Toolkit — Glossary¶

Adoption path¶

A system’s realistic entry into the organization: who can run it first, what minimum viable use looks like, how value appears quickly, and what redesign is required to scale.

Artifact¶

A concrete output a system produces that makes thinking and decisions inspectable (e.g., decision log entry, ownership map, interface contract, allocation table). If there is no artifact, there is no system—only conversation.

Artifact explosion¶

A scale failure mode where artifacts multiply faster than decisions improve, and teams spend time reconciling representations instead of acting.

Authority boundary¶

The explicit limit of who can decide, enforce constraints, approve changes, or escalate. Systems without authority boundaries rely on persuasion and drift under stress.

Authority mismatch¶

A failure mode where a system requires enforcement power that the unit running it does not have, producing superficial compliance and governance inflation.

Boundary rules¶

The system’s explicit “no”: what it refuses to do, what vague language it disallows, what behaviors it forbids, and what must be true to proceed.

Busy-team misuse¶

A predictable misuse mode where time pressure causes teams to weaken constraints, skip artifacts, or convert the system into a checkbox ritual.

Causality model¶

The system’s embedded belief about how actions produce outcomes. Common models: linear planning, feedback loops, constraints & flow, evolution/selection, socio-technical dynamics. Model mismatch invalidates systems.

Collision¶

When two systems optimize the same decision differently (or control the same object differently), causing conflict, drift, and “which system wins?” ambiguity.

Compliance theater¶

When a system’s visible motions are performed to signal control, while decisions and outcomes remain unchanged.

Constraint¶

A rule that forbids or forces behavior to create real tradeoffs and prevent decision avoidance. Constraints must be enforceable and should include explicit defaults.

Constraint ladder¶

Strength levels of constraints, from weak to strong: norm → policy → rule → gate → automatic default.

Constraints & flow¶

A causality model focused on bottlenecks, queues, WIP, and throughput. Fits delivery/operations problems where work doesn’t move.

Cost cap¶

A governance rule that limits how much time/effort a system may consume before it must justify itself or be redesigned/retired.

Default¶

The system’s automatic behavior when people avoid a decision or violate a constraint. Defaults make avoidance expensive and keep systems functional under pressure.

Decomposition¶

A method for reconstructing a system’s operating logic across the canonical dimensions so it can be evaluated, compared, adapted, or rejected.

Decomposition table¶

The primary artifact of decomposition: a filled specification of the system across the ten canonical dimensions.

Decision¶

A commitment that changes what happens next (priority, scope, ownership, sequencing, investment, diagnosis, repair). Discussion is not a decision.

Decision clarity¶

The property of a system where participants can name the optimized decision and produce consistent decision outputs.

Decision log¶

An artifact that records a decision with context, options, rationale, owner, and review date. Useful for preventing reversals, blame cycles, and memory loss.

Decision machine¶

A system understood operationally: it takes ambiguity as input, applies rules/constraints, and outputs a decision that commits action. If no decision improves, the system is ornamental.

Decision type¶

The primary category of decision a system optimizes: priority, scope, ownership, sequencing, investment, diagnosis, repair.

Drift¶

The predictable degradation of a system over time due to incentives, convenience, turnover, and political pressure. Systems must be designed with drift in mind.

Enforcement¶

The mechanism that makes constraints real: who enforces, how, and what happens when rules are violated or decisions are avoided.

Evolution / selection¶

A causality model where progress emerges through variation, selection, and retention over time. Fits scaling, innovation portfolios, and ecosystem dynamics.

Failure anchoring¶

The discipline of grounding a system in an observable failure rather than abstract aspirations like “alignment” or “clarity.”

Failure map¶

A compact description of where a failure appears (strategy/discovery/delivery/cooperation/evolution), how it manifests, and what it costs.

Feedback loops¶

A causality model where truth is learned through action, observation, and adaptation. Fits discovery, strategy under uncertainty, experimentation.

Framework stacking¶

A failure mode where new systems are added on top of old systems rather than replacing or subordinating them, creating collisions and artifact overload.

A recurring failure or decision domain not owned by any system in the landscape, leading to ad hoc behavior and recurring surprises.

Inspectability¶

The property of a system where its artifacts and outputs can be examined, challenged, compared over time, and used to make subsequent decisions.

Interface¶

The boundary where two units interact (teams, services, domains). Interface clarity often matters more than internal team rituals at multi-team scale.

Interface contract¶

An artifact defining how an interface behaves and is governed (ownership, expectations, change protocol, SLAs where relevant).

