The Cycle of Wise Action
Static plans fail in dynamic worlds. We replace linear thinking with a self-reinforcing loop that builds wisdom with every iteration.
Understand
Anchor in Reality.
Build a 360° diagnostic view of the situation. We separate signal from noise to establish a Shared Ground Truth before opinions are allowed to form.
But understanding isn’t just about gathering information. Every organization already has access to more data than it can process. The challenge is the distortion of context — the preconceived perceptions that filter what receives genuine attention before any analysis begins.
The Understand phase surfaces these perceptions explicitly. Each participant identifies the assumptions they carry about the relevant factors — independently, before group discussion begins. These assumptions are documented and held as hypotheses throughout the process.
Perception Friction (surfacing assumptions), Science Friction (AI directed to challenge the emerging frame), Emotional Friction (naming desires before engaging analysis).
Align
Forge the Shared Path.
Consensus is cheap; alignment is hard. We surface constructive friction and integrate diverse viewpoints to turn “agreement” into Strategic Coherence.
The critical structural requirement: independence before interaction. Each participant’s perspective is captured before group discussion begins. Without this sequence, the anchoring cascade and political filtering produce socialization rather than collaboration — the loudest voice or the highest-ranking opinion sets the frame, and everyone else adjusts to it.
The system provides channels for honest input when the social environment makes attribution costly — anonymous contributions, AI-generated representations of minority perspectives, and depersonalized presentation of competing views that surfaces disagreement as structural information rather than interpersonal conflict.
If independent inputs converge too rapidly, the system flags potential anchoring or performed alignment. Genuine diverse perspectives rarely converge quickly.
Decide
Lock in the Course.
Ambiguity is the enemy of execution. We commit with precision — assigning clear accountability across Strategy, Tactics, and Operations to create an Actionable Mandate.
Before commitment, the Pre-Mortem forces the team to assume the decision failed and work backward: what went wrong? This targets the emotional investment that makes aspirational commitments resistant to examination. The Commitment Lock requires genuine commitment — not performed agreement — before resources are allocated.
Critically, this phase defines evolution triggers: the specific, measurable conditions that would indicate the plan is failing and that adaptation is required. These are defined while thinking is clear and emotional investment is low — not after execution has begun and the pressure to defend the plan has replaced the capacity to evaluate it.
Authority Friction (every plan element traces to a strategic objective), Perception Friction (Pre-Mortem targeting the desire to believe the plan will succeed).
Evolve
Compound Your Wisdom.
Don’t just finish the project; learn from it. We monitor outcomes and feed insights back into the system, ensuring your organization gets Smarter with Every Cycle.
The evolution triggers defined during the Decide phase serve double duty: they prevent rigid execution (following the plan regardless of evidence) by defining when adaptation is required, and they prevent chaotic execution (abandoning the plan at the first sign of resistance) by defining when adaptation is not required.
Below the trigger threshold: maintain course. At or above the threshold: adapt. The triggers transform the adaptation decision from a subjective judgment call into a structural response to evidence.
Every Evolve cycle produces documented learning that feeds into the next Understand phase — not a summary report, but a decision record that captures the assumptions tested, the frictions applied, and the outcomes observed. Over time, this builds institutional memory — a compounding organizational asset.
The cycle repeats.
This isn’t just a process — it’s an engine for compounding intelligence.
The Five Forces Every Decision Requires
The word “convoking” means to call together, to assemble for a common purpose. A decision is not a moment of individual inspiration. It is a convergence of specific factors that must be assembled, examined, and integrated before commitment is possible.
Most decision-making frameworks treat context as background. This framework treats context as the primary material. The quality of a decision cannot exceed the quality of the contextual understanding that produced it.
Internal Capacity
What the organization can actually do
Not aspirational ability. Not theoretical ability. The real, present-tense capacity that exists when the decision is made — financial, operational, human, organizational, and innovation capacity.
The aspirational self-image — “we can do more than we actually can.” Every organization carries a narrative about its own capabilities shaped by past successes and leadership optimism.
Can we execute this with our actual current capacity — not our projected capacity, not our capacity if we hire, but what we can do today?
External Environment
What the organization cannot control
Market conditions, competitive landscape, regulatory shifts, macroeconomic forces, technological disruption, and social and cultural shifts — the forces that shape what is possible, necessary, and at risk, independent of your choices.
The familiarity assumption — “we understand our market.” Deep experience produces deep pattern recognition — and that pattern recognition becomes a preconceived perception that the environment is what it was when the patterns were learned.
What has changed in our external environment since our last assessment — and have we incorporated those changes, or are we planning for the market we knew?
Desired Result
What the organization is trying to achieve
The aspirational target — what the decision is intended to produce. This seems straightforward. It is not. The desired result is where individual desire becomes organizational direction. And the quality of that transition determines whether the result is a tested strategic objective or an unexamined wish wearing the language of strategy.
Desire-as-direction — “what we want is what we should pursue.” The distinction between desire-as-direction and desire-as-hypothesis is the single most important distinction in the entire framework.
Did this direction emerge from genuine examination, or did it enter the process as a pre-set frame that the analysis was designed to support?
Social Environment
The human ecosystem
The relational landscape — team dynamics, leadership credibility, psychological safety, stakeholder relationships, community context. The most systematically underweighted factor in decision-making, and the most common reason analytically sound strategies fail in implementation.
The alignment assumption — “our team is aligned.” Perhaps the most dangerous preconceived perception because it is the most easily performed and the most difficult to verify.
Who must support this for it to succeed — and have we assessed whether they actually will, or are we assuming alignment because no one has visibly dissented?
