Communication

I used to think negotiation was about persuasion. About having the right words, the right tone, the right strategy. Turns out I was missing the whole point. There’s a concept from negotiation theory called BATNA — Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. It sounds academic, but it’s actually the single most practical thing you can know before walking into any discussion where two people want different things. Your BATNA is what you’d actually do if the talks fall apart. Not what you hope for. Not what sounds good in your head. What you’d realistically do tomorrow morning when nothing has been agreed. ...

I spent years watching development and operations teams sit on opposite sides of every incident. Developers pushed code over the wall. Operations inherited the fires. DevOps was supposed to fix that, but most teams just gave it a new name and kept doing the same thing. Real collaboration isn’t a poster on the breakroom wall. It’s the unglamorous daily work of making sure two groups who think differently about problems end up solving them together. ...

I’ve been reading up on emotional intelligence lately and collecting the bits that felt useful. Not the textbook definitions — the ones that actually change how you show up in a room. The five things that matter There’s a framework that keeps coming up, and it boils down to five skills: rapport building, curiosity, communication, ambition, and conflict resolution. They’re not glamorous. They’re not the sort of things you put on a CV under “technical expertise”. But they’re the difference between being someone people want to work with and someone they tolerate. ...