Mara Voss
founder and CEO
Run a company through ten hard decisions.
You are the new chief of staff at Latchkey, a smart-lock company with one strong product and a difficult year ahead. Work through the company’s own paperwork, make the calls and learn the method each situation demands.
Personal practice is free · no cardFully self-pacedAbout 7–9 hours
Mara Voss
Founder and CEO · to you
You start Monday
I do not need a note that makes everybody comfortable. I need the decision, the evidence that earns it, and the fact that would make us reverse it.
#exec-room · Friday 08:42
Priya Nair
The retailer needs a number by Thursday.
Tomás Ibarra
Then Thursday is a constraint, not an argument.
Your memo · due 17:00
Make the call. Name the reverser.
Chapter 01 / 10
1company story
10connected decisions
18judgment methods
11written memos
How a chapter works.
- 01
Work from company documents
Read the emails, board slides, dashboards and operating notes that reach your desk — not a narrator’s summary of them.
- 02
Make the call in sequence
Every chapter advances the same company. Earlier choices become context for the decision waiting in the next room.
- 03
Get a reasoned debrief
Tests teach immediately. Written memos are reviewed against the chapter’s own criteria, with a specific push for the next draft.
Five colleagues argue for different calls.
Finance, product, growth and operations each see different evidence and risk. You have to make the final recommendation.
Dan Okafor
co-founder, VP Engineering
Tomás Ibarra
CFO
Priya Nair
VP Sales
Ellen Park
board member, Meridian Growth Partners
Ten chapters. One accumulating record.
35–60 minutes per chapter
- Chapter 1
What decision is actually on the table
Why smart people in the same meeting can describe three different problems while believing they agree
40–50 min - Chapter 2
Intent, and what the dashboard can't see
What a dashboard structurally cannot see, and how to name any metric's blind spot
35–45 min - Chapter 3
Borrowed conviction
Why the winner's story shows what is possible, not how likely
35–45 min - Chapter 4
Four stories, one number
Why "seasonality" ends arguments without settling anything
40–50 min - Chapter 5
What the money says no to
Opportunity cost: the real price of a choice is the best alternative it cancels, and unspent cash counts as one
40–50 min - Chapter 6
Arguing the other side
Steel-man: writing the other side's case so well that its own advocates would sign it
35–45 min - Chapter 7
How this decision fails
Inversion: writing the launch post-mortem before the launch
40–50 min - Chapter 8
Doors you can't walk back through
Two-way and one-way doors: sorting a contract clause by what undoing it would cost
40–50 min - Chapter 9
When the market grades late
Kind and wicked learning environments: loops that grade you within days against loops that grade you once, late and tangled
40–50 min - Chapter 10
The record
The decision journal: a defence against your own hindsight
45–60 min
Eighteen methods, taught at the moment of use.
The outside view appears when the team overweights one success story. Red teaming appears when the board’s preferred plan needs a serious challenge.
Explore the Judgment Playbook01Clarity test02Outside view03Inversion04Pre-mortem05Red team06Competing hypotheses07Second-order thinking08Steel-man09Two-way / one-way door10Fragility audit11Commander’s intent12Decision journal13Kind vs wicked learning environments14Decision Quality: six links15Falsifiability16Opportunity cost & trade-offs17Survivorship bias18Map is not the territory
Who should take the course?
Managers and operators
Founders and chiefs of staff
Consultants and strategists
Product and commercial leaders
Learn the method in one company. Put it to work across 58 cases.
The case library changes the industry, stakes and evidence so you can test whether the skill travels.
Try a standalone caseStart with Mara’s welcome letter.
Meet the team, read the first brief and make your first recommendation.