Twenty-one years.

That's how long I've been doing this. Producing content. Showing up. Week after week, with only a handful of exceptions—most of them involving hospitals and cardiac surgeons, but that's another story.
After twenty-one years, you learn what lands and what doesn't. You learn not to get too attached because you never know what's going to connect.
But this one surprised me.
Thinking 101—the response has been different. More comments. More questions. More people saying, “This is exactly what I needed.”
It's made me reflect on why I started this series.
Years ago, I was in a room with people from the Department of Education. I asked them a simple question: Why are we graduating people who can't think?
Not “don't know things.” Can't think. Can't reason through a problem. Can't evaluate an argument.
Their answer was… let's just say it wasn't satisfying.
That moment stuck with me. When AI exploded onto the scene—when everyone suddenly had a machine that could generate answers instantly—it became clear: thinking for yourself isn't just valuable anymore. It's survival.
That's what Part One was about. The Foundations. Building your thinking toolkit.
So what's next? For the next few weeks—nothing.
We're taking a breather for the holidays. I'm going to spend time with my wife, my kids, my grandkids.
We'll be back in early January. And if you're heading to CES in Las Vegas that first week—let me know. I'd love to meet up.
But before I go, I have a question for you.
Should there be a Part Two?
I have ideas. If Part One was about building your toolkit, Part Two could be about what happens when you have to use it. Because knowing how to think and making good decisions aren't the same thing. Real decisions happen when you're tired. When you're stressed. When your own brain is working against you.
Part Two could be about that gap—between knowing and doing.
But I want to hear from you first. Should I do it? What topics would you want covered? What questions are you wrestling with?
Post a comment. If you're a paid subscriber on Substack, send me a DM—I read those.
And speaking of paid subscribers—that's the best way to support the team that makes this happen. Twenty-one years of showing up doesn't happen alone.
You can also visit our store at innovation DOT tools for merch, my book, and more.
Part One is done. The holidays are calling.
Thank you for making this series land the way it did.
See you in January.
I'm Phil McKinney. Take care of yourselves—and each other.

Listen to this week's show: Thinking 101: A Pause, A Reflection, And What Might Come Next
Get the tools to fuel your innovation journey → Innovation.Tools https://innovation.tools

Before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, NASA management officially estimated the probability of catastrophic failure at one in one hundred thousand. That's about the same odds as getting struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark. The engineers working on the actual rockets? They estimated the risk at closer to one in one hundred. A thousand times more dangerous than management believed.¹

Both groups had access to the same data. The same flight records. The same engineering reports. So how could their conclusions be off by a factor of a thousand?
The answer isn't about intelligence or access to information. It's about the mental frameworks they used to interpret that information. Management was using models built for public relations and budget justification. Engineers were using models built for physics and failure analysis. Same inputs, radically different outputs. The invisible toolkit they used to think was completely different.
Your brain doesn't process raw reality. It processes reality through models. Simplified representations of how things work. And the quality of your thinking depends entirely on the quality of mental models you possess.
By the end of this episode, you'll have three of the most powerful mental models ever developed. A starter kit. Three tools that work together, each one strengthening the others. The same tools the NASA engineers were using while management flew blind.
Let's build your toolkit.
What Are Mental Models?
A mental model is a representation of how something works. It's a framework your brain uses to make sense of reality, predict outcomes, and make decisions. You already have hundreds of them. You just might not realize it.
When you understand that actions have consequences, you're using a mental model. When you recognize that people respond to incentives, that's a model too.
Think of mental models as tools. A hammer drives nails. A screwdriver turns screws. Each tool does a specific job. Mental models work the same way. Each one helps you do a specific kind of thinking. One model might help you spot hidden assumptions. Another might reveal risks you'd otherwise miss. A third might show you what success requires by first mapping what failure looks like.
The collection of models you carry with you? That's your thinking toolkit. And like any toolkit, the more quality tools you have, and the better you know when to use each one, the more problems you can solve.
Here's the problem. Research from Ohio State University found that people often know the optimal strategy for a given situation but only follow it about twenty percent of the time.² The models sit unused while we default to gut reactions and habits.
The goal isn't just to collect mental models. It's to build a system where the right tool shows up at the right moment. And that starts with having a few powerful models you know deeply, not dozens you barely remember.
Let's add three tools to your toolkit.
Tool One: The Map Is Not the Territory
This might be the most foundational mental model of all. Coined by philosopher Alfred Korzybski in the 1930s, it delivers a simple but profound insight: our models of reality are not reality itself.³
A map of Denver isn't Denver. It's a simplified representation that leaves out countless details. The smell of pine trees, the feel of altitude, the conversation happening at that corner café. The map is useful. But it's not the territory.
Every mental model,

Quick—which is more dangerous: the thing that kills 50,000 Americans every year, or the thing that kills 50?

Your brain says the first one, obviously. The data says you're dead wrong.
Heart disease kills 700,000 people annually, but you're not terrified of cheeseburgers. Shark attacks kill about 10 people worldwide per year, but millions of people are genuinely afraid of the ocean. Your brain can't do the math, so you worry about the wrong things and ignore the actual threats.
And here's the kicker: The people selling you fear, products, and policies? They know your brain works this way. They're counting on it.
You're not bad at math. You're operating with Stone Age hardware in an Information Age world. And that gap between your intuition and reality? It's being weaponized every single day.
Let me show you how to fight back.
What They're Exploiting 
Here's what's happening: You can instantly tell the difference between 3 apples and 30 apples. But a million and a billion? They both just feel like “really big.”
Research from the OECD found that numeracy skills are collapsing across developed countries. Over half of American adults can't work with numbers beyond a sixth-grade level. We've become a society that can calculate tips but can't spot when we're being lied to with statistics.
And I'm going to be blunt: if you can't think proportionally in 2025, you're flying blind. Let's fix that right now.
Translation: Make the Invisible Visible 
Okay, stop everything. I'm going to change how you see numbers forever.
One million seconds is 11 days. Take a second, feel that. Eleven days ago—that's a million seconds.
One billion seconds is 31 years. A billion seconds ago, it was 1994. Bill Clinton was president. The internet was just getting started. That's how far back you have to go.
Now here's where it gets wild: One trillion seconds is 31,000 years. Thirty-one THOUSAND years. A trillion seconds ago, humans hadn't invented farming yet. We were hunter-gatherers painting on cave walls.
So when you hear someone say “What's the difference between a billion and a trillion?”—the difference is the entire span of human civilization.
This isn't trivia. This is the key to seeing through manipulation. Because when a politician throws around billions and trillions in the same sentence like they're comparable? Now you know—they're lying to your face, banking on you not understanding scale.
The “Per What?” Weapon 
Here's the trick they use on you constantly, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
A supplement company advertises: “Our product reduces your risk by 50%!” Sounds incredible, right? Must buy immediately.
But here's what they're not telling you: If your risk of something was 2 in 10,000, and now it's 1 in 10,000—that's technically a 50% reduction. But your actual risk only dropped by 0.01%. They just made almost nothing sound like everything.
Or flip it around: “This causes a 200% increase in risk!” Terrifying! Except if your risk went from 1 in a million to 3 in a million, you're still almost certainly fine.
This is how they play you. They show you percentages when absolute numbers would expose them. They show you raw numbers when rates would destroy their argument.
Your defense? Three words: “Per what, exactly?”
50% of what baseline? 200% increase from what starting point? That denominator is where the truth hides.
Once you start asking this, you'll see the manipulation everywhere.
Let's Catch a Lie in Real Time 
Okay, let's do this together right now.

