Agreements: Your Choice

Whether you have a great day, an okay day, or a bad day, it all depends on how you start the day. We found through our years of research at leading universities and our work all over the world with real teams and organizations, families, and communities that the initial conditions you start with determine the experience that you have and the outcomes you achieve. How you see the world, how you engage it, and the agreements that you have about it. That's it.

The agreements you have in any given situation, whether with your family at breakfast, your friends for a coffee and trivia night, or in a meeting at work, all start with an underlying way of looking at the world. A set of assumptions about how the world works. These are your initial conditions, in that situation. These initial conditions determine the unspoken agreements that will guide your interactions. This will determine the experience you have and the outcomes you achieve. It all starts with the initial conditions. Conditions you can choose. This book guides you through those choices.

James L. Ritchie-Dunham is Clinical Associate Professor of Strategy in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, Research Affiliate in the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University, and President of the Institute for Strategic Clarity.