Glossary

Bare authoritative decision (BAD)

A choice that others are expected to act on, with no reasoning given for it: a bare decision that carries directive authority.

The BAD is the form in which people at work meet Hierarchical Decision-Making and its counterparts, Distributed and Fragmented Decision-Making: a choice from a position or a role that they are expected to act on, with no reasoning to question.

Decision

A choice that is not fully substantiated to contribute to achieving a desired outcome.

In everyday use a decision is any choice that takes thought, however well reasoned. In DFS the word is narrower: it names a choice whose reasoning has not been fully drawn out and questioned. A decision adds risk that could have been avoided, to the extent that perceptiveness the organisation could have obtained was not brought to bear on it. When a choice is fully substantiated, it is no longer a decision.

Decision free organisation

An organisation where nobody is expected to act on a choice before its reasoning has been given and their questions have been answered. Choices are still made; what changes is that the reasoning arrives before anyone has to act.

It is what the environment-of-no-decision-making amounts to when it holds across the whole organisation.

Desired outcome

What someone wants the outcome to be. It may or may not be what reality would produce. In DFS, risk, expert, substantiation and decision are each defined against a desired outcome: a person is an expert for one, and a choice is a decision for one.

DICE

Define, Identify, Clarify, Execute: the four phases in which a piece of work is done so that expertise is used and the reasoning is put to others before they act.

Define states the desired outcome and the conditions it starts from. Identify chooses who does the work, on perceptiveness for this outcome in this environment, not on convenience or familiarity. Clarify is where that person puts the reasoning for the approach to the others and answers their questions, in the full substantiation process. Execute carries out the approach, with progress reported against what was clarified. A deviation that changes the approach returns to Clarify.

DICE does not replace project management, Agile, Lean or any other method of carrying out the work. It surrounds them.

Directive authority

The property of a choice that the people it reaches are organisationally expected to act on it. A manager’s instruction has it, and so does a team’s call that others must follow.

It comes from how an organisation works, not from hierarchy as such. A position can hold it, and so can a role.

Distributed Decision-Making (DDM)

The counterpart of Hierarchical Decision-Making in flat and distributed structures, where directive authority sits in roles instead of positions: choices from roles that others are expected to act on, with nobody required to explain them or answer questions about them before those people have to act.

Environment-of-no-decision-making (EoND)

The set of conditions under which an organisation brings the perceptiveness of its people to bear on its work, expertise first among it. It is what the leadership role creates, sustains and communicates.

The name points in a direction. As the conditions take hold, more choices are substantiated before anyone has to act on them, and fewer remain decisions. Where a decision cannot be avoided, it is named as a decision and its risk is managed.

Expert

Someone whose perceptiveness reaches everything that bears on one particular outcome in one particular environment. It can be a person, a team or an organisation. Expert is specific to an event: a person can be an expert for one piece of work and not for another in the same field.

In everyday use an expert is someone with credentials, a title, a reputation or long experience, and the word goes with them from one situation to the next. In DFS it does not. Credentials record exposure to events, not perceptiveness for a specific outcome.

Expertise

A high level of perceptiveness in a domain, such as cardiology, structural engineering or organisational dynamics. A person or an organisation has expertise. It makes someone potentially an expert for events in the domain, but not for every one of them: that depends on whether their perceptiveness reaches all that bears on the event at hand.

EXPID

The DFS family of tools that read observable behaviour to identify expertise: whether someone has the perceptive capacity to become an expert, and whether an organisation’s conditions allow expertise to be identified and brought to bear. The name stands for Expertise Identification.

It has three tests. PCAT assesses individuals. Two further tests assess organisations: the observable signs of how choices that others are expected to act on are made (the signs of HDM), and the observable characteristics of the organisation as a whole. EXPID is one route to identifying expertise; substantiation and track record are the others.

First principles

DFS rests on two: reality is causal, and people perceive its conditions and rules unequally. Everything else follows from them, with precise definitions, by logic.

Outcomes are produced by the conditions that are present and the rules that apply to them, and by nothing else. Those conditions and rules exist whether anyone perceives them or not. Everyone perceives; some perceive more than others, which is what gives expertise its meaning.

Fragmented Decision-Making (FDM)

The counterpart of Hierarchical Decision-Making in organisations that combine hierarchical positions, distributed roles and other ways of working: choices that others are expected to act on, with nobody required to explain them or answer questions about them before those people have to act.

Full substantiation

The state of a choice when the full substantiation process has run to its end and met no limit of what anyone perceives: everything that bears on the outcome has been perceived, and the perceptiveness gap is closed. Such a choice is no longer a decision.

Whether the gap was in fact closed shows afterwards, in the absence of risk that cannot be traced to changed conditions.

Full substantiation process (FSP)

The process in which the person who made a choice puts the reasoning for it to the people whose perceptiveness bears on it, and they ask questions until none remain that draw out more. It brings the available perceptiveness to bear and, in the same act, shows where it runs out.

Those involved are the people the choice reaches, the people who perceive something about what it will do, whether or not they will carry it out, and the people whose perceptive capacity can draw more out of the person substantiating. It runs under TONNNNO.

