The profound success of ancient texts, like Sun Tzu’s — Art of War, Lao Tzu’s — Tao Te Ching, Marcus Aurelius’s — Meditations, and others, is their teachings are relevant regardless of the scale and context of a given situation. For example, the well known quote from the Art of War: “know your enemy and… Continue Reading
Part 2: Maintaining trust with a hostile audience
How often does strong arming someone into doing something work out in the long run? Last week’s post talked about situations that involve communicating ideas to a skeptical audience and the need to sometimes force trust quickly, rather than earning it over a longer period of time. This type of approach carries a price — forced… Continue Reading
Part 1: Winning trust from a hostile audience
“I need to understand why I would lease machines from you when I just spent millions of dollars on similar machines last year? What do I do with the machines I’ve already bought? Our last meeting didn’t address this question, so I hope you’ve got something better this time.” – Unhappy Executive The above comes from… Continue Reading
MVP: The problem with failing fast
Born out of the startup movement in Silicon Valley, Minimum Viable Products (MVP’s) have quickly gained popularity, spreading to both small companies and larger enterprises across numerous industries, and understandably so — a 90% failure rate for new initiatives is too expensive for everyone involved. Historically, companies would often place large bets on untested new… Continue Reading
Sharing new ideas with important strangers
The life and death survival instincts humans developed thousands of years ago are still an important factor today. Controlled by the oldest part of our brain, the amygdala (aka crocodile brain), these instincts play a nuanced role in determining how well we do in important conversations, especially sharing new ideas with people we don’t know. The croc brain… Continue Reading
How do you change someone’s mind?
I believe there’s quite a bit of truth to the idea that we each invent our reality. Within the context of this reality our decisions are right, and we will almost certainly reject anything or anyone who tells us we’re wrong. In fact, how can we be sure that what works well for others, would… Continue Reading
What is your decisive terrain?
“See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket…We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can [still] defy us from Vicksburg.” — Abraham Lincoln, Incidents and Anecdotes of… Continue Reading
In strategy, how you move is the second most important thing
One of the most focused upon elements of Strategy is Game Play; which can be viewed as “how you move”, but one of the things I’ve been learning recently is that movement, like many things, depends on space in order to exist. Game Play (Movement) Game Play relates to the steps we need to take… Continue Reading
Why choose strategic thinking?
How do you approach difficult decisions like switching careers, or dealing with competition, versus everyday decisions like the route you take to work, or the time you go to bed? In his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” Daniel Kahneman, tells us that most of the time the answer is the same: Many of our decisions are… Continue Reading