Commonplace Pages

… three professional negotiators walk us through techniques that members of Congress may be using right now. They explain these techniques not with textbooks, but with examples from their everyday lives.

From BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) to Disarming Empathy… some great business and management lessons. Thanks again Planet Money!

Obviously if struggle indicates weakness — a lack of intelligence — it makes you feel bad, and so you’re less likely to put up with it. But if struggle indicates strength — an ability to face down the challenges that inevitably occur when you are trying to learn something — you’re more willing to accept it.

Thorough enjoyed this piece and its message.

Barry Becher, co-creator of the Ginsu knife and the master of the hard sell TV pitch died recently. In memory, we are re-airing an exploration of the world of television pitchmen by erstwhile OTM producer Mike Vuolo.

Caught the re-broadcast this weekend.

When and how to ask for the money, false scarcity, social proof, perceived value.

I couldn’t help but think about of the projects on Kickstarter with their scarcity in the form of Limited Rewards and Pledge Deadlines, social proof by display the number of Backers, and of course of perceived value of wanting…

to invite your audience, the tip, to think differently about what they needed in their lives, so that the audience would reach into their pockets, pull out that dollar bill for that bottle of tonic and make the purchase.

I’m sure a Kickstarter campaign can learn a thing or two from the Morrises and Popeils.

Speaking of which… I also enjoyed this from The Onion:

The New Yorker just had their Five Key Ted Talks article and watched Sir Ken Robinson again. What a great Ted Talk. Great to hear him again in this Ted Radio Hour. 

… if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original — if you’re not prepared to be wrong.

Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

If people were to actually stop and read all of them for every website that they visited, they could spend on the order of 200 to 250 hours a year — about a month of time at work each year that you could spend reading privacy policies.

I wonder if there’s a crowd-source project here that users can then identify what’s most important to them and each form would highlight/flag the appropriate policy.

This is the line that got me after listening to the interview on NPR (where I first heard the story).

His focus… will be on distributing the magazine’s long-form journalism through tablet computers like the iPad.

My goal has never been to dominate the market. My goal has always just been to just make a living.

Makes using and paying for this service that much more satisfying.

Excellent series. And thought it was apropos after watching “Waiting For ‘Superman’” last week. Also a must see.

A virtuous circle minus, perhaps, only virtue. (07:55)

Nicely said.