Decisions at the Fulcrum

Opening in Beiruit, but it's a simulation. We're going to fly with Middle East Airlines (MEA) in this episode as it implements the socio-technical practice of "safety first" by teaching procedures with accurate communication, collaborative sense, and active monitoring.  I discuss MEA's internal program development decision, data collection techniques (documents, interviews, and event narratives), and the importance of considering communication a core competency. 

I examine the misguided tendency to want simple and concise narratives. Using the reluctance to simplify principle of high-reliability organizations, I contend that it is preferable to embrace complexity in order to address issues th...

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Candy corn is sweet, triangular, and curiously adamant: a confection that dwells the center of Halloween rituals, from knocking of doors to collecting a sugar surplus. In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum we trace candy corn’s journey from factory floors in Philadelphia to the front steps of 1930s and 1950s neighborhoods.

The episode pieces together empirical social science and a sensory chronicle to exhibit how scarcity and everyday exchange drive holiday consumer "preferences".

Subscribe for more episodes where organizational and social decision-making affects everyday routines. Those are shaped by strategic and o...

Allergies seem impromptu but also predictable. They come back with the changing seasons when the immune system interprets spring, summer, or fall in protective but hyperbolic ways. To manage allergies, particularly pollen allergies, humans have used steam bowls, neti pots, acupuncture, first-generation antihistamines (effective, but sleep inducing), second-generation antihistamines (non-drowsy), and, more recently, a new catalog of sprays for treating sinuses and itching. These changes are chronicled in the episode. In addition, we look at several decisions that happened between 1997 and the 2020s, including FDA's decision to allow DTC in 1997 and eventually their decision to permit Claritin, Zyrtec, and...

Allergies have a habit of coming back during the changing of seasons. Your immune system interprets spring, summer, and fall in protective but at times hyperbolic ways. To address allergies, humans have used steam bowls and "summer catarrh", neti pots, to first-generation antihistamines (effective, but drowsy), second-generation medications (useful, daily), and, ultimately, the post-2011 age of sprays that treat the sinuses and the itching. These shifts are chronicled in this episode. In addition, we tie in the FDA's quiet decision-making process that allowed Claritin, Zyrtec, and Allegra to move from the prescription pad to the counter.

Health...

Frank Herbert’s Dune has always been a paradox: an epic of empire written as a warning against power, a science-fiction saga about the dangers of certainty. Its world is dense, deliberate, and meditative—a novel that teaches patience while it unravels prophecy. Adapting it was never about spectacle; it was about understanding. When Lynch’s Dune premiered in 1984, the studio drowned it in its own ambition, an empire of exposition, inner monologue, and noise. Nearly forty years later, Denis Villeneuve built the same world by restraint, not endless monologues. This Dune listens where the earlier version shouted. It trusts silenc...

We're back! Open up a fridge at your local grocery store, and you'll find it: a row of bubbly tea with names that sound like they could be yoga poses. The kombucha journey didn’t start in the chilly vault. It begins with jars sitting on kitchen counters, homebrew gatherings, and this intriguing SCOBY floating around like a jellyfish diplomat. In this episode, we explore how that vibrant culture adapted to shelf life, starting with the mid-’90s natural channel, moving through the 2010 alcohol-content scare that led to improved fermentation control and labeling, and finally, the flavor shift that trans...

RC Cola did not follow anyone's playbook.  It forged a unique trajectory: local, ceremonial, and modestly enduring. We look a Southern-derived beverage, a cultural symbol of festivals, lunch breaks, and then birthday party ads.

From traditional lunch routines in mill towns to surreal promotional advertising in Manila, these decisions highlight what it takes to create brand meaning via embeddedness rather than size.

This episode follows decisions across several decades, including as early adoption of aluminum cans, the introduction of diet soda, and a focus on regional festivals.  We go to the convenience stores in the 1950s...

Screens are everywhere. They're on gas pumps, taxi headrests, airplane seats, even department store mirrors. It was only a matter of time before retail outlets tried screens on freezer doors, imagining they should glow too. What happened instead was a series of flickering displays, mislabeled shelves, and, at one point, freezers so opaque that employees taped up paper signs reading “Drinks Inside.”

This episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum dives into what happens when innovation chases spectacle instead of substance. From a six-store pilot stretched far beyond solid evidence, to the December 2023 “blackout” where Cooler Screens pulled the plug...

