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Have You Ever Asked a Doctor for a Refund?
It’s perhaps a strange question to ask but I am curious. A doctor diagnoses a condition, explains what is happening, recommends a course of treatment, and sends us on our way. We may follow the advice diligently. We may follow some of it. We may ignore it entirely. Yet if our condition fails to improve…
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These False Certainties may be Costing you a Fortune
Psychologists have long observed that human beings sometimes hold beliefs that help them cope with uncertainty, anxiety, or difficult realities. These beliefs are often referred to as protective delusions. Their purpose is not necessarily to help us see reality more accurately. Their purpose is to help us function. An entrepreneur launching a new business despite…
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No One Tells a Cardiologist, “It’s OK…I’ll Watch YouTube.”
One of the things that has always fascinated me about medicine is how readily we accept the idea that expertise matters. If someone experiences chest pain, persistent fatigue, an irregular heartbeat, or a concerning test result, very few people respond by saying, “You know, before you spend money on a cardiologist, have you tried Googling…
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Conversion of Knowledge of Acquaintance into Knowledge About Is a Risky Exercise
My WHY, according to the WHY Institute, is Make Sense. When I first encountered the WHY.os framework, I remember feeling a strange sense of recognition. The WHY Institute describes a WHY as the fundamental motivation that drives a person’s behavior, decisions, and way of seeing the world. In their model, the WHY is expressed through…
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Stop Trying to Create Perfect Stability
When I first read Thriving on Chaos years ago, what remained as a foundational thought, was not any particular model or management technique. It was the challenge buried inside the title itself. Most people spend an enormous amount of energy trying to create conditions that feel permanent. Businesses do it. Leaders do it. Entire industries…
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Is this Decision Asymmetrical?
Asking “Is this decision asymmetrical?” is a vital mental model for risk management and strategy. Before discussing strategy, before discussing execution, before discussing budgets, restructuring, hiring, expansion, partnerships, marketing campaigns, software purchases, or new opportunities, the question to ask is: Is this decision asymmetrical? Most leaders spend considerable time trying to determine whether a decision…
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The fog of war does not only exist on battlefields
The fog of war is a phrase that originally belonged to military strategy…those moments where commanders were forced to make decisions while visibility remained partial, communication fractured, and information arrived distorted through fear, delay, assumption, ego, or incomplete observation. From a distance, war often looks like movement directed by certainty. Inside it, however, people are…
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Why “One Size Fits All” Decision Training Fails
There is value in teaching and training leaders to become more effective in areas like decision-making, communication, delegation, negotiation, strategic planning, conflict resolution, emotional regulation, and execution. Organizations need these things. Teams function better when leaders can slow down enough to evaluate options, regulate reactions, ask better questions, and avoid making decisions from pure panic…
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What Apollo 13 Understood about Leadership Under Pressure
“Houston, we have a problem” has survived all these years partly because of the way it was delivered. The sentence itself carried no drama. There was no attempt to inflate the moment emotionally even though an oxygen tank had exploded in space and three men were suddenly inside a situation that could very realistically kill…
Clarity BEFORE Execution. Structure BEFORE Speed
If you could better understand one thing about your business right now….
Most costly decisions begin with
an inaccurate understanding of the situation.
I help leaders understand what is actually happening before major decisions are made or
resources are invested in solving the wrong problem.
Giselle Hudson | Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor | Sensemaking for high-stakes business decisions 