Business people, salesmen, game theory mathematicians, Donald Trump and negotiators would advice you to get the best deal possible. And the best deal would often amount to getting the biggest share of the pie that you can possibly get.
While that strategy may get you rich when selling refrigerators to Eskimos, it is not the best long term strategy for a partnership.
Whenever you try to get a bigger piece of the pie, the other parties gets less. And their motivation for baking pie suffers proportionally.
Trying to get the “best deal” by getting an unfair portion may be a viable short term strategy. But in the long run it kills partnerships.
The best way to ensure affluent pie making and long term profit is for every party to insist on a fair deal for everyone involved.
The best strategy is not to simply cater for one’s own interests. It is to cater for everyone’s interest. Putting my interest first hurts the other parties’ interests and kills off that much motivation to make the partnership work in the long run.
The best strategy would be to impress as much as you can by delivering value to the partnership as often as you can. Give life to the partnership by continually giving and insisting on a fair deal for everyone involved. Empathy, transparency, putting all cards on the table and dropping all chess gaming are keys to a good partnership. Don’t do tactics. Don’t do strategies. Just ensure everyone succeeds.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Thank you for an excellent reading. I recognized that the value of help could be formulated for example by a formula such this:
Value of help=number of people helped (0-inf.) x the average subjective quality factor of help conceived by helped (0-10) x the measurable objective quality factor of help in relation to outcome (0-1) x the summary number of ways of help conceived by all concerned (0-inf.) x the amount of available resources needed for help (0-1)
Let me ponder this for a while…
*Thank you Geir very much for your thoughts about the formula. I have just had some ideas how to update it:
*Value of help=the number of people helped (0-inf.) x the average subjective quality factor of the help conceived by all the helped people (0-10) x the summary number of different outcomes which are totaly or partialy attained by the help (0-inf.) x the average value of conceived relative importance of these outcomes attained by the help by us and helped people (0-5) x the measurable objective quantity factor which reflects the total part of all goals which are attained by the help (0-1) x the amount of available resources needed for help (0-1) 🙂
I watched the movie “The Founder” the other day. It was basically a story about how Rac Kroc stole McDonalds from the McDonald brothers.
Now, in his defense, the McDonald brothers were idealistic, naive, idiots and Kroc knew “stubbornly, inflexible stupid” when he saw it. The McDonald brothers pretty much did everything in their power to keep Kroc from making them filthy rich, and eventually, Kroc said, “Fuck it” and then fucked them out of everything.
A lot of people blame Kroc for the McDonald brothers losing money. I blame them.
THEY. OWNED. THE. FUCKING. NAME.
And then they gave away a large fortune for a small one.
Basically, the McDonald brothers were penny wise and pound foolish and Kroc was the opposite. In the end, the McDonald brothers got to keep the original McDonald’s restaurant if they changed its name. They did so, and Kroc then opened a McDonalds across the street from them and drove the founder’s store under.
The opposite of your post above.
The movie, and other examples, leave me wondering about how GREAT power is achieved. Sadly, Steve Jobs STOLE the graphic user interface from Xerox and then Microsoft STOLE Apple’s look and feel. LRH STOLE money and lives to amass a fortune. General Motors killed public transportation projects in major cities last century…
There is something we need to transcend as a species and that is how a totally selfish force can, without conscience, fuck over a cooperative, creative force and leave them utterly destroyed.
I saw this at work recently. As a trainer, I sometimes get people to join our gym from the outside. When this happens, they get “Trainer Rate” which is better than a standard membership. Such a person came in and my manager sold them a regular membership, telling them “Trainer Rate” was no longer available.
He did this for LESS THAN 50 DOLLARS IN COMMISSIONS.
How. Oh, HOW. Do we partner with the Ray Krocs in life? Often, we are forced to.
Your last paragraph is ACTUALLY how I work at my gym. And I am constantly told to “not say ____ to our clients” when what I am saying is simple honesty relevant to their best interest.
So, the Stoic notion is what I go with. “Create virtue for it’s own sake and enjoy it as your OWN WILL.”
And the art of enjoying virtue is to spend time at the end of the day ENJOYING the good one chooses to do. It’s a creative act, and an acquired taste.
I see a real contradiction here. One can only impress the persons within our own cultural bubble, so not everyone can win. Even so, it is an ideal scene.
I think that it is important here to mention that a person could be comfortable and responsible for both all his totaly good impressions and bad impressions and everything between it. A person could be also comfortable and responsible for any kind of impressions he make to others and for any kind of impressions others make to him… 🙂
Yes
Equilibrium. Would it be accurate to say your assumptions pretty much reflect your current core philosophy in life? 🙂
Yes. You are right. I have viewpoints that could change and improve. I perceive that my statement can look like some arbitrary principle set in stone, but that is why I wrote: I THINK at the beginning of the statement… 😉 And what was the intention of your question? 🙂
Thanks, Equilibrium.:) Just to clarify my intention — No, it was NOT a loaded question! 🙂 Just looking at your “handle”, made me think – mmm, this guy’s got a a pretty “grounded ” view of things!? 😀