In progress. Expected 2027.
The Decision Product
Turning Analysis into Decisions the Organization Can Run
The book is being written in the open. Subscribers get chapters as they are drafted and are told first when it is available.
The Decision Product
Turning Analysis into Decisions the Organization Can Run
The argument, as a pyramid
What the book claims, and what holds it up
A book about structured argument should be willing to show its own structure before you buy it. This is the whole thesis, with its supports.
Governing thought
Every decision you are asked to analyze already has a rule running. The product of the analysis is a challenger that beats that rule, gets installed where it ran, and carries a built-in way to tell whether it was wrong.
01
The incumbent starts ahead, so a challenger that is merely better on average will usually lose.
The rule already running is trusted, its costs are familiar, it is the default on someone’s screen, and nobody has to sign anything to keep it. Its working parts are often undocumented: a pad, a spreadsheet, a promise between two supervisors. A challenger measured against the documented rule is credited with gains the pad already captures and blamed for none of the failures it prevents.
02
Five questions define the work, and their answers fit on one page.
What rule runs today; who can change it, and by when; what could replace it; what would make the challenger lose; and how it will run, with the condition that would stop it. The first three produce the choice, the fourth the evidence, and the fifth the rule. A page that answers all five can be refused line by line, which is the point of it.
03
The work is finished when the challenger runs, not when the analysis is correct.
A challenger that has not been installed has replaced nothing, and one installed without a way to tell whether it is failing can only be defended or abandoned on opinion. The way to stop it belongs to the product as much as the way to start it.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it is not
Written for
- Operations researchers and decision scientists whose work is supposed to change what the company does
- Supply chain and logistics analysts who own a rule somebody runs on an ordinary Tuesday
- Data scientists and machine learning practitioners tired of watching correct work die in a meeting
- Technical leads who have to coach that work, and product managers close enough to the math to see when it is decorative
Not written for
- Anyone learning SQL, Python, or statistics. There is almost no notation in it
- Readers wanting the mathematics of sequential decisions under uncertainty, or formulation tricks for mixed-integer programs. Those are different books, including ones the author has already written
- Readers looking for a visualization manual, slide design, or a textbook of decision theory
- Readers who want reassurance that being right should be sufficient. The book argues it is one term in a product, and does not soften that
Outline
Table of contents
Four parts, fifteen chapters, in the order the work happens: find the real decision, earn the recommendation, get a commitment, make it survive. Every chapter links to its free method entry. The entry carries the mechanics; the chapter carries the cases, the objections, and the organizational politics a reference page cannot hold.
Part I
Find the Real Decision
Every request for analysis lands on a decision that some rule is already making. Before any analysis is worth starting, find that rule and the reasons it keeps winning, name who can change it and by when, and build a menu of challengers that could contain a good answer.
- 01
The Analysis Is Not the Product
Every decision already has a rule running, and analysis competes with it. What the default week produces, why labor gets mistaken for rigor, and the five questions whose answers fit on one page.
- 02
Every Decision Already Has a Rule
Where the incumbent hides: the pad, the unofficial spreadsheet, the promise between two supervisors, the default nobody touches. The incumbent is information, the status quo is a pick, and it gets named before anything is analyzed.
- 03
Why the Incumbent Wins
Defaults do most of the deciding, losses weigh more than gains, the status quo needs no defender, and incentives pay for the pad. What that head start means for the design of any challenger.
- 04
What Decision Are We Actually Making?
A complete choice is a sentence: an owner rather than a requester, a freeze date rather than a meeting, alternatives of the same kind, and the uncertainty that will remain. Problem, decision, and outcome kept apart, and observations kept apart from diagnoses.
- 05
Refuse the First Brief
Four questions to ask before you spend serious time, a translation sent back in place of a refusal, when not to analyze at all, and how to decline without becoming the problem.
- 06
Invent the Challengers
The email is a first draft of the menu. How to make a better list, the challenger nobody priced, why most candidates are killed on purpose, and why the missing alternative is usually a combination.
Part II
Earn the Recommendation
Work backward from the candidate choice to the cheapest evidence that could overturn it. Price consequences before metrics, make complexity justify itself, and name the conditions under which the challenger would lose.
- 07
Work Backward, Then Cut the Question
Write the candidate ranking first, then the claims that could kill it, then the cheapest test of each. Data last. How a cut fails, how to repair it with a true partition, and why pruning matters more than completeness.
- 08
Economics Before Metrics
Price the error. Metrics that pretend to be constraints, ranking when the units will not reduce, and why a locally optimal answer is so often globally stupid: local scoreboards, delayed feedback, and where to push.
- 09
Complexity Must Pay Rent
The ladder from a count to an optimization model. Climb only when a lower rung cannot settle a load-bearing claim, treat heuristics as first-class, and recognize when the mathematics is the cheap option.
- 10
What Would Make the Challenger Lose?
Decision-relevant uncertainty, ranges and flip points, value of information as a delay tax, and the difference between a stopping rule, a deployment trigger, and a choice honestly left open.
Part III
Get a Commitment
Write the decision so its owner can accept or refuse it on the first line, find the interests behind the positions in the room, and give a disagreement to the person who owns the tradeoff rather than to another notebook.
- 11
Writing the Decision
The same analysis written twice. Diagnosis, approach, and coherent action; the sentence at the top; the pyramid; independent reasons versus jointly necessary premises; and what to cut.
- 12
Interests, Not Positions
Positions defend the rule that protects their holders. Ask what the number protects, treat no agreement as an alternative on the menu, and change the fallback rather than the argument.
- 13
Disagreement Is Not a Request for Another Notebook
Name the fight, agree the criteria before arguing the answer, give the disagreement to the person who owns the tradeoff, and let people change their minds cheaply.
Part IV
Make It Survive
Design the rule so that a process can run it, install it against the incumbent it replaces, and keep it honest after its author has moved on.
- 14
Design the Rule
Five parts, of which most analysis specifies two. The information that exists when the action fires, the transition that brings the problem back, the default as part of the rule, an exception that costs a sentence, and a closed loop.
- 15
Install Against the Incumbent
What has to be specified before launch, why legibility is a feature, why replacing an incumbent is the change, what to do when you are not allowed to install, and what keeps a rule alive after its owner leaves.
Back matter
After the argument
- —
The Job
The five questions once more, and the gap behind each kind of failure.
- —
Appendix A: The Working Sequence
The five questions broken into steps, collected so you can find them when the email arrives.
- —
Appendix B: The Write-up
The eight sections, recommendation first. If a section is empty, you are not ready to present.
- —
Appendix C: Meridian Motors Parts
A completed example, worked end to end, with the operating specification Parts Planning would run.
- —
Further Reading
Annotated. The working habits and findings the book uses, named so you can go further.
This is a working manuscript and it is not for circulation, quotation, or sale. Chapters are being reordered as the material is tested against real engagements, and the through-line case is a composite built from patterns across automotive, logistics, retail, and consulting work rather than an account of any single employer or client.
Source: Working manuscript, October 2026.
Before the book
Everything structural in the book is already free on this site
The twenty method entries, the seven worksheets, and the diagnostic cost nothing and are not abridged. The book adds the cases, the objections answered at length, and the running Meridian Motors example worked end to end.