The Visual Display of Qualitative Information - Edward R. Tufte - ***

Graphical displays should reveal the data, and its message, to the eye.
Only a graphic can display a large volume of data in a small space.

The man who invented the bar chart, William Playfair, was skeptical about his invention, noting that his bar chart did not chart the progression of time. Multiple bar charts can be used, but generally, a graphic is a better way to display data that evolves over a timeline.

A good graphic includes every relevant variable in it - instead of looking at multiple graphics and trying to compare the two, all the relevant information should be laid out before the viewer in a neat and accurate fashion.

Graphics that accompany data should either be to scale or not used at all.

Lie factor:
size of effect shown in graphic
over
size of effect shown in data

Compare apples to apples.
Don't have a misleading zero point.
Draw everything to scale.

Tables are usually better than graphics for reporting 20 numbers or less.

Use as little ink as possible.
If the ink isn't displaying data, erase it.

The idea that statistics are boring has created a dearth of graphical abominations to accompany them.

Japan's statistics story:
No nation ranks more highly in its collective passion for statistics than Japan. Statistics are the subject of holidays, conventions, awards, and nationwide contests. Entries in the children's statistical graph contest were screened three times by judges, who awarded first prize this year to the work of five seven-year-olds. Their creation, titled "Mom, play with us more often," was the result of a survey of 32 classmates regarding the frequency with which mothers play with their offspring and the reasons given for not doing so.

When color is used to portray varying degrees of strength within the same data set, gradients in color, not multiple colors, should reflect the strength of the variation.

A small graphic, if it's to scale, is absorbed with little loss of information.

Tables > pie charts. Graphics > pie charts. The only thing worse than a pie chart are multiple pie charts.

When numbers are highly labeled, a way can be found to work the labels into the graphic.

The text relevant to a graphic should lead into the graphic. Don't just slap the graphic anywhere on the page the way magazine editors do.
The seperation of blocks of text from their accompanying graphics is a deevolution caused by advances in printing technology.

Outsourcing the art for your data is ill-advised, because commercial artists are usually better cosmeticians than they are analysts.

Display data with greater weight in thicker lines.

You Just Don't Understand - Deborah Tannen - ***

When a woman asks, "What do you think?", chances are good that she wants a discussion, not a decision.

Women nag because they don't know if the man is taking them seriously; men delay because they want to feel like they're acting of their own volition.

-- if you genuinely want to help someone, ask them to let you know what you can do. If they're calling the shots, they won't feel like allowing you to assist them is an indication that they can't handle things.

Men look for evidence of dominance and status, women look for evidence of connection
Divorced men and women both cited increased freedom as a benefit, but the freedom meant different things. To men, the freedom meant reduced obligations. To women, the freedom meant they didn't have to worry about the men!

Again, when a woman says something to a man, she's probably not looking for a solution.
When a man offers unsolicited advice to a woman, he's telling her they're not the same - she has the problems, he has the answers.

When a man says something to a woman, she shouldn't pounce on it as an opportunity to improve their connection.

Women have a tendency to deflect attention from themselves.

Troubles for men: tell them they've got it
Troubles for women: ask them about it and let them share their feelings

"In order to help the highest-status member of the party to dominate the conversation, others are expected to ask him questions that they know he can answer with authority."
-- I'll have to try this sometime, people will love it

[talking about a guy trying to fix the author's camera]
"He declared the lid hopelessly stuck. He explained the reason, then explained in detail how I could take pictures without a light meter. . . Even though I knew there wasn't a chance in the world I would adopt his system, I listened politely, feigning interest, and assiduously wrote down his examples. . ."
-- How do you counter this?
-- Maybe he could have explained enough of it to give her the gist of its complexity, then asked her, "How is this sounding so far?" - that would give her a nice opportunity to tell him she doesn't want to do it or ask questions

"It's just that I'm so used to listening to men go on about things I don't care about, I didn't even realize how bored I was until you made me think about it."
- they will do it and they will hate you for it without knowing why

"There is a kind of social contract operating here. Many women not only feel comfortable seeking help, but feel honor-bound to seek it, accept it, and display gratitude. For their part, many men feel honor-bound to fulfill requests for help whether or not it's convenient for them to do so."

Women are more comfortable learning from other women, who don't seperate themselves from their students as strongly
-- when teaching a woman, have them do things - women like a shared growth experience vs. men's enjoyment of proving competence by obeying orders

Men get annoyed when people don't accept their judgement, because they think their competency is being questioned
-- what to remember here is that the point at which further assessment is "unnecessary" is reached sooner by men than women, who like to improve things

Men are public speakers, women private speakers.
For women, talk is interaction. For men, talk is information.
-- never spend more than a couple sentences on an unsolicited explanation

Men's silence at home is a disappointment to women.

Men tend to disregard women's arguments, which draw more strongly from anecdote than men's.
-- for a woman, the anecdote is a prelude to the point, not the evidence for it

Women are as likely as men to have opinions during meetings; however, they aren't as suited to competing for floor time.
- During a presentation, a woman's key drive is that people understand her. A man's drive is that his competency can stand up to any attack.


"Keeping friends up to date about the events in one's life is not only a privilege; for many women it is an obligation. One woman explained that she didn't enjoy telling the story of her breakup with her boyfriend over and over, but she had to, because if she failed to inform her friends about such an important development, they would have been deeply hurt when they found out. . . The woman, furthermore, was incredulous when she learned that her boyfriend had not told anyone at all about their breakup."

"Carol had several women friends she talked to every few days, exchanging stories about dates with men. They would share their excitement before a new date, then report in detail what had been said and done. When Carol fell in love and formed a lasting relationship with a man, she ran out of material for talks with her friends. . .This put a strain on her friendships."
-- Sex and the City?

A few girls told a researcher (Eckert) that they prefer to have boys as friends because boys don't try to get juicy details and are less likely to spread them around. The girls may think that this demonstrates the moral superiority of boys. But the researcher points out that the reason a boy is less likely to scavenge for gossip and distribute his findings is because he has much less to gain by it. Boys' access to status is less a matter of who they are close to. . .

