It is instructive to see how organizations pursue their goal of reducing errors and uncertainty. They impose standards, employ checklists, demand that knowledge workers list assumptions for their conclusions and document all sources. These actions either directly interfere with forming insights or create an environment where insights and discoveries are treated with suspicion because they might lead to errors. They signal to knowledge workers that their job is not to make mistakes. Even if they don't make discoveries, no one can blame them as long as they don't make mistakes.

First, the skill of storytelling helps to galvanize your team. Second, the discipline of storytelling requires leaders to be clear about their intentions and to prioritize what fits into the story versus secondary goals and issues. Third, there is possibly an artifact here - great storytellers can make their exploits and achievements sound very exciting and memorable. Successful leaders who are not good storytellers won't get the acknowledgement and appreciation they deserve.

Slow adaptation is driven by forces such as evolution. Fast adaptation is driven by forces such as insight.

People sometimes are so confident in their flawed beliefs that they get stuck - fixated - and as a result are blinded to insights that are right in front of them.

You need to take your gut feeling as an important data point, but then you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it, to see if it makes sense in this context.

Many change initiatives are poorly thought out, and rolled out prematurely. Others are genuinely good ideas but the proponents underestimate the amount of time needed to make the change. And, I agree, true change usually requires people giving something up and so resistance is pretty well guaranteed for any meaningful change.

Most corporate decisions aren't going to meet the test of high validity. But they're going to be way above the low-validity situations that we worry about.