In this episode, we settle in at the Hampton Inn for its familiarity.  Hampton Inn has perfected what organizational scholar Herbert Simon termed "satisficing," or the practice of being deemed "good enough" by reaching quality thresholds.

Hilton used guest surveys to make big changes to Hampton, and one change was the waffle bar becoming a signature feature.

We go through the acquisition from Hilton in the late 1990s to their makeover in the 2000s, to the 3,000 hotels throughout the globe today that have white duvets, shared work tables, and waffle irons that beep like a s...

In this episode, we settle in at the Hampton Inn for its familiarity.  Hampton Inn has perfected what organizational scholar Herbert Simon termed "satisficing," or the practice of being deemed "good enough" by reaching quality thresholds.

Hilton used guest surveys to make big changes to Hampton, and one change was the waffle bar becoming a signature feature.

We go through the acquisition from Hilton in the late 1990s to their makeover in the 2000s, to the 3,000 hotels throughout the globe today that have white duvets, shared work tables, and waffle irons that beep like a s...

Caplinger's Seafood has turned into a local place in Indiana, famous for offering seafood that boasts the freshness you'd find in a coastal area along the Gulf in Florida or Louisiana or somewhere in Alaska, Washington (state), or Idaho.  

When the owners shifted their focus from the main dishes to the sides on the menu, they discovered exciting prospects, thanks to a clever application of linear and non-linear modeling.  

In this episode, I look closely at Seidelson's (2020) case study first, to find out how Caplinger's in Indianapolis employed linear and non-linear programming to evaluate labor cos...

Not the science fiction epic, that's "Dune".

In this episode, I consider the reasons Bluetooth became ubiquitous, even though it wasn’t supposed to be a global standard. It was one of many close range options. It was also clunky, battery-hungry, and forgot your name. Yet, it did something most technologies never achieve: it stayed, and became woven into expectation. It's Bluetooth, a symbolic icon from a Dutch-inspired bind-rune and a quiet connective tissue between billions of devices.

The episode investigates how bluetooth embedded itself not through technical "superiority", but through the power of network ti...

A grape 🍇 can tell you its story!

We can learn about who grew it, when it was picked, how cold it stayed on the long trip, and why it made it to your supermarket.

In this episode, Dr. H. looks at the compelling case of Sahyadri Farms, India’s largest farmer-owned export enterprise. We trace how a regional grape collective transformed into a model for longevity and dignity in agriculture.

Through cold chain logistics, traceability, the GLOBALG.A.P. certification standards, producer company governance, and then pandemic-era pivots, Sahyadri Farms revisited and reworked what...

You’re driving on i70. The horizon stretches wide and low. You cross the Colorado-Kansas border—and it’s like passing through a tear in time. The pavement thins. Shoulders disappear.  Roads are breaking… and so is the consensus about how, and whether, to fix them. In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we pull over and raise a sobering question: Which will collapse first, our infrastructure or our institutions?  This is more than simply pavement and potholes and water usage.  It delves further into what occurs when ideological dogma is confronted with the realities of degraded roads and disappearin...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, Dr. William Hoffman looks into the intricate story of Ben & Jerry's, from its founding in Vermont and texture-driven food philosophy to its unexpected persistence as an ethically aware brand within one of the biggest multinational companies in the world.  Edgar Schein's three layers of organizational culture permit you to look at how values are practically lived, legally defended, and functionally established in addition to being verbally expressed. We dive into the scoop shop's role as a place for creative research and development, their independent board's legal protection, and the swirl of chunky t...

What prevents someone from booking a luxury vacation with someone else's credit card? Actually, it would seem there are quite a few impediments blocking this, and keeping cards secure. In this episode, we follow a story that starts with a negligent swipe in Tampa and unfolds into a global infrastructure of reliability, risk modeling, and the subtle movement that underpins each transaction. We journey from the magnetic stripe period to chip-and-PIN acceptance, stopping in 2005 Stockholm, where card security had already become unseen infrastructure.  We go back to the 2008 Heartland breach, examine the 2015 responsibility shift, and dive into Mastercard's fraud detection s...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we enter the focus (groups) on taste. Through the lens of Coca-Cola’s Test–Learn–Scale methodology, we examine how an iconic beverage brand manages risk, generates resonance, and sometimes spectacularly misfires.

From the pixel-infused flop of Coca-Cola Byte to the calibrated triumph of Zero Sugar's reformulation, we explore how flavor is tested and calibrated.

