The Sixth Lens
A decision that passes five lenses can still fail on the sixth. Notes on how high-stakes decisions go wrong, how the 6-Lens Framework reads them, and what AI changes for the founders and boards who have to own the call.
Six lenses, three verdicts: how the 6-Lens Framework reads a decision
Most big decisions get examined from one angle. The 6-Lens Framework reads the same decision six ways (Strategic, Financial, Operational, Risk, People and Customer) and ends in one of three verdicts: proceed, proceed with conditions, or do not proceed.
The Framing Gap: why most bad decisions are well analysed
The Framing Gap is the distance between the question you asked and the decision actually in front of you. Most consequential decisions that go wrong were analysed perfectly well; they were framed badly, weeks earlier, in one sentence, and nobody reopened it.
Not every decision deserves the same rigour
Sort a decision before you analyse it: can you walk it back, and what does walking it back cost? Reversible decisions deserve speed. The few you can't undo are where all your rigour belongs. Most businesses do the opposite.
The ten schools of strategy, and the blind spot each one leaves
Mintzberg's Strategy Safari maps ten schools of how strategy gets made. Most leaders live in two of them and never notice the other eight are missing. Here is what each school gets right, the blind spot it leaves, and a test for whether it is yours.
The most dangerous thing an AI can do is agree with you
Conversational AI is tuned to agree, gives a different answer each time you ask, and sounds most confident exactly when you should check it. That is fine for a conversation and disqualifying for a decision you can't reverse. Here is why, and what I built instead.
If a board can't reconstruct a decision, it isn't overseeing it
AI is now woven through how management recommendations get built, and the reasoning behind them often can't be traced or reproduced. For the decisions a board is accountable for, reproducibility is a governance requirement, not a technical nicety.