Empowering Good teams to be Great!
Calibrating Confidence to Reality In the arena of decision-making, confidence can be both a strategic asset and a hidden liability. One of the most consistent and well-documented cognitive biases affecting decision quality is the Overconfidence Effect—the tendency for individuals to […]
Why Extremes Don’t Last In our journey through foundational thinking models for better decision-making, today we examine a quiet but profoundly powerful principle: Regression to the Mean. It sounds technical, but this mental model has real-world consequences in investing, management, […]
Why Volume Is Your Ally in Decision-Making “In the long run, the house always wins.”It’s a quote made famous in casinos, but it holds powerful truth for investors, entrepreneurs, and executives. Behind that saying lies a foundational concept in probability […]
Making Smarter Decisions by Quantifying Outcomes In business, investing, and life, we are constantly faced with uncertainty. Should we launch a new product? Should we expand to a new market? Should we take a new role or project? These decisions […]
Seeing the Hidden “Price Tag” on Every Choice “The most important thing to evaluate when you look at a decision is what you can’t do if you say yes.” – Charlie Munger Why Opportunity Cost Belongs in Every Executive’s Toolkit […]
How Smart Executives Tip the Scales In the world of high-stakes decision-making, not all risks are created equal. Some risks offer minimal downside but open the door to substantial upside—others do the reverse. Executives who understand Asymmetric Risk-Reward not only […]
Building Strategic Buffers for Better Decisions Why Margin of Safety Matters Beyond Investing Benjamin Graham coined margin of safety to shield investors from analytical error and market volatility. Executives face the same twin threats—imperfect information and unpredictable environments—but the stakes […]
Making Strategic Trade-offs That Compound Value “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”– Seneca In the world of economics, comparative advantage explains why countries trade and specialize. But in […]
Choosing Clarity over Cynicism in Executive Decision-Making Hanlon’s Razor “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by misunderstanding or error.” Executives who reflexively interpret problems as someone else’s ill-will ignite needless conflict, waste energy on politics, and slow […]
Turning New Information into Better Decisions Bayesian Updating “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”— (often attributed to) John Maynard Keynes Bayesian Updating is a disciplined way to revise what you believe in light […]
How Long-Term Investing Sharpens My Executive Edge and Doubles down on my 2 x Masters Degrees I have a confession to make. When I buy shares in companies like Palantir, Microsoft, CrowdStrike, The Trade Desk or C3 AI, the ticker […]
“Don’t reason by analogy. Reason from the ground up.” — Elon Musk Most executives unknowingly build their decision-making on borrowed assumptions—best practices, benchmarks, and industry norms. But when the landscape shifts or when you’re called to lead transformation, inherited wisdom […]
Foundational Mental Models for Executive Decision-Making In business, complexity is seductive. It makes you feel smart. It gives the illusion of control. It builds entire PowerPoint decks and project plans. But here’s the truth that seasoned CEOs know: Complexity kills […]
Foundational Mental Models for Executive Decision-Making Most leadership training focuses on forward planning. Set the vision. Plot the strategy. Move step by step toward success. That’s fine—until complexity hits. Inversion Thinking is the different! How? When you’re leading under pressure, […]
Foundational Mental Models for Executive Decision-Making Let me tell you a truth most CEOs avoid: The higher up you go, the less certainty you’ll have—and the more your decisions will shape everything. That’s why average executives chase control, while great […]
Foundational Mental Models for Executive Decision-Making In leadership, the greatest danger isn’t ignorance—it’s shallow thinking disguised as decisiveness. Too many executives are rewarded for reacting fast, delivering results this quarter, or solving the symptom in front of them. But true […]
Foundational Mental Models for Executive Decision-Making As an engineer by training and a data scientist by profession, I used to believe First Principles Thinking was universal. It felt intuitive—obvious, even. But after years of leading teams, advising executives, and working […]
Recently a friend asked “Why don’t you invest more in Australia?” — this post is aimed at explaining my answer to them. Most Australian investors concentrate their portfolios domestically. The majority of SMSFs, retail investors, and even some institutional funds […]
A Playbook for Thinking Clearly at C-Level “When the stakes are high and the variables messy, strategy is less about having the right answers than using the right lenses.” Welcome to The Executive Mental Models Series—a blog-cum-training journey designed to […]
From Kondratiev’s Long Waves to Ray Dalio’s Big Debt CycleCredit Cycles, Long Run and Short Run Why study century-spanning economic tides at all?Because the very forces that lift our portfolios in the good times are the same ones that can […]
