July 2020 Learning List

Photo by Joshua Chun on Unsplash

Info from the past month I'd actually consume again.

The importance of understanding "What is going on here?"

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While exploring practice of decision making I recently came across the following while reading Radical Uncertainty: 

Intelligent views about actions, and the range of possible actions, are expressed at the end, not the beginning, of the process of ascertaining ‘what is going on here.’

This lead to the realization that a large chunk my own decision making process is focused just on that, understanding "What is going on here?" 

Startups with decision cultures

While exploring the practice of decision making I've come across companies that have expressed some decision process as part of their culture.

Here are 9 I've stumbled across so far:

1. Square - SPADE (SPADE Toolkit)
2. Coinbase - Parameters / Deliberate / Decide 
3. Stripe - SCQA, via Zack Tratar and Jeff Weinstein (Writing == Decisions, redacted example)
4. Amazon - 6 Page Narrative  (again)
5. Fictiv - DACI
6. Coda - Framing
7. Matter - Decision Disagreement Framework
8. Intercom - RICE
9. Shopify - TOMASP

I don't believe it to be a coincidence that those companies emphasize (or at least signal...) a decision making practice. 

Instead, I think they are examples of how at some echelon of knowledge work, this practice makes a difference. 

Last updated 8/5/20, added Shopify and "SPADE Toolkit"

Stripe, decision making, and SCQA

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I've recently become interested in Stripe after noticing that a bunch of their people (Patrick Collison, Claire Hughes Johnson,  Zack Tratar, Jeff Weinstein, Patrick McKenzie @ ~46:55) frequently talk about the practice of decision making -- a practice I picked up ~4 years ago after being frustrated by unclear thinking, decision making, and history around product decisions. 

One framework that routinely pops up is Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principal and SCQA framework for effective communication.