Huan Hexagram & Jie Hexagram: When to Disperse and When to Restrain — Fail to Rein In After Scattering, People’s Hearts Won’t Come Back

Huan (Dispersion) and Jie (Limitation) are the 59th and 60th hexagrams in the I Ching (Book of Changes). One speaks of dispersing, the other of reining in.

Anyone leading a team will encounter these two hexagrams sooner or later.

I know the founder of a startup, in his mid-thirties, who has run the company for six years and has a team of over 40 people.

At the start of last year, three core team members left.

They left for different reasons: one thought the pay was too low, another felt there was no room for growth, and the third had a falling out with a partner.

He took two steps in response.

First, he gave a general salary raise to everyone who stayed.

Second, he tightened up attendance, reimbursement, and approval rules entirely—daily reports were changed to twice a day.

Six months later, seven more people left.

He came to me and said, "I raised salaries and tightened management. Why are people still leaving?"

I said, "Because you’re applying Huan and Jie in the wrong places."

The image of the Huan hexagram is wind moving over water: the upper trigram is Xun / The Gentle, and the lower is Kan / The Abysmal.

When wind blows across the water’s surface, ripples spread out layer by layer.

The Xiang Commentary (Images) says: "Wind moves over water; this is Huan (Dispersion). The ancient kings, in accordance with this, offered sacrifices to the Supreme Deity and established temples."

"Offering sacrifices to the Supreme Deity and establishing temples"—this is a very distinctive line in the I Ching.

When people’s hearts are scattered, the first thing the ancients did was not hand out money—it was to build a temple.

What is a temple? It is something everyone recognizes and believes in.

It can be ancestors, a deity, or some shared conviction. In short, there must be something greater than each individual that binds everyone together.

There is another line in the Hexagram Judgment of Huan: "The king comes to have a temple. It furthers one to cross the great water (利涉大川)."

Only with this "temple" can one cross the great river.

Translated to today’s context, this means: a team must have a cause that everyone believes in.

Not the values posted on the wall, but the line that everyone truly acknowledges in their hearts.

For example: "What we build must be something clients can trust to use"; "We can’t cut corners on this work"; "People who work with me won’t get a raw deal."

You don’t need many lines like this—one is enough. But it has to be real, and you have to believe it first yourself.

When a team falls apart, the first thing that breaks is not the people—it’s that shared belief.

Once people stop believing in that line, no matter how much money you throw at them, you’re only buying their time. When the time is up, they’ll still leave.

So the solution for the Huan hexagram is not to throw more money at the problem—it’s to re-establish that shared belief.

How to re-establish it? Not by announcing it in meetings, but by doing a few things that prove it’s real.

Refund the money that should be refunded, own up to the mistakes that should be acknowledged, and protect the people who should be protected.

After you’ve done these three things, that shared belief will come back.

The Jie hexagram is the other side of the coin.

Jie is Ze Shui Jie (Water over Lake). The upper trigram is Kan / The Abysmal, and the lower is Dui / The Joyous—water above a lake.

When there’s water in a lake, too much will make it overflow, too little will make it dry up—so there has to be a proper measure.

The Xiang Commentary (Images) says: "There is water above the lake; this is Jie (Limitation). The Junzi (Superior Person), in accordance with this, establishes numbers and measures, and discusses virtuous conduct."

"Establishing numbers and measures" means setting standards, rules, and quotas. "Discussing virtuous conduct" means debating what should and should not be done.

But the Hexagram Judgment of Jie has a prerequisite: "Bitter limitation cannot be persevered in (苦节不可贞)."

Limitation that is too bitter cannot be sustained.

These five words have saved many people.

Many managers, when they tighten the reins, tighten them to the breaking point.

Twice-daily reports, five levels of approval, three forms for reimbursement, and travel applications required two weeks in advance.

This is not Jie—this is bitter limitation.

What’s the consequence of bitter limitation? People come to work feeling like they’re being watched and distrusted every single day.

People who feel distrusted won’t argue with you. They’ll quietly look for their next job.

There’s a line in the Jie hexagram that puts this especially clearly. Top Six (上六): "Bitter limitation. Perseverance brings misfortune. Remorse disappears (苦节，贞凶，悔亡)."

Bitter limitation, if persisted in, leads to misfortune.

The I Ching rarely states so bluntly that a certain course of action is inauspicious.

So when it comes to limitation, the key is finding the right measure.

Where is that measure? Between what is necessary and what is excessive.

Necessary rules keep things running smoothly. Excessive rules just make people miserable.

Attendance tracking is necessary; twice-daily reports are excessive.

Budget approval is necessary; five levels of signatures are excessive.

There’s another line in the Jie hexagram that I’m particularly fond of. Six in the Third Place (六三): "Not limiting, then sighing. No blame (不节若，则嗟若，无咎)."

If you don’t practice limitation when you should, you’ll end up sighing. But there is no blame.

What this line means is: failing to exercise restraint when you should will cause distress, but it’s not a grave mistake—because you can still correct it.

This line leaves room for many people.

Many bosses don’t fail to understand limitation—they just didn’t practice it before, and now they have to rein things in. It’s normal for the process to be a bit messy.

The key is not to let it turn into bitter limitation.

Let’s go back to that founder.

Afterward, he didn’t raise salaries again, nor did he tighten the rules further. He did two things instead.

First, he rewrote the company’s distribution rules from scratch, clearly stating what each person could get under what circumstances. He posted the rules in the group chat, open for anyone to ask about.

Second, he canceled daily reports and replaced them with a 15-minute face-to-face check-in once a week, focused on only two things: what’s blocking you this week, and what do you need me to do?

Over the course of a year, no one else left, and five new people joined.

He told me, "It turns out people aren’t kept around by money."

I said, "People are kept around by clarity—by the sense that things are fair and explainable."

Clear distribution rules, clear standards, clear lines of responsibility. When things are clear, people feel secure. When they feel secure, they won’t leave on a whim.

Huan and Jie are a pair.

Huan is dispersion—when things are scattered, you need to "build a temple" (re-establish shared purpose). Jie is reining in—when tightening up, you need to leave room for measure.

The worst mistake is getting them backwards: throwing money at dispersion, and tightening until you choke people.

Money buys only endurance; choking people breeds only disaffection.

Neither of these builds cohesion.

Finally