The most common form of strategic failure is not choosing the wrong direction. It is choosing a viable direction that the organization lacks the internal capacity to reach — and the impossibility was knowable, but knowing it required confronting perceptions that every force was working to protect.
Strategy, Planning, and Execution Are Not Sequential Stages
They are concurrent modes that must remain in continuous conversation. When they disconnect, the organization fragments.
Strategy
“What should we pursue, and why?”
Fundamentally divergent — requires widening the field of possibilities before narrowing. Quality is determined not by elegance but by the breadth of what was considered and honestly rejected.
Premature convergence on an unexamined direction — desire dressed in strategic language.
Planning
“How do we pursue it, with what, and by when?”
Fundamentally convergent — translates direction into structure. Where internal capacity meets desired result with full force. The gap between what strategy demands and what capacity allows becomes visible here — or surfaces during execution at exponentially higher cost.
Plans disconnected from strategy or execution reality. A good plan will not execute itself.
Execution
“What is reality telling us, and how do we adapt?”
Fundamentally adaptive — where the decision meets the world. No plan survives contact with reality unchanged. The question is whether the organization adapts intelligently or oscillates between rigidity and chaos.
Rigid adherence (“the plan is right; reality will catch up”) or chaotic abandonment (“something is wrong — change course now”).
Strategy informs planning. Planning reveals strategic flaws. Execution generates learning. That learning feeds back into strategy. The UADE cycle is the mechanism that maintains this conversation.
Strategic Friction
Five mechanisms that counteract the natural slide from genuine deliberation to performed rigor. Friction that feels like doing the work well — not bureaucratic overhead imposed on top of it.
Perception Friction
Surfaces preconceived perceptions explicitly. The Perception Audit, Pre-Mortem, and Red Teaming widen the Probability Tunnel before it narrows the decision space. Applied during Understand and Decide phases.
Science Friction
Directs AI to challenge rather than confirm. Adversarial prompting: “What evidence exists that our understanding is outdated?” “What would need to be true for this plan to fail?” Applied to every phase, with phase-specific context loading to prevent confirmation bias in the AI itself.
Authority Friction
Treats every AI output as a draft to be tested — not an authority to be followed. Prevents AI-generated infrastructure from acquiring unearned credibility. The planning team’s assessment of what is actually feasible is the irreplaceable human contribution.
Emotional Friction
Names desires before engaging analysis. The leader documents what they want — and every subsequent output is evaluated: does this inform what is true, or confirm what I want? This targets the most powerful and least visible force in decision-making.
Context Friction
Manages what enters the AI’s context, when, and in what order. Critical information positioned for maximum attention. Phase-specific loading prevents dilution. During Understand: raw evidence, no preferred directions. During Evolve: execution data and triggers, not the strategic narrative that justified the direction.
Bias cannot be eliminated. It can be managed. Strategic Friction is the management system.
How We Manage AI — Not Just Use It
AI has its own version of the problems humans face. Context window dilution degrades attention across large inputs. The lost-in-the-middle effect buries critical information. Statistical herd bias defaults to majority patterns that may no longer apply.
When human preconceived perceptions align with AI’s statistical herd — which they often do, because both are shaped by the same historical patterns — the convergence feels like validation. It may actually be shared blindness.
Convoking4™ manages AI through three structural disciplines:
Phase-specific context loading
What enters the AI’s context depends on which UADE phase is active. During Understand: raw evidence, no preferred directions. During Evolve: execution data and triggers, not the strategic narrative that justified the direction.
Multi-model architecture
Multiple AI models process the same inputs independently. When they converge, it validates confidence. When they diverge, it locates genuine uncertainty requiring human judgment — and counteracts any single model’s statistical herd.
Authority Friction as default
Every AI output is structurally positioned as a draft — a starting point for human judgment, not a conclusion to be accepted. The planning team’s assessment of what is actually feasible is the irreplaceable human contribution.
The Wisdom Behind the Wheel
Fusing Human Judgment with AI Precision.
Charts give you data. The compass gives you direction.
But only the captain has judgment.
Every complex decision draws on four interconnected dimensions. Effective leaders hold all four simultaneously:
The Art
Creativity, vision, and the ability to read human dynamics.
The Science
Data, probability, and rigorous evidence.
The Process
The discipline to align, dissent, and commit.
The Gamble
The courage to act despite incomplete information.
What is the Wise Mind?
Wise Mind is not a trait you have; it is a state you enter. It is the specific real-time state where a leader simultaneously exercises art, applies science, follows process, and accepts the gamble.
Your library — the accumulated experience and ethical framework you possess.
The active state of drawing on that library to decide under pressure.
Augmenting Individual Judgment™
Expand What You Bring Into the Moment of Decision.
AI cannot inhabit the state of Wise Mind, but it can exponentially expand what you bring into it. The person remains in the seat, but with a radically expanded field of vision.
- Enhance the Art: Surface weak signals and sentiment shifts that intuition might miss.
- Deepen the Science: Run scenarios and stress-test assumptions in seconds.
- Calibrate the Gamble: Quantify uncertainty ranges to prevent overconfidence.
AI-Enhanced Collective Wisdom™
Scale Organizational Intelligence.
Group wisdom is often limited by what people can remember or articulate in the moment. Our engine acts as an "Always-On" cognitive partner.
- Institutional Memory: Synthesizing lessons across past decisions and surfacing relevant precedents that no one in the room remembers.
- Bias Detection: Flagging "Groupthink" or "Probability Tunnels" before they calcify.
- Divergence Handling: Validating consensus when the team agrees, and surfacing blind spots when they don't.
Tools enable. People decide.
See What This Produces
The framework explains why decisions fail. Convoking4™ ensures they succeed.