Our Thinking Models
Here are some examples:
The Real O in SWOT
The Real O in SWOT restores the original architecture of the model by re‑establishing Opportunities as external forces, not internal aspirations. When Opportunities are confused with goals, SWOT collapses into wishful thinking. When the internal–external boundary is respected, SWOT becomes a precise way of understanding how internal capability collides with external reality — and why the same opportunity can elevate one organisation and destroy another.
IO‑LM SWOT
A discipline for forcing SWOT out of documentation and into action. Strengths must be Improved, Weaknesses Overcome, Opportunities Leveraged, and Threats Mitigated. If a SWOT point does not drive one of these responses, it is noise.
Moon Lists
A calibration tool that accounts for hidden mass in every plan — the assumptions, frictions, delays, and second‑order effects that never appear in the first model but always arrive in execution. Moon Lists do not aim for precision; they make plans executable.
Noise Collapses Clarity
Noise Collapses Clarity identifies how excess information, process, and explanation quietly paralyse systems. When noise accumulates, priorities blur, decisions slow, and action fragments. Clarity does not emerge from adding more detail — it appears only after unnecessary complexity is removed. This model restores movement by treating noise as a structural failure, not an inconvenience.
Don’t Let the Tail Wag the Dog
Don’t Let the Tail Wag the Dog is a model for detecting authority inversion — when something downstream begins exerting control over something upstream. Tools, rules, and subsystems exist to support the mission, not reshape it. When a local mechanism starts dictating structure, direction, or behaviour beyond its scope, the system bends around the wrong force. This model protects proportional authority and keeps the value‑creating reality in command.
The Tunnel Solution
When a system is dangerous, rigid, or futile to confront on its surface, the winning move is to change the dimension of the problem and bypass it entirely. The Tunnel Solution rejects surface thinking and looks for the unseen path that avoids the rules everyone else has already accepted.
Forced Scarcity
Forced Scarcity is the deliberate removal of comfort, resources, and options to expose what actually works. When abundance is stripped away, ambiguity collapses, priorities sharpen, and ingenuity surfaces. Scarcity acts as a filter — revealing capability, clarity, and movement that excess hides. It is not about deprivation. It is about pressure used on purpose.
Purple Elephants
A model for eliminating wasted thought by refusing to describe what something is not. Purple Elephants remove imaginary noise so attention stays on reality, direction, and execution.
A Broader System of Thinking Models
The models above are just a small sample of the 27 Thinking Models I deploy in practice.
Together, these models form a working library developed through original thinking, disciplined reinterpretation of established tools, and adaptation into domains where those models are rarely applied.
I deploy them when they’re needed.