The 33 Strategies of War (79 page)

The key to the fait accompli strategy is to act fast and without discussion. If you reveal your intentions before taking action, you will open yourself to a slew of criticisms, analyses, and questions: "How dare you think of taking that bite! Be happy with what you have!" It is part of people's conservatism to prefer endless discussion to action. You must bypass this with a rapid seizure of your target. The discussion is foreclosed. No matter how small your bite, taking it also distinguishes you from the crowd and earns you respect and weight.

When Frederick the Great became king of Prussia in 1740, Prussia was a minor European power. Frederick's father had built up the Prussian army, at great expense, but had never really used it; the minute he put the army in play, he knew, the other European powers would have united against him, fearing any threat to the status quo. Frederick, though massively ambitious, understood what had kept his father in check.

The same year he took the throne, however, an opportunity presented itself. Prussia's great nemesis was Austria, where a new leader, Maria Theresa, had recently become empress. There were many who questioned her legitimacy, though, and Frederick decided to exploit this political instability by moving his army into the small Austrian province of Silesia. Maria Theresa, wanting to prove her toughness, decided to fight to take it back. The war lasted several years--but Frederick had judged the moment well; he finally threatened to take more territory than Silesia alone, and in the end the empress sued for peace.

All the conceptions born of impatience and aimed at obtaining speedy victory could only be gross errors.... It was necessary to accumulate thousands of small victories to turn them into a great success.

G
ENERAL
V
O
N
GUYEN
G
IAP
, 1911-

Frederick would repeat this strategy again and again, taking over small states here and there that weren't worth fighting for, at least not hard. In this way, almost before anyone noticed, he made Prussia a great power. Had he begun by invading some larger territory, he would have shown his ambitions too clearly and brought down upon himself an alliance of powers determined to maintain the status quo. The key to his piecemeal strategy was an opportunity that fell into his lap. Austria was at a weak moment; Silesia was small, yet by incorporating this neighboring state, Prussia enriched its resources and put itself in position for further growth. The two combined gave him momentum and allowed him space to slowly expand from small to large.

The problem that many of us face is that we have great dreams and ambitions. Caught up in the emotions of our dreams and the vastness of our desires, we find it very difficult to focus on the small, tedious steps usually necessary to attain them. We tend to think in terms of giant leaps toward our goals. But in the social world as in nature, anything of size and stability grows slowly. The piecemeal strategy is the perfect antidote to our natural impatience: it focuses us on something small and immediate, a first bite, then how and where a second bite can get us closer to our ultimate objective. It forces us to think in terms of a process, a sequence of connected steps and actions, no matter how small, which has immeasurable psychological benefits as well. Too often the magnitude of our desires overwhelms us; taking that small first step makes them seem realizable. There is nothing more therapeutic than action.

In plotting this strategy, be attentive to sudden opportunities and to your enemies' momentary crises and weaknesses. Do not be tempted, however, to try to take anything large; bite off more than you can chew and you will be consumed with problems and disproportionately discouraged if you fail to cope with them.

The fait accompli strategy is often the best way to take control of a project that would be ruined by divided leadership. In almost every film Alfred Hitchcock made, he had to go through the same wars, gradually wresting control of the film from the producer, the actors, and the rest of the team. His struggles with screenwriters were a microcosm of the larger war. Hitchcock always wanted his vision for a film to be exactly reflected in the script, but too firm a hand on his writer's neck would get him nothing except resentment and mediocre work. So instead he moved slowly, starting out by giving the writer room to work loosely off his notes, then asking for revisions that shaped the script his way. His control became obvious only gradually, and by that time the writer was emotionally tied to the project and, however frustrated, was working for his approval. A very patient man, Hitchcock let his power plays unfold over time, so that producer, writer, and stars understood the completeness of his domination only when the film was finished.

To gain control of any project, you must be willing to make time your ally. If you start out with complete control, you sap people's spirit and stir up envy and resentment. So begin by generating the illusion that you're all working together on a team effort; then slowly nibble away. If in the process you make people angry, do not worry. That's just a sign that their emotions are engaged, which means they can be manipulated.