Along the way, we dig into how Freestyle machines became stealth research platforms, how popular drinks in some regions, like Peach Coke, didn't make it big in the U.S., and how the fl...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we follow the symbolic changes of soda, through its early days as a societal routine at the 1950s soda fountain to its more ambiguous current iterations as liquid sugar, nostalgia, and brand fairy tale, beginning in the 1980s and carrying into the present day.

We begin at the fountain, with chrome chairs, phosphate mixers, and the common syntax of refreshment.  We pivot to look into how soda lost the plot.  In the 1980s, overrun marketplaces brought in an era of gimmicks. Many examples of this can be covered. Dr. Ho...

The story of Hertz's autonomous rental system is explained in this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum. Initially meant to simplify fleet management, the technology spiraled into a mechanism for arbitrary prosecutions.  

A NASA contractor held at gunpoint, a veteran arrested before his wedding, and a nurse apprehended at a border crossing years later are just a few of the striking case studies showing how a system named efficiency promised automation but reflected a deeper abandonment of human judgment.  

This episode considers the outsourcing of institutional trust to opaque algorithms that mistook logistical uncertainty for cr...

Snapple went from being an unexpected select underground favorite to just sitting on a shelf, bottled up.  

With Liz Moor's notion of branding as a guide, we trace the history of Snapple as it changed over the years, paying special attention to the cultural intermediaries: From the local deli in Brooklyn to Wendy the Snapple Lady, from Howard Stern to decentralized distribution networks, these were the individuals who gave it a unique, local taste. 

In this episode, we follow a perpetual shift from a local ordinance in a glass bottle to a commodity in shrink wr...

This week on Decisions at the Fulcrum, we delve into the unexpected journey of LaCroix, the sparkling water that found its niche not through its flavor, but through its inscrutability.

Before it became a meme or an iconic item, LaCroix was simply found in laid-back settings: office break rooms, workplace cafeterias, and your aunt’s second fridge. Then it made its way to Trader Joe's, appeared in your social media feeds, became your friend's Halloween costume, and turned into a daily ritual. It wasn’t seeking attention; it was just present, evoking the scent of sandalwood and bran...

The Instant Pot was a game-changing kitchen innovation of the digital age.  Pyrex was a legendary household icon for over a century.  

When a private equity firm tied them together under a single corporate roof in 2019, it seemed like alliance, but it felt like an appliance mismatch.  

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we dive into how Instant Brands incorrectly understood online popularity as a sign of lasting endurance, neglected key qualitative opportunities, and ultimately forgot to vent.

We delve into the Spiral of Silence and the consequences that ensue when nob...

What does it mean for a company to take a detour—not as an error, but as an investment in altering its narrative?  In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we plunge courageously into the symbolic pathways forged by two of the US's iconic automakers: Ford and General Motors.  This episode takes a step back from the insights of Part One, going to the underpinning symbolic arrangement supporting their different approaches to business revival and innovation.

Ford’s comeback of the Bronco wasn’t just about launching a product; it was a revival of collective nostalgia, a showca...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, Dr. William Hoffman explores two startlingly different methods in the car industry—one based on memory and the other on momentum.  

This episode examines how legacy corporations navigate the conflict between nostalgia and futurity, using Ford's spectacular resuscitation of the Bronco and General Motors' vast shift toward electrification as examples.

Ford's Bronco revitalization is noted as a case study in retrospective sensemaking. This uses memory and nostalgia as to look backward as a strategy for going, ironically, forward (with modifications). It's a masterclass in vintage visuals and emo...

Domino’s didn’t need the numbers to confirm there was a problem with their pizza. They already had plenty of indicators from surveys, which displayed the issues numerically, but lacked the nuance and complexity necessary to understand their causes.

This episode explores a critical moment in Domino’s turnaround: the shift from data sheets to direct dialogue, from numerical trends to qualitative understanding. It marked more than a tactical change and it redefined how insights were gathered and interpreted at an iconic organization.

By examining focus group methodology, we trace how Domino’s addressed recurrin...

This week on Decisions at the Fulcrum, we pull a hot one out of the oven! It’s the Domino’s redemption story. It’s about pizza and how a brand researched their way back from decades of being a public embarrassment to become pizza scholars leading the delivery economy.

Note: This episode contains 2 archival advertisements, from 1984 and 1986 respectively. This archival audio is used for purposes of commentary and criticism under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. § 107).