I stepped out of the shower in March and my chest split open.

Not a metaphor. The surgical incision from my cardiac device procedure just… opened. Blood and fluid everywhere. Three bath towels to stop it.
My wife—a nurse, the exact person I needed—was in Chicago dealing with her parents’ estate. Both had just died. So my daughter drove me to the ER instead.
That was surgery number one.
By Thanksgiving this year, I’d had five cardiac surgeries. Six hospitalizations. All in twelve months.
And somewhere between surgery three and four, everything I thought I knew about gratitude… broke.
When the Comfortable List Stopped Working
Five surgeries. Three cardiac devices. My body kept rejecting the thing meant to save my life.
Lying there before surgery number five, waiting for the anesthesia, one question kept circling: What if I don’t make it this time?
And that’s when the comfortable list stopped working.
You know the one. Health. Family. Career. The things we say around the table because they sound right.
But when you’re not sure you’ll wake up from surgery… when your wife is burying both her parents while managing your near-death… when the calendar is filled with hospital dates instead of holidays…
You can’t perform gratitude anymore. You have to find out what it actually means.
The clock isn’t just ticking anymore. It’s screaming.
What Survives
And that’s when I saw it clearly. Not in a hospital room—at a lunch table with my grandson.
Last month, Liam sat next to me after church. He’s twelve. Runs his own business designing 3D models. And he’d been listening to my podcast episode about breakthrough innovations.
He had an idea. A big one.
“It would need way better batteries than we have now, Papa.”
So we went deep—the kind of conversation where you forget a twelve-year-old is asking questions most engineers won’t touch. He’s already thinking about making the impossible possible.
And sitting there, watching him work through the problem, I realized something: This is what survives when I’m gone.
My grandfather would take me to my Uncle Bishop’s tobacco farm in rural Kentucky. When we’d do something wrong—cut a corner, rush through it—we’d hear it: “A job worth doing is worth doing right.”
Almost like a family mantra.
I heard it on that farm. My kids heard it from me. Liam hears it now.
And that line will keep moving forward long after I’m gone. Not because of the accolades. Because of the people.
It’s Not Just Liam
But here’s what hit me sitting there with Liam: It’s not just him.
It’s you.
Every week for more than twenty years, I’ve been putting out content. Podcasts. Videos. Articles. Not for the downloads. Not for the metrics.
For this exact moment—where something I share gets passed forward. Where you have a conversation with someone younger who needs to hear it. Where you take what works and make it your own.
That’s what legacy actually is. Not the content I create. Not what’s on a shelf. The people we invest time in. The effort we put into helping them become who the future needs.
My legacy is Liam, yes. But it’s also every person who’s taken something from these conversations and shared it forward. That’s you.
That’s the reason the clock screaming doesn’t make me stop. It makes me keep going.
Because you’re going to pass this forward. And that’s what survives.
The Math
I turned sixty-five in September. Both my parents died at sixty-eight. The math isn’t encouraging.
So when people ask me why I keep pushing—why I’m still creating content whe...

In August 2025, Polish researchers tested something nobody had thought to check: what happens to doctors' skills after they rely on AI assistance? The AI worked perfectly—catching problems during colonoscopies, flagging abnormalities faster than human eyes could. But when researchers pulled the AI away, the doctors' detection rates had dropped. They'd become less skilled at spotting problems on their own.

We're all making decisions like this right now. A solution fixes the immediate problem—but creates a second-order consequence that's harder to see and often more damaging than what we started with.
Research from Gartner shows that poor operational decisions cost companies upward of 3% of their annual profits. A company with $5 billion in revenue loses $150 million every year because managers solved first-order problems and created second-order disasters.
You see this pattern everywhere. A retail chain closes underperforming stores to cut costs—and ends up losing more money when loyal customers abandon the brand entirely. A daycare introduces a late pickup fee to discourage tardiness—and late pickups skyrocket because parents now feel they've paid for the privilege.
The skill that separates wise decision-makers from everyone else isn't speed. It's the ability to ask one simple question repeatedly: “And then what?”
What Second-Order Thinking Actually Means
First-order thinking asks: “What happens if I do this?”
Second-order thinking asks: “And then what? And then what after that?”
Most people stop at the first question. They see the immediate consequence and act. But every action creates a cascade of effects, and the second and third-order consequences are often the opposite of what we intended.
Think about social media platforms. First-order? They connect people across distances. Second-order? They fragment attention spans and fuel polarization.
The difference isn't about being cautious—it's about being thorough. In a world where business decisions come faster and with higher stakes than ever before, the ability to trace consequences forward through multiple levels isn't optional anymore.
Let me show you how.
How To Think in Consequences
Before we get into the specific strategies, here's what you need to understand: Second-order thinking isn't about predicting the future with certainty. It's about systematically considering possibilities that most people ignore.
The reason most people fail at this isn't lack of intelligence—it's that our brains evolved to focus on immediate threats and rewards. First-order thinking kept our ancestors alive. But in complex modern systems—businesses, markets, organizations—first-order thinking gets you killed.
The good news? This is a learnable skill. You don't need special training or advanced degrees. You need two things: a framework for mapping consequences, and a method for forcing yourself to actually use it.
Two strategies will stop your solutions from creating bigger problems:
Map How People Will Actually Respond – trace your decision through stakeholders, understand what you're actually incentivizing, and predict how the system adapts.
Run the “And Then What?” Drill – force yourself to see three moves ahead before you act, using a simple three-round questioning method.
Let's break down each one.
Strategy 1: Map How People Will Actually Respond
Here's the fundamental insight that separates good decision-makers from everyone else: People respond to what you reward, not what you intend.

You're frozen. The deadline's approaching. You don't have all the data. Everyone wants certainty. You can't give it. Sound familiar?