"scapegoat": a way to address an imbalance of power within a conversation

A psychologist (Leet-Pellegrini) set out to discover whether gender or expertise determined who would behave dominantly in a conversation. She set up pairs of people and asked them to discuss the effects of television violence on children. In some cases, she made one of the partners an expert by providing relevant information ahead of time. On average, experts did talk more, but men experts talked more than women experts.
Expertise also had a different effect on women and men with regard to supportive behavior. Leet-Pellegrini hypothesized that the person being supportive would be the non-expert: this was true everywhere except when the expert was a woman and her non-expert partner was a man. In this situation, the women experts showed support - saying things like "Yeah" or "That's right" far MORE than the non-expert men they were talking to. The women in this experience didn't wield their expertise as power, instead playing it down and making up for it through extra assenting behavior. They acted as if their expertise were something to hide. . . and perhaps it was. . . evidence of the woman's superior knowledge sparked resentment, not respect.
-- WHOA
When a woman has knowledge but won't speak up, it's not because she's afraid of being wrong. It's because she's afraid of being offensive.

When an expert man talked to an uninformed woman, he controlled the conversation from start to finish. When an expert man talked to an uninformed man, he controlled the conversation at the start, but didn't always have it at the end. Apparently, when the women surmised that the men they were talking to were more informed, they accepted that. But the men, despite their lack of information, would try to give their expert fellows a run for their money, possibly gaining the upper hand by the end.
-- the author goes on to say that she automatically assumes that her expertise gives her authority, which women agree with, but men often challenge her. She also states that most women lack experience in defending themselves against argumentative challenges, which they misinterpret as personal attacks on their credibility.

Women play "group wins" while men play "I win"
Women ask, "Do you like me?", vs. men asking, "Do you respect me?"

Sociologist Mirra Komarovsky found that the more middle class a couple was, the more the husband and wife considered each other friends.

Men and women listen in different ways. Women want feedback and support; men want quiet attention.
Some men don't like to listen at length because they feel it frames them as subordinate. Many women do want to listen, but expect it to be reciprocal - and are frustrated when their turn never comes.

Women want a balance in conversation; men assume that conversations are automatically balanced by each person's need to speak.

Two sociologists found that lesbians have sex less often than heterosexuals or gay men. They believe this happens because the women don't feel comfortable taking the role of initiator, a position in which they could be potentially perceived as making demands.
-- I bet couples with a "butch" would have more sex than couples without

Men's focus on dominance trains them to recognize and rebel against orders coming from equals.
Women use "Let's do this" as a way of offering their opinions to the group without telling them what to do. Men translate "Let's do this" into "I want you to do this" and resist it as if it were a stealthy manipulation.
-- the only time "Let's do this" is appropriate in guy language is when a man is improving on a previous proposal
-- Women, if you have good ideas, the man-group needs you to submit them in the form of a question [as men do] and be willing to defend them from inferior ideas
-- if a woman is using "Let's" on you, you should be happy: you're in her group

"It is not that women do not want to get their way, but that they do not wish to purchase it at the cost of conflict."
Women engage in creative solutions to preserve a balance in status.

Women are used to hearing explanations for preferences, but guys aren't used to giving them.

Boys boast, but girls who boast get criticized by the group for showing off.
Boys typically air complaints about other boys in the offenders' presences. Girls' complaints typically air in the absence of the accused, as to avoid conflict [and the ostracism that comes from going too far].

Girls fighting shatters their potential for friendship and makes them enemies; guys fighting gives them an opportunity to hash out their differences and become friends.

A woman's stories tend to be about community: a man's stories tend to be about contests.
-- she can hear all your stories of contests when you're not talking to her

Women will talk as much as men when everyone has a chance to speak, but don't like to be solo speakers as much as men.

Because women don't struggle to be seen as one-up, they're often seen as one-down.
Women having lower status than men subjects everything they do to that bias, which is difficult to overcome because it's subconscious.

When a woman asks for something indirectly, it's because she wants to get it without subordinating the other party with a direct request -- not because she's trying to trick them.

A woman saying "I'm sorry" means she feels bad, not that she needs to apologize.
Women don't want their apologies "accepted" and ignored - they want you to apologize, too, which strengthens the connection.

When women and men get together, they act according to men's norms.

Women don't like to let people know what they're doing wrong unless this can be done in an egalitarian way.

To a woman, intimacy means telling her what's on your mind - including what hurts.

Understanding gender differences in conversational style may not prevent disagreements from arising, but it gives you a better chance of preventing them from spiraling out of control.

The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford - ***

Things are most expensive when they are scarce: through examination, you can find out whether the scarcity is natural or artificial

Three economic reasons to pay expensive prices:
- The ROI justifies the price
- The convenience justifies the price
- The alternative is unavailable

A trade union is partly designed to bargain collectively, but also partly designed to block too much entry into the profession.

The self-incrimination strategy: where a company will charge a premium for some of its products despite similar production costs
One way to get people to pay as much as they can afford is to make the cheaper alternatives as unappealing as possible

Safeway vs. Wholefoods:
Safeway charges high prices on branded orange juice and sparkling water, because those are luxury items to its customers. Wholefoods sells these items for less, because these are low-end items in Wholefoods: the high-end customers are likely to buy the fresh-squeezed juice at the in-store juice bar or other such products.

Price discounts are best saved for price-conscious or repeat customers.

People object to individual-based prices, but are less resistant to group-based prices.

Premiums charged by retailers go straight into their pockets - the raw materials are a tiny portion of the price of the good, and changing them is a miniscule increase in expense.

When retailers rotate beween sale prices and high prices, they're able to make sales to price-sensitive consumers who won't buy the item for the higher price.
Companies find it more profitable to increase prices (above the sale price) by a larger amount on an unpredictable basis than by a small amount on a predictable basis.
One trick retailers use is to separate items with premiums from lower-priced items so that the consumer doesn't notice the price difference
-- not stocking the lower-priced alternatives also works, as does giving all items a premium, when dealing with price-insensitive customers

Restaurants can't charge people for dawdling, but they can charge people extra for items that tend to be consumed during longer meals, such as appetizers, desserts, and wine.

Externality: any impact of an economic transaction on an uninvolved party
Externalities need to be proportionately charged to the parties causing them

Externality pricing is attractive because it attacks the problem without making any assumptions regarding the solution.
- some of the solutions are good, but others are dodges (building a home with few windows to escape per-window luxury taxes)

The Undercover Economist vs. the carbon-neutral movement:
When the UE got to the discussion, a staff member asked him how he traveled to the meeting, explaining that trees would be planted to offset the emissions. The UE didn't understand how this worked. If planting trees was the best way to deal with carbon issues, why have the meeting? If the awareness-raising debate was the important thing, why spend their limited resources planting trees?

