Standing up uninvited

When Qin attacked Handan, Lord Pingyuan of Zhao was going to Chu to seek an alliance. He meant to take twenty men from his household, selected for wit and courage, and found nineteen.

A retainer named Mao Sui said: take me as the twentieth.

Lord Pingyuan looked at him. He said: a man of real ability stands out in a crowd the way an awl in a bag shows its point at once. You've been here three years and I've heard nothing.

Mao Sui said: I have never been put in the bag. If I had been, it would have been the point first and then the whole awl out, not just the tip.

He went with them. At the Chu court the talks stalled and the sun moved. Mao Sui went up the steps with open menace, walked to the Chu king, and told him that Chu owed Zhao something that went back generations, and that giving up a city for an alliance was nothing against what Chu would lose. He talked until the alliance was agreed.

Back in Zhao, Pingyuan said: I've met a thousand people with this awl-and-bag test and I got it wrong. Your three years of not standing out wasn't a lack of awls.

That's the honest part. The test was measuring whether the bag had been opened.

If you've been in a job quietly, you may not need to change yourself. You may need to say clearly that you're in the bag now.

MOJOWAY asks clients to say out loud that they're in the bag now, and to stop waiting to be discovered.