Cartesian Decision MakingDraft
Written for: CEOCOO
Decision intelligence that learns not just what we decided, but what happened next. Every large organisation keeps meticulous records of what it did, and almost none keeps a usable record of why.
Resources
Everything we publish, in one place
Fifteen executive white papers and twenty-five product data sheets, as PDFs, grouped by product. Nothing here requires a form or an email address.
Review state. 5 entries are listed without a file and render without a link.
Executive white papers
Longer arguments for readers who want the reasoning rather than the summary. Each one is worth reading whether or not you ever buy anything, and each ends with the strongest case against its own position. No form, no email address.
Enterprise Decision Intelligence
The Cost of Organisational IndecisionDraft
Written for: CEOCFO
Why decisions stop, what the stopping costs, and how decision governance moves faster without governing less. Organisations measure what they do; they do not measure what they fail to do.
Trust and VerifyDraft
Written for: CEOCOO
Leadership without losing control: governance that gives leaders visibility instead of a signature. Almost every senior leader says they want to delegate more; very few do.
Delegation Without Losing GovernanceDraft
Written for: CEOCOO
The boundary and the room: separating a rule about risk from a judgement about trust. Delegation fails for structural reasons rather than personal ones, which is why exhortation does not fix it.
Building a Decision-Making CultureDraft
Written for: CEOCHRO
Judge the decision, not the result. People decide well when they believe they will be judged on their reasoning — and telling them so is worthless unless you can reconstruct what they knew at the time.
Decision Impact AnalysisDraft
Written for: CFOCDO
What a decision intelligence dataset can honestly tell you, and what it will be sold as. Rigorous about correlation and causation, and candid that the near-term value is descriptive rather than causal.
The Decision-Aware EnterpriseDraft
Written for: CEOCOOCIO
Decisions in flight: the only choices an executive can still influence. Every screen you own is a rear-view mirror, and the decisions still open are the ones nobody is watching.
Decision Making AnywhereDraft
Written for: COOCIO
The channel a decision travels on is part of the governance decision, not an afterthought — for the people who are never at a desk when the decision needs taking.
When Micromanagement Is the Right ManagementDraft
Written for: CEOCOOCHRO
Oversight is a dial, not a character flaw. Proportionate governance and dynamic trust — including the test of whether you could explain a restriction to the person it affects, and when it ends.
The Customer JourneyDraft
Written for: CIOTransformation
Connect, Observe, Govern, Learn, Compound — adopting decision governance one decision class at a time. No large organisation should switch it on across its estate in one move.
Enterprise Ontology Management
Enterprise Ontology for Federated OrganisationsDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCIO
One essence, many entities: governments, groups and alliances that must act as one. Why a federation cannot see itself in its own architecture repositories, and what to do instead.
Enterprise Ontology for Inter-Entity AutomationDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCIO
Why automation across an organisational boundary fails without a shared model, and how to build one that holds. Automation between entities breaks at the seams.
Enterprise Ontology Maturity and BaseliningDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCDO
How much do you actually know? Measuring completeness and maturity against the entities you choose to be judged by — and the two numbers a federation should never be given as one.
Enterprise Architecture Roadmap HarmonisationDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectPortfolio
Roadmaps that agree: aligning entity roadmaps across a federation without merging them. Every entity has a roadmap, and none of them agree — harmonisation is not consolidation.
Enterprise Architecture Decision IntelligenceDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCIO
Decisions with a memory: impact before you decide, lessons after. Architecture decisions are taken, forgotten and then repeated.
Books
The four-book Enterprise Decision Governance series, by Dr Dan Oliver. None is published yet. When each is released it will be listed here; until then the books page has the full description of the series and a way to hear when the first one is out.
The Framework
Written for: CEOCOOCIO
What enterprise decision governance is, and why recording what an organisation decided — and under which rule — turns out to be a different problem from recording what it did.
Not yet published
The Use Cases
Written for: COOCFO
Enterprise decision governance in practice, worked through the decision classes where the cost of getting it wrong is easiest to see.
Not yet published
The Architecture
Written for: CTOChief Architect
Building enterprise decision governance: the capture routes, the register, the policy engine, and the design decisions each one forces.
Not yet published
The Culture
Written for: CEOCHRO
Building a decision culture — why judging decisions by outcome alone teaches people to avoid visible risk rather than to decide well.
