The 3 levels of strategic thinking most Westerners miss
And yes, sometimes the game really IS about chopsticks, not spreadsheets.
There’s a different rhythm to business thinking in the East, built on ideas we rarely discuss over here. I try to bring a piece of that wisdom on ISNW whenever I can. This is one of those pieces, from our collection The Unseen.
Let me tell you a story about instant noodles.
A few years ago, the sales of Master Kong, a giant in the Chinese food market, suddenly began to crash, hard. For years, they had fought a trench war with their main competitor. But this wasn't the competitor's doing. This was something else.
Who was the killer?
China’s new high-speed rail network.
Travel times that once took 22 hours were slashed to six. The simple need for a cheap, hot meal on a long train journey evaporated. Master Kong was playing checkers against other noodle companies, unaware that the real game of transportation infrastructure had just changed the entire board.
The lesson from the noodle story is a fundamental one: the greatest threats, and the biggest opportunities, almost never come from your direct competition. They come from a shift in the game itself.
And if you’ve felt stuck, like your income hasn’t moved in years, it’s likely because you’re still playing by the old rules. The first step to winning is to see the new board.
See the Trend, Not the Task
The founder of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, has a brutally honest way of putting it: "Even a pig can fly if it's standing in a whirlwind."
That sounds harsh, but think of it as a physicist’s observation about wealth. Most people stay stagnant because they focus on what they believe is noble work: the hard money. They put in long hours, perform manual tasks, and grind it out. All their energy is spent being busy, leaving no time to look up and spot the coming whirlwind.
True wealth creators are always looking for that whirlwind. They grasp the critical difference between use value and exchange value.
It's a simple concept. Rice has almost infinite use value; we need it to live. But its exchange value is tiny. You can’t build a fortune trading it.
Now consider Bitcoin. It has almost no practical use value. You can’t eat it or build a house with it. But its exchange value, its potential to be traded based on a shared story, created fortunes.
The specific asset doesn't matter.
The point is the underlying shift in thinking.
🔳 Wealth doesn't come from things people use. It comes from things people trade for a story they believe in. Your real work is to find the story, spot the trend, and get in front of it.
But seeing the game clearly is only half the battle. You still need people to play with. This is where most of us get networking completely, painfully wrong.
Value Attracts Value
We've been taught that networking means "maintaining relationships", endless coffees, awkward happy hours, collecting LinkedIn contacts like they're trading cards. It’s exhausting and it rarely works when you actually need help.
A sociologist named George Homans nailed this decades ago when he said the essence of every human relationship is exchange.
That might sound cold, but it’s the most honest lens you can use. A strong network has little to do with how many people you know. It has everything to do with how much real, tangible value you can provide to others.
An entrepreneur named Feng Lun created a filter for this that I’ve never forgotten. It’s called the "10-30-60" rule. Forget your thousands of social media followers. Your network is this:
10 People: The core circle who would actually help you move a body.
30 People: Your key collaborators. You talk frequently and work on things together.
60 People: Your true acquaintances. You know them, you know what they do, and you might see them once a year.
I came to realize, that’s it. That’s the entire world. Everything beyond that circle is a waste of energy. (in terms of business, of course)
🔳 Stop trying to know more people. Instead, become more valuable to the people who already know you. Focus your energy on your 60, and let the rest go.
Once you see the board, and you know who to play with, there’s one last level. And this one seems completely backward... right up until the moment it works.
The Generous Win
The fastest way to get what you want is to help other people get what they want.
Kazuo Inamori, the Japanese businessman known as the "God of Management,", told a famous parable about this. In both heaven and hell, everyone sits around a pot of noodles with one-meter-long chopsticks. (Another noodle story, yaay!)
In hell, everyone is frantic. They grab for the noodles, but because the chopsticks are too long, they can't get the food into their own mouths. They scramble, they fight, and they starve.
In heaven, the setup is identical. The pot is the same. The chopsticks are the same. BUT the people are calm. Each person picks up noodles and feeds the person sitting across from them. By helping each other, everyone eats.
The world doesn’t change. The mindset does.
A water expert in ancient China named Li Bing had a six-character principle for managing rivers that is also the best business advice I’ve ever heard: "Dredge the shoals deep, build the weirs low."
"Dredge the shoals deep" means you constantly dig out the shallow spots and sandbars in your own river—your core skills. Be undeniable at your craft.
"Build the weirs low" refers to the low dams that manage a river’s flow. It means you intentionally let profit and opportunity flow past you to your partners and customers.
When you master your craft and you make sure everyone around you profits, your success becomes an inevitability. Your entire ecosystem starts working to keep you in business.
It reminds me of that old Taoist idea: "Without breaking, there can be no establishment."
We read that and think it’s about breaking business models or old ideas. The real meaning is much more personal.
It's about breaking yourself. Your old view of the game. Your old rules for friendship. Your old definition of value.
You break the old you.
And then you build.
So, I'll leave you with this: What high-speed train is being built in your world right now? And are you even looking at the tracks?
By the way
I was on a roll this week and wrote something else I think you'll find useful. It’s about the ten truths of how a business actually works—the kind of stuff they don't teach you in school, and the kind you only learn from, say, a 7-figure fuck up. If you're in the mood for a good story (and some hard-won lessons), you can find it here:
10 truths about how a business actually works
🔳 I learned business from broken games that printed money and elegant ones that died on arrival.
Hi!
I'm Yuehan. After a decade spent building businesses in both the West and China, I'm sharing my most valuable, road-tested lessons right here on Substack.
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This hit like a freight train, no pun intended.
I love how you used the noodle story to show that real threats (and opportunities) usually come from outside the game we’re focused on. That’s the part that stings, though. It’s so easy to stay busy optimizing the wrong board.
Sometimes the "high-speed rail" isn’t even technology but a mindset shift happening in culture. AI, remote work, creator economy, whatever it is, the hardest part is realizing you’re still clutching the noodles of the old world while the tracks are being laid under your feet.
Thanks for this one Yuehan. Definitely bookmarking it for a reread.