Subsidies mar the true cost of things, allowing inefficient and otherwise impractical transactions to take place
The energy efficiency example: if a renovation is worth $500 to a homeowner and $300 to a utility company, it won't get done if it costs $1000. If a government grant of $500 is given to perform the renovation, the government will have spent $500 to make the parties $300 better off.
-- if a subsidy is insufficient, it encourages little change and raises the margin slightly
-- if a subsidy is an overcompensation, it encourages too much change and raises the margin in a big way
-- insufficient subsidies would be a good way to expand important but marginal trades
-- overcompsative subsidies would be good for investment purposes: if the important thing is that the investment gets made, it might be better to overpay and recoup the investment after a longer period than to never make the investment

Inside information changes the nature of a market.
the lemons problem: when inside information guts a market because ignorant buyers are unwilling to pay for quality they cannot observe

Tourist traps exploit the tourist's lack of inside information, charging him a premium for his ignorance.

Health insurance is expensive because people are able to self-select their participation: "fair" rates are noxious to the healthy, but leapt upon by the feeble

The only information a potential customer can glean from an ad with no informational content is that it was expensive to make, and therefore the entity responsible for it must be doing something right.
-- that's awesome

When you have inside information and someone else knows it, you can earn trust by communicating your value in ways that would be prohibitive to the valueless
When someone else has inside information and you know it, you can ask them to demonstrate their value - and you can enact safeguards against duplicity

moral hazard: the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk

Reported earning per share:
When buying a stock, check the company's earnings per share against the share price

The Grolsch method of stock trading: see what's popular, buy it early, cash out quickly

Long-term price-earnings ratios have always been around 16.
All stock prices incorporate tremendous expert knowledge.
Long-term profitability for a company comes from having a capability others cannot match.

When the telecommunications spectrum was auctioned off, the auction theorists made the mistake of allowing the telecommunications companies to make bids containing area codes. Since every company wanted a piece of the pie, but none of them wanted to pay more than they had to for it, the companies chose to bid in blank territories.

Collectivist auction: anyone who stays in the room is willing to buy the item for the named price, whereas anyone who leaves is not

Never ascribe to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

A project is most likely to be successful if the people who benefit from its success are the same people who make it possible.

Nepal's dam:
Nepal's irrigation system involved a dam and canals. The farmers near the dam would help clear the canals, and the farmers near the canals would help maintain the dam. When a new dam was built, a dam that required less maintenance, the farmers near the dam no longer needed help and the agreement broke down.

Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy world in which it's in most people's interest to take action that directly or indirectly damages everyone else.

Comparative advantage is the foundation of the way economists think about trade.
-- nationalism makes comparative advantage an arms race

One of the most important theorems of trade theory, the Lerner theorem, proved in 1936 that with a zero trade balance, a tax on imports is exactly equivalent to a tax on exports.

The Strategy of Conflict - Thomas Schelling - ****

There are two schools of thought regarding conflict. One school believes that conflict is bad and tries to eliminate it. The other school believes that conflict is inevitable and tries to win.

Most conflict situations are essentially bargaining situations.

Using an ultimatum as deterrence uses different skills than the carrying out of that ultimatum.

As far as deterrence goes, the only way a threat can be "too large" is if it violates suspension of disbelief with its severity - effective deterrent threats are never carried out.
-- That's kind of cool, but I disagree with it. In a situation where the effectiveness of a solution is fixed, you ideally want to solve the problem with the least amount of coercion possible. This makes for better relations and doesn't give your opponents the ability to develop defenses against your stronger weapons.

Being unable to appeal to a higher authority hurts negotiations.

Conflict theory is based on rationality, but irrationality can be a strategic advantage.
The threat of mutual destruction cannot be used to deter an adversary too unintelligent to comprehend it or too weak to enforce his will on those he represents.

We tend to identify peace, stability, and conflict resolution with notions like trust, good faith, and mutual respect. To the extent that this view encourages trust and respect, it's good. When trust and good faith don't exist, and when these qualities can't be cultivated by our pretending they exist, we need to look elsewhere for peaceful solutions.

-- in Chapter 2, the book specifically states that it isn't going to concern itself with mutually advantageous bargaining: instead, it'll focus solely on situations where good for one means bad for the other.
-- that seems like a limited view. A rose is probably not going to be the first thing an expert thistle-spotter sees.

Binding oneself fixes your position, but doing so surrenders control to the other party.
The first person to lock himself into a position establishes the precedent.
If you can demonstrate that the other party isn't commited, or that they've miscalculated their commitment, you may undo or revise their commitment.

Restricting the agenda: saying "these are the only things we discuss" to prevent extracurricular extortion (and non-essential issues)

Imagine there are two projects, each with a cost of 3. Each project is worth 2 to Player A and 4 to Player B. Player A has no incentive to do either of these projects by himself. If Player B wants to get Player A's help, he needs to offer to split the costs - giving Player A a net gain of 1 vs. Player B's net gain of 5.
-- note: if Player A and Player B were directly competing with each other, it would probably be unwise for Player A to double Player B's potential growth (if Player B did both projects by himself, he'd be at +2 instead of +4)

An important limitation of economic problems is that they tend to involve divisible objects and compensable activities. If a drainage ditch that would protect two houses costs $1000, and it's worth $800 to both homeowners, we assume that if they both knew the score, they'd get together and pay the $1000 jointly. But if it costs 10 hours a week to be scoutmaster, and each considers the job worth 8 hours of his time but one man must do the whole job, we can't assume that one of the neighbors will propose a deal to compensate the other for those extra hours.

When you bind yourself to a principle, it looks like you must either choose stalemate or discredit that principle.
-- my way to counter principled negotiations is to convince the party that either:
-- (a.) they shouldn't be applying the principle to this particular case, or
-- (b.) my offers aren't inconsistent with their principles

Last clear chance: a legal doctrine that recognizes that before an event occurs, there are points at which some of the parties can no longer affect it.

The best defense against a threat is to carry out your actions before the threat is ever made. If you can't hasten your actions, you can commit yourself to them to the point where the threat would be unable to alter your course. Finally, the threat has to be communicated - if you make yourself unavailable for messages, you can deter the threat itself.
-- that is unbelievable

If a threat can be broken down into a series of smaller threats, there's an opportunity to demonstrate on the first few transgressions that the threat will be carried out on the rest.
This tactic of decomposition applies to promises as well as threats. If neither party trusts the other on large issues, they might be willing to trust each other on small ones.

