Machiavelli
Start from what is done
How men live, not how they ought to live
The Prince, chapter 15
He has been abused for five hundred years over one sentence. This asks what that sentence actually claims.
What actually happened?
Chapter 15 opens by separating him from everyone before him. Many have imagined republics and principalities that were never seen or known to exist; but how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live that a man who neglects what is done for what ought to be done learns his own ruin rather than his preservation. That is not a recommendation to do harm. It is a statement of subject matter. He intends to write about how politics runs, not about how it should run.
Design on ought, and it leaks on day one
Any arrangement resting on people being expected to behave has been built on an untested assumption. The realist order is the reverse: watch what people do when nothing is constraining them, and design for that. Concede first, handle second.
An allowance everyone is trusted not to abuse will be used to the last unit. Assume that, then decide what the number should be.
Describing is not endorsing
He has been misread for five centuries because people took the description for the proposal. The distinction still costs money. Explaining why a mechanism works and recommending it are separate acts, and refusing to study the ugly ones leaves you unable to name what hit you.
Working out why a competitor's grey tactic pays is not advice to copy it. Refuse the analysis and the same move lands on you again.
Necessary harm still has to be costed
He does not abolish morality, he turns it into an account that has to be settled. What does the thing you may have to do cost, can you carry that, is there a substitute? We don't do that sort of thing is cheap to say and useless on the day.
Redundancies are hard to do decently. Settle the severance, the sequence and what it says to the people staying before the week it happens, not during it.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: writing a rule, and quietly assuming people will co-operate with it.
Ask first: if everyone used this to maximise their own position, what would it turn into?
Where it goes wrong: writing ought into the assumptions; or refusing to understand a method because the method is not respectable.
Lines to keep
A man who professes goodness in everything will come to ruin.
The prince must know how to use both the beast and the man.
Same situation, other people are asking
The more rules I add, the more people route around them.Everyone is chasing the same thing. Where is nobody standing?Every hour is booked and one delay wrecks the week.The numbers look great. Is that skill or is it leverage?I'm managing it and it's getting worse · all 14 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.