If you were king…

March 28th, 2007

KingOfHearts.jpgIf you were king, would you fire everyone, close the company, and open a donut stand tomorrow? If you were king, would you give everyone on your staff an extra week of vacation and a top-of-the-line iPod? If you were king, would you tell Microsoft to bugger off? If you were king, would you have your company invest in that scrappy little startup down the street?

“If you were king…” sets the mental stage differently than “if you were me…” or “if you were the boss…”

When you’re talking with someone and ask for their opinion, they bring in certain constraints to their answer. If you ask them to imagine that they are the boss instead, they will bring in the constraints that they imagine the boss might have.

By jumping on up to imagining they are king, it breaks the habit of thinking within constraints.

Kings don’t have to follow the rules. They can knight people. They can behead people. They get to wear fancy robes and carry a bejeweled scepter. Very few of us actually know any kings, so these four little words of conversational judo can help you think more broadly.

What would you do if you were king?

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4 Responses to “If you were king…”

  1. 1 Henri Yandell
    March 28th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    If I were king I would move to a small town on the west coast of England (not giving the name away, don’t want to cause a rush) and get a winter job as a barman.

  2. 2 Tomek
    March 28th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    If i were king I would open a restaurant in some nice place. I would work on stabilizing Polish-Chinese border.

  3. 3 Rysiek
    March 28th, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    Kings don’t have written constraints but they care about people they rule and it is a constraint. Maybe a better word would be dictator.
    Nevertheless, when you ask someone “if you were king” then this person still remembers that he/she is one of those below. So, the decision taken will affect directly this person and it is constrained by this.

    So, when is this “extra week of vacation and a top-of-the-line iPod” boss … or should I say, king ?

  4. 4 Dave
    May 11th, 2007 at 7:39 am

    If I were king, I would:

    1. Establish an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
    2. Issue an edict forcing JEE hosting to be priced comparable to Perl, PHP, and Python hosting. I mean, why do the ‘P’ guys get all the breaks?!?!

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