Finally, the use of the piecemeal strategy to disguise your aggressive intentions is invaluable in these political times, but in masking your manipulations you can never go too far. So when you take a bite, even a small one, make a show of acting out of self-defense. It also helps to appear as the underdog. Give the impression your objectives are limited by taking a substantial pause between bites--exploiting people's short attention spans--while proclaiming to one and all that you are a person of peace. In fact, it would be the height of wisdom to make your bite a little larger upon occasion and then giving back some of what you have taken. People see only your generosity and your limited actions, not the steadily increasing empire you are amassing.

Authority: To multiply small successes is precisely to build one treasure after another. In time one becomes rich without realizing how it has come about.

--Frederick the Great (1712-1786)

REVERSAL

Should you see or suspect that you yourself are being attacked bite by bite, your only counterstrategy is to prevent any further progress or faits accomplis. A quick and forceful response will usually be enough to discourage the nibblers, who often resort to this strategy out of weakness and cannot afford many battles. If they are tougher and more ambitious, like Frederick the Great, that forceful response becomes more crucial still. Letting them get away with their bites, however small, is too dangerous--nip them in the bud.

Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds. Anything else is ineffective communication, self-indulgent talk. Learn to infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details, luring people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they've gotten there by themselves. Some you can trick by cloaking your extraordinary ideas in ordinary forms; others, more resistant and dull, must be awoken with extreme language that bristles with newness. At all cost, avoid language that is static, preachy, and overly personal. Make your words a spark for action, not passive contemplation.

VISCERAL COMMUNICATION

To work with the film director Alfred Hitchcock for the first time was generally a disconcerting experience. He did not like to talk much on the sets of his movies--just the occasional sardonic and witty remark. Was he deliberately secretive? Or just quiet? And how could someone direct a film, which entails ordering so many people about, without talking a lot and giving explicit instructions?

This peculiarity of Hitchcock's was most troublesome for his actors. Many of them were used to film directors coddling them, discussing in detail the characters they were to play and how to get into the role. Hitchcock did none of this. In rehearsals he said very little; on the set, too, actors would glance over at him for his approval only to find him napping or looking bored. According to the actress Thelma Ritter, "If Hitchcock liked what you did, he said nothing. If he didn't, he looked like he was going to throw up." And yet somehow, in his own indirect way, he would get his actors to do precisely what he wanted.

The most superficial way of trying to influence others is through talk that has nothing real behind it. The influence produced by such mere tongue wagging must necessarily remain insignificant.

T
HE
I C
HING
, C
HINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

On the first day of shooting for
The 39 Steps
in 1935, Hitchcock's two leads, Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat, arrived on the set a little tense. That day they were to act in one of the movie's more complex scenes: playing relative strangers who, however, had gotten handcuffed together earlier in the plot and, still handcuffed, were forced to run through the Scottish countryside (actually a sound stage) to escape the film's villains. Hitchcock had given them no real sign of how he wanted them to act the scene. Carroll in particular was bothered by the director's behavior. This English actress, one of the most elegant film stars of the period, had spent much of her career in Hollywood, where directors had treated her like royalty; Hitchcock, on the other hand, was distant, hard to figure out. She had decided to play the scene with an air of dignity and reserve, the way she thought a lady would respond to the situation of being handcuffed to a strange man. To get over her nervousness, she chatted warmly with Donat, trying to put both him and herself in a collaborative mood.

When Hitchcock arrived on set, he explained the scene to the two actors, snapped a pair of handcuffs on them, and proceeded to lead them through the set, across a dummy bridge and among other props. Then, in the middle of this demonstration, he was suddenly called away to attend to a technical matter. He would return soon; they should take a break. He felt in his pockets for the key to the handcuffs--but no, he must have mislaid it, and off he hurried, ostensibly to find the key. Hours went by. Donat and Carroll became increasingly frustrated and embarrassed; suddenly they had no control, a most unusual feeling for two stars on set. While even the humblest crew members were free to go about their business, the two stars were shackled together. Their forced intimacy and discomfort made their earlier banter impossible. They could not even go to the bathroom. It was humiliating.

