Conveying ideas crisply and clearly is a rare ability. The Deadly Sho(r)ts and More Deadly Sho(r)ts i-TFTD posts received appreciative feedback so here is another set.
#334-1. A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
#334-2. Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument.
-Robert Half, American businessman (1918-) [not sure]
#334-3. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
-Helmuth von Moltke, German general (1800-1891)
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Physical force is sometimes overestimated, its control requires power of thought. I can use positional authority to enforce a decision but its implementation is far more energetic if I invest effort in convincing the team of the decision.
Persuasion is a dynamic skill—after reasonable preparation, its effectiveness lies in the actual conversation with others and how one fine-tunes the dialogue.
Planning and plans have to be understood as two different beasts. One is a useful thinking process with multiple benefits, the other is to be seen as a temporary and temporal artifact. This was discussed in the i-TFTD post titled, “Plan But Don’t Always Stick to It”. Two new books on strategy I started reading bring out the importance of this with brilliant examples from war and business:
-Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford, author of "The Undercover Economist"
-Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt
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