Diana McLain Smith "At least as far back as Agamemnon and Achilles on the beaches of Troy, relationships have had the power to create or to destroy enormous amounts of capital—human, social, intellectual, and economic. Yet few among us can say anything even remotely systematic about how relationships work, develop, or change. […] If relationships can have such a decisive impact on the success, even survival, of leaders and their firms, why do so many of us give them such short shrift? The answer lies in the outdated belief system that governs how we conduct business. Among the many beliefs that make up this system, four are killers. This manifesto is a call for us to shift to a new set."

About the author:
Diana McLain Smith is a partner at the Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm, where she teaches, consults, and conducts research. She is also a founding partner of Action Design, which specializes in organizational learning and professional development. Divide or Conquer is her first book Her more recent work can be found in The California Management Review, in Peter Senge’s The Dance of Change, and in Brown and Wiig’s Corporate Communication. Smith has taught courses and delivered lectures at the Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Boston College’s Carroll School of Management.