Hitchcock returned in the afternoon--he had found the key. Shooting began, but as the actors went to work, it was hard for them to get over the experience of that day; the movie stars' usual cool unflappability was gone. Carroll had forgotten all her ideas about how to play the scene. And yet, despite her and Donat's anger, the scene seemed to flow with unexpected naturalness. Now they knew what it was like to be tied together; they had
felt
the awkwardness, so there was no need to act it. It came from within.

Four years later Hitchcock made
Rebecca
, with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Fontaine, at twenty-one, was taking her first leading role and was horribly nervous about playing opposite Olivier, who was widely recognized as an actor of genius. Another director might have eased her insecurities, but Hitchcock was seemingly doing the opposite. He chose to pass along gossip from the rest of the cast and crew: no one thought she was up to the job, he told her, and Olivier had really wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh, to get her part. Fontaine felt terrified, isolated, unsure--exactly the qualities of her character in the film. She hardly needed to act. And her memorable performance in
Rebecca
was the start of a glorious career.

When Hitchcock made
The Paradine Case
, in 1947, his leading lady, Ann Todd, was appearing in her first Hollywood movie and found it hard to relax. So in the silence on set before the director called, "Action!" Hitchcock would tell her a particularly salacious story that would make her laugh or gasp in shock. Before one scene in which she had to lie on a bed in an elegant nightgown, Hitchcock suddenly jumped on her, yelling, "Relax!" Antics like this made it easy for her to let go of her inhibitions and be more natural.

When you are trying to communicate and can't find the point in the experience of the other party at which he can receive and understand, then, you must create the experience for him. I was trying to explain to two staff organizers in training how their problems in their community arose because they had gone outside the experience of their people: that when you go outside anyone's experience not only do you not communicate, you cause confusion. They had earnest, intelligent expressions on their faces and were verbally and visually agreeing and understanding, but I knew they really didn't understand and that I was not communicating. I had not got into their experience. So I had to give them an experience.

R
ULES FOR
R
ADICALS
,
S
AUL
D. A
LINSKY
, 1971

When cast and crew were tired on set, or when they'd gotten too casual and were chatting rather than concentrating on their work, Hitchcock would never yell or complain. Instead he might smash a lightbulb with his fist or throw his teacup against a wall; everyone would quickly sober up and recover his or her focus.

Clearly Hitchcock mistrusted language and explanation, preferring action to words as a way of communicating, and this preference extended to the form and content of his films. That gave his screenwriters a particularly hard time; after all, putting the film into words was their job. In story meetings Hitchcock would discuss the ideas he was interested in--themes like people's doubleness, their capacity for both good and evil, the fact that no one in this world is truly innocent. The writers would produce pages of dialog expressing these ideas elegantly and subtly, only to find them edited out in favor of actions and images. In
Vertigo
(1958) and
Psycho
(1960), for example, Hitchcock inserted mirrors in many scenes; in
Spellbound
(1945) it was shots of ski tracks and other kinds of parallel lines; the murder in
Strangers on a Train
(1951) was revealed through its reflection in a pair of glasses. For Hitchcock, evidently, images like these revealed his ideas of the doubleness in the human soul better than words did, but on paper this seemed somewhat contrived.

On set, the producers of Hitchcock's films often watched in bewilderment as the director moved the camera, not the actors, to stage his scenes. It seemed to make no sense, as if he loved the technical side of filmmaking more than dialog and the human presence. Nor could editors fathom his obsession with sounds, colors, the size of the actors' heads within the frame, the speed with which people moved--he seemed to favor these endless visual details over the story itself.

