“Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.”
Force the opponent to scramble by showing up at the unprepared point; movement beats mass when it is unpredictable.
Chapter 6’s first operational rule: appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected. The verse joins two motions into one maneuver — the feint toward the precious point that forces the scramble, and the true movement into the vacated space. Note the causality: you go where he is not because you first made him go where you pointed.
An agency wants a client everyone considers unwinnable — the incumbent’s flagship. Instead of pitching the flagship account, it wins the client’s small regional division nobody fights for, and serves it visibly well for a year. At the holding company’s vendor review, the flagship brand’s directors ask why their own sister division uses someone else. The pitch that follows is a formality; the scramble happened twelve months earlier.
This is not blitz-for-its-own-sake — speed serves the unexpected destination, never substitutes for having one. A rival who simply moves fast toward the obvious target is merely arriving early at the defended point. The maneuver only exists as a pair: the point he must defend, and the place you actually go.