Maybe it's a hiring decision with three qualified candidates and red flags on each one. Or a product launch where the market research is mixed. Or a career pivot where you can't predict which path leads where. You want more information. More time. More certainty. But you're not going to get it.
Meanwhile, a small group of professionals—poker players, venture capitalists, military strategists—consistently make better decisions than the rest of us in exactly these situations. Not because they have more information, but because they've mastered something fundamentally different: they think in probabilities, not certainties. I learned this the hard way—I once created a biometric security algorithm that the NSA reverse-engineered, where I mastered probabilistic thinking perfectly in the technology, then made every wrong bet with the business around it.
By the end of this episode, you'll possess a powerful mental toolkit that transforms how you approach uncertainty. You'll learn to estimate likelihoods without perfect data, update your beliefs as new information emerges, make confident decisions when multiple uncertain factors collide, and act decisively even when you can't guarantee the outcome. This is the difference between paralysis and power, between gambling recklessly and betting wisely.
What Is Probabilistic Thinking?
But what does probabilistic thinking actually entail? At its core, it's the practice of reasoning in terms of likelihoods rather than absolutes—thinking in percentages instead of yes-or-no answers. Instead of asking “Will this work?” you ask “What are the odds this will work, and what are the consequences if it doesn't?” This approach acknowledges that the future is uncertain and that every decision carries risk. By quantifying that uncertainty and weighing it against potential outcomes, you make smarter choices even when you can't eliminate the unknown.
The Cost of Demanding Certainty
Today's world punishes those who demand certainty before acting. Research from Oracle's 2023 Decision Dilemma study—which surveyed over 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries—found that 86% feel overwhelmed by the amount of data available to them. Rather than clarity, all that information creates decision paralysis.
And the paralysis has real consequences. When we can't be certain, we freeze. We endlessly research options, seeking that final piece of data that will guarantee success. We postpone critical decisions, waiting for perfect information that never arrives. Meanwhile, opportunities pass us by, problems grow worse, and competitors who are comfortable with uncertainty move forward.
This demand for certainty doesn't just slow us down—it exhausts us. Decision fatigue sets in as we agonize over choices, draining our mental resources until we either make impulsive decisions or avoid deciding altogether. Neither outcome serves us well.
What Certainty-Seeking Actually Costs You
Here's what it looks like in real life: You're the VP of Marketing. Your CMO wants a decision on next quarter's campaign budget by Friday. You have three agencies to choose from, each with strengths and weaknesses. So you ask for more data. Customer focus groups. Competitive analysis. Agency references. By Wednesday you're drowning in spreadsheets and conflicting opinions.
Friday arrives. You still can't be certain which choice is right, so you ask for an extension. Two weeks later, you finally pick one—not because you're confident, but because you're exhausted and the CMO is furious about the delay.

Try to go through a day without using an analogy. I guarantee you'll fail within an hour. Your morning coffee tastes like yesterday's batch. Traffic is moving like molasses. Your boss sounds like a broken record. Every comparison you make—every single one—is your brain's way of understanding the world. You can't turn it off.
 

When someone told you ChatGPT is “like having a smart assistant,” your brain immediately knew what to expect—and what to worry about. When Netflix called itself “the HBO of streaming,” investors understood the strategy instantly. These comparisons aren't just convenient—they're how billion-dollar companies are built and how your brain actually learns.
The person who controls the analogy controls your thinking. In a world where you're bombarded with new concepts every single day—AI tools, cryptocurrency, remote work culture, creator economies—your brain needs a way to make sense of it all. By the end of this episode, you'll possess a powerful toolkit for understanding the unfamiliar by connecting it to what you already know—and explaining complex ideas so clearly that people wonder why they never saw it before.
Thinking in analogies—or what's called analogical thinking—is how the greatest innovators, communicators, and problem-solvers operate. It's the skill that turns confusion into clarity and complexity into something you can actually work with.
What is Analogical Thinking?
But what does analogical thinking entail? At its core, it's the practice of understanding something new by comparing it to something you already understand. Your brain is constantly asking: “What is this like?” When you learned what a virus does to your computer, you understood it by comparing it to how biological viruses infect living organisms. When someone explains blockchain as “a shared spreadsheet that no one can erase,” they're using analogy to make an abstract concept concrete.
Researchers have found something remarkable: your brain doesn't actually store information as facts—it stores it as patterns and relationships. When you learn something new, your brain is literally asking “What does this remind me of?” and building connections to existing knowledge. Analogies aren't just helpful for communication—they're the fundamental mechanism of human understanding. You can't NOT think in analogies. The question is whether you're doing it consciously and well, or unconsciously and poorly.
The quality of your analogies determines how quickly you learn, how deeply you understand, and how effectively you can explain ideas to others.
Remember this: whoever controls the analogy controls the conversation. Master this skill, and you'll never be at the mercy of someone else's framing again.
The Crisis of Bad Analogies
Thinking in analogies is a double-edged sword. I learned this the hard way.
A few years ago, I watched a brilliant engineer struggle to explain a revolutionary idea to executives. He had the data, the logic, the technical proof—but he couldn't get buy-in. Then someone in the room said, “So it's basically like Uber, but for industrial equipment?” Instantly, heads nodded. Funding approved. Project greenlit. One analogy did what an hour of explanation couldn't.
Six months later, that same analogy killed the project. Because “Uber for equipment” came with assumptions—about pricing, about scale,

$37 billion. That's how much gets wasted annually on marketing budgets because of poor attribution and misunderstanding of what actually drives results. Companies' credit campaigns that didn't work. They kill initiatives that were actually succeeding. They double down on coincidences while ignoring what's actually driving outcomes.

Three executives lost their jobs this month for making the same mistake. They presented data showing success after their initiatives were launched. Boards approved promotions. Then someone asked the one question nobody thought to ask: “Could something else explain this?” The sales spike coincided with a competitor going bankrupt. The satisfaction increase happened when a toxic manager quit. The correlation was real. The causation was fiction. This mistake derailed their careers.
But here's the good news: once you see how this works, you'll never unsee it. And you'll become the person in the room who spots these errors before they cost millions.
But first, you need to understand what makes this mistake so common—and why even smart people fall for it every single day.
What is Causal Thinking?
At its core, causal thinking is the practice of identifying genuine cause-and-effect relationships rather than settling for surface-level associations. It's asking not just “do these things happen together?” but “does one actually cause the other?”
This skill means you look beyond patterns and correlations to understand what's actually producing the outcomes you're seeing. When you think causally, you can spot the difference between coincidence, correlation, and true causation—a distinction that separates effective decision-makers from those who waste millions on solutions that were never going to work.
Loss of Causal Thinking Skills
Across every domain of professional life, this confusion costs fortunes and derails careers.
A SaaS company sees customer churn decrease after implementing new onboarding emails—and immediately scales it company-wide. What they missed: they launched the emails the same week their biggest competitor raised prices by 40%. The competitor's pricing reduced churn. But they'll never know, because they never asked the question. Six months later, when they face real churn issues, they keep doubling down on emails that never actually worked.
This happens outside of work too. You start taking a new vitamin, and two weeks later your energy improves. But you started taking it in early March—right when days got longer and you began going outside more. Was it the vitamin or the sunlight and exercise? Most people credit the vitamin without asking the question.
But here's the good news: once you understand how to think causally, these mistakes become obvious. And one of these five strategies can be used in your very next meeting—literally 30 seconds from now. Let me show you how.
How To Master Causal Thinking
Mastering causal thinking isn't about becoming a statistician or learning complex formulas. It's about developing five practical strategies that work together to reveal what's really driving results. These build on each other—starting with basic tests you can apply right now, and progressing to a complete system you can use for any decision.
Strategy 1: The Three Tests of True Causation
Think of these as your checklist for evaluating any causal claim.
The Three Tests:

