About Chris Butler

Chris Butler is a chaotic good product manager, writer, and speaker. He has over 20 years of product management leadership at Microsoft, Waze, KAYAK, Facebook Reality Labs, and Cognizant. He is now the Lead Product Manager at Google's Core Machine Learning team where he PM's the PM experience and strategy.

Cynefin Framework

A sensemaking framework that aids decision making by identifying environmental domains and understanding their dynamics

Decision Rehearsals (Wargaming)

aka Wargaming - using simulated conflicts to test strategies, assess risks, and explore outcomes to aid in scenario planning

Randomness in Decision Making

Introducing randomness is a technique that helps remove our self-limiting tendencies and explore potentially counter-intuitive paths.

OODA Loop

A model designed by John Boyd, a fighter pilot, that involves observing, orienting, deciding, and acting, with the goal of gaining a competitive advantage in uncertain or rapidly changing environments

"Even Over" Statements

Even Over statements provide guidance on how to choose between two "good" options when making decisions and simplify trade-offs

Autonomous agents in decision making

Exploring the role of human and machine

March 18, 2024

Uncertainty Project Year in Review - Chris Butler, Group PM at Google

learnings from this year and predictions looking ahead

December 20, 2023

360° Strategies

Integrating inclusive, exclusive, proven, and aspirational strategies

August 24, 2023

Making space for decision discourse

Many teams stumble through their decision making process because they don’t make time for discourse separated from the decision point.

July 19, 2023

Chronos and kairos time in strategic decision making

Taking advantage of inevitable change and adapting to improvisation

June 29, 2023

What is the right amount of 'Strategic Ambiguity'?

We often think that strategic clarity helps make a strategy more effective but it may keep people from believing in it. Strategic ambiguity is a concept that points to people needing a bit of ambiguity in the communication of a strategy. This thread talks about the benefits of strategic ambiguity and some “smells” that your strategy is too specific.

July 6, 2023

Uncertainty and the limits of AI with Chris Butler

August 1, 2023

Dealing with Uncertainty in Portfolio Management

July 8, 2023