Diving into Organizational Sensemaking (Part 1)

A look at how organizations construct reality, apply meaning, and make decisions

Improving strategic decision making in 2024

3 challenges to help bring theory into practice

Decision-centric product operations

Expanding on the product operations model with decision-centric approaches

Are OKRs overprescribed?

The negative side-effects of goal-setting

Do OKRs hinder decision making in radically uncertain environments?

'Effectual' reasoning, means vs ends, and the explore-exploit dilemma

Are OKRs improving or inhibiting decision making?

Taking a deeper look at how OKRs influence strategic decision making (a multi-part series)

The 'data-driven' mindset feeds our dangerous craving for certainty

Exploring the principles of a decision-driven approach

From Data-driven to Decision-driven

Leading with questions, not looking for answers

Looking back on the first six months of the Uncertainty Project

Summarizing some of the key learnings and major themes covered over the last six months

‘Psychological Safety’ and embracing discomfort

Psychological Safety may be misunderstood as something that is 'comfortable' when in reality it's a model for dealing with necessary dissent in a productive way.

'Divergent Thinking' and tools to facilitate it

Optionality is critical in strategic decision making and it starts with how we think

How a tweak in team psychology helped define modern airline safety

The story of how 'Crew Resource Manage' transformed airline safety and a general exploration of how teams can and should foster productive disagreement.

Are we any good at planning?

We crave certainty - and detailed plans give us a false sense of certainty. In this thread, we explore whether or not we have the cognitive toolset for planning, how we mentally 'construct' strategies, and how we update our mental models to change course when necessary.

Our dangerous tendency to overcommit and tools to mitigate overconfidence

The role of conviction and narrative in decision making

Conviction as a superpower, why we tend to be overly optimistic, and how outcome trees help us map potential outcomes

Exploring goal setting and OKRs through the lens of decision making

Exploring how goals help teams make better decisions, strategic misrepresentation, and the power of 'Even Over' statements

How 'collective illusions' influence decision making

There's quite a bit we can learn from parallels to research on social norms and how culture develops - this thread explores a piece of that 👉

What optical illusions can tell us about our biases and heuristics

This is an excerpt from a newsletter post exploring the value (if any) of bias education and whether or not optical illusions are a good way to illustrate the impact of cognitive biases - or at least our unavoidable ignorance of them.

Artificial Intelligence vs Human Decision Making

With artificial intelligence tools 'going mainstream', we see a flood of conversations that say something like "will AI replace [role]?". This is exploring the difference in humans and machines from the perspective of decision making.

Communication starts well before a decision is made

We often think of communication as a post-decisions activity, but how can bring people along for the process to help smooth over even the most unpopular decisions?

What makes a good decision, good?

We might often think about a 'good' decision as having a positive or expected outcome, but there's so much out of our own control (luck). A good decision is the result of good dialog, processes, and communication.