Best Of
Three hundred+ posts. These are the ones that land.
I write every day. Some days the pattern is sharp, the story is right, and the mechanism clicks into place. Other days I'm circling something I can't quite name yet.
This page collects the first kind. Short observations where the insight survived contact with evidence and first-time readers told me they saw something they couldn't unsee.
Start anywhere. Each one stands on its own.
How AI Actually Changes Work
What Stayed Expensive — AI made capability cheap. That made something else expensive. The organizations struggling right now haven't noticed what shifted.
AI in the Loop — The question isn't whether to use AI. It's who provides context to whom. Get the direction wrong and expertise atrophies invisibly.
Can Versus Should — AI removed the capability question. Now every decision is a judgment call. Most organizations aren't structured for that.
The Context Flow — Geoffrey Hinton predicted radiologists would be obsolete by 2021. Eight years later, there are more radiologists than ever. One variable explains why: context flow direction.
Why Accurate Data Leads to Wrong Decisions
The 58% Lie — I tracked my own high-confidence decisions for a year. The ones I was 90% sure about? They landed 58% of the time. The gap between felt confidence and actual accuracy is the whole problem.
Everyone Had the Data — The 2002 Oakland A's didn't have better data. Every team had the same numbers. Only one was willing to act on what the data actually said.
The Gorilla Blindness — Radiologists searching for tumors missed a gorilla 48 times larger than the nodules they were trained to find. 83% of them. Expertise doesn't just focus attention. It creates blindness.
Why Organizations Slow Down as They Grow
The Density Model — Netflix doesn't run on trust. It runs on talent density, top-of-market pay, and mission clarity. When any of those three conditions breaks, the model breaks with it.
The Gap Between What Companies Say and What They Do
Intelligence Becomes Prison — Smart people build better rationalizations. The same analytical power that solves problems can lock you into the wrong frame.
The Ivory Tower — The Segway was a $100 million monument to isolation. Brilliant engineers solving a problem nobody had. The higher you rise, the less truth reaches you.
Three Companies, One Well — Three organizations. Same resource. Three different stories about what they were doing. The gap between those stories was the strategy nobody wrote down.
How Customers Really Make Decisions
The Personalization Myth — The best digital experiences don't feel personalized. They feel inevitable. That distinction is worth billions in misallocated tech spend.
The Pre-Suasion Question — "Do you consider yourself a helpful person?" One question. Compliance jumped from 33% to 73%. The real work happens before you realize the ask is coming.
The Label Problem — French wine experts rated California wines superior in a blind tasting. Then the establishment ostracized the organizer. They weren't tasting wine. They were tasting labels.
The Belonging Purchase — Fortnite made $9 billion selling cosmetic items that provide zero competitive advantage. People aren't buying features. They're buying membership.
Where Strategy Dies in the Handoff
Three Minutes Nineteen Seconds — That's how long it took for critical information to exist in a system and still kill 583 people. The data was there. The flow wasn't.
Want the Full System?
These are the observations. The frameworks behind them live on the Frameworks page. Start there if you want to understand why these patterns keep repeating.
Every note on this page was selected from 300+ published pieces. The filter: does a smart person reading this for the first time walk away seeing something they couldn't see before?