and to slay him if we could: what is likely to be our fate at his hands? Will he not go all lengths so that, by inflicting on us the extreme of ignominy and torture, he may rouse in the rest of mankind a terror of ever marching against him any more? There is no question but that our business is to avoid by all means getting into his clutches.
“"For my part, all the while the truce lasted, I never ceased pitying ourselves and congratulating the king and those with him, as, like a helpless spectator, I surveyed the extent and quality of their territory, the plenteousness of their provisions, the multitude of their dependants, their cattle, their gold, and their apparel. And then to turn and ponder the condition of our soldiers, without part or lot in these good things, except we bought it; few, I knew, had any longer the wherewithal to buy, and yet our oath held us down, so that we could not provide ourselves otherwise than by purchase. I say, as I reasoned thus, there were times when I dreaded the truce more than I now dread war.
“"Now, however, that they have abruptly ended the truce, there is an end also to their own insolence and to our suspicion. All these good things of theirs are now set as prizes for the combatants. To whichsoever of us shall prove the better men, will they fall as guerdons; and the gods themselves are the judges of the strife. The gods, who full surely will be on our side, seeing it is our enemies who have taken their names falsely; whilst we, with much to lure us, yet for our oath's sake, and the gods who were our witnesses, sternly held aloof. So that, it seems to me, we have a right to enter upon this contest with much more heart than our foes; and further, we are possessed of bodies more capable than theirs of bearing cold and heat and labour; souls too we have, by the help of heaven, better and braver; nay, the men themselves are more vulnerable, more mortal, than ourselves, if so be the gods vouchsafe to give us victory once again.
“"Howbeit, for I doubt not elsewhere similar reflections are being made, whatsoever betide, let us not, in heaven's name, wait for others to come and challenge us to noble deeds; let us rather take the lead in stimulating the rest to valour. Show yourselves to be the bravest of officers, and among generals, the worthiest to command. For myself, if you choose to start forwards on this quest, I will follow; or, if you bid me lead you, my age shall be no excuse to stand between me and your orders. At least I am of full age, I take it, to avert misfortune from my own head."
Such were the speaker's words; and the officers, when they heard, all, with one exception, called upon him to put himself at their head.”
***
THE RETURN
It was over a year of a desperate fighting march out of Persia.
The Persians had cavalry, and the Greeks had none; it was a repeated source of misery. And thus, the Greek mercenaries re-formed under Xenophon, and converted their pack animals and footsoldiers trained their own cavalry troops. This is how he received the title The Cavalary Commander which he is so often-called.
The Persians had missile weapons, and the Greeks none; thus, they were forced to innovate, invent, and train with new types of weapons so they could fire back from a distance.
There was a mix of diplomacy, ambushes, raiding, diplomacy, politics, leadership – it was constant strife and struggle to escape from Persia.
It took over a year.
You can imagine, then, Xenophon’s reaction when reaching the home gates of Athens in 399 BC.
Blood-soaked, battle-hardened, a much older 31-year-old than the fresh-faced boy who left to accompany a friend on an adventure, the news must have shocked him –
Your teacher, Socrates, has been executed earlier this year by Hemlock.
What? Why?
He was charged with corrupting the youth and being impious to the Gods.
***
DUBIOUS BATTLE, FINALE: THE THREE PATHS TO POWER
And here we close our series on Dubious Battle .
This series was a different ty
pe of series than past ones we’ve covered in Progression, Machina, and at The Strategic Review – in the past, we’ve looked primarily at best practices, looking for concrete answers on how to do better, how to live better, timeless lessons we can apply to our lives.
Dubious Battle took a different approach – we looked at the long-running and never-ending conflicts across history, those without right or wrong answers; those that recur because of the various tradeoffs between them.
In this final chapter, we look at the Three Paths to Power – mastery over self, mastery over environment, and mastery over others.
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