Making decisions is one of keystone actions we all take on a consistent basis, and we’re all faced with an abundance of options that lead us in conflicting directions. It’s hard not to be irrational.

The bad news is that the underperforming salespeople lack the self-awareness to know that buyers don’t value them, nor do they understand why. They don’t take the time to figure out why they lost a deal or longtime client. They either don’t know why they weren’t selected or they reflexively blame it on factors out of their control.

Executives appear to recognize this imperative and frequently exhort their companies to become “learning organizations.” Still, many businesses fail to instill the right practices for developing a thriving learning culture.

Top teams need to navigate greater complexity and uncertainty than teams lower on the org chart. Perhaps that ‘s why we found the highest-performing senior teams are those that recognize and skillfully navigate three key tensions. These tensions are embraced as polarities to be managed rather than problems to be solved.

In an era of fast-paced offices, instant gratification, and constant access, one of the most important things we can do personally and professionally is take a step back. Taking the time to be thoughtful about our actions and responses can ultimately leave us with more time and more bandwidth to do our jobs well — and be happier outside of work as well.

Onboarding is one of the least measured aspects of human resources. And as a result of that lack of metrics, most organizations can only guess as to which of their onboarding features make a measurable difference. However, Google’s analytics team led the way in trying closely measured experiments in order to discover which factors have the highest positive impact on getting new hires up to minimum productivity levels faster.

To our surprise, we found that the highest-performing teams were the ones that adopted a different configuration of expertise depending on the needs of the project phase. They decentralized design expertise when identifying solutions, and then centralized technical expertise to build them.

It’s not bad, wrong, or lazy to pick a popular, crowd-approved strategy. Those strategies are good, safe bets, and there’s a reason most loner strategies are so lonely. On the other hand, you can build your skill at developing good loner strategies if you can improve your ability to think strategically. With skills, processes, and tools to generate and evaluate ideas, you can spot risks worth taking.

The good news is that you can harness the power of platforms and network effects without turning yourself completely inside out. The business press tends to focus on “pure-play” platforms like Facebook, eBay, and PayPal. But platforms and networks can be developed in many different ways.

We need to start treating innovation like other business disciplines — as a set of tools that are designed to accomplish specific objectives. Just as we wouldn’t rely on a single marketing tactic or a single source of financing for the entire life of an organization, we need to build up a portfolio of innovation strategies designed for specific tasks.

The obvious lesson is that our adult brains are tuned to relate current events to past experiences so that we can make sense of the world. This serves us well in areas that we find replicable success (history repeats itself). Where this can get in our way, and where leaning on our fluid intelligence is important, is when we are faced with new and complex problems which require new and unique solutions. Far too often we get stuck in analysis paralysis and fail to act because we are trying to find the right clue to unlock our thinking.

What does long-term debt mean for millennials? Much more than you may think. With the national debt projected to hit $20 trillion this year, no one has more at stake in how America confronts its fiscal challenges than our generation. It’s our economic future on the line.

Failure is sometimes lauded as a key to successful innovation, but it takes a psychic toll on the manager. Anxiety can lead to exaggerated worry, irrational fear, and obsessive thoughts. So how do you maintain your calm when the roof is falling on you?

For example, while women typically make up roughly 16% of software engineers in the U.S. (and almost no companies report engineering data specifically), Pinterest’s goal in 2016 was to hire women engineers at nearly twice this rate. The goal was based on a legal analysis of the current workforce, industry graduate rates, and co-founders Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp’s desire to push far beyond the status quo after two years of flat data.

One second can be the difference between achieving desired results or not. One second is all it takes to become less reactive and more in tune with the moment. In that one second lies the opportunity to improve the way you decide and direct, the way you engage and lead. That’s an enormous advantage for leaders in fast-paced, high-pressure jobs.

In short, trust begets trust. When people are trusted, they tend to trust in return. But people must feel trusted to reciprocate trust. Managers have to do more than trust employees; they need to show it.

The 16th-century financier Sir Thomas Gresham famously observed that bad money drives out good. The same, I’d suggest, is true about illegal business models. If we allow an illegal business model to flourish in one sector, soon businesses in that sector and others will see that the shrewd strategy is to ignore the law, seek forgiveness rather than permission, and hope for the best.

To me, though, the much more profound question, both substantively and symbolically, is what the deal says about the future of an approach to business, branding, and organizational culture that Whole Foods and Amazon have come to represent. In a nutshell, does this deal signal the beginning of the end for the so-called new economy, or is it more like the end of the beginning? Is it a sign of strength for those of us who believe there are smarter, saner, more sustainable ways to create economic value and build organizations based on humane values, or is it a warning sign? What lessons can we draw about what it takes to turn progressive ideas about business strategy and practices into enduring businesses?

There is an enormous gender gap in venture capital funding in the United States. Female entrepreneurs receive only about 2% of all venture funding, despite owning 38% of the businesses in the country. The prevailing hope among academics, policy makers, and practitioners alike has been that this gap will narrow as more women become venture capitalists. However, homophily does not seem to be the only culprit behind the funding gap. Over the past several years, the U.S. has seen an increase in the number of female venture capitalists (from 3% of all VCs in 2014 to an estimated 7% today), but the funding gap has only widened.

Many salespeople behave as if buyers are rational decision makers. In reality, human nature is complicated, and a mix of factors — some rational, some not — determine how buyers evaluate sales reps and who they select. Ultimately, it is the mastery of the intangible, intuitive human element of the sales process that separates the winner from losers.