The struggle of the reborn prince

"Zhao Yong, you set the start time of the attack in April. If you can't launch the attack according to the scheduled time, whether it is earlier or later, but the army has already assembled, should you force the attack, or cancel the plan?" Zhao Tong asked again. The plan in the Privy Council was called into question.

"Your Majesty, your subordinates have not considered this issue." Zhao Yong admitted honestly.

"Besides, after the West Route Army arrived at Huining Mansion, you planned to use the strategy of besieging the city and fighting for reinforcements. If the enemy's reinforcements arrived first, or wandered away from the battlefield and refused to enter the hub, how would you deal with it? Could it be that you waited indefinitely?" Go down?"Zhao Tong's voice became louder.

"Your Majesty, according to past experience, when the capital of an empire is besieged, troops are often dispatched quickly to clear the siege, and the planned plan should be realized!" Zhao Ren saw that Zhao Yong was stunned by His Majesty's questioning, and hurriedly rescued him.

"Should?! There are many things that should be, but you are not Wushu, nor Wanyanquan, so how can you expect that they will definitely mobilize the army to break the siege, maybe they will use the city to hold back the West Route Army, maybe they don't believe that you can break through As for the city, the battlefield is ever-changing, so how can you take it for granted?" Zhao Tang didn't give Zhao Ren any face, and even got involved with him and reprimanded him, "As the leader of the officials, you should focus on strategy instead of entanglement. Focus on the minutiae, in order to be comprehensive and safe.” “Experience is a good thing, but regard the past as classics and copy them without modification. If you stick to the old rules and don’t know how to innovate, you will not be able to achieve success!” Zhao Tong looked at The two said that they should admit it.The battle plan they formulated wasted a lot of effort and referred to many successful experiences.He also knows that in the process of people's thinking, the first thing that comes to mind is usually the previous experience, the established plan, the example of success or failure.

But drawing conclusions based solely on these factors may be time-saving and labor-saving, but it is often not optimal.No matter how valuable the thinking material provided by experience is, it is limited in guiding the future.Problems will not simply repeat, and history will not simply repeat itself. This is an important reason why strategic plans rigidly formulated based on historical experience are often difficult to achieve success.

"Your Majesty, we have used this experience to defeat the Dangxiang people, the Khitan people, and the Jurchens several times. The Northern Expedition is a major national event, so it should be safe." Zhao Ren thought about it after being robbed by the emperor. "This is because any stall, how glorious it used to be, cannot be kept by punctuality alone. Therefore, not only preservation is needed, but also innovation is needed. It is not just seeking stability, but also seeking change. This is the powerful strategic thinking. At the core of vitality, adhering to the family law of the ancestors cannot guarantee a country's eternal prosperity. And blindly applying the experience of past victories cannot guarantee victory in every battle." Zhao Tong asked himself and answered without waiting for the two to answer.

As an example of Zhao Tun, a former person who knew more about adhering to the old system than modern people, lost in the war.One of them he still remembers.In the nineteenth century, the Prussian army was defeated at the Battle of Jena.Among Napoleon's captives was an inconspicuous junior officer—Later Clausewitz, a world-renowned military strategist.He summed it up brilliantly: the defeat of the Prussian army was not just an example of obsolete style but of the most conventional and unimaginative example.

Clausewitz attributes the failure of the Prussian army to the fact that senior and middle officers rarely realized that the character of warfare had changed while following past successes.The same is true in ancient and modern times. The Jurchens suffered many disastrous defeats in the confrontation with the Song army. It is impossible not to make changes in response to the changes in the Song army's tactics and the emergence of new weapons in order to win strategically and tactically.

It is in this sense that you can say that strategic thinking is comprehensive thinking, overall thinking, and long-term thinking, but you cannot say that it is balanced thinking, harmonious thinking, or compromise thinking.When you lose creativity in strategic thinking, you lose the most vital and innovative parts of that thinking.

"Your Majesty, what should we do?" Zhao Ren and Zhao Yong saluted after looking at each other.

The question is raised here, and Zhao Tun has to answer it. How can we ensure continuous and continuous progress?Zhao Tong taught the two of them another lesson on how to make strategic plans, organize campaigns, and tactical operations.

If we say that under normal circumstances, the will of the state is usually manifested as the will of the leader representing the administrative power of the state, then the real progress of the leader is first of all the progress of the ideological concept. No matter how much success or failure, the thinking subject will also Able to transcend experience and tradition by maximizing subjective initiative.Only in this way can we produce thinking results that are truly valuable and guide practice.