You see a headline: “Study Shows Coffee Drinkers Live Longer.” You share it in 3 seconds flat. But here's what just happened—you confused correlation with causation, inductive observation with deductive proof, and you just became a vector for misinformation. Right now, millions of people are doing the exact same thing, spreading beliefs they think are facts, making decisions based on patterns that don't exist, all while feeling absolutely certain they're thinking clearly.

We live in a world drowning in information—but starving for truth. Every day, you're presented with hundreds of claims, arguments, and patterns. Some are solid. Most are not. And the difference between knowing which is which and just guessing? That's the difference between making good decisions and stumbling through life confused about why things keep going wrong.
Most of us have never been taught the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. We stumble through life applying deductive certainty to inductive guesses, treating observations as proven facts, and wondering why our conclusions keep failing us. But once we understand which type of reasoning a situation demands, we gain something powerful—the ability to calibrate our confidence appropriately, recognize manipulation, and build every other thinking skill on a foundation that actually works.
By the end of this episode, you'll possess a practical toolkit for improving your logical reasoning—four core strategies, one quick-win technique, and a practice exercise you can start today.
This is Episode 2 of Thinking 101, a new 8-part series on essential thinking skills most of us never learned in school. Links to all episodes are in the description below.
What is Logical Reasoning?
But what does logical reasoning entail? At its core, there are two fundamental ways humans draw conclusions, and you're using both right now without consciously choosing between them.
Deductive reasoning moves from general principles to specific conclusions with absolute certainty. If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. “All mammals have hearts. Dogs are mammals. Therefore, dogs have hearts.” There's no wiggle room—if those first two statements are true, the conclusion is guaranteed. This is the realm of mathematics, formal logic, and established law.
Inductive reasoning works in reverse, building from specific observations toward general principles with varying degrees of probability. You observe patterns and infer likely explanations. “I've seen 1,000 swans and they were all white, therefore all swans are probably white.” This feels certain, but it's actually just highly probable based on limited evidence. History proved this reasoning wrong when black swans were discovered in Australia.
Both are tools. Neither is “better.” The question is which tool fits the job—and whether you're using it correctly.
Loss of Logical Reasoning Skills
Why does this matter? Because across every domain of life, this reasoning confusion is costing us.
In our social media consumption, we're drowning in inductive reasoning disguised as deductive proof. Researchers at MIT found that fake news spreads ten times faster than accurate reporting. Why? Because misleading content exploits this confusion. You see a viral post claiming “New study proves smartphones cause depression in teenagers,” with graphs and official-looking citations. What you're actually seeing is inductive correlation presented as deductive causation...

The Crisis We're Not Talking About
We're living through the greatest thinking crisis in human history—and most people don't even realize it's happening.

Right now, AI generates your answers before you've finished asking the question. Search engines remember everything so you don't have to. Algorithms curate your reality, telling you what to think before you've had the chance to think for yourself. We've built the most sophisticated cognitive tools humanity has ever known, and in doing so, we've systematically dismantled our ability to use our own minds.
A recent MIT study found that students who exclusively used ChatGPT to write essays showed weaker brain connectivity, lower memory retention, and a fading sense of ownership over their work. Even more alarming? When they stopped using AI tools later, the cognitive effects lingered. Their brains had gotten lazy, and the damage wasn't temporary.
This isn't about technology being bad. This is about survival. In a world where machines can think faster than we can, the ability to think clearly—to reason, analyze, question, and decide—has become the most valuable skill you can possess. Those who can think will thrive. Those who can't will be left behind.
The Scope of Cognitive Collapse
Let's be clear about what we're facing. Multiple studies across 2024 and 2025 have found a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities. We're not talking about a slight dip in performance. We're talking about measurable cognitive decline.
A Swiss study showed that more frequent AI use led to cognitive decline as users offloaded critical thinking to machines, with younger participants aged 17-25 showing higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older age groups. Think about that. The generation that should be developing the sharpest minds is instead experiencing the steepest cognitive erosion.
The data gets worse. Researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that the more users trusted AI-generated outputs, the less cognitive effort they applied—confidence in AI correlates with diminished analytical engagement. We're outsourcing our thinking, and in the process, we're forgetting how to think at all.
But AI dependency is only part of the story. Our entire information ecosystem has become hostile to independent thought. Social media algorithms create filter bubbles that curate content aligned with your existing views. Users online tend to prefer information adhering to their worldviews, ignore dissenting information, and form polarized groups around shared narratives—and when polarization is high, misinformation quickly proliferates.
You're not thinking anymore. You're being fed a carefully constructed reality designed to keep you engaged, not informed. The algorithm knows what you'll click on, what will make you angry, and what will keep you scrolling. And every time you accept that curated reality without question, your capacity for independent thought atrophies a little more.
What Happened to Education?
Here's where it gets personal. Schools used to teach you HOW to think. Now they teach you WHAT to think—and there's a massive difference.
Research from Harvard professional schools found that while more than half of faculty surveyed said they explicitly taught critical thinking in their courses, students reported that critical thinking was primarily being taught implicitly. Translation? Professors think they're teaching thinking skills, but students aren't actually learning them. Students were generally unable to recall or defin...

Most innovation leaders are performing someone else's version of innovation thinking.
 
