Strategy

When an AI participates in a problem-solving conversation, people drop defenses they have carried for decades. This is not about a better search engine. It is about changing the dynamics of the room.

I built an AI agent that applies TOC Thinking Processes autonomously to improve business ideas. When I pointed it at itself, it resolved two real tensions via Evaporating Cloud across 10 iterations.

A public hospital loses tens of millions a year. Taxpayers cover the gap. But where does the taxpayers' money come from? Following that thread leads to a reframe that might change the conversation.

A board commissioner and an AI sit alone in an empty conference room and talk honestly about what just happened and why. Episode 06 of the Cascade Valley audio drama series.

Twelve people walk into a working group carrying separate problems and walk out carrying a shared one. Episode 05 of the Cascade Valley audio drama series.

Replacing a $150/month accounting platform with open-source tools and AI revealed something bigger: the build-vs-buy calculus has shifted, and most of us have not caught up.

King County faces a familiar cycle: deficits, targeted cuts, new taxes, repeat. A Theory of Constraints lens on their own public data suggests the measuring stick itself may be the problem.

Distorted cost accounting in public institutions does not just produce bad budget decisions. It produces learned helplessness in the people who manage those budgets. The system, not the people, is the cause.

A question for CFOs at Washington State critical access hospitals: could standard cost allocation be distorting your service line decisions at exactly the wrong time?

A hospital CFO runs the same numbers two ways and gets answers that disagree by a factor of five. Episode 04 of the Cascade Valley audio drama series.

A baker named Rachel thinks she has two bad options: raise prices and lose customers, or hold prices and lose her business. She has neither. This is how the Evaporating Cloud works.

You invested in a professional website. It gets traffic. It looks right. But the phone barely rings. The problem is not the website. It is what the website is saying.

A dramatized community hospital board meeting — fictional health system, real governance dynamics — showing what changes when an AI has a seat at the table.

Why good people in well-run hospitals still end up in the wrong conversation, and what a structural fix might look like.

The word "waste" smuggles in a verdict before the analysis begins. Theory of Constraints offers a sharper test: waste relative to what?

Why 'FTE Headcount' is a vanity metric that hides the real constraint: Nursing Minutes at the Bedside.

Most dashboards measure local efficiency at the expense of global throughput. Here is how to define the minimum dataset that actually drives system performance.

Why 'Scope Creep' is usually a symptom of a deeper strategic failure—in software, in hardware, and in healthcare.

Why smart, well-run organizations reliably get stuck on solvable problems, and what tribal dynamics and cognitive limits have to do with it.

Matt Shumer is right that AI is about to change everything. But the real transformation isn't about job loss -- it's about discovering that most of the limits you've been working within were never real.

How AI can dissolve complex multi-stakeholder conflicts by surfacing hidden assumptions, not by replacing human judgment.

A concept for addressing the complex discharge problem at its source—by capturing discharge-relevant information during routine primary care, before any hospitalization occurs.

Why moving fast is an undervalued strategic advantage for community hospitals.