Machiavelli on doing hard things at once and good things slowly. From The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, 1513.
Chapter 8 of The Prince is about men who took power by crime. Agathocles, a potter’s son, had his soldiers kill the leading men of Syracuse one morning in 317 BC. In Machiavelli’s own time, Oliverotto da Fermo killed the uncle who raised him, at a dinner.
Machiavelli does not dress it up. Such methods, he writes, can win power, but not glory.
In chapter 8 of The Prince (1513), Machiavelli looked at two men who took power by crime, Agathocles of Syracuse and Oliverotto da Fermo, and refused to call it glory. Yet he drew a rule from them: harm done all at once is felt less, while benefits given little by little are enjoyed longer.
Give bad news all at once and good news a little at a time. Practical advice: when you have hard news, tell all of it in one talk, with nothing saved for later.
Likely, on the evidence · checked against 4 sourcesPut all of one piece of hard news into a single, honest talk.
“I have to give my team bad news, and I’m tempted to break it slowly. How do I tell it well?”
Bad News All at Once and the other 11 ideas of The Prince, a minute at a time.
Download on theApp StoreEvery idea is drawn from the public-domain text, and its names, dates and quotes are checked against the sources listed with it. The paintings are made for Counsel; they show the scene, not a historical record.