I've spent decades in this field. Worked with Fortune 100 companies. And here's what I see happening everywhere.
Brilliant leaders following external frameworks. Copying methodologies from people they admire. Shifting their approach based on whatever's trendy.
But they never develop their own innovation thinking skills.
Today, I'd like to share a simple practice that has transformed my life. And I'll show you exactly how I do it.
The Problem
Here's what I see in corporate America.
Leaders are reacting to innovation trends instead of thinking for themselves. They chase metrics without questioning if those metrics matter. They abandon promising ideas when obstacles appear because they don't have internal principles to guide them.
I watched a $300 million innovation initiative collapse. Not because the market wasn't ready. Not because the technology was wrong. But because the leader had no personal framework for making innovation decisions under pressure.
This is the hidden cost of borrowed thinking. You can't innovate authentically when you're following someone else's playbook.
After four decades, I've come to realize something that most people miss. We teach innovation methods. But we never teach people how to think as innovators.
There's a massive difference. And that difference is everything.
When you develop your own innovation thinking skills, you stop being reactive. You start operating from internal principles instead of external pressures. You ask better questions. Not just “How can we solve this?” but “Should we solve this?”
That's what authentic innovation thinking looks like.
The Solution
So what's the answer?
Innovation journaling.
Now, before you roll your eyes, this isn't keeping a diary. This is a systematic development of your innovation thinking skills through targeted questions.
My mentor taught me this practice early in my career. It became a 40-year obsession because it works.
The process is simple. Choose a question. Write until the thought feels complete. Close the journal. Start your day.
However, what makes this powerful is… The questions force you to examine your core beliefs about innovation. They help you develop principles that guide decisions when external pressures try to pull you in different directions.
Most people operate from borrowed frameworks. Market demands. Best practices. Organizational expectations. Their approach shifts based on context.
Innovation journaling builds something different. An internal compass. Your own thinking skills provide consistency across various challenges.
Let me show you exactly how I do this.
Sample Prompt/Demonstration
Let me give you a question that consistently surprises people.
Here's the prompt: “What innovation challenges do you consistently avoid, and what does that tell you about your beliefs?”
Most people want to talk about what they pursue. But what you avoid reveals just as much about your innovation thinking.
I've watched executives discover they avoid innovations that require long-term thinking because they're addicted to quick wins. Others realize they dodge anything that might make them look foolish, which kills breakthrough potential.
One leader discovered she avoided innovations that required extensive collaboration. Not because she didn't like people. But because her core belief was that innovation required individual genius. That insight changed how she approached team projects.
The question isn't comfortable. That's the point.
Innovation journaling works because it bypasses your intellectual defenses. It accesses thinking you normally suppress or ignore.
When you write “I consistently avoid innovations that&#...

Michael Dell and his investors spent twenty-five billion dollars to buy back Dell Technologies. But they weren't really buying a company. They were buying freedom from quarterly earnings pressure.
 

I'm Phil McKinney, former CTO of Hewlett-Packard, and I witnessed how this pressure shaped decisions for years. Today, we are exploring why the WSJ's recent defense of quarterly reporting misses what actually happens inside corporate boardrooms.
The Reality of Quarterly Pressure
I want to show you what quarterly reporting actually looks like from the inside.
Let me paint you a picture. It's week seven of the quarter, and you're in a conference room with your executive team. On the screen are two critical numbers – your revenue projection and Wall Street's expectations. They don't align.
During my time as CTO at HP, I found myself in these situations repeatedly. R&D projects worth billions in the future would get paused. Innovation initiatives that could transform the company would get delayed.
Not because they lacked value. But because we had weeks to hit the quarterly numbers.
What struck me was how predictable this became. Quarter-end approaches? Cut the long-term stuff. Meet short-term targets. Rinse and repeat.
When your stock price swings ten percent over missing earnings by three cents per share, you optimize for quarterly performance, even when it destroys long-term competitiveness.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. One CEO escaped this system entirely.
The Dell Example: Twenty-Five Billion Dollar Proof
Here's the proof that this system is broken.
Michael Dell and Silver Lake paid $ 24.9 billion for one thing: freedom from quarterly earnings pressure, killing Dell's long-term potential.
Dell's explicit goal: “No more pulling R&D and growth investments to make in-quarter numbers.”
What happened next was remarkable. R&D spending jumped from just over one billion to over four billion dollars. That's a 400 percent increase. Dell transformed from a declining PC manufacturer to an enterprise solutions leader.
The return on investment by 2023? Seventy billion dollars.
What Dell did wasn't just a corporate restructuring. It was a twenty-five billion dollar bet that quarterly reporting destroys long-term value. And they were proven spectacularly right.
If you've experienced similar pressure at your company, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
Why the WSJ Analysis Falls Apart
So with examples like Dell showing the impact, why does the WSJ still support quarterly reporting?
The WSJ points to the UK's optional move from quarterly to semi-annual reporting and notes that companies didn't dramatically change behavior. Their conclusion: quarterly reporting isn't the real problem.
That reasoning ignores a fundamental truth. We've trained an entire generation to think in ninety-day cycles. Business schools teach earnings management. Compensation rewards quarterly performance. Analysts' careers depend on short-term predictions. Journalists need something to write about, like quarterly results. 
You don't undo decades of this quarterly mindset simply by making reporting optional. The UK comparison is meaningless without addressing the ecosystem that reinforces short-term thinking.
The Big Tech Illusion
The WSJ claims Big Tech's AI investments prove quarterly reportin...

What if I told you that the people who disagree with you are actually your secret weapon for better thinking? 

Just last month, my wife and I had a heated argument about studio changes I wanted to make here on the ranch. Her immediate reaction was about cost. Mine was about productivity and creativity. We were talking past each other completely. But when I applied what I'm about to teach you, we discovered we were both right—and found a solution that addressed both concerns without compromising either. What started as an argument became a session where each of us was heard and understood. 
Sounds crazy, right? By the end of this video, you'll not only believe it—you'll have experienced it yourself.
Think of someone you disagree with about something important. Got them in mind? Good. In 25 minutes, you'll see that person as your thinking partner.
You know that sinking feeling when a simple conversation with someone turns into a heated argument? You walk away thinking, “How did that go so wrong?” The problem isn't the disagreement itself—it's that most people never learned how to use disagreement to think better.
We encounter difficult disagreements almost daily. Your spouse questions your spending. Your boss pushes back on your proposal. Your friend challenges your weekend plans. Each disagreement is an opportunity for your thinking to become sharper. When you approach it right, others often think more clearly too.
Your Brain Gets Smarter Under Pressure
During solo thinking, you operate in your thinking “comfort zone“. Familiar patterns feel safe. Trusted sources get your attention. Comfortable assumptions go unchallenged. It's efficient, but it also limits intellectual growth.
In our Critical Thinking Skills episode—our most popular video—we taught you to question assumptions, check evidence, apply logic, ask good questions. If you haven't watched that episode, pause this and watch that first—it's the foundation for what comes next.
What we didn't tell you in that video is that intelligent opposition makes these skills far more powerful than solo practice ever could.
Let me show you what I mean. Take any belief you hold strongly. Now imagine defending it to someone smart who disagrees with you. Notice what happens in your mind:

