Radical Candor
Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor is a truly fascinating management book. You can tell it is a good book because it is hard to summarize. Each chapter is fi...
Author: Ludvig
The Art of Dealing with Difficult People
The modern relevance of Stoic ideas is beautifully explained by the American philosopher William B. Irvine in two of his books, A Guide to the Good Life: The An...
The Ajax Dilemma
The Ajax Dilemma is a fantastic interpretation of the Iliad by the classicist philosopher Paul Woodruff, centering on the tensions arising between Ajax, Odysseu...
Understanding Competition and Cooperation
Contemporary society literally surrounds us with a semantic mess when it comes to the way human interactions are to be “managed.” On the one hand, we are bombar...
The Art of the Sale
Economics tells us that selling is about understanding a customer’s needs and delivering a product to meet them. In the world of homo oeconomicus, the success o...
On the Careful Use of Language
Although primates in general are among the most social of mammal species, very few primate groups are capable of supporting more than eighteen males. Beyond thi...
Why Hierarchy is Everywhere
Abhorred by some as a means for social domination, adored by others for its apparent success, hierarchy (from ancient Greek hiereus (ἱερεύς) “priest” and arkh...
Designing the Office
In Cubed (2015), Nikil Saval offers a refreshing and well-sourced history of the American office, from the counting houses of the nineteenth century to the Goog...
The Uses and Misuses of Competition
There is an interesting analogy to be made between today’s corporations and the mystery surrounding the construction of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids. How could...
On Office Politics
The exercise of power is not something that solely belongs to the realm of government. One could argue that nearly all organizations are prone to power games. D...