2 min read Free

Decision Making and Systems Thinking Series #2: Most Decisions Should Be Made Faster. Here's How to Know Which Ones Can't.

Decision effort should match reversibility. Move quickly when mistakes are easy to undo, but create optionality, stage commitments, and defer irreversible steps when consequences are durable; this corrects the common habit of debating trivia while rushing structural choices.
2 min read Free

Decision Making and Systems Thinking Series #1: Good Judgment Is Not a Personality Trait. It's a Decision System.

Good judgment is a repeatable system, not an innate trait or a lucky outcome. Writing down assumptions, reasoning, and reversal conditions before deciding makes implicit models testable, separates process from results, and creates the discipline to update.
4 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #10: The Business Ontology Audit

A business ontology audit exposes where systems disagree about core objects, definitions, ownership, lifecycle states, and authority. Scoring what is defined, embedded, and evidenced helps prioritize gaps before they distort money, customer promises, workflows, metrics, or AI actions.
4 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #8: Ontology as Operating Design

Ontology must shape operations, not merely document vocabulary. Clear business, system, data, workflow, governance, and executive ownership turns definitions into decision rights, trusted implementation, and controlled change, preventing one semantic shift from quietly breaking dependent workflows.
4 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #9: AI Makes Ontology Urgent

AI removes the human judgment that once buffered inconsistent definitions across systems. Reliable agents therefore require clear identities, relationships, permissions, and authoritative context so their recommendations and actions are useful, auditable, and operationally safe.
4 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #7: Ontology Debt

Unclear definitions, relationships, lifecycle states, ownership, and permissions accumulate costs that surface during migrations, forecasting, automation, and AI adoption. Treating these failures as people problems leaves the company’s underlying operating model unresolved.
3 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #6: Where Ontology Actually Lives

A company’s model of reality is distributed across operational systems, analytics, spreadsheets, documents, workflows, and AI tools. Governing it requires coordinating meaning across these locations rather than expecting one platform or team to contain it.
4 min read Free

The Company’s Hidden Data Model Series #5: Metrics Are Ontology With Math Attached

Metrics encode definitions, relationships, time periods, trusted systems, and interpretive authority—not merely calculations. Making those assumptions explicit prevents polished dashboards from creating false precision and turns contested numbers into more reliable decision tools.

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