You suddenly need better evidence than “I read somewhere…”
Your own assumptions come under sharper scrutiny
Logic becomes more rigorous under pressure
Questions get sharper to understand their position

That mental shift happened because I introduced opposition. Your brain got more demanding of itself. And when you engage thoughtfully, something interesting happens—the other person thinks more carefully too.
Think of it like physical exercise. Muscles strengthen through resistance, not relaxation. Your thinking muscles work the same way. Intellectual resistance—smart disagreement—strengthens your reasoning, your evidence gathering is more thorough, and your conclusions are more robust.
This is where things fall apart for most people.
The Critical Mistake That Kills Thinking
Most people will never learn this because they're too busy being right. They miss the thinking benefits because they fail at disagreement basics. They get defensive. They shut down. Conversations become battles.
Someone challenges their ideas, fight-or-flight kicks in. Instead of seeing an opportunity for better thinking, they see a threat.
Imagine your boss questioning your budget request in a meeting. Your heart rate spikes.

In 2005, I had a ten-minute conversation at San Jose Airport that generated billions in revenue for HP. But here's what's fascinating: three other HP executives heard the exact same conversation and saw nothing special about it.

If you read Monday's Studio Notes, you know this story from the emotional side—what it felt like to have that breakthrough moment, the internal resistance I faced, the personal transformation that followed. Today I'm delivering on my promise to give you the complete tactical methodology behind that insight.
I'm going to show you the systematic framework I call high-resolution thinking—and how you can train yourself to see opportunities that others miss entirely.
By the end of this episode, you'll understand the three-stage system that turns casual conversations into breakthrough innovations, you'll have nine specific methods you can practice, and you'll walk away with a week-long exercise you can start immediately.
Here's what I want you to do right now: think of one conversation you had this week where someone mentioned a frustration, a side project, or something they wished existed. Hold that in your mind—we're going to transform how you process that kind of information.
Credibility and Results
But first, let me establish why this matters. That airport conversation led to HP's acquisition of VooDoo PC, the creation of HP's gaming business unit, and HP's rise to number one gaming PC market share—a position we held for years. The HP Blackbird that resulted earned PC Gamer's highest score ever awarded and a 9.3 from CNET.
More importantly, I've used this same methodology to identify breakthrough opportunities across multiple Fortune 100 companies over the past two decades. The framework is repeatable, teachable, and it works.
The difference between breakthrough innovators and everyone else isn't intelligence or access to information. It's thinking resolution—the cognitive ability to process multiple layers of information simultaneously while others get stuck examining only the surface.
The Problem
But before we dive into the framework, let me show you why this has become absolutely critical.
We're living through what I call a “thinking recession.” Despite having access to more information than ever before, our cognitive resolution is actually decreasing.
Here's a startling statistic: the average executive processes over 34 GB of information daily, but misses 73% of the strategic signals embedded in that data. We're drowning in information while starving for insight.
Watch any leadership meeting and you'll see the symptoms: binary thinking applied to complex situations, focus on symptoms instead of root causes, poor synthesis of multiple data streams, and over-reliance on frameworks that miss critical edge cases.
Pause here and ask yourself: How many potential opportunities did you miss last week simply because you processed them as routine information instead of strategic signals?
Consider Kodak—a company that literally invented the first digital camera, owned the patents, and dominated the market. They processed digital photography in low resolution, seeing it as a threat to film rather than recognizing how convenience, quality improvements, and social sharing behaviors would converge to create an entirely new market.
Meanwhile, Instagram—a company that didn't even exist yet—was destined to process the same signals with enhanced clarity. They understood that digital photography wasn't about replacing film. It was about transforming social connection through visual storytelling.
This pattern repeats constantly, and the stakes keep getting higher.
The HP Story
Let me show you exactly how high-resolution thinking worked in that airport conversation.
I was traveling to San Diego with three other HP executives to visit a defense contractor. Standard business trip.

In October 1903, The New York Times published an editorial mocking the idea of human flight, stating that a successful flying machine might take “from one to ten million years” to develop through the efforts of mathematicians and engineers. 

Eight weeks later, on December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, controlled flight over the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, proving the skeptics wrong.
The smartest people in the world got this catastrophically wrong. What does that tell us about impossibility itself?
Every industry has billion-dollar opportunities hiding behind a single word: impossible. And most executives never see them coming because they've been trained to accept limitations that don't actually exist.
The Innovation Reality Check
If the smartest experts can be so wrong about something as fundamental as human flight, then we need to completely rethink how we evaluate impossibility. The problem isn't that impossible things become possible. The problem is that we're terrible at recognizing what's actually impossible versus what just looks impossible.
What Innovation Actually Means
Innovation is simply an idea made real. Not brilliant concepts sitting in notebooks. Actual stuff you can touch. Use. Buy. Experience.
Leonardo da Vinci invented flying machines in the 15th century. The Wright brothers innovated flight in 1903.
What's the difference? Da Vinci had amazing ideas that stayed ideas. The Wright brothers made the idea real.
This distinction changes everything about impossible innovation. Has someone successfully transformed an “impossible” idea into a tangible reality? Then logically, it was never truly impossible. We just lacked the knowledge, tools, or perspective to make it happen.
Those dismissed breakthroughs floating around your industry right now? They aren't abstract fantasies. They're concrete challenges waiting for someone to develop the right knowledge, tools, and perspective.
The Three Types of Impossibility
Not all impossibilities are created equal. Three distinct categories:
Logical Impossibility: Things that contradict themselves by definition. Married bachelors. Square circles.
But even these sometimes dissolve when we reframe the question. Negative numbers? Logically impossible for centuries. Until merchants needed to describe debt, scientists needed to measure temperatures below freezing. Suddenly, those “impossible” numbers became essential tools.
Physical Impossibility: Things that appear to violate natural laws. Quantum mechanics would've been physically impossible under 19th-century physics. Today, we're building quantum computers using those “impossible” principles.
Practical Impossibility: Ideas that don't violate logic or physics—they're just beyond our current capabilities. Commercial fusion power. Artificial general intelligence. Reversing human aging.
Most breakthrough innovations emerge from this third category. They represent temporary constraints. Not permanent barriers.
Here's what nobody talks about: the companies that get blindsided by “impossible” innovations aren't stupid. They're victims of expertise. The more you know about an industry, the harder it becomes to see past its false limitations.
Everyone says innovation requires thinking outside the box. That's backwards.
The biggest breakthroughs come from questioning the box itself. Not thinking outside your industry's limitations—questioning whether th...