What makes many agreements enforceable is only the recognition of future opportunities that will be eliminated if mutual trust is not created and maintained, and that the value of these opportunities outweighs the gains that would come from cheating in the present instance.
-- you can manipulate this dynamic by structuring situations so people have nothing to gain by cheating you

When people can't communicate but need to cooperate, they do so through a common language of equitability, selecting what they believe to be logical points of agreement.

Since agreements typically default to "logical" values, it's important to set the stage in such a way as to give favorable outcomes prominence.

"The initial departure of retaliation from the locality that provokes it may be a kind of declaration of independence that is not conducive to the creation of stable mutual expectations."
-- if your relative weakness in an assessment based on stable expectations is what keeps your opponents from fearing your retaliation, this kind of declaration is the only immediate way to achieve meaningful deterrence.

-- Any bargaining situation can quickly evolve into a hierarchy of extracurricular threats and promises if there are no limits regarding what can be put on the table. Any zero-sum situation you see in reality can be transformed away from its basic dynamic with just a few words.

Mobs evolved away from leadership because leadership could be identified and eliminated: now, "incidents" are the coordinating entities.

Tipping points are the result of communication systems that make it easy to take one course of action and virtually impossible to agree on other solutions.

Coordination isn't about guessing what the other person will do: it's about guessing what he thinks you'll do based on what you'll think he'll do, ad infinitum.

-- giving people a prize for successfully choosing the options they think others will find most attractive is an unbelievably effective way to determine mass appeal

If your neighbor's fruit tree overhangs your yard and you pick all the fruit on your side of the line, he has a pretty good idea of what he's acquiesced to in future if he doesn't retaliate. If, instead, you pick the same amount of fruit randomly from both sides, he won't really know how to react. Was it you who took the fruit? Is he going to have to stop you, or are you not going to take any more?

Game theory needs to take into account communication and enforcement systems to be applicable in real-world situations.

If twenty men are held up for robbery by one man who has six bullets, they can overwhelm him provided they're willing to lose six of themselves. The gunman must keep this kind of agreement from being formed: he must sever their communications and threaten any man from being first.

Prohibition delivers enormous power into the hands of the people who can enforce otherwise-unenforcable contracts.

"The ordinary high-school graduate has to work hard for his money, but he could destroy a hundred times that much if he set his mind to it. Given an institutional arrangement in which he could abstain from destruction for a mere fraction of the value that he might have destroyed, the boy clearly has a calling as an extortionist rather than as a mechanic or clerk. It is fortunate that extortion usually defends on self-identification and overt communication by the extortionist himself."
-- bahaha

The timely destruction of communication may be a winning tactic. When a husband and wife are arguing on the phone about where to have dinner, the argument is won by the wife if she announces where she's going and hangs up.
-- that's not a winning tactic unless the need to collaborate outweighs the desire to prevent the "winner" from reaping the rewards of dysfunctionality. Even if it succeeds, it damages the "winner's" reputation: people recognize that there's not a lot of potential for a collaborative relationship with someone whose idea of negotiation is to get the last word in, destroy all communication, then wait for the other guy to acquiesce.
-- the best use of this tactic is temporary interruption of communication, which takes people out of the moment and gives them time to think about the preceding negotiations. The only time you ever want to be the "hang-up-the-phone" guy is when someone's trying to steamroll over your final offer: there's no discussion taking place at that point.


Children are skilled at avoiding the warning glance from their parents, knowing that if they perceive it the parent is obliged to punish noncompliance. Adults are equally skilled at not requesting the permission they suspect would be denied, knowing that explicit denial is a sterner sanction that obliges the denying authorities to take cognizance of the transgression.
-- the "better to seek forgiveness than beg permission" douchebags

In zero-sum games, the objective is not to be found out. In mixed-motive games, the objective is to make the other party take your behavior for granted.

Those who played uncooperatively against a cooperative partner had an opportunity, on the second play, to respond to the implicit offer of cooperation. Instead of thinking of the act as a cooperative one, however, they tended to assume that the cooperative player either didn't care or didn't quite understand the game.
-- there's something to be learned from this.

A promise's cost is paid when it succeeds, and a threat's cost is paid when it fails. If you promise more than you need to, you pay more than you need to. If you threaten more than you need to, the excess is superfluous - a successful threat is one that's not carried out.
-- again, I would stay away from threatening more than is necessary... they go into some math that agrees

You can't threaten that you MIGHT do something, because that's equivalent to saying that you MIGHT NOT do it - it shows that you're not commited. Furthermore, if you don't carry out a threat that you MIGHT have commited, you're only reinforcing your opponent's belief that when it's put up or shut up you'll shut up.
The only way to threaten that you MIGHT do something is if the final decision to carry out that threat is not entirely under your control.

Brinksmanship is the ability to push your opponent to the point where if you go, he goes with you.

If surprise has an advantage, it makes sense to be the first person to gain that advantage.
The perceived likelihood of being attacked first is a large factor in one's willingness to attack.
-- ideally, you want to structure situations so that surprise attacks confer no advantage: barring that, you want their advantage to be outweighed by disadvantages.

If you have the ability to strike with impunity, your opponent will factor that into the likelihood that you'll attack first and be accordingly more likely to attack you because of it.
An example is submarines. As things stand, submarines can't be stopped from launching their nukes. If technology came out that made it possible to detect and eliminate every sub before its nukes were launched, the situation would be substantially less stable [thanks to the increased effectiveness of surprise attacks]. The U.S. knows this, but we have to research submarine detection methods anyway - we can't afford to be without detection when someone else has it.

It's important that your opponent is not forced to guess whether or not you'll attack him if you have no intention of making a surprise attack. During the Cold War, a general remarked, "Our reluctance to strike first is in fact a military disadvantage to us; but it is also, paradoxially, a factor in preventing a world conflict today."
-- earlier in the book, the author recounts someone's proposal not to execute the Russian spies who represented Russia's only way of independently verifying that we were telling the truth about this

-- when you launch a surprise attack, the goal should be to obliterate the opponent's capacity for reprisal.

