Small tests, alignment, & human genome project 2.0
Decision Balance Newsletter | 11.5.2025
Key Insight
The best decisions often begin as small tests, not bold declarations. A lesson many business leaders can teach politicians. The simplest way to learn faster is to run mini experiments. Whether in biology, markets, or software, progress starts with micro-experiments — reversible, measurable, and low-cost.
AI Action: “Given this decision, propose three mini-experiments I can run in the next 7 days. For each: hypothesis, smallest possible test, metric, and ‘stop/scale’ rule.”
A question to ask yourself
What is one thing you can do to increase alignment with a customer, partner or supplier? Your action could be reorienting a contract renewal toward shared upside / downside or it could be more simple like listening to their challenges so you can better position your customer support to solve actual problems. A restaurant might negotiate variable cost rent tied to % of revenue vs traditional fixed cost; what might you do?
Reading, podcast thoughts
1. Game tapes - The NBA is back and so is Charles Barkley. During an Inside the NBA episode, Barkley joked that “every coach loves film — until it’s their own.” The same applies to leaders. Reviewing “game tape” (calls, memos, investment notes) is uncomfortable because it reveals who we are when we’re not performing at our best.
A 2024 HBR article on “postmortem culture” at Stripe described how teams systematically review failed projects to detect patterns — not to assign blame, but to codify new rules of thumb. That’s how organizations mature: reflection replaces repetition.
→ AI Action: “Pull my last five investments or pitch reviews. Summarize key decision themes, recurring blind spots, and what pattern I’d bet on again.”
2. James Dyson on Iteration — Dyson built 5,127 prototypes before success. His principle: Every failure is data you paid for.
→ Actionable Insight: Catalog mistakes instead of hiding them. Your “failed prototypes” may reveal your edge.
→ AI Action: “Help me create a Failure Log → Lesson → Rule → Next Experiment sheet for my team.”
Interview summary
3. Sean Feeney — an Anchorage / Goldman trader-turned-restaurateur who rejected “that’s how it’s always done,” used film-room rigor on service loops (a drink needs to be in a customer’s hand within 5 minutes of seating), and wrote a new playbook for NYC restaurants.
→ Actionable insight: In your org, highlight any step justified by tradition; run a 30-day experiment with an outside-view alternative (pricing, waitlist, release cadence).
→ AI Action: “List 5 ‘we’ve always done it this way’ steps in my [team/process]. Draft an outside-view experiment for each with success metrics.”
Podcast
Health
Two decades ago we wrote the human genome; today we are writing it (sort of). Today, nearly every advance in modern medicine rests on its foundation. Reading the human genome transformed biology into an information science, spawning ancestry testing, virus tracking, precision cancer therapies, the first personalized medicines, and more. Now, a new generation of scientists wants to take the next step: not just reading the code of life, but writing it. Check out Human Genome Project-write (HGP-write) and SynHG, the Synthetic Human Genome Initiative to see where it may go right or wrong.
Welcome to the DecisionBalance newsletter where I share insights, questions, and reading recommendations. I coach asset managers, artists, and start-up founder/CEOs to set goals, improve performance, and find deeper meaning in their work.
