The human race is governed by its imagination.

What moves large numbers of people is rarely the facts of their situation; it is the picture they hold of it. Money, borders, institutions and loyalties all run on collective belief, which means whoever shapes the picture has more power than whoever controls the machinery. That is true in a country and equally true in an office of nine people.

The defensive use is to ask, when something feels inevitable, who supplied the frame you are seeing it through. The constructive use is the same knowledge pointed forward: if you want people to move, give them something to imagine rather than more information.