The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Martin: Public Company Boards Disciplining Management Is an Absolute Fantasy
“The idea that, that a board will discipline management is, is just an absolute fantasy. And that's a core kind of element of the logical structure that guides the workings of the capital markets, the equity markets, and the widely held publicly traded companie…”
Roger Martin: Rating agency analysts are inherently worse at assessing bonds than market traders
“The only reason they would be in that chair is that they're not particularly good at rating bonds, right? Because if they had a skillset that made them good at rating bonds, what chair would they be sitting in? ... They'd be either sitting in a chair at Goldma…”
Roger Martin: Creative domains require creating causes, not analyzing past data
“Analyze data, collect as much data, analyze it rigorously to determine causes of effects in this other part of the world. Imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made. And he said, the job of human beings in that …”
Roger Martin: Motivations like pay and prestige undermine corporate board effectiveness
“I think the only useful reason for wanting to be on a board is is that you think a well-functioning board is integral to the success of democratic capitalism. Now, how many people think that that's the reason for being on a board? Not, not many. Like, and most…”
Roger Martin: Massive Founder Delusion Is Essential for Economic Innovation
“The economy is underpinned by delusion in, in, in that we do know that nine out of 10 kind of startups expire with a hundred percent of the resources kind of wasted.
If anybody
Thought those were the odds that they personally were facing.
They wouldn't do i…”
Martin: MBA Programs Indoctrinate Students to Be Narrow 'Tool Matchers'
“They come in indoctrinated into the notion that my job as a business person is to figure out into what category this problem that I'm facing falls and then apply that tool. Ah, this is a finance problem, so I will apply the capital asset pricing model, or this…”
Roger Martin: Harvard Business School cases artificially illustrate single narrow tools
“When you do a case study the case has been written to illustrate a tool. Right? The answer comes from applying a given tool, like, and you, and we're made to think, oh, these are just general business situations. No, they're not. The writing of Harvard Busines…”
Martin: CEOs must build operational slack or efficiency will kill organizations
“Part of the CEO's job is to create enough of that discretion. So that they can do those things, right? That that they know are going to be in the interest longterm, like in your case, building up some slack, you know, for the bad times because if they don't bu…”
Roger Martin: Retail stockbrokers are inherently bad at picking stocks
“There's only one thing you can know absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt about a stockbroker. The only thing that's for sure, you don't know if they're male or female, young or old, but what you know is that they're crummy at picking stocks.”
Martin: Young children learn integrative thinking easily without entrenched binary biases
“The bottom line is, is that they don't need to be untaught anything, right? So that's their gigantic advantage. They're easily smart enough, and they don't have a view already built up that life is full of either or choices, where it's the devil or the deep bl…”
Martin: Integrative thinking requires pushing opposing models to extremes before synthesizing
“Rather than saying, let's think about something in between right away, you say, let's push those to the extreme, the completely exclusive film festival, the completely inclusive film festival, right? And then you lay out how they work. How do that do each of t…”
Roger Martin: The most powerful strategy question is 'what would have to be true?'
“The most powerful question in strategy is what would have to be true? Not what is true. What would have to be true for that to be a great idea?”
Martin: Use integrative thinking only when all available options are unappealing
“If the choice is, is between kind of lying on the beach or getting kicked in the groin, You don't need to use integrative thinking. I'll take lying on a beach, right? But it's when you feel like, oh, I hate the fact that I have to, that I apparently have to ch…”
Roger Martin: Great companies must irrevocably commit assets to strategic decisions
“Because you have to commit
Assets irrevocably to decisions to be great as a company.
You can't just say, well, we'll do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and we'll shift and change.”
Roger Martin: Leaders who do not genuinely love people cannot be great
“I just don't know any, what I think of as great, great leaders who don't love other people.
I mean, if you think people are annoying and you have to put up with them and put up with their foibles rather than you genuinely love them, then I think you can only b…”
Roger Martin: The Primary Failure Mode Is Keeping All Options Open
“The failure mode I see probably more than anything else is Somebody who is what I think of as not strategic, right? Which is that they believe that they need to always keep all their options open, not make big choices and sort of see what evolves and then just…”
Martin: Strategy is choosing where to invest to offer superior customer value
“Well, I think about strategy as a set of choices that enables you to invest in a given place. To win, whether that's geography or business or whatever. So it, it's that set of set of choices. And what do I mean by winning? I mean, in the field of play that you…”
Martin: Expecting unique success while copying competitors is a managerial conceit
“Another is, is kind of bad strategy is just trying to do the same as everybody else and assume that you're going to win anyway. You know, that's the great managerial conceit. We don't have to do anything unique or different and we will have unique success.”
Roger Martin: Big Companies Stifle Innovation by Requiring Prior Analytical Proof
“No new idea in the history of the world has been proven in advance analytically.
Why?
It's linked to what Aristotle said, right?
You can't prove something new and different that hasn't happened yet, analytically.
And most innovation processes in the world …”
Martin: Resisting Premature Closure Is the Hardest Decision-Making Skill
“Giving yourself the time to roll ideas around as long as they need to be rolled around and not feel the premature need for closure.”
Martin: Leaders Delay Choices Because Neither Option Is Good Enough
“And the reason you haven't paid a choice now is because neither of them are that good. If one of them was awesome, you'd have already made the choice.”
Martin: Formulating a provisional choice is the equivalent of launching a prototype
“In some sense, when you force yourself to say, this is what I would do if I had to choose now. That's the moral equivalent of putting a prototype. Into the market. I hadn't thought of it that way. Cause then you can, and you can say, oh, this happened. That, t…”