On Power

Power and Poor Decision-Making

Extracts:

“Power leads to over-precision, which is the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of personal knowledge. (...)

The most effective leaders bring people around them who critique them. As a power holder, the smartest thing you might ever do is bring people together who will inspect your thinking and who aren't afraid to challenge your ideas." But, ironically, the study shows that the more powerful they become, the less help leaders think they need.”

UNESCO is better at naming enemies than finding friends

Jul 14th 2012 – The Economist

Extract:

“UNESCO, like most other UN agencies, suffers from a house culture which prefers to deal with governments, and lives happily with the fiction that governments genuinely care about citizens and their heritage. If that were true, then the problem of protecting patrimony could simply be solved by telling governments to pass good laws and enforce them. But in many places where sites are at risk, government either does not operate at all, or functions only in the interest of a kleptocratic elite. In some such places, so-called non-state players (from warlords to private firms to religious leaders) are about the only things that really function at all.”