We don’t have written records, but I’m imagining that groups of cavemen made decisions around the fire in largely the same way we run sophisticated organizations today.
About a hundred years ago, three disciplines helped create the modern world:
Scientific management used a stopwatch and the assembly line to relentlessly improve the productivity of the industrial age.
Scientific advertising brought measurement and rigor to the work of creating ads and buying media.
And engineering brought physics and the scientific method to everything we build. Bridges don’t fall down, computer chips get faster and cheaper and the things we make rarely break.
But the bosses still do what they always did. They place comfort and convenience over effectiveness. If the hard-working people in any other part of the organization approached their work the way they do, it wouldn’t last.
One estimate is that the direct labor cost of time spent in meetings at a Fortune 500 company is over a quarter of a billion dollars a year. Per company.
And yet, meetings occur regularly, with no measurable outputs. Few people do the reading or prep, and many show up late or uninformed. The room isn’t designed for the purpose it’s being used for, and no one is taking notes or sending out follow-up action requests.
There’s rarely an interlocutor–a neutral moderator who asks questions, guides the conversation and leads the group to a decision. People are rarely given feedback on their meeting productivity, and aren’t encouraged to get training or improve their skills.
You’ve probably been to a thousand meetings. How many can you remember that achieved what could have happened with that much time and talent invested?
In my experience at large organizations, the physical dynamic in the room is often left to the facilities person who ran the AV cart in high school or the office supply vendor who was asked to fill a square room with furniture that would serve many purposes. That’s not how we invest in an assembly line or a semiconductor fab…
And many decisions, if implemented, remain unexamined. There’s little time or focus invested in learning from what came before, and no one is keeping track of whether the loud voices are usually right. Famous CEOs shoot from the hip, and seem to think that wrong action fast is better than thoughtfully doing the right thing tomorrow.
Corporate culture usually pushes people to avoid speaking up, to prize comfort over progress, and to support the status quo unless there’s an emergency. We either invite too many or not enough people into group decisions, and end up using superficial or extraneous information to make choices.
We reject a job applicant because they had parsley in their teeth, didn’t go to a famous college or they don’t look like us. Deniability often seems more important than progress. We use easy proxies and measures instead of the ones that really matter. And we repeat patterns that worked with the old systems, but make no sense with the new ones.
*The job of the Chief Decision Officer, then, isn’t to make decisions. It’s to create the conditions for the organization to do a better job of it. Not only at a Fortune 500 company, but at a thriving non-profit, a government agency or a small start-up.
Surgeons scrub before entering the OR. It’s hygienic, but also a ritual. It reminds them that this place is special, it has a purpose, rules and outcomes. Don’t come in if you’re not prepared to do your part.
The CDO ought to establish the same approach for the way we make decisions and take action on those decisions.
It often seems that everyone is talking about what everyone is talking about.
No one cares about a song or a movie or a political issue–and then they do. Then it’s everywhere.
But of course, that’s precisely why. Most people feel safe when they’re engaging within the expected social norms. It’s easier to fit in and to avoid an error. Or, if that’s your thing, it’s easier to stand out in contrast to everyone else who is trying to fit in. Either way, we’re always on the lookout for a bandwagon to hop on.
The media, in their relentless search for newsstand sales, clicks and likes, seek precisely the same thing. PT Barnum figured out that putting a marching band on a wagon at the front of the parade drew a crowd, and then Dan Rice, an actual clown, realized that politicians would be eager to ride on a wagon that had a crowd, which drew others to the crowd and the cycle continued.
The math is simple: you can’t bandwagon by yourself. The nature of bandwagoning means that it will always be overrepresented in any sampling of the media.
Just because someone organized a parade doesn’t mean you have to be in it.
I just built a page containing many of my books. Click on any one of them and it’ll take you to a directory of where you can get a copy. And the page then re-indexes based on which ones get the most clicks.
In high school, the quarterback isn’t allowed to call the plays, the actor isn’t allowed to write the lines and the math whiz isn’t allowed to choose what to prove.
We all grew up in the age of compliance (and indoctrination).
The long tail of the internet and the astonishing leverage of AI has made this training much less valuable.
No matter what you do for a living, there’s a machine standing by, waiting for instructions. Instructions from you, if you choose, or from your overlords if you don’t.
And following the playbook isn’t much help, because the world is changing so fast, a playbook is obsolete by the time someone hands it to you.
One reason AI got such a fast start is that it gave people seeking compliance a chance to wait for the AI to tell them what to do next. Quick, cheap answers.
AI gives bosses a cheaper (and often more compliant) alternative to hiring humans to do some tasks.
For those indoctrinated to comply, this is stressful. The stress is due to a desire to get things back to normal, to give them a chance to comply again, but right here, right now, is as normal as things are ever going to get. “Good jobs” are no longer sinecures where success comes from following instructions.
It’s an abrupt change, and winging it is insufficient. Handling this sudden transition alone is too difficult. But we have a chance to find the others, to connect and be part of a cohort that challenges, educates and encourages each other on the path to find a way forward.
