Only when thinking from first principles can we separate what’s essential from what’s familiar.
We inherit decisions made by people solving problems in a particular moment, with the information they had and the constraints they faced. Those decisions are carried forward, adapted, built upon and eventually accepted as the way things are done. Given enough time, they stop feeling like decisions at all.
Many of those decisions deserve to survive. They become part of what makes an organisation, a product or an idea successful. The challenge is that familiarity makes it difficult to tell the difference between what has endured because it’s fundamental and what has endured simply because nobody has thought to question it.
Thinking from first principles isn’t about rejecting what came before. It’s about understanding why it exists before deciding whether it still belongs.
We think that’s a more thoughtful place to begin. Good decisions begin with better questions.