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Here’s US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld talking about the famous “unknown unknowns”, in the context of the Iraq war. But there’s one category he misses, and it is the most important of all. “There are known knowns, the things we know we know, and known unknowns, the things we know we don’t know. And … Read more

It can be positively dangerous to be too much of a subject matter expert. The following comes from a body of work originally developed by the CIA as guidance for analysts. Consider the following simple experiment. Read the text in the three triangles below. Did you notice that in each case the article is repeated? … Read more

Try this experiment. For six months, ban the use of the word “culture” in your organisation. (The only exception is if you are a pharmaceutical company, in which case you may still have cultures, so long as they live in petri dishes). Instead of “culture” say “the collection of habits and beliefs that determine how … Read more

You know this one, but I have a new twist on it…. Without lifting your pen from the paper, draw 4 straight lines which go through each of the nine dots exactly once. When you first came across the problem you were probably foxed, at least for a while. Then you either noticed, or were … Read more