An assessment of defensive measures comes out differently if we put primary reliance on deterrence. Chicago cannot be hidden. Similarly, a defense of Chicago that requires the enemy to triple the size of his attack may be a poor prospect; it may mean only that the enemy must invest in a larger initial attack.
-- this is something I know from RTS. If you're building static defenses, odds are you're probably losing.

The ideal limitation for a situation in which people can't be stopped from cheating is high enough to negate the advantage of cheating.

If the enemy can hit anything he can locate, and kill anything he can hit, he has to be made unable to locate it.

Examine the sustainability of measures for increasing alertness. If they're not sustainable, they're not effective solutions against situations where the enemy can attack at any time.

You cannot prove that you won't do something. You can only prove that you can't.
Compliance must be observable, verifiable, and provable.

Tenants are less easily removed by threat of forcible eviction than by shutting off the utilities.


J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

The Art of Coercion

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Be proactive
Begin with the end in mind
Put first things first
Think win/win
Seek first to understand, then to be understood
Synergize
Sharpen the saw (increase your capacity for productive action)


If you try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what you want, while your character is fundamentally flawed, in the long run you cannot be successful. Your duplicity will breed distrust, and everything you do will be perceived as manipulative.

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

Production vs. Production Capability - invest in your future, don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and don't neglect the now for the later.

The determinisms: genetic, psychic, or environmental "excuses"
The stimulus-response cycle is different in humans - it's more like stimulus - perception - response


Reactive people are driven by feelings.

The three types of problems: direct control, indirect control, and no control.
Anytime we think the problem is "out there", that thought is the problem.
-- assume nothing is static about the future
-- avoid conversation in which someone won't be helped

Try the thirty-day test of proactivity
-- reminds me of the "If you can do it for a month, you can do it for the rest of your life" idea

It's easy to climb the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.
It's possible to be very busy without being very effective.
-- the Ronald McFondle philosophy: "Take more action. Take more effective action."

Plan things before you do them.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Develop a personal mission statement:

-- my mission statement:
recognize, influence, and exploit patterns and dynamics for profit

-- to fulfil this mission:
pay attention
stay transcendent
be creative
do my best
reexamine situations periodically
plan

-- these roles take priority in achieving my mission:
renaissance man: have a wide body of knowledge to draw from
observer: be aware of things as they unfold
warrior: take action, be disciplined, vanquish fears
friend: get guidance, opportunities, and assistance from other friends
commander: make plans, exercise leadership, provide oversight


-- this book contains much crowing

ingredients of a good affirmation: personal, positive, present, visual, emotional
step back and use visualization from time to time

What one thing could you do that if you did on a regular basis would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?
-- constantly seek to improve everything around me
What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?
-- quickly earn and maintain a reputation as an expert

Successful people have the habit of doing things failures don't like to do.

The time management matrix: classify activities as Important/Not Important and Urgent/Not Urgent
Watch out for misclassifications, and spend time doing important things that aren't urgent.
People get frustrated with their schedules when the schedule won't bend around spontaneous occurences. Weekly planning towards goal accomplishment works better than daily planning.
Effectiveness is substantially more important than efficiency when dealing with people. You can't control how long it takes to bring a person to the point where you want them to be.

Delegation is an important part of both leadership and management.
-- whenever the group acquires an objective, delegate its components

You can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

The emotional bank account - make deposits exceed withdrawals

-- competition builds strength, cooperation gets results

Types of mindsets:
Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Win/Win, Lose/Lose, compromise (lesser win/win), and Win/Win or No Deal
-- the No Deal option is critically important
High on courage, high on consideration: Win/Win
High on courage, low on consideration: Win/Lose
High on consideration, low on courage: Lose/Win
-- High on unresolved issues: Lose/Lose

Dealing with Win/Lose is the real test of Win/Win.
-- you'd have to draw them out of that mentality: transcend the dynamic

"I can't understand my kid. He just won't listen to me at all."
"You don't understand your son because HE won't listen to YOU?"
-- "He looked into his own head and thought he saw the world." - a good phrase

Satisfied needs do not motivate.

Seek first to understand, then be understood.
When rephrasing what someone said, try not to unconsciously put your own spin onto it.
Recognize and value people's differences.

Force Field Analysis:
The current level of performance is determined by the driving forces that encourage upward movement and the restraining forces that discourage it.
-- this is true and I'm going to exploit the shit out of it

He advises people to read a book a week. I can easily read two or more.
Be a magic mirror - show people what's good about themselves.

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it, but it is so clear that it is impossible to mistake it."

The upward spiral: commit, learn, do.
-- see me there.

The Elements of Style - Strunk and White - ***

The Elements of Style

Note: I have no idea why Strunk and White would make the first chapter of this book so inaccessable to the average reader. Here's an example:
"Participial phrases preceded by a conjunction or by a preposition, nouns in apposition, adjectives, and adjective phrases come under the same rule if they begin the sentence."

The book drops the jargon somewhere around the second chapter, but it's painful until then.


TOP 5 IDEAS:
Keep related words together.
Work from a suitable design.
Write in a way that comes naturally, and don't assume that because you've acted naturally, your product is without flaw.
Make the paragraph your unit of writing.
Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.


Charles's is correct, Charles' isn't
Semicolons combine two complete sentences.
Colons link sentences while continuing the flow.

Singular subjects use is, plurals use are, regardless of what they're linked to

He's one of those people WHO'S never ready on time: INCORRECT
He's one of those people WHO'RE never ready on time: CORRECT
His speech as well as his manners are objectionable: INCORRECT
His speech as well as his manners is objectionable: CORRECT

If NONE means NOT ONE, use singular forms:
None of us is perfect - RIGHT
None of us are perfect - WRONG
-- what the hell
-- this makes sense. "one of us", not "us", is the subject

Compound cliches (the long and short of it) are considered singular
Every is considered singular, no matter how many subjects follow it
"Every window, picture, and mirror was smashed."

Make the paragraph your unit of writing.

Show, not tell.
Make definite assertions in writing. "Not" shouldn't be used as an evasion, i.e., "He was not pleased with the ending."
Don't use "would", "should", etc. unless there's uncertainty.
Prefer specific, definite language over abstraction.

Extra words are bad.
"The fact that" is an unacceptable phrase.
-- I agree, it tips your hand as a cliche-spewing chump

Avoid a succession of loose sentences (two-part sentences joined with "and", "but", etc.)
If you've written a monotonous paragraph, reform it. Simple sentences can be good.