Not yet published
Product data sheets
Two or three pages each, describing one capability: what it does, how it works, the problem it removes and what gets measured. Start with a suite sheet if you want the whole product in one go.
Enterprise Decision Intelligence
Suite overviewDraft
Written for: CEOCIO
Govern every decision, whoever — or whatever — made it. The whole platform in two pages, for people, AI agents and applications.
CaptureDraft
Written for: CIOCOO
The decisions you never knew were made. You cannot govern a decision you never saw, so capture arrives where the decision is actually taken.
Record and evidenceDraft
Written for: AuditRisk
One record of how the business actually decides. Record the judgement, not just the transaction it produced.
Decision support and contextDraft
Written for: COOClass owners
The questions that surface what a decision really costs: context, precedent and the four Cartesian questions, in front of the person deciding.
Delegation, policy and agent authorityDraft
Written for: CEOChief AI Officer
Set the guardrail once, then widen the dial as it is earned. A rule about risk and a judgement about a team are not the same setting.
Routing, intervention and escalationDraft
Written for: COORisk
Stop the wrong decision without stopping the business. Escalation is a routing decision, not a full stop.
Reach: presence, delegation and notificationDraft
Written for: COOCHRO
The gate exists on paper — is anybody behind it? Routing decides who should decide; reach decides whether they are there.
Outcomes, learning and stallsDraft
Written for: CEOCFO
Find out whether your decisions were any good. A bad outcome and a bad decision are not the same thing.
Platform and serviceDraft
Written for: CIOCISO
Measure first, enforce second, automate last. An enterprise will not run a decision system it cannot administer or isolate itself.
Alpha Engine
Suite overviewDraft
Written for: PartnerCIO
Where sector expertise compounds. The deal-to-value lifecycle for private equity, from first signal to exit.
FindDraft
Written for: AnalystOrigination
Find what matters, question everything. Sourcing, screening and cited data-room research — the assembly disappears, the judgement stays.
PredictDraft
Written for: PartnerOperating partner
What actually creates value, rather than what merely correlates with it. Model the investments under consideration, singly or combined.
ValidateDraft
Written for: Deal teamDiligence
Buy only the answers you do not already have. Work out what the firm genuinely does not know, and rank it by whether it would change the decision.
DecideDraft
Written for: Investment committee
Judge the decision, not just the outcome. The alternatives, the evidence and the forecast frozen at the moment of the call.
OwnDraft
Written for: Operating partner
The thesis has to survive the deal. Five per cent of a fund's life happens before completion; this is the other ninety-five.
LearnDraft
Written for: PartnerCIO
Every investigation makes the next one smarter. Predictions scored against what happened, with attribution that separates the lever from the market.
ProtectDraft
Written for: CISOCompliance
Your data, your jurisdiction, your control. Three hosting models, so residency is a decision you make rather than a limitation you inherit.
Solution packs and maturityDraft
Written for: Operating partner
The playbook, written down. What your best operating partner knows about fixing a business, as a pack reviewed before it goes live.
Human-in-the-loop review and predictive learningDraft
Written for: PartnerAnalyst
The system proposes; a named person decides. Everything significant the system generates carries a confidence and a route to a human.
Enterprise Ontology Management
Suite overviewDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCIO
One essence, many entities. A continuously maintained architectural intelligence system for a group of organisations that must act as one.
Knowledge and evidenceDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectCDO
Where every fact comes from, and how sure we are. Nothing enters the model without a source, and nothing becomes a fact without a person.
Understanding the enterpriseDraft
Written for: Chief Architect
How much we know about each entity, and how it stays true. Discover the entities, gather what is known, and keep it current as they change.
AnalysisDraft
Written for: CIOPortfolio
Where entities overlap, what a change will break, and how mature each one is — the questions an executive cannot answer today.
Decisions and recommendationsDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectGovernance
Recommendations with their reasons, decisions with their evidence and outcome. The product proposes patterns; people decide.
Roadmap and governanceDraft
Written for: Chief ArchitectPortfolio
Roadmaps that converge, partners that are known, and a named person behind every approval.
Videos
Short films on how organisations decide, and on what the products do about it. In production — nothing is published yet. The videos page will list them when there is something real to watch.
Coming soon
No films have been published. Rather than list titles that do not exist yet, this section stays empty until they do.
Not yet published
Want the long form?
The four-book Enterprise Decision Governance series sets out the framework these papers draw on.