Negotiation practices, food for thought and hacks
I’ve been regularly following Ben (Benoit) Lecomte‘s incredible 190 day-long swim through plastic-filled Pacific Ocean. Incredible heroic human achievement, priceless scientific research on consequences of Fukushima radioactive polution and an exploration of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Thanks to the Longest Swim team, we have a clear picture of the devastating impact on nature our so called “progress” has brought.
Here is Ben’s gruesome summary of his findings.
Just watched “A Plastic Ocean” documentary by Craig Leeson on Netflix.
It shows a horror of plastic that contaminates literally all ocean, penetrating all life forms, killing marine animals and birds ending up on our plates poisoning us with toxins.
But what is estonishing is that long before we learnt how to separate and recycle, we have been burning waste, generating electricity.
Today’s technologies allow to use plasma to transform all waste into simple organics, breaking all toxins into simple elements. These modern burning facilities already exist in Norway and Germany and the company shown in the documentary producing scalable waste-to-energy solutions is called PyroGenesis Canada.
Naturally, I’ve checked out the company, their story and their financial documents. Poor lads are about to get bankrupt. They simply don’t have enough orders to stay afloat. Contrary to plastic…
author unknown
My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours, Charles Bukowski
Reading “Start with Why” I came to this brilliant quote from Herb Kelleher, creator of the Southwest, one of the world’s most successful budget airlines.
Remember my cat, the greatest negotiator ever?
He could open any door and get what he wanted effortlessly. Well, he was ran over by a car last week-end.
And I guess there is a lesson to be learnt from this awfull tragedy: No matter how great you are at what you do, the reality is like a truck. It will run you over one day if you don’t pay attention.
Shipping 100mln orders in less then 3 days required unprecedented automation and ingenuity. Bravo Alibaba!
Lots of articles written about this topic. Emotions make you blind. You deliver “I-have-a-dream” sort of speech and think that you won the heart of your counterpart, then you get frustrated seing that your emotional tirade bounced off the wall, so you start boiling. 🙂
My advice, be yourself! If you shout on your counterpart, apologize and carry on. If you are nervous, pause, explain the nature of your behavior, let your counterpart understand. Don’t be afraid of emotions. Once you cool down and can clearly think, make a recap together so that in your passion you’re not carried away too far.
When you leave the table make sure that all parties have the same version of the event, the result is well noted and follow-up actions planned.
2nd row 5th from the left. Practice (a lot)
Let me introduce you Mr. Wassily Leontief, the 1973 Nobel Prize Laureate in economics.
In 1951 Mr. Leontief was working at Harvard University and having access to the US Bureau of Labor statistics decided to imperically test Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage theory (precisely, Heckscher–Ohlin theorem that derives from it). The result of his study is what is known to be the Leontief paradox.
In breif, the comparative advantage theory states that in the free trade economy all countries will specialize in either capital or labour intense products production. The comparative advantage of one country will push out unproductive and uncompetitive industries of the other and vice versa thus establishing an equilibrium.
Ricardo is an apostle of capitalism. His free trade mantra is used (if not abused) by the World Bank, the IMF, WTO and other powerful institutions whose role is to impose and guard free trade on the global scale.
So what’s with Mr. Leontief paradox? Well, he simply proved the theory wrong. While being the most capital intense country in the world, US was and is importing more capital intense products and exports more labour intense products then the rest. The “free” trade is never free. Thanks for proving it, Mr. Leontief!
I’m not sure if David Ricardo would appreciate Mr. Trump’s new tariffs on steel. They just don’t fit his free trade comparative advantage theory…
