Embrace uncertainty, avoid ambiguity

Uncertainty is part of every decision; ambiguity should never be. There are at least 4 significant sources of uncertainty in any decision:

Stakeholders’ inability to express the relative importance of design margin associated with criteria (weights)
Inability to estimate the effectiveness of alternatives against a criterion (scores) - no facts about future!
Impact of probabilistic events (risks, opportunities) that could [...]

Decision patterns: thoughts from the bleeding edge

Rather than writing a well-formed teaching topic, today I share some less-structured thoughts on what the world looks like from the bleeding edge of decision patterns.

Where have all the early adopters gone?  Everyone seems to be playing it very safe on the job right now; they have a very short-term (quarterly budget or get through [...]

Stop the brain drain

As Baby Boomers retire in increasing numbers, there’s an amazing wealth of knowledge that will be lost from many successful organizations.  In some cases, this matters little - an industry may be experiencing rapid technology change or significant business model transformation such that decisions made or lessons learned more than 2 years ago are already [...]

Visible assumptions

When folks don’t know what to call something or where it fits in the scheme of things, they tend to throw it into a big bucket or list of assumptions.  This happens most frequently when they are attempting to understand someone else’s plan (e.g. due diligence on a business case, forecast or estimate) or attempting [...]

Trade studies

If you have worked as or with a systems engineer from the Defense and Aerospace industries, you have very likely heard the term “trade study” used to describe a type of design analysis and the white paper or report that documents it.  From my travels, engineers from other industries are more likely to call the [...]

Control requirements volatility with decision baselines

Requirements volatility is one of the classical problems encountered in systems engineering and new product development.  Changes in requirements that occur or are discovered after design has started can lead to costly delays, rework, project cancellation or even failures in the field.  However, the root cause analysis behind requirements volatility tends to stop prematurely by [...]

Every decision is an oppportunity to innovate

I’m driven to innovate; I’m always asking “How could this be done or made better?”.  Most of my innovations have come in the area of methods - improving how individuals or groups think to create the future.
I naturally see patterns; frameworks of connected concepts that can yield insights or provide a jump-start when facing a new [...]

Decision patterns as a consulting services differentiator

Although I’m somewhat biased, I believe decision patterns are the ultimate differentiator for anyone who offers consulting services. Decision patterns are a form of high-level knowledge capture and reuse; they distill out the essence of the thinking that has worked in the past and make it immediately transferable to a new situation.  However, the key [...]

Pareto’s Law applied to decisions

When I demonstrate the Decision Driven® Strategy and Life web application, I sometimes get pushback when folks see the Make this decision windows/tools:

My criteria: Seeds the decision with proven pattern of ~10 factors to consider; enables the user to define their Must limit (walkaway point) and Ideal value and drag-drop criteria into priority bands
My alternatives: Used [...]

Reverse engineering a decision and roadmap baseline

Nearly all of my consulting engagements start with the same task - reverse engineering a strategic baseline for the client’s business or project from whatever source documents they can provide.  The initial output of this effort is an explicitly defined (visible, actionable) decision and roadmap baseline and a set of very pointed questions aimed at [...]