Cognitive Move
Shift
Run exactly one approved support at the smallest dose that could help, instead of stacking techniques.
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Cognitive Move
Shift the lag
Shorten or lengthen the delay between action and consequence relative to how fast the system moves.
Mental Model
Shifting the Burden Archetype
Peter Senge's system archetype where addressing a problem with a symptomatic solution reduces pressure to implement the fundamental solution—and over time, the symptomatic solution becomes the default, the fundamental so…
Mental Model
Shipping / Bias Toward Action
The productive counterweight to analysis paralysis: the principle that shipping (releasing, publishing, delivering) an imperfect product is almost always better than perfecting a product that never ships
Mental Model
Shirky Principle (Institutions Preserve the Problem They Are Meant to Solve)
Clay Shirky’s observation that institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution
Mental Model
Shokunin (Craftsman Spirit)
Shokunin kishitsu ('craftsman spirit') is the Japanese ethic of total dedication to one's craft, where the pursuit of mastery becomes both a social obligation and a spiritual practice
Mental Model
Short-termism
The systematic preference for immediate rewards over long-term value creation—driven by quarterly earnings pressure, political election cycles, evolutionary tendencies toward present-bias, and compensation structures tha…
Cognitive Move
Shorten the Echo
Move valid feedback close enough in time to affect the very next attempt.
Mental Model
Shu-Ha-Ri (Mastery Stages)
Shu-Ha-Ri describes three stages of mastery in Japanese martial arts that apply universally to skill development
Mental Model
Shura (Consultative Decision-Making)
Shura is the Quranic principle (Quran 42:38, 3:159) mandating that decisions affecting a community must involve genuine consultation with its members
Mental Model
Shuttle Diplomacy Model
Shuttle Diplomacy is a mediation technique where a third party travels between adversaries who refuse direct contact, carrying proposals and counterproposals
Mental Model
Side Project Launch Protocol
A protocol for launching and managing a side project alongside a full-time career, designed to prevent the common failure modes of over-commitment and indefinite tinkering
Cognitive Move
side-by-side
The same drawing repeated with exactly one thing changed, both panels sharing one scale. Everything that stays constant is doing work here, because it is what makes the single difference legible. Break the shared scale and the pair becomes two unrelated pictures that merely sit near each other.
Cognitive Move
Sign
Label the loop's polarity. Does each trip around the circuit amplify the outcome (reinforcing) or push it back toward a set point (balancing)? Reinforcing loops explain runaway growth or collapse; balancing loops explain why change stalls.
Cognitive Move
signal
Ask what information people actually see while they decide, and whether it is accurate, timely, and fine-grained enough to steer by. A right target still produces misses if the numbers arrive late, average away the problem, or measure a proxy.
Cognitive Move
Signal
Recast the thing as information arriving through a noisy channel, so you ask what is transmitting, how loud the noise is, how many samples you need before believing a reading, and what counts as detection versus static.
Cognitive Move
SIGNAL gate and diagnostic weight
Audit the quality of the result, then ask how much more expected it was under one explanation than the others.
Mental Model
Signaling
Signaling concerns how observable actions or attributes convey information about less observable qualities
Mental Model
Signaling Game (Costly Signals)
An informed sender chooses an observable action that a receiver uses to infer a hidden attribute; credible separation depends on different incentives across types.
Mental Model
Silent Evidence
The systematic invisibility of failed outcomes that distorts our understanding of success
Mental Model
Silent Treatment as Control
When emotional withdrawal is deployed not as a flooding response (which is involuntary) but as a deliberate punishment or control mechanism
Mental Model
Silent Treatment Pattern (Organizational Silence)
Elizabeth Morrison and Frances Milliken's concept of 'organizational silence'—the collective-level phenomenon where employees withhold information, concerns, and opinions because they believe speaking up is futile or dan…
Mental Model
Silent Writing Before Discussion Protocol (Brainwriting)
A protocol that precedes group discussion with individual silent writing to prevent anchoring, groupthink, and dominance by extroverts
Mental Model
Simpatia (Social Harmony Priority)
Simpatia is the Latin American and Iberian cultural script that prioritizes social harmony, warmth, and interpersonal pleasantness above directness, efficiency, or uncomfortable truth-telling