This article was written by L. John Jones, and though he tends to be full of himself his thoughts are really interesting so I edited it and put in a Sun Tzu quote. Enjoy!
Sometime during my teenage years I decided that my personal motto would be "to have my friends always underestimate my virtues and my enemies to always overestimate my faults". I didn't coin this phrase myself but I borrowed it from Mario Puzo’s famous character, Don Corleone, in his novel, ‘The Godfather’. I have come to believe that this is the greatest advantage that a human being can have over others, be they friend or foe: that their true worth should be underestimated and their inevitable blemishes overestimated. Instead of correcting the mistaken assessment, Do Nothing; sometimes I will even go as far as to even stoke the fires and encourage an erroneous approximation of myself. If a friend does not appreciate the full measure of my virtues or an enemy has over estimated my faults, they are at a serious disadvantage to me, so I always try to remind myself to keep things as they are. It is however very difficult not to assert oneself in such situations because most human beings naturally desire to have their full worth appreciated by others. Perhaps I am a bit fortunate in this because I am one of those people that enjoys shocking people constantly; excelling in doing things that they did not think were possible for me to do. Consequently I have decided that it is necessary for me to ensure that both my allies and adversaries never have an accurate measure of what I am fully capable of, what my true intentions, actual goals and inner motivations really are; always be prepared for the unexpected, the awe inspiring and the baffling when it has to do with me (...okay it appears he’s blowing a horn here...ignore this hubris filled narrator when the horn blows – KAA).
At first it appears that allowing people to hold a wrong assessment of you is not just ill advised and irresponsible but reduces your prospects with them; or does it? Underestimated virtues and overestimated faults have been the cause of a great many disappointments and innumerable huge surprises and account for the victories or losses of a myriad battles. They remain an inextricable part of fiction and non-fiction tales as well as movie plot twists. They are a recurring theme in epic anime saga’s that have bleached their mark on our psyche and inspire true-life tales of impossible triumphs. If you assess my virtues and faults inaccurately I have a great advantage over you because you will always be unprepared when I prove that I am more virtuous or less faulty than you thought. This fits in perfectly with what ‘our’ favorite Chinese philosopher has to say, “All [warfare] is based on deception, hence when able to attack, we must seem unable, when using our forces, we must seem inactive, when we are near we must seem far away and [vice versa]”. This is the hallmark of excellence, the ability to deceive people without lying to them but rather allowing (or encouraging) them to lie to themselves about you. It involves using the other persons preconceptions, biases, attitudes, upbringing, observable traits and the like against them in such a way that is simply reaffirming what they expect of you, instead of what you can really do – until the point where it is advantageous for you to play your hand!
To fully explain this concept would be impossible in a three-paragraph blog so I encourage you to deliberate more on this. Essentially this is how magicians create illusions and seasoned poker players always seem to win – they play on your perceptions and misdirect you from the truth about what they are actually doing (or holding) so that your assessment of what is going on is completely wrong. It is important for every Business Mind to appreciate the power of ‘intentional misdirection’ in order to maintain a critical advantage over any competition. Never ever make the mistake of putting all your cards on the table, rather put up your most useless cards first and wait until the advantageous moment to reveal your ace in the hole. But before you can create illusions on your virtues and faults you must first know yourself completely – you must be completely honest about your capabilities and limitations to yourself before you can try to make others assess them inaccurately. When you are completely aware of what you are truly capable of then can you truly become a master strategist who excels at befuddling other people's expectations of you. There is nothing I love to hear more than statements like, “I know you Jones, you can’t do it”, “I have you all figured out Jones” or something along those lines – I laugh with joy inside because I know that there is only one entity that knows me through and through. Anybody else who thinks they have ‘read’ me accurately is only being misled and Yes, preparing to be SHOCKED!
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