Keep related words together.
-- that's very helpful advice
-- when I'm editing or rereading my work, I'll check to see whether I've put the words in the strongest order

Make sure your sentences don't have multiple interpretations.
Example: "All of the members were not present."
Does that mean "Not all of the members were present." or "All of the members were absent."?

Keep summaries to one tense.

Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.
-- I've been trying to do this.
The other prominent position in a sentence is at the beginning.
-- if you emphasize something in the beginning of a sentence it has a natural tendency to get overruled by the emphasis at the end of the sentence
-- use one emphasis per sentence for stronger messages

Exclamation marks are reserved for actual exclamations.
-- tell that to the easily excitable, they'll fight you for it


MISUSED WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS:

And/or: a device, or shortcut, that damages a sentence and often leads to confusion or ambiguity
-- shouldn't that read "confusion and/or ambiguity"? hehehe

Cases: Don't use "cases" unless referring to actual incidents (or casings)

Claim (verb): Not to be used as a substitute for DECLARE, MAINTAIN, or CHARGE.
-- I'd use it as a substitute for DECLARE or MAINTAIN when intentionally leaving room for doubt: "He claimed he put it back, but it's not there."
-- The dictionary agrees: "To state to be true, especially when open to question; ASSERT or MAINTAIN."
-- owned

Compare to / Compare with:
Compare to = dissimilar things
Compare with = similar things

Comprise: Don't confuse COMPRISE with CONSTITUTE
-- comprise = consist of
-- constitute = amount to
-- I'm probably guilty of this

Different than: should be DIFFERENT FROM

Factor: Another cliche-spewing chump word, avoid it

Farther and Further:
farther = distance
further = time, quantity

Feature: Another cliche-spewing chump word, avoid it

The common word meaning "combustible" is "inflammable". But some people are thrown off by the in- and think "inflammable" now means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE.
-- HAHAHAHA, that's the saddest thing I've ever heard, especially since the book was published before I was born and flammable's a legitimate word now

Fortuitous: Don't confuse FORTUITOUS with FORTUNATE
Fortuitous = happening by chance
Fortunate = lucky
-- guilty of this

More importantly: should be MORE IMPORTANT

-ize: people were making verbs by adding -ize to nouns: listed are CUSTOMIZE, PRIORITIZE, and FINALIZE
-- I bet grammarians rarely win these battles: though the law's on their side, the speakers of the house are not, and thus they find themselves outvoted and the law changed

Less: use FEWER when fewer applies
Regretful: not to be used in place of REGRETTABLE
They: not for use in addressing a group of people
Transpire: does not mean HAPPENED - means LEAKED OUT


STYLE ADVICE

Place yourself in the background.
Write in a way that comes naturally, and don't assume that because you've acted naturally, your product is without flaw.

"Don't assume that because you've acted naturally, your product is without flaw."
-- I wish I had invented that sentence. It perfectly captures my attitude toward people who use the authenticity of their actions as a shield against reproach.

Work from a suitable design.
-- I've never done that, it could help a lot

Revise and rewrite.
Don't overwrite.
Don't overstate.
Don't use qualifiers (rather, very, little, pretty).

Don't be Spontaneous Me.
-- save the stream-of-consciousness bullshit for your blog

Don't explain too much. Let conversation disclose the speaker's manner or condition.
Avoid fancy words. Let your ear be your guide.

Be clear.
"There are occasions when obscurity serves a literary yearning, if not a literary purpose. . ."
-- Hah!

Don't inject opinion into your writing.
Use figures of speech sparingly.
Prefer the standard to the offbeat.
What's appropriate in advertising or business writing may not be for formal or literary writing.

Notes on the Synthesis of Form - Christopher Alexander - **

Notes on the Synthesis of Form - Christopher Alexander

Every design problem begins with reconciling form and context. Form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem.

Let's say you're designing a kettle. The difference between the kettle and everything else in the world may seem clear, but it would be easy to change the boundaries. As an example, you could say it's not the kettle that needs to change, but the method of heating it.

It's easier to see when something's wrong than when it's right. This principle should govern design.
Few men have sufficient ability to invent forms of any clarity, but we are all able to criticize existing forms.

The goal of design is to make everything fit. To do this, you need to be conscious of the way your decisions and fixes can negatively affect your product.

When we admire a simple situation for its good qualities, this doesn't mean we wish we were in the same situation.

In situations without explicit rules, the rules only emerge as you start to correct your mistakes.

The light analogy: if one misfit light lights up, its neighbors might light up as well

If a form is made the same way again and again, its maker finds little wrong with it.
Misfit provides an incentive to change; good fit provides none.

Equilibrium between form and context can be reached, but only if there's a force that prevents needless change.
Selfconsciousness kills these equilibriums. Individuals want to succeed on an individual level, and the only way to do this is to break loose from the system. Unfortunately, the average designer lacks the ability to invent forms that fit their contexts better than the forms that have been refined by adaptation and development.
-- that's a very important point to remember

Slovakian peasants used to be famous for their well-made, colorful shawls. When they were given new dyes, the shawls turned out terribly - their artistic skill was a product of tradition, not artistry, as their experiments with the new colors proved.

There are limits to the number of concepts you can cognitively manipulate at one time.
To simplify things, designers agglomerate related concepts into hierarchies: for a kettle, "function" might encompass "production", "safety", and "use", which encompass other areas or requirements.

When a number of issues are being taken into account in a design decision, the ones which can be most clearly expressed are best reflected in the form.

Concepts have a bad habit of moving from descriptions to criteria; what is at first a useful tool can become a bigoted preoccupation.
-- I can see how I might have done that with Sprawl

As time goes on, the designer gets more and more control over the process of design. But as he does so, his efforts to deal with the increasing cognitive burden actually make it harder and harder for the real causal structure to express itself.
What can we do to overcome this difficulty?
-- my guess is to design piece by piece, and regularly review to test how the pieces are integrating into the whole
-- keeping concepts simple enough to remember would help, too

In order to solve a problem by selection:
1. It must be possible to generate a wide range of possible alternative solutions
2. It must be possible to express all the criteria for solutions in terms of the same symbolism
3. All solutions must be testable against the criteria, and the testing must reveal a solution as satisfactory

The selfconscious designer works entirely from the picture in his mind, and this picture is almost always wrong.
The way to overcome this is to examine the mental picture in a way not subject to language or experience biases.
-- the test of reality: when presumed reactions meet actual reactions
-- you can't afford to ignore any hints that your engineering might go awry

-- ... there's a part here on set theory which I can't believe didn't get removed during beta
-- all things should have a beta: that's not in here, but it should be

A well-designed object illuminates the problem in addition to solving it.
A constructive diagram provides readily apparent insights into the nature of the context.

