Symptom-to-path

Local KPI Wars

Areas optimize against one another because local metrics drive behavior more strongly than shared impact or value flow.

concepts

Goodhart's Law

When a metric becomes a target, it loses explanatory value because the system starts optimizing for the proxy instead of the underlying outcome.

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Why this step:Shows directly why local metrics distort behavior and systematically produce optimization against the whole.

diagnostics

Critical Systems Heuristics

A philosophical diagnostic tool that asks which actors gain power from a software architecture and who is disempowered by it.

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Why this step:Helps explain Local KPI Wars not just descriptively, but in a structurally understandable way.

diagnostics

Boundary Critique

A method for exposing deliberate blind spots by questioning what, and who, was actively excluded from an architecture decision.

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Why this step:Adds a second perspective to the diagnosis so that side effects and limits become visible.

interventions

Incentive Redesign

The destruction of the cobra effect in IT by stopping the reward of failure-producing behavior and aligning incentives with system health instead.

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Why this step:Derives an initial intervention from the diagnosis that targets structure rather than only the symptom.

tooling

Systems Mapping Canvas Tools

Frameworks for the wall. Pre-structured thinking matrices, from Wardley Maps to Team API canvases, that keep architecture offsites from dissolving into philosophical small talk.

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Why this step:Supports the practical implementation and documentation of the path from Local KPI Wars to change.

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