Your best innovation ideas aren't losing to bad ideas – they're losing to exhaustion.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. After 30 years of making billion-dollar innovation decisions at HP and CableLabs, I thought I understood why good ideas failed. Market timing. Technical challenges. Resource constraints.
Sometimes that was the case … but most of the time, I was wrong.
We've created an innovation economy that's too innovative to innovate. And if you're wondering why your breakthrough ideas keep getting ignored, dismissed, or tabled “for later review,” this video will show you the real reason.
I'm going to reveal why even brilliant ideas are dying from attention scarcity, not their merit. And why this crisis will determine which companies dominate the next decade.
Monday, I shared the complete story in my Studio Notes newsletter about how I first discovered this crisis at HP. For a comprehensive analysis and its implications for your company, please visit the link below. 
In this episode, I will share with you a practical framework for recognizing and addressing this problem within your organization.
The Innovation Overload Problem
Let's start with the math that's breaking everyone's brain.
Every C-suite leader I know is evaluating 40+ innovation proposals monthly. That's what they tell me when I ask why good ideas are getting ignored—two per business day, every day, without break.
However, what's happening psychologically is that decision-makers are developing reflexive skepticism toward all innovation claims as a survival mechanism.
It's not cynicism – it's cognitive self-defense against proposal overload.
In conversations with dozens of executives over the past year, nearly three-quarters tell me “innovation fatigue” has become their top decision challenge.
Think about that. The problem isn't a lack of innovation. The problem is too much innovation.
Good ideas are dying not from merit evaluation but from attention competition. We've created an innovation economy where the sheer volume of innovation prevents genuine innovation from emerging.
And here's the irony – I'm using the same overloaded language that's part of the problem. When every idea is described as “revolutionary”, the words lose all meaning.
Last month alone, I was pitched 23 “revolutionary” AI solutions. Most were solid ideas with real potential. But none got the attention they deserved because my brain had already tagged them as “more innovation noise” before I could properly evaluate their merit.
And that's when it hit me: if someone whose job is literally to analyze innovation decisions can't focus properly, what chance do overwhelmed executives have?
The cruel mathematics are simple: breakthrough ideas need deep consideration, but executives only have bandwidth for surface-level evaluation.
Let me show you exactly how this plays out in the real world.
Case Study: HP's Innovation Program Office
I first discovered this crisis when I was running HP's Innovation Program Office – what we called the IPO.
The IPO was HP's dedicated engine for identifying, incubating, and launching breakthrough technologies that would become the company's future growth drivers. We had frameworks, funding, and brilliant people. Harvard and Stanford now teach case studies about the HP IPO and our process design.
But here's what those case studies miss entirely:...

A software engineer grabbed a random word from a dictionary – “beehive” – and within hours designed an algorithm that saved his company millions. While his colleagues were working harder, he was thinking differently.

This breakthrough didn't come from luck. It came from lateral thinking – a systematic approach to finding solutions hiding in plain sight.
I'm Phil McKinney and welcome to my Innovation Studio. In this episode, we will cover the lateral thinking framework. Not theory – a practical, step-by-step system you can use immediately. You'll try your first technique in the next five minutes. By the end of this episode, you'll have four specific techniques that transform how you approach problems, plus practice methods that make mastery inevitable.
And hey, if this kind of framework thinking resonates with you, then hit that subscribe and like button. It helps us with the algorithm. If you want to dive deeper into these topics, then subscribe to my Studio Notes on Substack. Plus, if you know someone who might find this episode useful, feel free to share it with them.
Alright, let's dive in.
Here's what most people miss: breakthrough solutions don't come from thinking faster or working longer. They come from thinking differently. While everyone else improves using existing tools and approaches, lateral thinkers reimagine entire problems.
For example, Southwest Airlines didn't create a better airline experience – they reimagined air travel as mass transportation. Tesla didn't build superior cars – they re-conceptualized personal mobility around sustainable energy. These companies succeeded by approaching familiar challenges through completely different frameworks.
The question isn't whether you're smart enough to solve problems – you are. The question is whether you're willing to disrupt your thinking patterns to discover solutions that conventional logical approaches miss.
But here's where most people get lateral thinking completely wrong, and understanding this distinction will determine whether you develop breakthrough capabilities or just become better at brainstorming…
Lateral Thinking vs Linear Thinking
What is the distinction between Linear and Lateral thinking? When faced with a problem, most people use linear thinking – they analyze what's wrong and optimize within existing frameworks. It's logical, sequential, and focuses on improving current approaches.
Lateral thinking does something completely different. Instead of improving what exists, it changes how you perceive the problem itself.
Let me illustrate the difference with a single example. When customers complained about long wait times, linear thinking said, “Make the elevators faster.” Lateral thinking asked, “What if waiting wasn't the real problem?” The solution? Install mirrors next to elevators. People stopped complaining because they were distracted, not because waits got shorter.
Linear thinking improved the elevator. Lateral thinking eliminated the problem by changing what the problem actually was.
This is Dr. Edward de Bono‘s systematic method for shifting perceptions entirely. As he explained: “To find breakthrough solutions, change where you're looking, not just how hard you're looking.”
The challenge isn't that people lack creativity – it's that they don't have systematic methods for breaking free from mental patterns that limit them. Lateral thinking offers specific techniques for generating wha...

The most popular piece of innovation advice in Silicon Valley is wrong—and it's killing great ideas before they have a chance to succeed.

I can prove it with a story about a glass of water that sat perfectly still while a car bounced beneath it.
My name is Phil McKinney. I spent decades as HP's CTO making billion-dollar innovation decisions, and I learned the hard way that following “fail fast” advice cost us billions and robbed the world of breakthrough technologies.
Today, I'm going to share five specific signs that indicate when an idea deserves patience instead of being killed prematurely. Miss these signs, and you'll become another “fail fast” casualty.
The Water Glass That Changed Everything
So there I was around 2006, sitting in Dr. Bose's lab at Bose Corporation, and he was showing me what honestly looked like just a regular car seat mounted on some automotive hardware. I'm thinking, “Okay, what's the big deal here?”
But then he activates the system and has his assistant start driving over these increasingly aggressive road obstacles. And here's what blew my mind—the car chassis is bouncing around like crazy, but the seat? Perfectly still.
Then Dr. Bose does something that I'll never forget. He places a full glass of water on the seat and tells his assistant to hit a speed bump at thirty miles per hour. The chassis lurches violently, but not a single drop of water spills.
And here's what should terrify every “fail fast” advocate—this technology took fifty years to develop. Dr. Bose began developing the mathematical model in the 1960s. Under today's quarterly Wall Street pressure, this project would have been killed a hundred times over.
When I asked Dr. Bose how he could invest in an idea for fifty years, he explained that keeping Bose private meant they weren't subject to the quarterly results pressure that often destroys patient innovation at public companies.
At HP, we were trapped in that system—and it cost HP billions.
How “Fail Fast” Destroyed Billions at HP
As a public company, we lived and died by quarterly earnings calls. Every ninety days, we had to show growth, and that quarterly drumbeat made us masters at killing promising ideas the moment they didn't produce immediate results.
Let me give you three examples that still keep me up at night:
WebOS: We acquired Palm for one-point-two billion dollars in 2010. Revolutionary interface, years ahead of its time. Killed it when it didn't achieve immediate dominance. Every time you swipe between apps today, you're using thinking we threw away.
Digital cameras: We literally invented the future of photography. Abandoned it the moment smartphones started incorporating cameras.
HP Halo: Immersive telepresence rooms with extraordinary meeting experiences. Sold to Polycom for eighty-nine million in twenty-eleven when quarterly pressures demanded focus. We bought Poly back for three-point-three billion in twenty-twenty-two. We paid thirty-seven times more to reacquire capabilities we built.
We weren't bad managers. We were trapped by the quarterly earnings system that makes “fail fast” the only option for public companies. And it was systematically destroying our breakthrough potential.
Visit Studio Notes over on Substack where I discuss how these quarterly pressures shaped our boardroom decisions and what we were really thinking.
Now,

