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Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing.
The Agentic Organization Isn’t New. It’s a Bigger Trainyard — and the Real Risk Is an Empty Tower.
July 24, 2026
The "agentic organization" isn't new. I ran a version of it in 1998 — a trainyard where humans governed the tracks. The trains are AI agents now. What hasn't changed is who has to be in the tower. And the danger was never the trains.
Posted in: Commentary
The Biggest Mistake People Are Making with AI
July 23, 2026
The biggest mistake with AI isn't overestimating what it can do — it's building agents to execute functions no one validated against reality.
Posted in: Commentary
Reasoning About the Real System, Extending TOC — A One-Day Executive MasterClass
July 22, 2026
Every transformation method — TOC, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile — reasons brilliantly once the model is right. The one upstream step they all assume you already took is the step that decides the outcome. A new one-day Executive MasterClass, extending TOC, on the missing nail: validating the operating model before you reason. Available August 17.
Posted in: Commentary
The Theory of Constraints Optimizes the System You Give It. Invariant Physics™ Asks Whether It’s the Real One.
July 21, 2026
The Theory of Constraints reasons brilliantly — once the system is characterized. The question that decides the outcome sits one step upstream: is the model the operating reality, or the process people are willing to describe?
Posted in: Commentary
Building AI for the Way the World Really Works — Taking Aaron Levie’s Observation One Step Further
July 21, 2026
Aaron Levie said Build for how the world should work. Almost three decades of implementations continue to point to the missing step — build for how it really works, before a court calls it a design output.
Posted in: Commentary
McKinsey Documents in Luxury What This Archive Has Recorded Since 2004: It’s Time to Meet AI at the Edge
July 20, 2026
McKinsey documents in luxury what this archive has recorded since 2004: where intent is first interpreted decides everything downstream. The physics never changed.
Posted in: Commentary
The Space Between the Lines
July 19, 2026
In 2011, every major forecaster drew the same cloud curve — and they were right. Almost none of them charted the line underneath: how much of it organizations actually absorbed. That gap is the whole story, and we're drawing the same picture now for AI.
Posted in: Commentary
Not the Cure — the Response
July 18, 2026
"When a technology's promised value runs late, organizations reach for the tangible instead of the operating model. A pattern worth watching in AI."
Posted in: Commentary
AI Sprawl Is the Fever, Not the Disease
July 18, 2026
"Gartner just named "AI sprawl" a top 2026 priority. We've seen this fever before — and the treatment on offer is the one that failed last time."
Posted in: Commentary
Why I Have Never Quite Been Satisfied with the Term “Supply Chain”
July 25, 2026
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I've used the term "supply chain" my entire career — and never quite trusted it. Not the words; the mental model they smuggle in. A chain teaches you to hunt for the broken link. But nothing important moves in a line — it moves in a weave, and the failure is never in a single strand or thread. It's in the pattern.