Hard Problems
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Organizations protect their routines more fiercely than their goals.

James G. MarchThe Dynamics of Rules, 2000

In a reliability improvement that shifts risk elsewhere, the conversation keeps returning to what you do not know. The practical question is what you will do anyway.

When the boundary is unwritten, people optimize for what is legible and defensible, not for what is true. That is how you get busywork and brittle systems. Define the decision rights before the crisis, or the crisis will define them for you. The system learns from what you allow under pressure, not from what you say you value in calm weeks.

State the non-goal and the boundary that keeps scope from turning into a rewrite. That is how you keep pressure from rewriting the decision. Do not add ceremony; add precision.

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