Article Library

Decision Making

Industry Articles

The Technology Decision Nobody Can Explain

Ask three executives who made the call on the last major technology investment, and the answers may not match. This article names the structural cause: an official decision process on the org chart running alongside a real, unofficial one that carries the actual authority, unmapped and unreconciled. It closes with what fixes it, mapping what actually happened and making four things explicit before redesigning anything.
Scott Smeester
August 25, 2026
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Why Layered Approval Fails Technology Leaders... And The Levers That Reverse It

Technology decisions often stall inside an approval chain nobody designed on purpose, even when ownership of the decision is completely clear. This article separates decision rights from approval architecture and names the specific levers, from collapsing redundant sign-offs to running independent reviews in parallel, that rebuild an approval chain for speed without lowering the organization's risk standard.
Scott Smeester
July 28, 2026
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Why CIOs Avoid Explicit Tradeoffs... And Why It Hurts Them

CIOs routinely omit the one piece of information executives need most: what is being given up to fund the ask. The executive room reads that omission as incomplete prioritization, and adjusts trust accordingly. The CIOs who declare the sacrifice ... and stand behind the call ... earn a kind of credibility that thorough analysis alone cannot produce.
Scott Smeester
March 2, 2026
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Leadership Blogs

Dear board: You don’t know what you don’t know.

Decisions are never meant to be made in a void, and information alone isn’t education. Wisdom is the pool in which information and context swim together. Very few board members have technology experience. Less than 10% have technology subcommittees from which to draw. What is a board to do?

Scott Smeester

October 26, 2020

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To Remote Or Not To Remote

The benefits of remote work are without question, but that still doesn’t mean it is best for your company. How do you know if remote work is for you? A number of questions here will help you work through to the answer.

Scott Smeester

July 21, 2020

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