The Critical Chokepoint
- 4717
- Apr 14
- 3 min read
It isn't where you think it is
We’re all focused on a single, critical chokepoint, but it’s only one of many: From manufacturing and minerals processing bottlenecks in China and, for much of the world outsourcing national security to the United States is starting to look ill-advised.
Chokepoints are a hazard of our obsession with system optimization, forming when easy-to-calculate metrics bury long-tail risks that are less definitive. Yet, just because something is hard to quantify or price, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. We’re seeing the dangers in supply chains, but less obvious is in the decision process.Chances are you’re missing the most crucial choke - the one behind your headlights.
One of the major break-throughs is in allowing smaller firms to expand into new markets and punch above their weight. Product teams use it tech to synthesize customer feedback, marketing uses it for positioning and messaging, operations deploy it for forecasting and leadership uses it strategic framing Decisions are made with efficiency and certainty Speed increases and costs decline. And someone at least looks like an unassailable genius.
Remember that these efficiencies aren’t the same as stability and, like other chokepoints, the danger is hard to see at first. Nothing goes catastrophically wrong, but it’s isn’t quite right either. Where decisions were once formed through discussion - perhaps not rigorous but from different sets of eyes all with skin in the game - are generated by synthesis rather that construction and stress-testing. If you want to know if you’re there - just ask someone to explain and break-down a decision or tactical operation without notes. If no one can, chances are that the thought process was outsourced. Double check that work.
Practically, the solution to sidestepping these mental chokepoints is shockingly simple: Write process notes: informal jottings on how you came to a decision or position. This may be terrifying to the average human, but only for a moment and it’s worth it. Stress-testing both the thinking and the conclusion enables you to explain both without notes, backwards, sideways and on the far end of happy hour. It is a hell of a way to overcome prospect objections by creating a lateral thought process that includes the second-order thinking absent in so many “optimized” decisions.
The Field Guide
Hang your process on this frame:
Immediate effect: What is the direct and intended outcome?
Behavioral response: How will individuals and organizations respond?
System response: How will the market or environment adjust?
Remember that systems are not static, they respond to competition and optimization with adaption. Break into a new market and their will be second order affects. You can use AI to create product positioning and launch plans, but everyone using it is drawing from the same echo-chamber. This is less innovation than convergence on a “sameness” that is seductively comforting but it will have an effect on the market as well. And if your strategy is built on the same logic, it isn’t going to do you any favors.
The remedy isn’t rejection of technology any more than blind acceptance. Use AI to crunch the numbers and set the table, as it were. A little structural discipline applied to your thought process will make it resilient and accessible as markets change and react.
The history of business is, in many ways the history of mistaking temporary advantage for enduring control - only to have the plan fly out the window once markets adjust. AI isn’t going to mitigate this, but accelerate it. Firms that survive the next hairy decade or so will be the ones that adopt the most advanced tools, but retain the ability to think independently of them and the mental chokepoints that they create.
If your team is preparing for a market expansion or product launch and wants to pressure-test second-order risks,
