Episode 558: Why Smart Organizations Keep Doing Dumb Things (Premium Preview)

Premium This is a preview of our premium episode. Full access is available only to premium subscribers. Click here and learn about the Premium Podcast to access this interview... [Play video preview episode](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_558_2026_08_29_Smart_Organizations_Dumb_Things_Preview.mp4 "To download: Right click here and select 'Save as...' or 'Save target as...'") | [Play audio-only preview episode](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/pmpodcast/PM_Podcast_558_2026_08_29_Smart_Organizations_Dumb_Things_Preview.mp3 "To download: Right click here and select 'Save as...' or 'Save target as...'") | [Play on YouTube](https://youtu.be/vc1V4NUuhLU "Watch it on YouTube") | [Play on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xQm6HgQCP8RyVmPuuxwbf "Watch it on Spotify") ## Episode Summary Sara Gallagher returns to examine a frustrating reality for project managers: organizations can employ smart, experienced, well-intentioned people and still produce the same bad outcomes again and again. Sara, president of The Persimmon Group and creator of the Big Dumb Questions newsletter, brings more than 15 years of consulting experience to a discussion that starts with artificial intelligence and quickly expands into how organizations make decisions, manage transitions, respond to change, and structure project leadership. She explains how she separates work into simple, complicated, and complex categories when deciding what to give AI, and why simple and selected complicated work offer the most practical opportunities today. From there, Sara and Cornelius examine decision latency and the danger of judging a decision only by its eventual outcome. Sara argues that leaders should focus on whether they made a defensible decision based on the information and criteria available at the time. They also examine project handoffs, where weak preparation can allow value to leak away and risk to increase just as the project reaches a critical transition point.