Tag: Operating model
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Decision Escalation: Fear is a big driver, but not the only one
Decision escalation is rarely about complexity. It is about safety. When the personal cost of being wrong feels higher than the organizational value of being fast, decisions climb the org chart. Teams call it alignment. In reality, it is risk redistribution. Fear explains a lot of escalation. But it is not the only driver. Power,… Read More
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10 governance principles that remove transformation slippage by design
Transformation doesn’t slip because teams can’t deliver. It slips because decisions don’t close. Unclear ownership, vague guardrails, slow approvals, and informal exceptions quietly push timelines to the right. What looks like “execution risk” is often decision latency disguised as alignment. In this article, I outline 10 governance principles that remove transformation slippage by design: one… Read More
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AI Is Scaling Faster Than Your Decision Model
When experimentation spreads across marketing, sales, service, and operations but no one can clearly answer who owns the risk, what the guardrails are, or how escalation works you don’t have governance. You have improvisation. This article outlines a minimal viable AI governance model for CEOs: one accountable executive, 3–5 non-negotiable guardrails, tiered risk triage, and… Read More
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GenAI in Customer Service: Escalation Design Is the Real Product
In GenAI-powered customer service, the model is not the product. The escalation design is. Customers do not judge your AI on fluency. They judge it on what happens when it fails. If a refund request loops three times, if a promo exception cannot reach a human, if context is lost during handoff, trust collapses. Escalation… Read More
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You don’t have a KPI problem. You have a decision clarity problem.
The fastest way to restore clarity is to separate steering metrics from performance metrics. Steering metrics are the few signals teams can influence quickly, and they exist to trigger action this week. Performance metrics validate outcomes over time, and they exist to confirm whether your strategy worked. Read More
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When Pressure Hits, Your Operating Model Behaves Like a Dog Chasing a Squirrel
In commerce transformations, governance shows up when pressure hits: promo dates slip, inventory is wrong, an executive asks for “just one exception,” and teams start improvising. If decisions don’t have an owner, a pathway, and a feedback loop, the operating model behaves like a dog chasing a squirrel—fast, committed, and messy. Read More
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