Hierarchical Decision-Making (HDM)

Decisions from hierarchical positions that others are expected to act on, with nobody required to explain them or answer questions about them before those people have to act.

In everyday use, hierarchical decision-making means making choices through a hierarchy, whether or not the reasoning is shared. HDM is the narrower case, the one where nobody is required to do that. What makes it HDM is that absence, not the hierarchy: a hierarchy in which the reasoning for such choices must be put to the people who act on them, and their questions answered, is not HDM.

Intuition

Perceptiveness with no substantiation: someone perceives, and the reasoning is not given. What was perceived may be accurate, but with no reasoning to question, nobody else can see how much of what bears on the outcome was perceived.

Leadership role

The role of creating, sustaining and communicating the conditions under which the perceptiveness of an organisation’s people is brought to bear on its work, expertise first among it, so that desired outcomes are achieved at minimal risk.

It is a role, not a person or a position. Anyone can take it on: chairing a meeting, leading a project, running an organisation. What it produces is conditions in the environment, not behaviour in people. Those conditions are the environment-of-no-decision-making.

PCAT

The Perceptive Capacity Assessment Tool: the EXPID test for individuals. It assesses someone’s perceptive capacity from the perceptiveness their colleagues see in how they behave at work. Where its place in the family matters, it is written EXPID-PCAT.

Several colleagues answer twenty-eight questions about the person, in four categories of behaviour, anonymously and independently. Someone with directive authority over the person does not rate them. Only behaviour involving people and organisations is scored; technical and engineering reasoning is left out.

PCAT shows who has the capacity to build expertise. Whether someone is an expert for a particular outcome is identified through substantiation and track record.

Perceptive capacity

The stable underlying ability that sets how fast perceptiveness develops from exposure to events. Equal exposure gives unequal perceptiveness, because capacity differs. Without it, exposure does not build perceptiveness, and expertise does not develop. PCAT reads it from the perceptiveness that colleagues see in someone’s behaviour at work.

Perceptiveness

What a person, or an organisation, sees of the conditions and rules at work in a particular situation, at a particular time. It has three parts: perceiving which conditions are present and how the rules that apply work on them; understanding how conditions and rules produce outcomes; and foreseeing outcomes from what has been perceived.

It is exercised in a situation; the stable ability behind it is perceptive capacity. Everyone perceives; some perceive more than others.

Perceptiveness gap

The gap between everything that bears on achieving a desired outcome and what the people working on it perceive. Risk follows from it: the gap is the cause, the risk its consequence.

Bringing more perceptiveness to bear makes the gap smaller. Substantiation does not close it; it makes what has been perceived visible, and so makes part of the gap visible too.

Risk

The effect that insufficient perception of relevant information has on achieving a desired outcome.

In everyday use, risk names any threat, uncertainty or possibility of loss. In DFS it is one thing: what follows from the perceptiveness gap. It comes in three kinds, by what can be done about it.

• Unnecessary risk is what could have been perceived, and was not: the perceptiveness was held in the organisation and not drawn out, or was not held and could have been sourced elsewhere.
• Identified risk comes from a gap that the full substantiation process found but could not close. It is named, and watched for.
• Residual risk comes from what the process never reaches, and from conditions that change after the choice. It is known only when it shows itself.

Substantiation

The reasoning from what has been perceived to a desired outcome, put where the people it reaches can question it. It shows which conditions have been perceived and how the rules that apply work on them.

In everyday use, to substantiate is to justify or prove. In DFS the reasoning also has to be answerable. Reasoning that names no conditions and no rules, or that cannot be questioned, has not been substantiated.

Substantiation expresses perceptiveness; it does not add to it. It is a spectrum, from none, in a bare decision, to full substantiation.

TONNNNO

Six principles for communication between people who perceive different things: Transparency, Objectivity, No Details, No Requirements, No Relationships and No Pretence. They apply to everyone in an exchange, whoever perceives more, and the full substantiation process runs under them.

• Transparency. The causal reasoning is clear without the listener having to think. It is the listener’s reception that counts, not the speaker’s explanation.
• Objectivity. Criteria that anyone can verify: facts over opinions, and where that is not possible, the subjective elements made explicit.
• No Details. The speaker stays with what causes what, not how exactly to do it. Detail belongs among people who share the expertise.
• No Requirements. Nobody imposes a constraint without substantiating it. A substantiated constraint is a prerequisite; an unsubstantiated one is a requirement, a decision inside the exchange.
• No Relationships. Perceivers are chosen for their perceptiveness for the outcome, not for convenience, familiarity or proximity.
• No Pretence. The limits of what someone perceives are flagged honestly. The listener says what is unclear and asks until it is clear.

Trust

In everyday use, trust is a disposition towards a person that comes from reputation or standing. In DFS it is assuming that someone’s past performance will carry over to a setting of similar kind and complexity. A reputation says what someone has; it does not show that they perceive enough for this outcome.

Trust can be a reason to act when no substantiation is given and the full substantiation process cannot be run. It is never evidence that the perceptiveness gap is closed.