CODEXCard 7 of 9 · Art of War, Core Nine
Indirect approach
The frontal attack is always the most expensive.
The indirect approach means reaching your goal by a route your opponent is not guarding. Sun Tzu described two kinds of force, the direct and the unexpected, and argued that battles are joined with the first but won with the second. The skilled general combines them so the enemy never knows which is coming.
Frontal attacks are expensive because they meet the opponent's strength head on, where they have prepared the most. Moving around that strength, toward neglected areas or unexpected timing, lets a smaller effort achieve a larger result. The military historian Basil Liddell Hart later made the indirect approach a central theme of his own writing on strategy.
The limit is turning indirectness into a fixed habit. A plain, head-on move can be the smartest option, especially when your position is clearly stronger or when roundabout moves would only waste time and create confusion. Indirect methods are most valuable when you are outmatched in a straight contest. Choose based on the balance of strength, not on habit.
This links closely to choosing your ground and to deception. All three are ways of making sure the contest happens on your terms rather than on your opponent's.
Example
A small neighbourhood bakery cannot compete with the supermarket on bread prices. Instead of trying, it starts offering early morning coffee and pastries for parents on the school run, a time and customer the supermarket ignores. Within months the bakery has a loyal crowd that the bigger store never thought to fight for.
Try it this week
For one goal that keeps meeting resistance, list two routes to it that avoid the point where the resistance is strongest.
From Art of War, Core Nine (Sun Tzu · 500 BC).
