“When you capture new territory, cut it up into allotments for the benefit of the soldiery.”
Distributing the gains binds the force to the cause; hoarding the prize weakens the bond.
Chapter 7 pauses between stratagems for an economics of morale: when you capture new territory, cut it up into allotments for the benefit of the soldiery. The instruction follows the maneuvering verses deliberately — armies that maneuver hard must be bound to the campaign, and the binding agent is a share of what the campaign takes. Sun Tzu treats distribution as a strategic act, not a benevolent afterthought.
A studio lands a monster client after two brutal years — the capture. The founders take the margin as management prerogative; the team that did the two brutal years gets a retreat and a toast. The next monster client never lands, because the people who knew how left at the first market, taking the capability with them. The rival studio splits captured accounts into named profit shares — and its veterans hunt new territory like owners, because they are.
Sharing spoils is not communism of margin — allotments follow contribution and rank in Sun Tzu’s army, not equality. The strategic minimum is that effort and reward visibly correlate with the capture. What breaks the force is capture without distribution at all: the general who wonders why nobody maneuvers enthusiastically for his territory.