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Truth Is Believing. Accuracy Is Knowing.
Recent CIO Surveys and CPO Conferences Made Me Think of Genchi Genbutsu (現地現物): Here’s Why.
July 28, 2026
Before we optimize the system... are we certain we've correctly modeled the one we're standing in? — The C-Suite
Posted in: Commentary
A question I keep getting: “How is the Hansen Model different from what’s already out there?”
July 28, 2026
Two established families of frameworks — reference models (SCOR, TOC, Six Sigma) and relational models — both work on the system as it is declared to operate. The Hansen work validates that the declared system is the real one, before either begins.
Posted in: Commentary
Every Firm Found the Same Problem. None of Them Found the Layer Beneath It.
July 27, 2026
Every major AI report this year found the same problem: readiness, not technology. Every one of them reached for a checklist. A checklist is the one thing that can't fix it — and the reason is ontological.
Posted in: Commentary
Why I Have Never Quite Been Satisfied with the Term “Supply Chain”
July 25, 2026
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.
Posted in: Commentary
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
The Map You Design and the Map You Trace
July 29, 2026
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Before you optimize the map you were handed, ask which map you're holding. If it was drawn from what you know instead of operating reality, it points confidently to the destination—and misses the reason you never arrive.