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… through the obsessive and actionable study of business expertise. Sign up for the weekly newsletter and join thousands of readers:
It turns out that operational excellence results from the pursuit of a certain form of knowledge and using metrics in business is about the pursuit of this knowledge. This is Part 3 of the Becoming Data Driven series, and the result of a deep dive into the field of Statistical Process Control.
I relocated for a three month expertise acceleration experiment in Judo. These are my notes from two months in: what I learnt, what was hard, and what deliberate practice actually feels like.
The answer, like most things from Statistical Process Control, is more surprising and more obvious than you might think.
A quick announcement. Happy Year of the Rabbit everyone!
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Goodhart's Law is useless. It tells you about a phenomenon, but it doesn't tell you how to solve it. We look at how organisations actually prevent Goodhart's Law, and illustrate this with Amazon's Weekly Business Review as an example.
This was the final newsletter edition sent out to subscribers at the end of 2022. A recap of Commoncog's best ideas, and a preview of several upcoming experiments.
Technological Windows is Steve Jobs's conception of the game of consumer technology. We look at how he used it over the course of his career. Note: this is a follow-up to and an update for the Commoncog Case Library Beta.
Two case studies of real world competitive advantage, followed by a question: was this a moat or not?
A concrete story of positive process improvement, deep from the trenches of early customer service at Amazon.
Most companies skimp on process improvement. But the surprising thing is that they do so not because they're bad or lazy — but because there are system dynamics that prevent them from doing so. We take a look at what those are.
Accelerated Expertise is the best book we have on creating accelerated training programs today.
Working Backwards is the first book that explains how Amazon really works.
David Epstein's mediocre book argues the merits of being a generalist. Instead of reading it, read this and subscribe to Epstein's newsletter.
What do we actually know about burnout? What does the research say? Is burnout preventable? All the research, in one free, updated place.
The bare minimum you need to know to be an adequate manager. Short enough to finish in three hours. Meaty enough to take 6-8 months to master.
The soup-to-nuts guide to building a career moat. We start from understanding your job market, executing a skills audit, all the way to building and then maintaining a moat.
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