The 36 Strategies: #15. Train a tiger to leave the mountains

The 36 Strategies are almost as famous as Sun 's Art of War. Where the AoW tries to lay out the landscape of strategic thought, the 36 Stategies is a pithy way of hitting the highlights by way of teaching by example. Not many of us are going to be plotting corporate takeovers, but chances are that someone is going to do something that is going to influence you, try to get you to do something, or otherwise impact you. It's important to be able to recognize strategies while they are in the making when they are directed at you.

You don't go into the fastness of a powerful opponents' territory, but induce them to come out of their stronghold.

The meaning of this strategy is to not mess with someone what he is in a position of power. You have to draw him out to where he'll be exposed and vunerable. There are many ways to do this, which includes others from the 36 Strategies. You can appeal to greed, by putting something of apparant value out in the open as bait. You can use fear, by threatening something the tiger hold dear. The key point is to get the opponent to leave safety of his own power base.