Kill criteria¶

Explicit conditions under which an initiative, system, or experiment must stop or be retired. Prevents endless accumulation.

Landscape (system landscape)¶

The set of systems—formal and informal—that shape decisions in an environment, including processes, governance, tools, and cultural defaults.

Landscape matrix¶

The primary artifact for system landscape identification: a table listing systems and their decision type, unit of analysis, object of control, artifacts, constraints, and misuse modes.

Legibility¶

How easily leadership or outsiders can “read” what is happening. Useful, but dangerous when it replaces truth and drives reporting over decisions.

Legibility over truth¶

A failure mode where artifacts are optimized to look stable and understandable, causing bad news to travel slowly and surprises to appear late.

Linear planning¶

A causality model assuming sufficient predictability to plan sequences and expect them to hold. Fits stable, repeatable work.

Metric capture¶

A failure mode where metrics become targets or weapons, driving gaming and hiding reality. Measurement becomes an incentive system rather than a learning system.

Minimal Viable System (MVS)¶

The smallest system that can reliably improve a real decision under real constraints. Core formula: one decision + one artifact + one constraint + one default (plus misuse warning and adoption path).

Misuse model¶

A prediction of how a system will be gamed, ritualized, captured, or degraded—plus mitigations. Misuse is part of design, not an afterthought.

Non-negotiable rule¶

The constraint that gives a system power—what it forbids or forces even when inconvenient.

Object of control¶

What a system directly manipulates (e.g., work items, interfaces, constraints, information flow). Systems do not control outcomes directly; they control objects that influence outcomes.

Observable failure¶

A repeated breakdown that can be witnessed and has concrete consequences. The required anchor for system design and selection.

Observable Failure Statement¶

A 3–5 sentence artifact describing: situation, recurring symptom, consequence/cost, who is impacted, and frequency. The entry condition for system work.

Operating mode¶

How a system runs in practice: one-off vs continuous, slow strategic vs fast operational, facilitation-heavy vs solo-usable, cadence/event triggers.

Ownership¶

A decision domain about responsibility and authority: who owns what, who decides, who maintains, who approves changes, and how disputes escalate.

Precedence rule¶

A rule that resolves collisions by declaring which system’s artifact/decision wins when systems overlap.

Problem frame¶

The category of failure the system addresses: strategy, discovery, delivery, cooperation, evolution/scaling. Frames determine appropriate causality assumptions and artifacts.

Repair¶

A decision domain about structural fixes: what changes remove constraints or recurring failures, and how capacity is protected for that work.

Review & validation¶

A governance practice that ends with one of four outcomes: keep, modify, subordinate, remove—based on evidence of decision improvement, enforceability, and misuse.

Scale collapse¶

Failure caused by applying a system at the wrong unit of analysis (e.g., team practice mandated org-wide) without redesign of artifacts, authority, and constraints.

Selection pressure¶

The force that causes winners to persist and losers to stop (e.g., kill criteria, gates, budget limits). Without selection pressure, “evolution” becomes sprawl.

Socio-technical dynamics¶

A causality model where outcomes are shaped by incentives, authority, trust, identity, and power interacting with technical reality. Fits cooperation and governance failures.

Source of truth¶

The artifact (or artifact set) that is authoritative for a decision domain. Multiple sources create collision and translation work.

Subordinate¶

A review outcome: keep a system but clarify it is secondary to another system (via precedence rules) to prevent collisions.

Sunset clause¶

A rule that a system (or constraint) expires unless renewed based on evidence. Prevents fossilization.

System¶

An engineered construct that reduces a specific observable failure by optimizing a specific decision through controllable objects, producing inspectable artifacts, under enforceable constraints, with a misuse model.

System Contract¶

The required specification for deliberate system invention: target situation, observable failure, root-cause assumption, object of control, decision optimized, artifacts, constraint + default, misuse model, adoption path.

System shape¶

A common structural pattern of systems (e.g., diagnostic, allocation, boundary, flow-control, selection). Shapes help keep systems coherent and minimal.

Unit of analysis¶

The smallest boundary where the system’s logic is valid and enforceable: individual, team, multi-team, organization, ecosystem/market.

Vocabulary substitution¶

A failure mode where words replace decisions (“alignment” replaces priority, “clarity” replaces scope). Creates debate without commitment.

WIP (Work in Progress)¶

Work started but not finished. Uncontrolled WIP creates queues, context switching, and long cycle times; controlling WIP is a common flow constraint.

“We’ll revisit”¶

A common decision-avoidance escape hatch. Systems counter it with constraints and explicit defaults.