Standard work

• Constrain decision-making and iteration flow by the results of risk assessment
• Use tight controls for activities that could damage the environment
• Prefer actions that preserve options and develop alternatives
• Don’t risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need
• Prioritize decisive actions that support the main effort
• Use standardized drills and processes as points of departure for adaptation
• Minimize meta-work such as task switching, overheads, and administration
• Don’t change or eliminate elements before understanding their function
• Minimize irrevocable commitments in cooperative environments
• Irrevocable commitments may be needed in highly competitive environments
• Use speed, maneuver, deception, and surprise to gain advantage in competitive environments
• Iterate between complicated and mess contexts, consigning things to routine context as stability emerges and the risk of getting it wrong is low
• Focus on systems in routine and complicated contexts, human capital in mess context

Bias towards simplicity

• Get the team right; good teams simplify execution
• Keep requirements simple
• Stabilize core principles, but allow variation in tactics
• Actions can be simple and broad, but should not be vague
• Actions must be logistically supportable
• Beware of confident planners with elaborate plans
• Simplify actions to reduce communication requirements
• Simplify actions to allow for adaptation to the unforeseen
• Simplify actions to reduce the need for command and control
• Simplicity is the result of long, hard work
• Cultivate simpler approaches by building and maintaining many options
• Simplify when you don’t need high efficiency or maximization

Warning signs

• Significant changes in size, speed, or concentration
• High power combined with low accountability
• Benefits and liabilities are disconnected
• Using heavyweight, slow decision-making processes for reversible decisions
• Assuming low volatility means low risk

Proactive work

• Perform periodic situation assessment and address context changes
• Adjust design decisions as feedback is received
• Make decisions that address outlier events by positioning to survive or benefit from them
• Evaluate decision sequence; first or last moves can be critical
• Focus on what it takes to succeed rather than success itself
• Cultivate the best people and manage poor performers out