Wideness is boundless, and strict punishments take care of one thing and lose another. What should we do?They think that decision makers know what the national interests are without thinking, that the rulers of the country are omnipotent, that other countries have the same understanding of reality as their own, and that the country and the people are a subject.But in fact, it is difficult for them to question the professional data and speculations of various departments.A good decision maker does not approve or doubt everything, nor does it replace the department to correct the details, but is good at quickly grasping the overall situation and essence.

Strategies often give people a very comprehensive, directionless, and indecisive feeling. If all factors are considered regardless of their importance, the decision-making center will be "overloaded", and it will be difficult to make timely decisions in the end, and miss favorable opportunities to take action or avoid risks when it is unfavorable. opportunity.Decisions that consider all factors are therefore necessarily inefficient, and strategies must be simplified.

The planner should not be like an officer instructing the siege troops how to blast, fire cover and assault in battle, but he will clearly point out where the key lies.He will not consider artillery preparations, concealed standby, sneaking in advance, and even combatants getting supplies as carefully as a commander-in-chief during a battle, but he should give the principles for winning victory and the capture and management of the victory stage, and military affairs. and the principle of grand coordination of political economy.

At present, Zhao Ren and Zhao Yong, as the military and political leaders of the Song Dynasty, should organize and formulate strategies according to the principles set by the emperor. First, speed up the pace of war preparations; second, prepare for emergencies.The formulation of the plan should take into account the occurrence of various complex situations.As for the correct solution, it is necessary to kill chickens with a sledgehammer, not to procrastinate, to kill with one hammer, and to come up with several sets of side cases, so as to be prepared.Aggressiveness is the eternal pursuit of the main body of strategic thinking.Only by preparing with both hands and being tough with both hands can we finally grasp the process of event development through aggressiveness.

Of course, it is not easy to make changes. Since Taizong's two Northern Expeditions failed, Song Dynasty has long been accustomed to formulating strategies from the standpoint of the weak and passive defenders.They realized that the great theory of the world is vulnerable to thousands of iron hooves, and the nomadic people's ambitions to go south with thousands of troops and horses are no match.Zhao Tong's painstaking efforts for many years have gradually reversed this situation. Today, Song Dynasty is a big country in the region and an important chess player in the whole world. Today's strategy should no longer be waiting, passive, marginal, and resentful. It is active design, active layout, creating opportunities, and grasping the initiative of war, rather than waiting.

Of course, there must be a price to pay for change, and this also means that you can bear the corresponding price only if you can show the corresponding strength.In the early years, when Zhao Tuo was in the early stage of starting a business, his capital was very small. He could win but could not afford to lose, so he had to plan carefully and keep his foundation.Today's Great Song Dynasty is no longer the Great Song Dynasty 20 years ago. A failed Northern Expedition almost ruined the entire dynasty. The current Great Song Dynasty can withstand a failure in terms of manpower, material resources and financial resources.Now that you are determined to do it, you have to dare to bear the loss, and you can't become overwhelmed because of the haggling at the beginning...

Listening to what you say is better than reading ten years of books.Zhao Ren and Zhao Ren, who had been taught a lesson by the emperor, thought it over, and they dared to waste a long time doing something thankless, and they did everything that the subordinates did.Fortunately, the battle plan they made in the room was not implemented, otherwise not only would the emperor be dissatisfied, but the people below would also have to curse their plan as an unrealistic dream.

After figuring out the key point, the formulation of the battle plan went much smoother. Like the emperor, they asked the questions and handed them over to the various divisions of the Privy Council and the various ministries of the Shangshu Province for answers, and each division and each ministry then decomposed the problem and handed it over to the various armies below. solution.The tasks and plans were decomposed layer by layer. The two of them only needed to review and summarize the plans sent by the various ministries, formulate plans separately, and report the situation to the emperor so that he could make a final decision according to the changes in the current situation.

At the same time, according to the needs of the operation, the armies also used various reasons to march to the scheduled assembly area, carry out targeted training, manufacture equipment, test new tactics, and learn new tactics.At this time, the Kingdom of Jin was vigilant about the frequent mobilization of Song's army and gathered at the border between the two countries. While stepping up preparations for the war, it was careful to prevent Song from finding a reason to start the war...