The letter set Cyrus thinking of the means by which he could most effectively persuade the Persians to revolt, and his deliberations led him to adopt the following plan, which he found best suited to his purpose. He wrote on a roll of parchment that Astyages had appointed him to command the Persian army; then he summoned an assembly of the Persians, opened the roll in their presence and read out what he had written. "And now," he added, "I have an order for you: every man is to appear on parade with a billhook."...The order was obeyed. All the men assembled with their billhooks, and Cyrus' next command was that before the day was out they should clear a certain piece of rough land full of thorn bushes, about eighteen or twenty furlongs square. This too was done, whereupon Cyrus issued the further order that they should present themselves again on the following day, after having taken a bath. Meanwhile Cyrus collected and slaughtered all his father's goats, sheep, and oxen in preparation for entertaining the whole Persian army at a banquet, together with the best wine and bread he could procure. The next day the guests assembled, and were told to sit down on the grass and enjoy themselves. After the meal Cyrus asked them which they preferred--yesterday's work or today's amusement; and they replied that it was indeed a far cry from the previous day's misery to their present pleasures. This was the answer which Cyrus wanted; he seized upon it at once and proceeded to lay bare what he had in mind. "Men of Persia," he said, "listen to me: obey my orders, and you will be able to enjoy a thousand pleasures as good as this without ever turning your hands to menial labour; but, if you disobey, yesterday's task will be the pattern of innumerable others you will be forced to perform. Take my advice and win your freedom. I am the man destined to undertake your liberation, and it is my belief that you are a match for the Medes in war as in everything else. It is the truth I tell you. Do not delay, but fling off the yoke of Astyages at once." The Persians had long resented their subjection to the Medes. At last they had found a leader, and welcomed with enthusiasm the prospect of liberty.

T
HE
H
ISTORIES
,
H
ERODOTUS
, 484-432
B.C.

And then the film would be a finished product, and suddenly everything that had seemed peculiar about his method made perfect sense. Audiences often responded to Hitchcock's films more deeply than they did to the work of any other director. The images, the pacing, the camera movements, swept them along and got under their skin. A Hitchcock film was not just seen, it was experienced, and it stayed in the mind long after the viewing.

Interpretation

In interviews Hitchcock often told a story about his childhood: When he was around six, his father, upset at something he had done, sent him to the local police station with a note. The officer on duty read the note and locked little Alfred in a cell, telling him, "This is what we do to naughty boys." He was released after just a few minutes, but the experience marked him indelibly. Had his father yelled at him, as most boys' fathers did, he would have become defensive and rebellious. But leaving him alone, surrounded by frightening authority figures, in a dark cell, with its unfamiliar smells--that was a much more powerful way to communicate. As Hitchcock discovered, to teach people a lesson, to really alter their behavior, you must alter their experience, aim at their emotions, inject unforgettable images into their minds, shake them up. Unless you are supremely eloquent, it is hard to accomplish this through words and direct expression. There are simply too many people talking at us, trying to persuade us of this or that. Words become part of this noise, and we either tune them out or become even more resistant.

To communicate in a deep and real way, you must bring people back to their childhood, when they were less defensive and more impressed by sounds, images, actions, a world of preverbal communication. It requires speaking a kind of language composed of actions, all strategically designed to effect people's moods and emotions, what they can least control. That is precisely the language Hitchcock developed and perfected over the years. With actors he wanted to get the most natural performance out of them, in essence get them
not
to act. To tell them to relax or be natural would have been absurd; it would only have made them more awkward and defensive than they already were. Instead, just as his father had gotten him to feel terror in a London police station, he got them to
feel
the emotions of the movie: frustration, isolation, loss of inhibition. (Of course he hadn't mislaid the handcuffs' key somewhere on the set of
The 39 Steps
, as Donat later found out; the supposed loss was a strategy.) Instead of prodding actors with irritating words, which come from the outside and are pushed away, Hitchcock made these feelings part of their inner experience--and this communicated immediately onscreen. With audiences, too, Hitchcock never preached a message. Instead he used the visual power of film to return them to that childlike state when images and compelling symbols had such a visceral effect.

It is imperative in life's battles to be able to communicate your ideas to people, to be able to alter their behavior. Communication is a form of warfare. Your enemies here are defensive; they want to be left alone with their preexisting prejudices and beliefs. The more deeply you penetrate their defenses, the more you occupy their mental space, the more effectively you are communicating. In verbal terms, most people wage a kind of medieval warfare, using words, pleas, and calls for attention like battle-axes and clubs to hit people over the head. But in being so direct, they only make their targets more resistant. Instead you must learn to fight indirectly and unconventionally, tricking people into lowering their defenses--hitting their emotions, altering their experience, dazzling them with images, powerful symbols, and visceral sensory cues. Bringing them back to that childlike state when they were more vulnerable and fluid, the communicated idea penetrates deep behind their defenses. Because you are not fighting the usual way, you will have an unusual power.