Research

Everything I've written about how this work is done. Longer analysis pieces and shorter method notes, each stating what it is based on and what it could not determine.

Notes and analysis

Jul 2026 Nonprofit and Global Operations in an AI-Driven World Adoption is near universal and impact is rare. Two structural reasons: AI is added on the side of the boundary that already holds the power, and it quietly deskills the people who run the work while making experts who replace the ones who build it. A double-edged sword. Sep 2025 When Not to Hire Someone Like Me Cross-industry pattern recognition suits a narrow class of problem. For most operational problems, domain depth wins. Being honest about which is which. Mar 2025 What a Process Audit Actually Involves A plain description of the first two weeks of an engagement, written because "process audit" means very different things to different people. Nov 2024 Problems That Live Between Departments When billing blames scheduling and scheduling blames billing, both are usually right. The failure is in the handoff, which nobody is measured on. Jun 2023 Before You Diagnose a Performance Gap, Confirm It Exists A meaningful share of apparent variance between teams turns out to be definitional. They are counting different things and calling them by the same name. Feb 2022 Sequencing Automation: Data Trust Before Speed Automating a lookup against stale data produces fast, confident, wrong answers. In a clinical or regulated context that is worse than a slow correct one.

Formal publications

Problems That Live Between Departments: A Diagnostic Note on Cross-Functional Process Failure
David Zatara
Preprint (2024)
BibTeX 
@techreport{zatara2024handoff,
  title={Problems That Live Between Departments: A Diagnostic Note on Cross-Functional Process Failure},
  author={Zatara, David},
  year={2024}
}
Before You Diagnose a Performance Gap, Confirm It Exists
David Zatara
Preprint (2023)
BibTeX 
@techreport{zatara2023measurement,
  title={Before You Diagnose a Performance Gap, Confirm It Exists},
  author={Zatara, David},
  year={2023}
}
Sequencing Automation: Why Data Trust Must Precede Speed
David Zatara
Preprint (2022)
BibTeX 
@techreport{zatara2022automation,
  title={Sequencing Automation: Why Data Trust Must Precede Speed},
  author={Zatara, David},
  year={2022}
}
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