Category: MentalModel
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Goodhart’s Law and the ‘tyranny of metrics’
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” This, in the words of Marilyn Strathern, is the most succinct summary of Goodhart’s Law. It has implications for how organizations make decisions and evaluate performance. Over-reliance on measurements and targets causes problems for organizations, at both the top and the bottom…
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User-centered design: the art of making things easy to use
Fewer buttons, more thought.
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The expectancy vs surprise continuum: music, art, suicide, and the good life
A rule of thumb about how to live a good life and what makes good content. There’s a thread that connects sounds in nature, music, suicide and what makes a good film: the expectancy vs surprise continuum. Understanding or at least being aware of this continuum can help us see life through a different lens…
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John Kotter’s 8 stages of change management
Most major change programmes fail because of a lack of proper planning, according to John Kotter. He proposed eight steps to overcome this. Kotter’s 8-step model of change management was first published in a 1995 Harvard Business Review article and followed up in his book Leading Change. His steps comprise: Watch out for Kotter said…
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Clark Gilbert’s two types of business inertia
This model explains why some large, established firms respond well to largescale disruption, while others struggle. Imagine you run a chain of clothes shops. You sell the coolest, most popular clothes and you’re the king of the High Street, with a knighthood to boot. But a new generation of online retailers appears. You start your…