Friday Donuts

Friends, One of the more memorable books I read in business school was Getting to Yes . Its pages contained many insights about the art of negotiation. Some of the recent headlines call to mind the chapter on “Soviet-style negotiations” -the notion that negotiations are zero-sum games. If you win, I lose. I’ve been wondering what would happen if we applied some of the rhetoric we’re seeing at the international level to a smaller scale (all tongue in cheek, of course) Californians have been migrating to Colorado for some time now, driving-up the cost of housing and, with it, the overall cost of living. Should our governor build a wall at the border to keep all those unsavory characters out? What about the People’s Republic of Boulder? They think they’re so evolved and cultured. But all the worthwhile cultural venues are in Denver. Might it be a good idea to impose a tax on Subarus coming into Denver (we all know where those come from) to help pay for what those freeloader hippie

Friends, Words, the basic building block of communication. The English language has over 170,000 words in current use, so it’s not surprising that some of them might not mean what you think they might -or should. For instance, if you look-up the word “dite” in the dictionary, you find it means “bit” (most commonly used in the British expression “I don’t care a dite”). So, when one hears El Chapo Guzmán is being “extradited” to the U.S. one might be forgiven for thinking they were giving him a bonus (he was being given an “extra dite”, if you will). Also prompted by the news, this morning I was thinking of the word “Inauguration”. If you break it down, the core particle of the word would be “augur” (i.e. to predict), preceded by the prefix “in” (a negative or privative force -e.g. in organic, in defensible). So, in-augur-ation should mean “an unpredictable activity”. Which is an odd name for something that has every activity scripted down to the minute. Then again, come to think abou

Friends, This morning’s two hour version of my usual thirty minute commute got me thinking about bargains and whether there is an antonym to the word (apparently the closest is ”rip-off”). Getting less for more is not pleasant (for instance less time to write this note on account of having more time on the road). I figured there were going to be less people in the office today, however, I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of you decided to brave the roads and close-out the week strong -quite the bargain! (chalk it up to better living through lower expectations). Unfortunately, that means you get the same number of donuts for the same number of people (is there a word for that? -value?) Happy New Year!