Menu
SkillsMP has collected 68 skills from product-on-purpose/thinking-framework-skills. Open a skill to review its source and details.
Showing 40 of 68 collected skills.
Produces a prioritized, evidence-graded Thinking Plan that diagnoses which thinking frameworks a situation actually needs - the dominant cognitive job, a short sequence of the fewest fitting frameworks to apply (each with its evidence tier, expected artifact,…
Builds an abstraction ladder that moves a problem up ("why / to what end?") and down ("how / what specifically?") to locate the right altitude to work at, then marks one rung as the working level. Use when a problem is stated as a bare solution with an…
Produces a clustered theme map that groups many raw notes, observations, quotes, or data points bottom-up into a small set of named, traceable themes (the KJ method). Use when a scattered pile of dozens to hundreds of existing items needs to become a few…
Produces a structured after-action review by comparing what was expected against what actually happened, diagnosing why the gaps occurred, and converting them into specific owned sustain-and-change actions. Use when a project, launch, sprint, or incident has…
Handles a by-name request for ACH (Analysis of Competing Hypotheses), the evidence-by-hypothesis disconfirmation matrix, honestly. Controlled trials found ACH raises confidence with no accuracy gain and does not reduce confirmation bias, so this skill does…
Produces an argument map by laying out a claim's supporting reasons, the co-premises each silently depends on, and the objections against it as an explicit structure, then flags the weakest links and unsupported premises. Use when an argument or…
Generates non-obvious ideas by surfacing the foundational assumptions a problem or solution rests on, negating each, and reframing from the reversed assumptions, then shortlisting, producing an assumptions-and-reversals sheet. Use when an option space feels…
Checks whether a decision has genuine minority dissent or only smooth surface consensus, identifies who actually holds a contrary view, and plans how to elicit and protect real dissent, flagging clearly where a view is constructed rather than authentically…
Produces a backcast path by fixing a vivid desired future state and reasoning backward through the milestones and preconditions required to reach it, ending at the next concrete step available now. Use when planning toward a transformative or long-horizon…
Produces a belief-update ledger that re-scores a standing inventory of open beliefs against newly arrived evidence on a cadence - each belief carrying a prior confidence, the evidence accrued since the last review, a revised confidence with an explicit delta…
Audits the boundary judgments that silently define a problem frame. For each of four sources, who benefits, who decides, whose knowledge counts, who has standing, it contrasts the descriptive is boundary against the normative ought boundary, names the gaps,…
Generates ideas the way silent parallel brainwriting does, producing several independent idea streams that build on each other without anchoring on the first voice, then consolidates them into a shortlisted idea pool. Use when you need breadth of options and…
Produces a four-layer matrix (litany, system, worldview, myth) of the current 'used future' beside a reconstructed preferred future per layer, anchored by a deliberately changed deep metaphor. Use when an issue is stuck because the framing is stuck, the…
Builds a signed causal loop diagram by closing the feedback loops in a situation, labeling each loop reinforcing (R) or balancing (B) with its link polarities, and reading likely dynamics (spiral, goal-seeking, or oscillation) off which loop dominates. Use…
Runs a Complexity Domain Sort, sorting a situation into Clear, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, or Confusion and choosing the response posture that fits, caveat-first. It leads with the weak evidence (the 2021 PMC internal-medicine review found scientific proof…
Builds a concept map - a non-hierarchical network of concept nodes joined by directed, labeled linking phrases so each node-link-node reads as an explicit proposition, with cross-links across clusters - then surfaces gaps, missing links, and questionable…
Produces a known-unknowns ledger by enumerating the relevant evidence not in hand, the variables that bear on a judgment but are unknown or unobservable, rating each unknown by its bearing and its obtainability, then re-rating confidence against the mapped…
Converts a stuck trade-off into a contradiction to dissolve rather than a compromise to settle for. Names the two conflicting requirements, states an implementation-free Ideal Final Result, and applies the four separation principles (separate the requirements…
Produces a both/and polarity map - two interdependent poles, the upside and downside quadrant of each, a greater purpose and a deeper fear, early-warning signs, and action steps - for a chronic tension that should be managed rather than resolved. Use when an…
Produces a decision journal entry that records a consequential decision at the moment it is made - the decision, the rationale, the predicted outcome, an explicit confidence level, and the assumptions it rests on - so it can be honestly reviewed later against…
