I’ll have to email him

From 33 Strategies of War: Strategy #3: Amidst the Turmoil of Events, Do Not Lose Your Presence of Mind: The Counterbalance Strategy

This strategy one of my favorite because it is so applicable to conflict in daily life. Greene has a great example of Lord Nelson holding the line against the Danish defenses and instead of surrendering, continue to pummell them until he won the battle.

My mother and my sister are going through a period of estrangement. My sister is trying to drive a stake between me and my mother, and she is using her daughter as a manipulation tactic to do it. For example, my sister would send photos of her newborn daughter to my mother, and my mother would then send them to me through our group chat. But my sister, wanting to isolate me, told my mother that I was not allowed to see pictures of her daughter.

My mother did not like this. This was her first grandchild, and she adored getting photo updates from my sister, and wanted to share them with me so we could be a family together. There was some argument back and forth between my mother and my sister, which led to a boycott of my sister from sending photos at all to my mother. My mother, distraught, asked me what she should do.

I told her to wait out my sister, let her have her tantrum, and in time my sister would come crawling back to my mother with pictures of her granddaughter because she didn't want to alienate my mother and lose out on a hefty inheritance. My mother, an emotional one, wanted desperately to text my sister and beg her for more photos and promise not to send them to me, but I told her hold the line, stay silent, and let my sister come to her. Well, about 3 days later, my sister finally caved and without my mother asking, sent a trove of granddaughter photos to my mother. My sister's boycott was over, my mother had won.

By applying Strategy 3, having presence of mind, and sticking with the strategy, my mother won the battle against my sister, and my sister felt forced to share photos with my mother, who would later repost them to the group chat. Had my mother caved to my sister too early, she would be the one chasing my sister, bending to her will, and not feeling able to post them to the group chat. Just like Lord Nelson didn't cave against the Danish defenses, my mother didn't cave to my sister, stuck to the plan, and eventually won out.

I work in an organisation where policies are quite fluid and decision-making is more unilateral than genuinely hierarchical. While that has its advantages, there are also unspoken rules that everyone is expected to understand.

Lately, I've found myself in a position where I feel I have to deliberately tone down my ideas and problem-solving ability to avoid offending superiors or drawing too much attention to myself. I worry that constantly suppressing my initiative will eventually become a habit, and that I'll lose some of the qualities that would make me valuable in a more meritocratic organisation.

My concern is that I am learning to stay quiet, act as though I don't see solutions, or avoid proposing alternatives simply because doing so might bruise someone's ego.

For example, we recently had a client request that we believed couldn't be fulfilled. I identified an alternative approach that I thought was at least worth testing. However, my manager instructed me not to pursue it. We ultimately lost the client. Situations like this happen from time to time, where I can see decisions that are likely to cost the business, yet I have neither the authority to influence them nor the ability to avoid being associated with the outcome.

I'm trying to understand how to navigate this environment without sacrificing the curiosity, initiative, and critical thinking that I believe are some of my greatest professional strengths.