Peter D. Kaufman

And when they misstepped, their businesses stumbled, it's almost always because they reneged on one of these relationships.

So if you master these, Peter argues, how many blind spots are you going to have?

Zero.

How many mistakes are you going to make?

Zero.

The next point Peter makes is about simplicity.

Most people assume complexity is a signal for sophistication.

And Peter argues that Albert Einstein disagreed.

According to Peter, Einstein listed five ascending orders of cognitive prowess.

At the bottom, the lowest level was smart and then came intelligent.

That was the second lowest level.

And then you had brilliant and then genius.

However, there is one level above genius, and that's simple intelligence.

Why does simple beat genius?

And Peter gives an empathetic answer, because you can understand it.

He contrasts a book by Spinoza on ethics, undeniably written by a genuine genius, but it's largely incomprehensible to 99% of us.

He compares that with the principles he had just outlined to his audience in less than 30 minutes.

Mere reciprocation, go positive and go first, dogged, incremental, constant progress.

Everyone understands every word of his talk.

Hardly anyone understands Spinoza.