Produces a criteria-weighted option matrix by comparing a set of options against weighted criteria, scoring each, surfacing the explicit tradeoffs, and recommending one while flagging where the scoring is soft. Use when choosing among several real options, or…
Produces a dialectical estimate that improves a single committed number by polling the inner crowd, make a first estimate, assume it is wrong and list why, read whether that pushes the answer too high or too low, make a second estimate from those changed…
Runs one of the three lightweight prioritization presets (Eisenhower urgent-important 2x2, MoSCoW Must/Should/Could/Wont bucketing, or Pareto vital-few cut) caveat-first. It leads with the fact that this is a bundle of three different operations stapled by…
Produces an ethical matrix, a grid that cross-references affected parties (rows, deliberately including voiceless ones such as future generations and the environment) against prima facie principles (columns of wellbeing, autonomy, fairness), specifying the…
Produces an evidence/inference ledger by sorting the claims in a prompt, document, or proposed conclusion into evidence, inference, and assumption, attaching a confidence level to each inference and flagging anything uncited. Use when a recommendation must be…
Evaluates competing actions under uncertainty by building a decision tree of choice and chance nodes, placing explicit probabilities on outcomes the decider does not control, rolling the tree back to an expected value per option, recommending the best-EV…
Generates novel solution candidates by stating a problem's deep relational structure, mapping it to distant source domains (nature, other industries, games), and transferring the mechanism rather than surface features, then adapting. Use when near, obvious…
Produces a Fermi decomposition worksheet that estimates an unknown numeric quantity by factoring it into a chain of order-of-magnitude sub-estimates, guessing each to within a band, then multiplying back to a point estimate plus a compounded low/high range,…
Runs a Five Whys root-cause trace caveat-first. It leads with the weak evidence (Card 2017 found the single-chain method oversimplifies multi-causal problems), then forces the discipline a bare why-chain lacks, namely flagging at each step whether more than…
Generates a new problem frame from theme analysis of the broader context, an abductive standpoint stated as approach it as if it were Y that redefines what the problem is and reasons forward to native solution directions. Use when an open paradoxical problem…
Produces a consequence map by tracing the first, second, and third order effects of a change or decision radiating outward from the center, surfacing ripples beyond the obvious and flagging the high-impact branches. Use when a decision has knock-on effects…
Produces an iceberg that moves a problem down four levels of causation - from the visible event, to the pattern over time, to the underlying structures, to the mental models that hold them in place - pairing each level with the intervention it implies to find…
Produces a negotiation preparation map that separates both sides' positions from their underlying interests, anchors the accept-or-walk decision on a named, valued best alternative inside the mapped zone of possible agreement, and invents options for mutual…
Audits whether a stated confidence interval means what it claims by running an equivalent-bet indifference test on its width and scoring nominal confidence against the actual hit rate, emitting corrected intervals and a calibration scorecard. Use when a…
Produces an issue tree that decomposes one big, ambiguous question top-down into a mutually-exclusive, collectively-exhaustive (MECE) set of smaller sub-questions, branch by branch, until the leaves are small enough to answer with data or judgment. Use when a…
Produces an annotated reasoning trace that reconstructs how a conclusion was reached, from the observable data, to the data actually selected, to the meaning and assumptions added, then flags the riskiest leap and tests an alternative interpretation. Use when…
Builds a simple mechanical scoring model - a few weighted predictive cues combined by a fixed formula and applied consistently - for a repeated predictive judgment, because consistent simple rules reliably match or beat holistic expert intuition. Use when the…
Produces a regret (opportunity-loss) matrix with the minimax pick and the binding worst-case state, choosing among options over un-probabilized states of nature. Use when a few discrete options face a few discrete uncontrollable states and no defensible…
Produces a morphological field (a Zwicky box of independent parameters by their possible values) plus a cross-consistency-pruned set of internally consistent configurations. Use when a solution is genuinely a configuration - a choice on each of several…
Converts a conditional-probability or base-rate question into natural frequencies over a concrete population (for example 9 of 1000) to compute the correct posterior and expose base-rate neglect, and refuses to proceed without real input rates. Use when…