Reciprocity is Good Until It Isn’t
Reciprocity is essential for group function. It enables trades across time through informal IOUs – “Help me today, and I’ll help you tomorrow.” These IOUs exist because of trust between people, and in turn strengthen that trust. This exchange forms the foundation of social contracts dating back to our earliest days: “You watch the children […]
Life Is Combustion. Sometimes, that’s Good. Sometimes It’s Not.
When you light a fire (or a candle), that’s combustion. The process goes like this. Ignition: Heat starts the process. When enough heat is applied to a suitable fuel source and oxygen, the fuel and oxygen molecules get excited and start moving faster, increasing the likelihood of colliding with enough energy to react. The Bonds […]
The Cure for Bad Information
We naturally gravitate toward information that is easy to collect, familiar, or validates what we believe to be true. Even then, gathering that type of information consumes time and attention while doing almost nothing to advance the quality of a decision. You could also take a different approach: Spend only time gathering information that will […]
The Right to Say “No”
This may seem counterintuitive. Often, the best way to get to “yes” is to start with “no.” Here’s what I mean. Conventional sales wisdom says you want the other person to say “yes” a lot. It’s almost Pavlovian. Get them to say yes to lots of little things, and pretty soon, the only thing left […]
New! Improved! Going Fast!
Great headlines sell. They do the hard work of getting you to stop, pay attention, and change your focus from over there to RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW! This is true for direct mail. It’s true for newspapers and magazines. It’s true for television (those scrolling chyrons on the bottom of your screen are headlines. It’s […]
Show Your Expertise in The Questions You Ask
A motivated fifth grader can memorize specifications and recite them on command. With a bit of practice, they can also translate those features into benefits (what’s in it for the buyer). Five minutes with your favorite search engine, and you won’t even need the fifth grader. I’m not trying to insult fifth graders. I’m just […]
The Map is not the Terrain
A geodetic map shows terrain lines. It’s helpful if you plan to hike, bike, or ride across the land. An Atlas (the old kind printed on paper) sections the landscape into “states” or “countries” and highlights “cities” and parks and mountains and maybe roads. A road map sections the landscape in standard increments and highlights […]
The Gift of Persistence
I have to admit it. I’m a fan of the “Persistence Hunting Hypothesis.” The idea is that humans evolved as endurance runners. As the recent Olympic games have amply demonstrated, some of us are capable of incredible speed. But even the fastest will be shown the backside of any number of critters in a sprint, […]
Certain About One Thing
Werner Heisenberg was a giant of 20th-century physics. If you were collecting physicist trading cards, you’d want one of his. If you took high school physics, you probably remember hearing about “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.” If not, here’s the simple version . . . You can measure where a particle is or where it’s going, but […]
Lost in Space. Or Not.
Like most people, I’m not following what is or isn’t going on at the International Space Station. I might be able to pick Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams out of a photo montage, but only if they were posing in flight suits and floating weightless. If none of this is ringing a bell, you are […]