1: It’s Friday night.

Mari works as a project manager for a global supply chain company.  Oba is a chef.

It’s been a tough year for the couple.

“A recession triggered a restructuring in Mari’s company, and she was asked to take on additional responsibilities while downsizing her team,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, and their co-authors write in their classic book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes … continue reading

1: Why pay attention to the stories you are telling yourself?

And why devote the time, effort, and energy to change these stories?

It’s not going to be easy, Crucial Conversations authors Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory warn us.

There are two reasons you may want to change the stories you are telling yourself:

Reason #1: Bad results.

Maybe you … continue reading

1: “Invert.  Always invert.” Charlie Munger loved to quote the great algebraist Carl Jacobi.

Inversion is defined as: “A reversal of position, order, form, or relationship.”

Charlie is telling us the power of “turning the question backward.”  Because “many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward” he writes in  Poor Charlie’s Almanack. 

So that was his approach when he was invited to give a … continue reading