Choose something you want to get better at. Each lesson introduces a person whose work can help, with an example you can use. The original reading is optional.
Albert Hirschman
You can catch signs of lost trust that a complaint count misses.
Complaints can fall because service improved, or because unhappy customers stopped bothering to tell you.
Hirschman’s book, with publisher description and preview. Start with the distinction between leaving and speaking up.
Mary Parker Follett
You can uncover another way to meet both sides’ needs before giving up price or quality.
Two demands can clash while the needs behind them can both be met.
An excerpt from Follett’s paper. Read the library example on the second PDF page.
W. Ross Ashby
You can give a team enough ways to solve problems without sending every unusual case to you.
One standard reply cannot fix a late delivery, a duplicate charge and a broken product.
An Introduction to Cybernetics
Ashby’s original book. Chapter 11 introduces requisite variety. The business example here is our application.
Elinor Ostrom
You can share decisions while making responsibility and limits clear.
A shared resource does not always need one boss making every decision.
Her summary of the design principles observed in lasting arrangements for shared resources.
Herbert Simon
You can set a stopping rule for research and judge the decision using what you knew at the time.
The best option you can imagine may be impossible to identify with the time and information you have.
Herbert Simon: decision-making research
The Nobel committee’s explanation of bounded rationality and satisfactory choices.
Lisanne Bainbridge
You can build an automated process that someone can diagnose and recover when it fails.
The person called in during a failure may be the person who has had the least recent practice doing the job.
Full paper, mirrored from Automatica. The AI booking example is our own modern application.
John D. Rockefeller
You can find costs and supplier problems that weaken every sale, then choose a fix worth testing.
Standard Oil made its own wooden barrels and operated storage facilities. Some advantages came from controlling the steps around the product.
Rockefeller Archive Center: John D. Rockefeller
Historical overview of Standard Oil. Pair it with the Library of Congress collection on its monopoly and critics.
Ludwig von Mises
You can compare revenue ideas by what they use, what they return and what you must give up.
Knowing how to build something does not tell you whether it is the best use of the people and materials it needs.
The Nature of Economic Calculation
Original argument, hosted by the Mises Institute, which advocates his school of thought. The business exercise is our application.