Essays

For people: Success often comes from appearing legitimate, not from being effective.

For organizations: Organizations survive by conforming to what their environment considers proper, not just by being efficient.

For people: What you take for granted shapes what you can accomplish.

For organizations: Organizations are attention machines. The premises everyone accepts determine outcomes before any decision gets made.

For people: Before asking "how do I win?", someone has to decide what game you're playing.

For organizations: Markets coordinate brilliantly within frameworks they cannot generate.

For people: Know what to commit to and what to leave open. Lock in your values; stay flexible on methods.

For organizations: As measurement improves, variance shifts from execution to objective selection.

For people: The faster you can measure something, the less likely you are measuring what actually matters.

For organizations: Markets coordinate at speeds that exceed the validation of what they coordinate toward.

For people: There are two ways to lose the ability to pursue meaningful goals: checking signals too constantly, or caring only about survival.

For organizations: Strategic choice exists in a zone bounded by market degeneration and survival degeneration.

For people: We are the bridge from instant to eternity—connecting here and now to caring beyond ourselves and tomorrow.

For organizations: Firms exist to span time scales—bridging immediate coordination to commitments that outlast any individual attention span.