The disconnect between what people know about how the Internet (and by extension social media) “works” (choices, behaviors, options, etc.) and what people use the Internet (and social media) to accomplish (tasks) is underrated and massive. Part of the disconnect comes from a lack of interest and caring about how Read more…
The two most difficult roadblocks to success in resolving hard problems are the presence of real trade-offs and considerations of power. Most complicated problems and difficult conflicts have simple solutions. We often confuse what we believe is a hard solution with a complicated one. What makes solutions to hard problems not Read more…
Most negotiations don’t happen because many people lack the curiosity to ask for what else might be on offer. When you have the courage to ask the other party—and open a negotiation—you gain the power to get more. You also grow the opportunity to move beyond mere transaction to something Read more…
Teutonic organizations believe that size makes up for persuasion. Small organizations believe that persuasion makes up for size. The problem in both organizations is scale, not properly understood. Because your organization, your team, your personality, or your project is large, that doesn’t mean that persuasion is something to be abandoned. Read more…
What happens when how I remember an event doesn’t match how you remember an event? This mismatch in memory—and framing of those mismatches—leads to people constructing palaces to specific memories in their minds. These palaces are filled with feelings, ideas, thoughts, and conclusions that may not be objectively accurate. And Read more…
Wisdom is a skill. In our modern era, that values speed over taking time, and that values the new over the old, wisdom is viewed, not as a skill, but as something unattainable. This intellectual and cultural state of affairs has not always been the case. As a matter of Read more…
When people talked with each other across the fences in the backyard, they knew (with some certainty, though certainly not ontological certainty) which of their neighbors were angry and which were pleasant. The bowling league, the local bar, the country club, and even the grocery store served as locations that Read more…
Everyone “knows” what “it” is, but we often confuse the outcomes of “it” with the source of “it.” Everyone “knows” that “it” is shifting geographically, technologically, morally, ethically, physically, mentally and spiritually, but no one “knows” why this shift is happening at this moment in our global historical consciousness. Everyone Read more…
There are conflicts everywhere. From wars to rumors of wars, people, nation-states, corporations, organizations and many other individual and corporatized entities, are locked in conflicts, rooted in two factors: perceptions of reality and perceptions of power. Perceptions of reality: This one is the hardest to address, because from every person Read more…
In a conflict there are two primary movers: Fear and Power. Fear moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through resistance, panic, aggressiveness, and avoidance. Power moves a conflict forward, or backward, or to the side, through domination, aggressiveness, passive-aggressiveness, and outright confrontation. In many organizations, departments, Read more…