When you draw a diagram, start with the most specific things you can think of, then work up to general concepts that encompass the specific things.
When designing requirements, make each one in the hierarchy of similar size and significance. "Economically satisfactory" and "maintenance costs low enough" don't belong on the same level: for the design to be economically satisfactory, the maintenance costs obviously have to be low enough.

Performance standards can be used as criteria of fitness, but subjective issues such as comfort need to be taken into account.
-- I really like the idea of contrasting what people think with what they think other people will think

Try to make requirements as independent as possible. This makes it easier to check whether or not a solution to one requirement could negatively impact the other requirements.

Built to Last - Jim Collins - ***

Visionary companies are only great places to work for the people who fit in. Everyone else is quickly expelled.
Visionary companies focus on outdoing themselves, not the competition.
Visionary companies make AND choices instead of OR choices.
A visionary company is its own harshest critic.

Time telling vs. clock building: it's a fallacy to respect the guy who always knows what time it is more than the guy who can build a clock for others to use
In countries with kings, the prosperity of the country largely depended on the king.

The success of your company is not the same as the success of your idea.

Wal-Mart let department managers run their department as if it were a business. Cash rewards and public recognition were given to employees who came up with money-saving solutions that could be replicated at other stores.

The Newtonian revolution: the idea God set up a universe with specific principles vs. God's manually making everything happen

Merck's philosophy was that medicine is for the people, not the profits. The profits follow.
Pfizer diversified, saying "I would rather make 5% of $1 billion in total sales than 10% of $300 million in drugs."
-- it's funny, Pfizer's quote brings up the same point I made when I read Good to Great
-- even though Pfizer is the "comparison company", not the "visionary company", its earnings are over double Merck's in '07, and its profits are almost 5 times higher

Hewlett-Packard wanted to contribute something to the world. Texas Instruments wanted to become a giant company. When TI switched to making calculators and cheap digital watches in a "more is better" strategy, Hewlett-Packard had the same opportunity, but HP elected not to take it because it allowed no opportunity for technological contribution.
-- that's kind of cool: if your strength is knowledge, you'll do better if you concentrate on knowledge and let others compete over manufacturing

During the Depression, Motorola was pressured to lie about their financial health. The founder responded that he didn't care about industry practices. "Tell them the truth," he said, "first because it's the right thing to do and second because they'll find out anyway."
The visionary companies are not purely pragmatic or purely idealistic. They are both.

The core ideology of a business needs to be what that business believes, not what it would like itself to believe.
The very act of stating an ideology influences behavior toward consistency with that ideology.

Commit to it or get rid of it.

3M didn't pay lip service to encouraging individual initiative and innovation; it decentralized, gave researchers 15% paid time to pursue any project of their liking, created an internal venture capital fund, and instituted a rule that 25% of each division's annual sales should come from products introduced in the previous five years.

Big Hairy Audacious Goal: the visionary companies rose to success by taking on massive challenges with unreasonable confidence
Procter & Gamble's explanation: "We like to try the impractical and possible and prove it to be both practical and possible -- if it's the right thing to do in the first place. You do something you think is right. If it clicks, you give it a ride. If you hit, mortgage the farm and go for broke."

Cult-like companies: the visionary companies are notable for their
- fervently held ideology
- indoctrination
- tightness of fit (buy in or get out)
- elitism
To create this atmosphere, the companies tailor training, punishment, and rewards to meet the ideology. Emphasis on the ideology is continued, and corporate culture and incentives are provided to produce psychological buy-in.

Procter of Procter & Gamble concluded that workers who showed indifference to the need for a greater work effort should be deprived of their share of the profits - that their shares should be turned over to those who cared. He set up four classifications, based on the degree of a worker's cooperation as decided by management. That helped considerably [to ensure the proper attitude]

Good to Great - Jim Collins - ***

Good is the enemy of great, because it's easy to settle for good things.

Good-to-great companies didn't principally focus on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what NOT to do and what to STOP doing.
Technology can accelerate a transformation but not cause one.

Level 5 leadership: a blend of personal humility and professional will
First who, then what: get good people, get rid of bad people, put the right people in the right seats
Stockdale paradox: confront the brutal facts, yet maintain faith that you will prevail
The hedgehog concept: if you can't be the best in the world at your core business, your core business can't be the basis for a great company
Technology: used to accelerate existing transformations
Gradual success: keep pushing in the same direction
A culture of discipline

The other levels of leader are: capable individual, contributor, manager, effective leader
The "leadership is the answer to everything" approach to business is the equivalent of the "God is the answer to everything" approach to science.

Some leaders have "biggest dog" syndrome: they don't mind other dogs, as long as they remain the biggest one.

Comparison leaders, concerned with their reputation for personal greatness, often failed to set the company up for success in the next generation. After all, what better testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls apart after you leave?

The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They were seemingly ordinary people with an incurable need to produce results.

Bethlehem Steel blamed imported steel as the cause of their problems. Ken Iverson of Nucor saw the challenge from imports as a blessing: steel was heavy, and the competition had to ship it all the way across the ocean, giving the American companies a huge advantage.

The window and the mirror:
Level 5 leaders look out the window to give credit to people, but look in the mirror to assign responsibility. Comparison leaders do the opposite.

If you have the right people, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people are self-motivated: you just need to to avoid de-motivating them.

The Wells Fargo story:
The CEO of Wells-Fargo knew the banking industry would undergo substantial change, but he didn't know what that change would be. Instead of mapping out a strategy for change, his strategy was to hire outstanding people. "If I'm not smart enough to see the changes that are coming, they will. And they'll be flexible enough to deal with them."

The "genius with a thousand helpers" model is not a sustainable vision.

The right people will deliver the best results they're capable of, regardless of the incentive system.
-- the incentive system is what makes them deliver the results to you, not other people

Nucor built its entire system on the idea that you can teach farmers how to make steel, but you can't teach a farmer work ethic to people.

