Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 100 answers
Audit the incentive system for one role in your organization. List every metric that is measured, reported, or rewarded — both formally (performance reviews, bonuses, promotions) and informally (what gets praised in meetings, what gets attention from leadership, what gets criticized). For each.
Map the information flows for one decision process in your organization. Choose a recurring decision — a hiring decision, a prioritization decision, a resource allocation decision. For each step in the decision process, identify: (1) What information is available to the decision-maker? (2) What.
Audit the decision rights for your team or function. List the ten most common decisions your team makes. For each decision, identify: (1) Who currently makes this decision? (2) Who should make this decision? (the person closest to the relevant information and most affected by the outcome). (3).
Map the end-to-end process for one type of work your team produces. Document every step from initiation to completion, including: (1) Active time — how long does each step take when someone is actively working on it? (2) Queue time — how long does the work sit waiting between steps? (3) Handoffs —.
Identify one technology tool your organization uses that was deployed as an automation of the existing system rather than as a systemic change. Ask: What new information flows does this tool make possible that we are not using? What process changes could this tool enable that we have not.
For a change your organization has implemented, assess its sustainability using four tests: (1) Incentive alignment — are people rewarded for the new behavior or the old behavior? If the incentives still support the old behavior, the change will revert when attention shifts. (2) Process embedding.
Assess your own leadership approach to systemic change using three questions: (1) Am I setting clear direction — have I articulated what the changed system looks like, why it matters, and how it differs from the current state? Direction is not a mandate; it is a vision that helps people understand.
Conduct a systemic change readiness assessment for your organization. Evaluate your organization's capability across the ten systemic change functions covered in this phase: (1) System identification — can you map your organization's key systems, including boundaries, components, connections, and.
Map the decision flow in your organization for one week. For every decision you encounter — whether you make it, request it, or wait for it — record: (1) What was the decision? (2) Who made it? (3) Who had the information needed to make it? (4) Were the decision-maker and the information-holder.
Audit one week of decisions in your team or organization. For each decision, record: (1) Who made the decision? (2) Who had the most relevant information? (3) How long did the decision take from request to resolution? (4) How much of that time was active analysis versus waiting in queues? (5) Was.
Run a one-week self-organization experiment with your team. For one sprint or work week, give the team full authority over three decisions that are currently made by management: (1) task allocation — let the team decide who works on what, (2) process design — let the team design their own daily.
Test your organization's purpose as a coordination mechanism using three scenarios. For each, ask: does our stated purpose help resolve this decision, or is the purpose too vague to guide the choice? Scenario 1: Two projects compete for the same engineering resources. Project A is more profitable;.
Conduct an information accessibility audit for your team. List the ten most important decisions your team makes in a typical month. For each decision, identify: (1) What information is needed to make this decision well? (2) Who currently has access to that information? (3) How does the.
Map your organization's current feedback systems at four frequencies. For each frequency, identify: (1) Real-time — what automated or immediate signals does the organization generate about its performance? Are they visible to the people who can act on them? (2) Weekly — what regular information.
Design and run a lightweight organizational retrospective with three to five representatives from different teams. Use this structure: (1) Individual brainstorm (5 minutes): each participant writes answers to three questions — 'What is working well across the organization?' 'What is frustrating or.
Select one governance mechanism in your organization — an approval process, a meeting cadence, a reporting structure, a resource allocation method — and evaluate it using four questions: (1) What purpose does this mechanism serve? What organizational need does it address? (2) Is it still serving.
Practice consent-based decision-making on one pending decision in your team. Follow this protocol: (1) A proposer presents the decision with a clear recommendation and supporting reasoning. (2) Each participant responds with one of three responses: consent ('I support this'), concern ('I have a.
Map the authority structure of your team or department. For each type of decision (technical, hiring, resource allocation, process, quality, communication), identify: (1) Who currently has the authority to make this decision? (2) Is this authority attached to a person (because of their position).
Conduct a knowledge audit of your team. Identify the five most critical types of knowledge your team possesses — the knowledge that, if lost (through attrition, role changes, or organizational restructuring), would significantly impact performance. For each knowledge type, assess: (1) Where does.
Identify one type of recurring problem in your team or organization — something that happens repeatedly, is handled individually each time, and never gets resolved at the systemic level. Document five recent instances. For each instance, record: what happened, what caused it, how it was resolved,.
Map the emotional landscape of your team or organization right now. Use an anonymous survey with three questions: (1) What emotion best describes how you feel about your work right now? (Choose from: energized, satisfied, frustrated, anxious, burned out, hopeful, confused, angry, grateful,.
Conduct a resilience assessment of your team using this stress test: imagine that tomorrow, one of the following disruptions occurs. For each, assess how long it would take your team to restore normal function. (1) Your team lead or manager is suddenly unavailable for two weeks — can the team.
Practice organizational sensemaking on a recent ambiguous event in your organization — a competitor action, a customer behavior change, an internal metric shift, or a market development. Gather three to five people from different functions or teams and run this 30-minute protocol: (1) Data sharing.
Assess the individual sovereignty conditions in your team using four dimensions: (1) Epistemic sovereignty — are team members free to form their own opinions, voice disagreement, and challenge the prevailing narrative? Or is dissent discouraged, and conformity rewarded? (2) Creative sovereignty —.