'Knowledge' here is defined as 'theories or models that help you predict better'. How an idea from W. Edwards Deming may well be a working philosophy of business.

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.

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.