Technology changes fast. Good decisions shouldn't depend on keeping up.
Practical guidance built around the decisions technology leaders actually make, in operations, during incidents, and under pressure.
Practical thinking • Operational experience • Real-world frameworks • Thoughtful analysis • Ethical technology
Start with the decision, not the technology
Most sites organise around what a technology is. These are organised around the calls you actually have to make.
Is this AI tool worth what it costs you to run it?
Separating tools that reduce real, repeated work from tools that only look impressive in a demo.
What breaks first when the alerts start firing?
Where recovery actually stalls during a major incident, and why it is rarely the monitoring.
Does automating this solve the problem, or hide it?
Recognising when automation removes effort and when it quietly removes visibility.
How do you say no to a change without stopping the work?
Governance that holds under pressure, without becoming the reason people route around you.
Who decides when nobody is sure who decides?
Decision rights, escalation, and the cost of ambiguity at three in the morning.
What would you check before you trusted this?
Reusable questions for evaluating anything new, so you are not starting from scratch each time.
More than articles
Four kinds of practical material, each built for a different moment in a decision.
Articles
Short, specific pieces on one decision at a time.
Frameworks
Reusable structures for evaluating what is in front of you.
Learning guides
Step-by-step paths for building capability, not just awareness.
Playbooks
What to do when it is happening now and the clock is running.
“Technology rarely fails because of technology. It fails because people misunderstood the situation.”
“I'm here to help you understand technology before you rely on it.”
You will find plenty of people willing to tell you what to think. That is not what you will find here. I will help you ask better questions, separate lasting principles from passing trends, and decide with confidence rather than hope.
I will not promise easy answers. Sometimes the honest answer is “it depends” — and knowing why it depends is the part worth learning.
— Halden, your guide at Inside Knowledge HQ
Recent writing
When a major outage happens, the technology is usually only part of the problem.
4 min read
A reusable test you can run on the next tool someone brings to your team.
6 min read
The first five minutes of an incident
Why what happens before the diagnosis often determines how long recovery takes.
7 min read
One practical lesson, every week.
Written for people responsible for technology decisions.
- No hype, and no recycled AI news
- No roundups padded out to fill a send
- No sales sequence you have to unsubscribe to escape
Short enough to read on the way into a meeting. Specific enough to use in one.