Innovation partnerships can create breakthrough markets—or hand them to competitors through terrible decisions. I know because I lived through both outcomes.

Bill Geiser from Fossil and I had it exactly right. We built the MetaWatch—a smartwatch with week-long battery life, Bluetooth connectivity, and every feature that would later make the Apple Watch successful. We had HP's massive retail reach, Fossil's manufacturing scale, and the technical vision to create an entirely new market.
But our organizations couldn't execute on what we knew was right. Leadership chaos at HP and innovation paralysis at Fossil killed a partnership that should have dominated the smartwatch market—handing Apple a $50 billion opportunity. I've shared the complete behind-the-scenes story of the people, strategies, and decisions that killed our partnership in my Studio Notes post “How HP and Fossil Handed Apple the Smartwatch Market.”
Today I'm applying the DECIDE framework to our partnership failure. If you haven't seen my DECIDE framework yet, grab the free PDF—it's the innovation decision tool I've developed over 30 years of making high-stakes choices. Because here's what this partnership taught me: having the right vision means nothing without the right decision framework.
What Makes Innovation Partnerships Different?
Let me start by explaining why the HP-Fossil partnership should have worked. This wasn't just another business deal—it was the perfect storm of complementary capabilities.
Bill Geiser, Fossil's VP of Watch Technology, had been working on smartwatches since 2004. The man was practically clairvoyant. In 2011, he told me, “Phil, I wouldn't be shocked if Apple evolved the Nano to take advantage of this space. They'll legitimize it in consumers' minds worldwide.”
Bill understood something most people missed: Apple didn't need to be first to market—they needed to be first to create a platform.
Meanwhile, I was developing HP's connected device strategy. We had the technology foundation, unmatched retail distribution—about 10% of consumer electronics shelf space—and the same retail muscle that helped launch the original iPod.
Together, Bill and I had solved the hard problems. We had the vision, the technology, and the market insight. But we couldn't overcome the organizational machinery that prioritizes short-term comfort over long-term position.
Innovation partnerships aren't just about having the right technology or market vision. They're about having the right decision framework when uncertainty meets organizational reality.
The Three Partnership Decision Traps
Before I show you how DECIDE could have saved our partnership, let me show you the three traps that derail even the smartest collaboration. Bill and I understood what needed to happen, but our organizations fell into every one of these traps.
Trap #1: Innovation Type Mismatch
This is when you apply the wrong decision framework because you've misidentified what type of innovation you're actually pursuing. It's the most common partnership killer because different innovation types require completely different approaches to risk, timing, and success metrics.
In our case, Bill and I understood that smartwatches represented a platform opportunity—a new ecosystem that would change how people interact with technology. But our organizations treated it as a product extension that wouldn't threaten their existing businesses.
HP's leadership viewed MetaWatch as another device in their portfolio, rather than as the foundation of a connected ecosystem s...

You know that moment when you walk into a meeting and immediately sense the mood in the room? Or when a proposal looks perfect on paper, but something feels off? That's your intuition working—and it's more sophisticated than most people realize.

Every leader has experienced this: sensing which team member to approach with a sensitive request before you've consciously analyzed the personalities involved. Knowing a client is about to object even when they haven't voiced concerns. Feeling that a project timeline is unrealistic before you've done the detailed math.
That instinctive awareness isn't luck or mystical insight—it's your brain rapidly processing patterns, experience, and environmental cues. The leaders known for “amazing judgment” haven't been blessed with superior gut feelings. They've learned to systematically enhance this natural capability through practical thinking.
By the end of this post, you'll understand the science behind intuitive judgment, why some people seem to have consistently better instincts, and how to use Practical Thinking Skills to make your own intuition more reliable and actionable.
What Your Intuition Really Is
Intuition is your brain's rapid processing of experiences, patterns, and environmental cues that occur below the level of conscious awareness. When you sense the mood in a room, your mind is instantly analyzing dozens of subtle signals: body language, tone of voice, seating arrangements, who's speaking and who's staying quiet.
This isn't mystical—it's sophisticated pattern recognition. Your brain has stored thousands of similar situations and can quickly compare current circumstances to past experiences, delivering a “gut feeling” about what's likely to happen or what approach will work.
Everyone has this capability. You use it constantly:

Walking into a meeting and immediately sensing the mood in the room
Knowing which team member to approach with a sensitive request
Feeling that a project timeline is unrealistic before you've done the math
Recognizing when a client is about to say no, even if they haven't said it yet
Sensing that a proposed solution won't work in your company culture

The difference between people with “great intuition” and everyone else isn't the quality of their initial gut feelings—it's how systematically they validate, investigate, and act on those insights.
Why Some Leaders Seem to Have “Amazing Intuition”
Leaders who are known for excellent judgment have developed what I call practical thinking—the systematic approach to using their knowledge and experience to enhance their intuitive insights.
Here's what they do differently:
They treat gut feelings as valuable data, not emotions to dismiss or blind impulses to follow. When something feels off, they investigate systematically rather than ignoring the signal or acting without validation.
They've learned to distinguish between intuition based on genuine patterns and reactions driven by personal bias, stress, or recent events. They can separate “this timeline feels aggressive because similar projects have failed” from “this timeline feels aggressive because I'm overwhelmed today.”
They apply structured approaches to validate their intuitive insights before making important decisions. They don't just trust their gut—they use their gut as the starting point for systematic investigation.
They understand stakeholder psychology at a deeper level,