Latest Posts
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Trust
🤝Trust is regularly overestimated in negotiations. And regularly underestimated. Often by the same people. Benjamin Franklin looks around the table. “Trust is a strange thing. Nobody wants to be the first to give it—yet everyone expects it from the other side.” Machiavelli nods. “Because trust can be costly.” “Distrust can be too,” Franklin replies. At…
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Separating wheat from chaff
In high school, my Latin teacher (close to retirement at the time) was proud of a reform he’d introduced decades earlier: he allowed students to use a dictionary during exams. Everyone expected grades to improve. Instead, something surprising happened.Good students became even better. Weak students became even worse. Why? The stronger students already understood grammar,…
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Information
♟️Information is power. Why, then, is this source of power so often neglected? Since the discussion began, Sun Tzu has said remarkably little. No one is surprised. Then he asks a question. “How do you know that you have the right information?” The room falls silent. Machiavelli does not answer. Augustus remains quiet as well.…