Decisions at the Fulcrum

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I map out one of the more complex disputes in international resource policy: the seabed mining near Nauru. We'll look at the issue by going from the depth seabed floor to the brightly-lit world of international governance. I employ Paul Wehr's conflict mapping approach to comprehend how conflict arises when parties have disparate "maps" of the same terr...

This episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum starts with the Brandywine River, instead of inventiveness, innovation, or even chemical synthesis. This is an account of how a few generations of refugees taught in  European scientific disciplines morphed into an institution much bigger than a company. Instead, this institution gradually became a kind of infrastructure the United States grew to rely on, f...

Part II shifts focus from federal legislation to the marketplace, revealing the painful truth that, after years of expansion, the CBD business in 2025 remains fundamentally unstable, poorly regulated, and dominated by bulk isolates and white-label manufacture. Laboratory tests, including JAMA's 2020 review, continue to demonstrate considerable mislabeling, with products having considerably less or...

Part I investigates the federal hinge that enabled today's CBD scenario via a minor provision: Section 7606 of the 2014 Farm Bill. This section enabled universities and state agricultural agencies to grow hemp for research purposes, unwittingly establishing the first legal road for contemporary cannabinoid study in more than 70 years. It created the structural circumstances that would ultimately s...

In this episode, we plunge headfirst into calamity from a stormy weather event. Using everything from wandering caribou herds to turbulent typhoons, we delve into how scientists truly forecast the atmosphere and why that process is more chaotic than my sleek weather apps being refreshed in a frenzy. I explain why contemporary forecasts depend on ensembles—multiple parallel model runs that chart a...

This episode is a recording of an asynchronous lecture/discussion I gave in 2025. I cover the opening narrative in "managing the unexpected" from Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe. The main theme is how we can comprehend High Reliability Organizations (HROs) using 5 principles. I also look at the airline industry in 2024 as another example. WaMu and the airline collapse in 2024 (as well as the mor...

At 4:46 a.m. in Changi Airport, a robot arm known as Ella the Barista is on the job.  Behind glass, it grinds, pours, and serves coffee with unwavering precision as a traveler effortlessly pays with a flick of their smartwatch and strides confidently to their gate. From a sleek corner closet-like kiosk of Singapore's award-winning airport, this episode dives into the world of automation: from 1980...

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),...

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 scie...

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), a...

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 a...

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 ad...

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...

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....

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 Hilt...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 prac...

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 jour...

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 cal...

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 refre...

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 sho...

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 wer...