Assume the people around you are not always fully honest and not always fully on your side. Then notice you are the same to them. Everyone is pursuing their desires with the methods they know, under the constraints they face.

The work is in three stages. First, seeing: take people as they are, without demonizing or idealizing them. Second, solving: find the arrangement that fits the overlap and tension between their interests and yours, without requiring either person to become someone else. Third, doing: execute with honesty and respect — frank enough not to pretend, discreet enough not to expose or demean.

Seeing without solving is only observation. Acting without solving is only reaction. The solve is where the work happens.