15 skills.
Use when asked to role-play the person or organization that opposes the user, their plan, or their success — a competitor, rival, or someone who benefits from their failure — and lay out exactly where and how they would compete, undermine, or thwart it, including moves the user would not see coming. Distinct from a [[premortem]] (imagines the plan has failed and explains why, with no opposing agent), from [[competitor-analysis]] (describes competitors as they are, not how a motivated one would attack), and from the full [[foresight]] sequence, where it is the fourth stage.
Use when asked to carry out a structured, end-to-end analysis of a significant decision under uncertainty — frame the decision, define objectives and alternatives, model uncertainties and values, evaluate, run sensitivity analysis, and decide whether more information is worth buying — as distinct from a single technique such as a [[decision-tree]], [[expected-value-analysis]], or [[weighted-decision-matrix]], which it may use, and from [[game-theory]] (where other parties choose strategically).
Use when asked to record an important decision at the moment it is made — the situation, options, reasoning, expectations with probabilities, and mental state — and to review it later so the quality of the decision can be judged separately from its outcome and judgment can improve over time; distinct from [[architecture-decision-record]] and [[decision-records]] (shared, formal records of choices for an organization), general [[journaling]], and a [[postmortem]] (analysis of a failure after it happened).
Use when asked to build a decision tree — a branching structure of decisions and their outcomes, for classification, prediction, or evaluating scenarios — as one structured evaluation tool, distinct from the generative, judgment-free phase of ideation (see ideation) that typically precedes it.
Use when asked to compare uncertain options by estimating the possible outcomes of each, their probabilities, and their payoffs, then computing the probability-weighted average (expected value) while also examining the spread, worst case, and sensitivity to the estimates — as distinct from a [[decision-tree]] (sequential decisions, though it uses expected value at its nodes), a [[weighted-decision-matrix]] (multiple criteria, no probabilities), and [[bayes-theorem-analysis]] (updating probabilities from evidence).
Use when asked to stress-test a plan end to end before executing it — a five-stage sequence of [[premortem]] (autopsy of the failed plan), verdict (most likely vs. most dangerous failure and the biggest hidden assumption), rebuild (a plan with every failure closed off plus a pre-launch checklist with walk-away results), [[adversary]] (the opponent's attack on the rebuilt plan), and [[tripwire]] (a measurable signal and check day per failure). Use for launches, hires, investments, career moves, and projects not yet started; not for a single stage alone, for an incident already happened ([[postmortem]]), or for a plan too early to have a timeline and success definition.
Use when asked to analyze a decision whose outcome depends on what other rational parties will choose — identify the players, their options, payoffs, and information, then find dominant strategies, equilibria, and ways to change the game (commitments, repetition, side payments) — as distinct from [[expected-value-analysis]] (one decision-maker against uncertain nature), a [[decision-tree]] (no strategic opponent), and [[second-order-thinking]] (general downstream consequences without formal payoffs).
Use when asked to explain or apply the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) — John Boyd's decision-cycle theory — for business strategy or competitive situations, or to compare it against PDCA/DMAIC — grounded in joelparkerhenderson/ooda-loop.
Use when asked to stress-test a plan before committing to it by assuming it has already failed and writing the autopsy — a prospective, failure-first analysis of a plan's likeliest causes of death, the assumptions behind them, and the first warning sign of each — as distinct from a [[postmortem]] (analyzing a failure that already happened), a generic risk list ([[risk-register]]), and the full five-stage [[foresight]] sequence, of which the premortem is the first stage.
Use when asked to understand or predict how people actually judge risky choices — evaluating outcomes as gains and losses relative to a reference point, feeling losses more than equal gains, overweighting small probabilities, and being swayed by framing — in order to debug one's own decisions, design offers, or explain surprising behavior; distinct from [[expected-value-analysis]] (the rational benchmark it departs from), [[game-theory]] (strategic interaction), and [[decision-analysis]] (the structured process it can inform).
Use when asked to decide a personal or career-scale choice where numbers do not settle it, by imagining oneself at a distant future point (for example age 80, or ten years on) and asking which option would be regretted least — covering regret of action versus inaction, regret of omission, and what the decision reveals about values — as distinct from a [[weighted-decision-matrix]] (quantified criteria), [[premortem]] (assuming a plan failed), and general [[journaling]].
Use when asked to look past the immediate result of a decision to its downstream consequences — the reactions, feedback loops, and side effects that follow the first effect, and then what follows those — to catch decisions that look good now and backfire later; distinct from [[systems-thinking]] (the wider discipline of modeling interacting parts), a [[premortem]] (assumes failure and asks why), and [[strategic-flywheel-effects]] (a specific reinforcing loop).
Use when asked to turn failure modes, dangers, or risks into tripwires — for each one, a single measurable signal that shows it is starting to happen, a threshold, and an exact time or cadence to check — rather than vague "keep an eye on it" monitoring. Distinct from [[key-risk-indicators]] (the general practice of risk metrics across an organization), a [[risk-register]] (which records the risk but not necessarily its trigger), and the full [[foresight]] sequence, where it is the fifth stage.
Use when asked to decide how much deliberation, evidence, and approval a decision deserves by classifying it as reversible (a two-way door, decide fast and adjust) or hard to reverse (a one-way door, slow down and verify), and to find ways to turn one-way doors into two-way ones — as distinct from a [[weighted-decision-matrix]] (choosing among options), a [[premortem]] (stress-testing a chosen plan), and [[architecture-decision-record]] (documenting a decision made).
Use when asked to choose among several options against multiple criteria that matter by different amounts — score each option on each criterion, weight the criteria, total the results, and test how sensitive the winner is to the weights — as distinct from a [[decision-tree]] (sequential choices under uncertainty), [[expected-value-analysis]] (a single quantity under probabilities), and a plain pros-and-cons list (unweighted, unstructured).