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Why Most Advice About Dealing with People Doesn’t Work - and What I Focus on Instead For years, I did what everyone does when they struggle with people: I consumed advice. Books. Podcasts. Articles. Frameworks with neat acronyms. Lists of “things emotionally intelligent people never do”. Scripts for difficult conversations. Techniques for influence, persuasion, boundaries, confidence, empathy, assertiveness, charisma - you name it. I tried them earnestly. I applied them carefully. And, more often than not, they failed. Not always dramatically. More subtly. Conversations still went sideways. Relationships still drained energy. People still misunderstood me, resisted me, or reacted in ways that advice promised they wouldn’t -  if only I said the right thing the right way . After sorting through hundreds of failed attempts - my own and other people’s - I eventually accepted an uncomfortable truth: Most advice about dealing with people doesn’t fail because it’s wrong. It fai...

  Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance: A Story of Quiet Preparation and Loud Results If you have ever rushed out of the front door clutching your keys, half-drunk tea in one hand, and a growing sense of dread in your chest because you know you’ve forgotten something… then you already grasp the basic premise of today’s theme: Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance . It’s a phrase that gets thrown around boardrooms, workshops, and classrooms, often with a wagging finger and an expression that suggests you should have known better. But planning is more than a slogan. It’s a mindset—a way of reducing chaos before life has the chance to serve it to you on a platter. To explore this, let me tell you a story. Not the sort featuring dragons and treasure (sadly), but one about an ordinary person who discovered something extraordinary: that a few moments of preparation can change everything. The Beginning of the Chaos Meet Sam. Reliable, clever, well-meaning—and utterly disor...