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AI

06
Oct
Monday Myth: The Engine That Fought Its Governor

Monday Myth: The Engine That Fought Its Governor

Monday Myth: Faster intervention promises tighter control. Yet a steam engine can oscillate because of the governor meant to steady it. Organisations add another complication: the figures can improve as people adapt to the measurement, while the work those figures once represented struggles to move.
7 min read
22
Sep
Monday Myth: Precision Makes the Future Predictable

Monday Myth: Precision Makes the Future Predictable

Weather forecasts lose resolution as their horizon extends. Corporate roadmaps do the opposite: uncertainty grows, milestones multiply and confidence hardens. Precision does not make the future predictable. It merely makes surprise look like failure.
7 min read
17
Sep
Wednesday Reality: Most Failures Begin Between Two Competent People

Wednesday Reality: Most Failures Begin Between Two Competent People

The most dangerous point in a system is often not where someone fails. It is where one competent person finishes and another competent person begins. A product is not a baton passed from Product to Engineering. Value survives only when understanding travels through the whole loop.
8 min read
15
Sep
Monday Myth: Every Failure Needs Someone Responsible

Monday Myth: Every Failure Needs Someone Responsible

When failure demands a name, organisations usually find one faster than they find a cause. The person nearest the rupture gets corrected. The system that produced it quietly returns to service.
8 min read
12
Sep
Friday Fun: The Corporate Mobility Programme

Friday Fun: The Corporate Mobility Programme

The executive flight simulator shows clear skies. Down below, every strategic initiative is completing its sixth lap of the corporate roundabout. Fortunately, the dashboard confirms excellent momentum.
9 min read
27
Aug
(Untitled)

(Untitled)

Safety-critical industries learnt that punishing the person closest to an accident often produces a satisfying culprit but an inadequate explanation.
9 min read
15
Aug
Friday Fun: The Great Corporate Cargo Cult

Friday Fun: The Great Corporate Cargo Cult

The expression cargo cult entered Western vocabulary through observations of religious and social movements in Melanesia, particularly around and after the Second World War.
9 min read
11
Aug
Monday Myth: Small Teams Move Faster

Monday Myth: Small Teams Move Faster

In 1989, Volvo opened a car factory at Uddevalla on Sweden's west coast that looked strangely unlike the factories which had come to define twentieth-century manufacturing.
12 min read
26
May
Law 8 — Without Clear Purpose, Systems Drift to Noise

Law 8 — Without Clear Purpose, Systems Drift to Noise

Systems disconnected from purpose do not remain neutral over time: they slowly become self-referential and increasingly optimise around their own internal dynamics.
9 min read
24
May
Friday Fun — The Company of Theseus

Friday Fun — The Company of Theseus

The Ship of Theseus is an old philosophical paradox. If one replaces every plank of a ship, every sail, every rope and every beam over time, does it remain the same ship?
4 min read