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The one law from The 48 Laws of Power I actually use

Ndcharles Nweke
Ndcharles Nweke Data and IT Operations

Most of The 48 Laws of Power reads like a guide to being exhausting at work. I don’t recommend running a team on it.

But “Never outshine the master” has a useful, less cynical reading for anyone in data. When your analysis makes a manager’s decision look wrong, the numbers don’t land on their own. Bring them the finding first, in private, and let them carry it into the room. The insight still ships, and you keep the ally you need for the next one.

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Ndcharles Nweke
Ndcharles Nweke Data and IT Operations

People quote The Prince as a manual for scheming. Read it again and a lot of it is about something duller: keeping a system stable after you inherit it. Machiavelli’s point is that a new ruler is judged on what happens, not on what was intended. Operations works the same way. Nobody remembers the e…

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Toyota lets anyone stop the line. Do your dashboards?

Ndcharles Nweke
Ndcharles Nweke Data and IT Operations

On a Toyota assembly line, any worker who spots a defect can pull the andon cord and stop production. Stopping is expensive, and Toyota does it anyway, because a defect caught at the station costs far less than one found by a customer. Most data teams have the opposite culture. A number looks off, …

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