People
The Uncertainty Team

About the Uncertainty Team

The Uncertainty Project team is a group of independent contributors that document, aggregate, and build on existing models and techniques. Many of these techniques are adapted by the Blueprint team particularly for strategy and group decision making. Many of these models come from sources across various industries, research projects, and time periods. The Uncertainty Project team aims to represent them in a way that can be actionable and useful to all kinds of teams and organizations.

Tools & Techniques
Threads
Talks

Estimator Calibration

This approach treats humans as the “instrument” and the estimates as a “measurement” that needs calibration.

The Mediating Assessments Protocol

A method from the book "Noise", designed by Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony, "with noise mitigation as a primary objective".

Noise Audit

Evaluating systematic variations in human judgement

Constraint Maps

First understand what is shaping the system, then nudge with changes that require minimal energy.

Shared Visions

Vision statements influence strategy processes. Done correctly, they tap intrinsic motivation, while poorly crafted visions can lead to organizational skepticism.

Liberating Structures

Simple, inclusive facilitation techniques that distribute control and foster active participation in groups enhancing collaboration, creativity, and engagement.

Assumptions Mapping

Systematically identifying and testing underlying assumptions through targeted experiments

Simple Rules

Complex systems benefit from "Simple Rules" to guide decisions, emphasizing flexibility, simplicity, and decentralized authority

Assertive Inquiry

Intentionally crafting the words and tone used in conversations to promote effective dialog, not gridlocked disagreements

Vanishing Options Test

A divergent thinking tool to help overcome anchoring bias and identify different options by eliminating the existing options

Fielding Outcomes

Evaluating decisions as "bets" against future uncertainties and measuring good/bad decisions based on process - distinguishing between skill and luck.

Causal Decision Diagrams (CDD)

Causal Decision Diagrams help decision-makers visually capture the causal relationships between desired goals, the different choices of levers to pull, and any intermediate results that connect them.

Rumsfeld Matrix

Categorizes information into known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns, helping navigate uncertainty and uncover risks

Tripwires

pre-set signals or checkpoints that trigger decisions, reviews, or actions when specific conditions are met, serving as early warning systems

RAPID® Framework

BAIN & Company's decision making framework for clarifying roles and responsibilities

Pre-Mortem

Evaluate potential risks and possibilities of negative outcomes by evaluating a decision from the perspective

Mini-Delphi Method

Generate and revise probabilistic forecasts across a group of experts or leverage the 'wisdom of crowds' in a systematic way

Decision Types

Distinguishing between decision types help teams and organizations identify the level of risk and potential consequences associated with different options

Nominal Group Collaboration

Nominal group collaboration is a method of group decision making that involves structured, anonymous input from all members to generate a representative group viewpoint

Eisenhower Matrix

Effectively prioritize and delegate decisions to keep the most important, urgent decisions front and center

Outcome Tree

Map the potential outcomes of a decision to visualize counterfactuals and surface potential risks

Decision Framing

Effectively frame a decision in a clear, concise, and objective way to set up the process for productive dialog

DACI Roles & Responsibilities

The DACI framework is a simple, yet effective way to quickly identify roles and responsibilities in a decision making process.

Speed Test

The speed test is a tool for understanding when to go fast with a decision and when to go slow

Multi-Choice Decision Matrix

A decision matrix is a tool that is used to evaluate the potential options or choices in a decision making process.

Belief Challenging

Belief challenging is a tool for challenging existing, often implicit, beliefs and arrive at better pivot/persevere decisions when evaluating existing product investments (projects, features, etc…)

‘Psychological Safety’ and embracing discomfort

Psychological Safety may be misunderstood as something that is 'comfortable' when in reality it's a model for dealing with necessary dissent in a productive way.

August 29, 2023

'Divergent Thinking' and tools to facilitate it

Optionality is critical in strategic decision making and it starts with how we think

July 6, 2023

How a tweak in team psychology helped define modern airline safety

The story of how 'Crew Resource Manage' transformed airline safety and a general exploration of how teams can and should foster productive disagreement.

July 6, 2023

Are we any good at planning?

We crave certainty - and detailed plans give us a false sense of certainty. In this thread, we explore whether or not we have the cognitive toolset for planning, how we mentally 'construct' strategies, and how we update our mental models to change course when necessary.

July 6, 2023

Our dangerous tendency to overcommit and tools to mitigate overconfidence

July 6, 2023

The role of conviction and narrative in decision making

Conviction as a superpower, why we tend to be overly optimistic, and how outcome trees help us map potential outcomes

July 6, 2023

Exploring goal setting and OKRs through the lens of decision making

Exploring how goals help teams make better decisions, strategic misrepresentation, and the power of 'Even Over' statements

July 6, 2023

How 'collective illusions' influence decision making

There's quite a bit we can learn from parallels to research on social norms and how culture develops - this thread explores a piece of that 👉

June 12, 2023

What optical illusions can tell us about our biases and heuristics

This is an excerpt from a newsletter post exploring the value (if any) of bias education and whether or not optical illusions are a good way to illustrate the impact of cognitive biases - or at least our unavoidable ignorance of them.

July 13, 2023

Artificial Intelligence vs Human Decision Making

With artificial intelligence tools 'going mainstream', we see a flood of conversations that say something like "will AI replace [role]?". This is exploring the difference in humans and machines from the perspective of decision making.

June 19, 2023

Communication starts well before a decision is made

We often think of communication as a post-decisions activity, but how can bring people along for the process to help smooth over even the most unpopular decisions?

October 28, 2023

What makes a good decision, good?

We might often think about a 'good' decision as having a positive or expected outcome, but there's so much out of our own control (luck). A good decision is the result of good dialog, processes, and communication.

June 8, 2023
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