"The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving." -- a Wells Fargo executive
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to the right people.
-- every system that yokes a man to a community needs effective methods of identifying and excommunicating community members who don't pull their weight

Practical disciplines:
1. When in doubt, don't hire. Keep looking.
2. When you know you need to make a people change, act.
3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

The Philip Morris story:
Philip Morris took their best executive off their domestic business and put him in charge of international operations, their best opportunity. The end result was that Marlboro became the best-selling cigarette in the world three years before it became number one in the United States.

At a good-to-great company, the people either stayed on the bus for a long time or got off the bus quickly.

You don't need to sell off good people.
If you have trouble with someone in one capacity, try moving them to another capacity where they might blossom.

You can't reject data because you don't like its implications.
The Kroger story:
Both Kroger and A&P did studies on what consumers wanted, and both companies' studies came back with the same answer: superstores. A&P ignored the data. Kroger converted all its facilities to superstores or eliminated them. Within years, Kroger was the number one grocery chain in America, and A&P was in sad decline.

If you can't be number one or number two in a market, there's no place for you in that market.

People need to be worried about the company's problems, not the feelings of management.

Charisma can be a liability as well as an asset.
Charismatic people need to be especially conscientious about making decisions based on facts.

How to create a climate where the truth is heard:
1. Lead with questions, not answers.
2. Debate. Don't coerce.
3. Conduct autopsies without blame.
-- conducting autopsies is not limited to failures or even to what you yourself are doing
4. Build "red flag" mechanisms, where people have opportunities to say things that would ordinarily go unsaid.

Hosting "debates" to convince people to buy in to a predetermined decision is a waste of time.

Use the opportunity provided by crises and challenges to grow stronger.
The difficulty of the challenge matters less than the response to it.

The optimists didn't make it out of POW camps. The people who made it saw the facts for what they were, yet still had faith in their ability to prevail.
-- optimism is a dangerous delusion, especially when the assets in question aren't the optimist's
-- a way to differentiate optimism from morale-boosting hype is that hype either goes away or changes targets when buzzkilling facts appear

"Are you a hedgehog or a fox?"
-- I'm a fox
"Each day, the battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins."
-- actually, foxes used their cunning to develop an exploit: they roll the hedgehog into water, where its one defense doesn't work, and then eat it
-- man I hate reading corollary points based on flawed reasoning - this isn't the first time fact-checking has revealed something like this, but it is the first time the conclusion that's been drawn is the exact opposite of the one the reality of the analogy supports

Integrate your thinking into a unifying vision.
See what's essential and ignore the rest.
-- fox note: as essential things are being completed, niceties that are compatible with the vision should be experimented with on a smaller scale
-- fox note: if you do one thing really well, but 30% of your market wants something you're not providing, your maximum return on your product is 70% of market share. No matter how good you get at providing your service, you can never win the 30% of customers your service doesn't appeal to. Fox thinking overcomes this limitation through diversification.

Walgreens' strategy:
- The best, most convenient drugstores.
- High profit per customer visit.
That's it. More convenience led to more visits, and with high profit per visit, Walgreens prospered.

Eckerd's strategy:
- make good deals
- grow grow grow
While Walgreens executives understood that profitable growth would come from pruning away all that did not fit with the Hedgehog Concept, Eckerd executives lurched after growth for growth's sake. Eckerd threw itself into the home video market with its purchase of American Home Video Corporation. Eckerd's CEO told Forbes magazine, "Some feel the purer we are, the better we'll be. But I want growth, and the home video industry is only emerging -- unlike, say, drugstore chains." Eckerd's home video foray produced $31 million in losses.
-- fox note: what if their experiment had been a success? Philip Morris derives over 1/3 of its revenue from non-essential sources.

The Hedgehog Concept Venn diagram:
1. What you can be the best in the world at -- analyzing, deconstructing, and recompiling systems and experiences to improve them
2. What drives your economic engine -- multiple sources of income, each with different requirements regarding scales and balances
3. What you are deeply passionate about -- learning, improvement, truth, evolution, righting wrongs, personal development, creativity, teamplay

Being the best at what you do:
Wells Fargo realized they couldn't be better than Citicorp at global banking, so they pulled the plug on the majority of their international operations. Wells Fargo then turned their attention to what they COULD be the best in the world at: running a bank like a business, with a focus on the western United States. [presumably where their strengths were]
Abbot: Recognized that they couldn't compete with Merck in pharmaceuticals, switching instead to diagnosis tools and economic healthcare solutions.
Fannie Mae: Figured out that they could develop a unique capability to assess risk in mortgage-related securities and become a full capital markets player.
Kimberly-Clark: Saw they had a latent skill at creating brands where the name of the product is synonymous with the category (Huggies, Kleenex, Depends)
Nucor: Found that they had tremendous skill in creating a performance culture and making far-sighted bets on technology.
Philip Morris: Built brand loyalty and diversified into non-tobacco areas as a defensive measure.
Hasbro: Built classics and recycled them.

You don't need to be in a great industry to produce great results.

Try to find your performance denominator - how you measure where your profits stem from.
-- sales * critical reviews * customer reviews at various intervals (first impression, two one month, three months, whatever)

Finding your Hedgehog Concept is not a weekend affair.
A Council made of 5-12 people from a wide range of perspectives can help determine this concept.
Rules for the Council: governed by leading executive, informal, does not seek consensus

Try to find your performance denominator - how you measure where your profits stem from.
-- sales * critical reviews * customer reviews at various intervals (first impression, two one month, three months, whatever)

Build a culture around the idea of freedom and responsibility, within a framework.
Fill that culture with self-disciplined people.
Adhere to the Hedgehog Concept.

Level 5 leaders created a culture of discipline. Level 4 leaders disciplined the organization.

The fact that something is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity doesn't make it a good one to take, especially if it doesn't fit within the vision.

Nucor made workers' hard hats the same color. When the foremen complained, Nucor responded, "Your status comes from your leadership capabilities, not your position. If you need a class distinction, Nucor is not the place for you."

Most people have to-do lists, but not "stop doing" lists.

You can't make good use of technology until you know which technologies are relevant.
Early technology pioneers rarely prevail in the end.
-- the later you get into the tech game, the further your dollar goes, but you lose opportunities to establish market share

Success is built upon accumulated momentum, not miracles.
Changing your course reduces your momentum.

How do you get a company of 50,000 people to embrace a radical new strategy? Start little by little, then let them see it's working.

You can buy your way to growth, but not greatness.