Tian Dan was preparing to attack the Di people, and went to visit Master Luzhong. Master Luzhong said, "General, if you attack the Di, you will not take them." Tian Dan said, "I once held an inner city of five li and an outer city of seven li, leading the remnants of a defeated army, and defeated Yan with its ten-thousand chariots, recovering the lost territories of Qi. Now if I attack the Di and cannot take them, why is that?" He mounted his carriage without taking leave and departed, then immediately attacked the Di, but after three months he had still not conquered them. The children of Qi sang a ballad: "A great cap like a winnowing basket, a long sword propping the chin—attacking the Di, we cannot take them, only piling bleached bones into mounds." Only then did Tian Dan grow afraid, and went to ask Master Luzhong, saying, "Sir, you said I could not take the Di—please let me hear your reasoning." Master Luzhong said, "When the General was at Jimo, when seated you wove grass baskets, when standing you grasped a spade, and urged the soldiers on, saying: 'There is no retreat! The ancestral temples are doomed! Our souls are scattered! Where can we go!' At that time, the General had the resolve to die, and the soldiers had no thought of survival. Hearing your words, there was not one who did not wipe away tears and raise his arms, eager to fight to the death. That is why you could defeat Yan. But now the General has the tribute of Ye Yi to the east, and the pleasures of the Zi River to the west, a golden belt hung across you as you gallop between the Zi and the Mian—knowing only the joy of living, without the resolve to die, and therefore you cannot prevail." Tian Dan said, "I have such thoughts, and you, Sir, already know them." The next day, he roused his spirit, inspected the city walls, stood where arrows and stones fell thick, and personally seized the drumstick to beat the drum—only then were the Di people conquered.
💡 商战启示录
Tian Dan's failure and subsequent success in attacking Di reveals the dialectical relationship between "crisis awareness" and "comfort zones" in commercial warfare. Startups often ignite an all-hands, back-against-the-wall wolf-like tenacity precisely because of resource scarcity—much like Tian Dan in Jimo, who, possessing "no will to live," crushed a formidable enemy with the momentum of burning one's boats. Yet once a company achieves staged success, it easily sinks into the complacent state of "the luxuries of Yi and the pleasures of Zi" —management indulges in existing market share, fat profits, and plush office environments, while employees lose their sense of urgency, causing execution to unravel, just as Tian Dan failed to take Di for three months. A classic case is Nokia: after reaching the summit in the feature-phone era, it wallowed in hardware superiority, neglected the disruptive innovation of the smartphone ecosystem, and was ultimately routed by Apple and the Android camp. Conversely, Huawei's Ren Zhengfei has always stressed that "the next company to fall may be Huawei," employing a "Blue Army mechanism" for self-critique to sustain crisis awareness, enabling continuous breakthroughs in telecommunications and terminal devices. Tian Dan ultimately "steeled his spirit, circled the city walls, and stood amid flying stones and arrows," reclaiming the ethos of leading from the front—a reminder to business leaders that the greatest risk after success is not external rivals, but the inertia bred within. Leaders must proactively step out of their comfort zones, rebuild urgency, and personally go to the front lines (as Lei Jun did in his early days, personally overseeing Xiaomi's community operations) to guide their teams in conquering the next "City of Di."