We accepted that it was required to spend years being trained to handle a life of compliance. Now we have the chance to lean into the hard work we’ll need to do to thrive in an age of initiative.
Juan Tamariz and Wendell Berry recently passed away. Between them, they had more than 170 years of generous contribution.
Juan was a card magician. His students are generally considered the best working in the world today.
Wendell was a farmer and a writer. His essays on non-industrial farming and community-building will resonate for generations.
What each had in common was the patience and commitment to choose depth. To seek out the inconvenient path because it mattered.
Neither traded for easily measured metrics or convenience. Instead, they chose a path and followed it, leaving things better than they found them.
Looking back a century, it’s easy to appreciate this. And yet, each and every day, it requires a recommitment. “Under the circumstances,” it’s tempting to justify the small compromises that corrode our work. The hard part is to realize that we’re not under the circumstances; we are them. We can start today.
Insider jargon, previously known as cant, is designed to keep outsiders out.
The burglars in cartoons are often seen wearing a black mask over their eyes (like Robin in Batman but for a different reason) and carrying a bulging sack over their shoulders.
[Of course, the burglar’s sack was rarely bulging. A robber would have to have the perfect haul to get the right mix of value, density and weight. You can’t fit a chest of drawers in the sack, and that much gold would be impossible to carry. But I digress.]
The cant for this was ‘swag’, which comes from an old term for swaying or bulging. Sort of wishful thinking.
And thus we get to the swag of business promo and conference loot…
Establishing jargon is a key step in group identity. It’s rarely dictated from the top down, but permitting and celebrating it is a smart move if you’re looking for group cohesion.
Just about everyone commutes to work, by car or by public transit. And just about everyone carries a smart phone.
All organizations have a communications problem, and it gets worse as they grow. Which issues are we facing today? Who else is on the team? What’s changed in the environment, and what do we need to get in sync on?
Consider starting an internal podcast. Just fifteen or twenty minutes a day. The host interviews team members, informs on important issues or simply helps people see the big picture. When everyone on the team listens to the same podcast each morning, cohesion and focus improve.
A podcast with 25 of the right listeners might be exactly the right size.
The second hack: I’m amazed at how many people on the train are mindlessly swiping through one social media platform or another. Judging by their facial expressions, they’re not enjoying it much.
Instead, we can focus our time and energy on learning. Six months of commuting can easily cover an advanced college course in something that interests us. And using Claude as a Socratic tutor can be a breakthrough. If you’re driving, use voice mode. Ask it to patiently engage you, one conversation at a time, in a journey to learn something difficult. How transistors work. Why the Roman Empire fell. The origin of species.
Day by day, your commute gets better and you get smarter.
I know that you know that taking this exit will get us to Sheridan Drive, but the person who’s likely to be driving down this road in a few minutes has no idea.
Let’s agree that most street signs are for folks who know where they’re going. We would label things differently if we were instructing those that don’t.
I know that you know that ERASE isn’t the same thing as DELETE, but the next person interacting with your command-line interface might not know.
Of course this is obvious when we say it so clearly. And yet, there are many kinds of USB cables, poorly named and labeled. The instructions that come with just about anything we buy were written by lawyers for juries, not by a product manager who actually wanted to inform and delight.
Design to be understood. And design so that the inevitable confusion of the newbie doesn’t get worse. Because without your active intervention, it will.
A company wants web traffic, so it dumbs down content, builds listicles and grows. But then others become even dumber or more convenient, so it has to race to keep up with them. Eventually, with nothing but junk, it fades away.
A company builds a reputation for delivering useful permission-based email newsletters. But it needs to grow, so it eases its rules on spam, facilitates list swaps and grabs for attention. This attracts new users, but eventually the spam filters catch on and the site (and its users) sink into the muck.
A celebrity finds their notability fading, so they appear on C and then D list reality shows until everyone is in on the joke except them…
We can justify most moves to the bottom while they’re happening, but the problem with this race is that you might win.
With effort, you might not get to the top, but without resolve, you’ll certainly find yourself at the bottom.
The alternative is to resist the temptation for fast growth and settle for trust and authority instead. The race to the top is possible, but it’s more like a patient, persistent climb.
It’s difficult, lonely and only for long-term players. That’s precisely why it’s so valuable.
The truth is, I’m not a good worker. I’ve had very few traditional jobs, and my performance on typical tasks was poor.
Work the exact hours, do precisely what’s asked, don’t ask questions and focus on what the boss wants.
We modeled ‘good worker’ behavior in school. “Will this be on the test?” was the key question for 100 years. Do what the teacher asks for, and don’t overthink it.
The indoctrination of compliance came from factory owners. It’s easier to run an industrial operation when you can treat your workers as interchangeable cogs, not individuals.
We took that idea to schools, to communities, and even to how some engaged in spirituality.
The good worker trope falls apart when the world changes fast. It becomes a hindrance when job security wavers. And it doesn’t really pay off when AI and the atomization of work mean that most of us are the boss now, even if we are on a payroll.
It’s better to be a good leader, a resilient contributor and someone who has the insight and guts to ask why.
October 16, 2026
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