THE LEAFLET

December 11 2025

slow learning amid speedy reform, LLM as plumber, cheap trust-builder: solicit the counterargument

SLOW LEARNING AMID SPEEDY REFORM

If you choose not to trust the way things have been done, you’re re-allocating that trust to yourself, your team, new vendors. You’re making bets. You’re taking a risk.

You might make this bet because you want speed. The way things have been done is slower than you want to go. You think your customer or community deserves something faster. Or you’re running out of time and cash and you can’t afford to wait.

Dear speedster, please note: Learning, correcting, and building take some time in the early going that using the system that exists does not. You might look and feel slower than the default / status quo at the outset of your experiment.

Don’t let that initial delay dismay you; don’t forget to price it in when you’re planning.

-eric

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LLM USE CASES: PLUMBER & INTERIOR DESIGNER

Somewhat counterintuitive for me, but I’ve found LLMs to be especially useful and trustworthy in the management of physical space. Two modes in particular where this has been helpful are 1) design and 2) repair.

For both of these, starting with a picture of the space you want to design or the item you want to fix is best. Then give the clearest description you can offer of the end state that you want.

You could take some pictures of your office space (or your home office, if you work remotely) and prompt something like: “Here’s the current layout and set up of my workspace. The work I do is _____ with a team of _____. The most frequent use of this space is _____ and the most important, highest-stakes use of it is _______. I’d like to redesign it with a budget of _______ so that it feels _____, ____, and ______ and enables _____. What’s the best way to achieve this?”

For repair, I take a picture of the busted or incomplete thing, describe the problem, describe what I want to be true when it is fixed, and ask for help achieving that. I’ve found this works for hardware and software issues. 

• “I want to hitch this 500-gallon water wagon to my creaky old Jeep so I can water a bunch of trees. What parts do I need to do this safely?” 

• “I’m editing a podcast episode and getting this error message every time I try to open the video file [screenshot of message]. What are my options?”

-eric

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CHEAP TRUST-BUILDER: SOLICIT THE BEST COUNTERARGUMENT AGAINST YOU

No matter how noble and succinct your core values are, no matter how widely they are embraced and embodied, when you’re the leader, you are still likely to encounter reasonable skeptics. These are folks who weren’t born yesterday. It’s possible they’ve had some really rough experiences on the losing side of a power divide in the past. They are not about to be fooled again.

Pleading with such folks and preaching to them don’t go very far. It’s too easy for the skeptic to pattern match those behaviors with uses and abuses of power they’ve seen in the past. 

Leaders I’ve seen cut through that skepticism and build trust often solicit the best counter-argument against themselves. In a meeting, they don’t try to win the conversation. When they are the known decision-maker, that effort can feel gratuitous, even demeaning to others. You don’t have to win the conversation! You get to decide anyway. Geez.

If the leader seeks out the strongest version of the strongest counter-argument (the “steel man”), ideally from the person for/to whom that counter-argument is most important, they show that something matters to them other than the pure exercise of power. Something like “the truth,” or “clear reasoning,” or “democratic discussion.” 

-eric

Read the rest here.

COMPELLING QUOTES

Poet Hanif Abdurraqib on a miraculous fraction:

I know and understand the world is large and I will absolutely never encounter every person who could love me well. There are people who would love you well, and they will never know you exist. You will live and then die having only come across a fraction of those people. And that fraction is the miracle!

Rapper Nipsey Hussle on aspiration:

The highest human act is to inspire.

Architect Christopher Alexander on tree places:

Trees have the potential to create various kinds of social places: an umbrella — where a single, low-sprawling tree like an oak defines an outdoor room; a pair — where two trees form a gateway; a grove — where several trees cluster together; and an avenue — where a double row of trees, their crowns touching, line a path or street.

Keep going, keep growing,

Ben & Eric