The three burrows

Feng Xuan went to serve Lord Mengchang of Qi and got no attention. He complained twice about not having a sword and not having a mother's support, and both times the lord quietly paid. The other retainers decided he was a greedy nobody who had done nothing.

Then he was sent to collect debts in a district called Xue. He took the IOUs, gathered the people, and burned the whole stack. The debtors wept. He came back and said: you have no joy, so I bought you joy.

Years later, the lord was driven out of office and had to leave the capital. He got to Xue, and the people came out to receive him. That was the first of the three burrows.

Feng Xuan then worked to restore him elsewhere, and arranged a reserve position in another state. Between them, the lord was never without a way out. Feng Xuan said: a cunning rabbit has three burrows and isn't caught. Now you have three.

The reason I like this story is that the man who earned it was the one everybody had written off, and the value was in insurance, not performance.

Nobody is kept up by their victories. They're kept up by the backups nobody celebrates: the friend who will take the call at 6 a.m., the amount of money that lets you walk away, the skill no one can revoke.

If you have one burrow, that's not a career, that's a bet.

MOJOWAY asks what would happen if the main thing failed. That question, asked early and answered honestly, is what turns a client's situation from fragile into workable.