About this notebook

This notebook records a research program.

Every organization is born from thousands of decisions. Some are large. Most are small: a name, a package, a process, a conversation, a hire. We usually see these decisions as isolated events. The hypothesis that guides this work is that they are not independent. When an organization has a clear promise, each decision begins to influence the next, forming a pattern of development.

This notebook exists to observe that process.

Each entry documents a cycle of investigation. First, a decision. Then, the consequences it produces in the organization. Finally, the hypotheses those consequences raise about the very model that guided the decision.

The order is deliberate.

I do not start with theory in order to prove it, nor with practice merely to illustrate it. Theory guides the decisions. Practice reveals their consequences. Those consequences, in turn, may support, expand, or contradict the theory itself.

That is why the hypotheses recorded here are not conclusions. They are working hypotheses. Some will be strengthened by new entries. Others will be abandoned. The purpose of this notebook is not to defend a model, but to submit it continuously to reality.

The essays present, at each moment, the best theoretical formulation I have been able to build. This notebook records the process by which that formulation is continuously put to the test.

If this experiment works, both the organizations observed and the theory itself will end up different from how they began.