Comprehend

We have never known so much. So why do we keep repeating the same mistakes?

Human beings are capable of intelligence, cooperation and innovation. Yet in companies, families, politics and between cultures, we keep creating the same rigidities, misunderstandings and collective impasses. Joseph Acunzo's answer is that the problem is rarely what we know. It is how we use our intelligence.

At the heart of this book is one simple question, to be asked before speaking, deciding or acting:

How will what I am about to say or do change the context in which I act?

This question applies equally to our professional lives, our family relationships and the way we think.

Like a stone thrown into still water, every action creates ripples, changing the context and giving rise to the question once again.

Across 44 short chapters, Comprehend shows this question at work in real situations:

• a salesman who loses a client by talking too much

• a worker who removes a machine's safety guard, and the real reason he does it

• a meeting where two minutes of silence achieve more than any speech

• a father who punishes his son before discovering what was happening on his phone

• the summer of 1914, when no one could slow down anymore

• the ozone layer, a rare case of the whole world learning in time

This is neither a doctrine nor a toolbox of techniques. It is a way of thinking, which the author calls evolutive thinking. It was shaped on the factory floor, in management meetings and at the family table, and it is written in plain language for anyone who works, leads, teaches, negotiates or simply lives with others.

Understanding does not mean agreeing. It means looking beyond our own convictions to see what we might otherwise miss.

About the author

Joseph Acunzo was born in Italy and grew up in Argentina. At eighteen he was working in a steel mill in Switzerland. He later moved to Belgium, where he spent seventeen years working for a multinational company, eventually leading several teams, before founding and running his own companies. He has lived in Luxembourg for more than twenty years.