Robert SnyderFounder & President| Innovation Elegance, LLCChicago, Il, United States
Thank you Luis. Good stuff.
I follow you a little closer on the concept of “Organizational Architecture” … it’s still pretty lofty. Nodding that some aspects are mindful, formal, even “on-script.” Some aspects are casual and “off-script.”
Nodding that systemic and systematic are not the same. My distinction is that systemic is neglectful not purposeful. Systematic is purposeful.
On the of patterns, I’m mildly curious if any patterns in agile remain sacred? With so many adaptations of agile, I lost any sense of rhythm.
On the topics of authority and accountability, do you like the idea of fusing them together? Or are there occasions when they should be decoupled?
I think your list of Organizational conditions is great. Perhaps they’re not abstract, but they still harbor ambiguity, and as you might know by know, I’m keenly interested in minimizing ambiguity and all of VUCA, in the workplace. And when someone shrugs at that trend, I conclude that they avoid systems, simplification, and clarity.
You use the word “architectural” while I use the word “cultural.” It’s possible we mean the same thing but I’m not sure.
You’re correct: Five Verbs does not assign the team member. Five Verbs is a kind of prompt for forced, documented, sponsored collaboration. It is a forcing function and a “liberating structure.” It demands that the team populate the “Decision Symphony.”
Five Verbs governs decision infrastructure and rhythm. Metaphorically, these are “in front of the glass.” You are correct that outcomes are “behind the glass.” Teams do not control outcomes. I emphasize decisions since teams directly control outcomes.
One goal of the Five Verbs is to minimize the cost to detect untrustworthiness and minimize the cost to reassign for untrustworthiness, so I disagree that Five Verbs is a root cause of the hiccups you list. Five Verbs confronts untrustworthiness; i.e, when one of the assigned resources is unable to complete their verb within a modest window, e.g. one workday.
Five Verbs forces the “organizational architecture” (as ambiguous as that still is) in a rhythm of setting expectations, on paper, collaboratively. If the “organizational architecture” dislikes this rhythm, I would ask why and ask if the “organizational architecture” has a different metaphor as an inspiration and positive role model.
Financial Management Specialist | US Peace CorpsYaounde, Centre, Cameroon
Jul 24, 2026 10:00 AM
Replying to Aaron Porter
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Should we expect project management to eradicate business dysfunctions? Many of the biggest dysfunctions originate outside the project - in strategy, governance, organizational design, incentives, or leadership. Project management can expose those issues and help mitigate their impact, but expecting it to eliminate them may be expecting it to solve problems that belong to the organization as a whole.
Organizational problems tend to be cyclical rather than eliminated. Unlike diseases, they aren't caused by a single pathogen; they emerge from people, incentives, culture, governance, and changing business conditions. The biggest successes have come from institutionalizing good practices through processes, technology, and culture. Even then, those practices have to be maintained. Otherwise, organizations end up having to relearn the same lessons every few years.
HI Aaron, Thanks for tis insightful feedback Saving Changes...
Financial Management Specialist | US Peace CorpsYaounde, Centre, Cameroon
Jul 26, 2026 8:28 PM
Replying to Robert Snyder
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Thank you for the intellectual welcome, Aaron. Your post presents a handful of possible places to start, so in the order of ease of taking forward and playing “Yes And” …
“Project Management as the primary mechanism.”
For purposes of today, YES. Any alternate “primary mechanism” … let’s save for another day.
You use the word mechanics, which is a critical concept to improving team performance because only certain things can be standardized. These fall under mechanics. Adjacent to that are things that should not be standardized. Using a dance metaphor, Style.
Using a singing metaphor, contrast technique (standardized for skilled singers) versus expression (unique for skilled singers).
Yes, project management, because when project teams synchronize trustworthy productivity, they convert Current State to Future State, and within Future State is synchronized Operations.
Synchronized Operations depends on Synchronized (Trustworthy) Innovation.
Conversely, unsynchronized, untrustworthy innovation results in unsynchronized operations.
I’ll pause on that point, welcoming your reaction.
Thanks for presenting this angle of response Saving Changes...
Financial Management Specialist | US Peace CorpsYaounde, Centre, Cameroon
Jul 25, 2026 6:28 AM
Replying to Luis Branco
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An intriguing question. I suspect specific problems can be eliminated within a defined context, especially when their causes are observable and the organization has the authority and incentives to remove them. But broader project dysfunctions are rarely eradicated because they are continually reproduced by changing priorities, fragmented authority, misaligned incentives, and organizational behavior. Perhaps the real test is not whether a problem disappeared once, but whether the conditions that previously recreated it were altered in a way that could be sustained over time.
Thanks for bringing up the issue about context Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Thank you, Robert. Your clarification helps me see more clearly what Five Verbs is intended to do: create a visible, documented rhythm through which expectations, participation, decision progress, and emerging constraints become easier to observe.
A few distinctions may help sharpen where our perspectives converge.
I would not define systemic as neglectful or non-purposeful. I use it to describe phenomena arising from the relationships and interdependencies of the system as a whole, whether those relationships were deliberately designed or emerged over time. Systematic, by contrast, refers to work performed through an ordered and repeatable method. A purposeful intervention can therefore be both systematic in its execution and systemic in its effects.
I also see culture and organizational architecture as related, but not interchangeable. Culture shapes how people interpret and use authority, rules, information, and relationships. Architecture shapes how authority, accountability, incentives, capabilities, resources, governance, and decision rights are distributed. Each influences the other, but a cultural preference cannot, by itself, correct fragmented decision rights or provide someone with authority that the organization has not granted.
On authority and accountability, I would keep them conceptually distinct but architecturally aligned. Accountability may sometimes extend beyond direct operational authority, particularly for leaders responsible for designing or governing a system. However, responsibility becomes difficult to attribute legitimately when the person lacks the authority, information, capability, discretion, causal influence, resources, or opportunity to act that the responsibility requires.
This is also where I see an important contribution from Five Verbs. It can make expectations, delays, dependencies, and decision bottlenecks visible. It may reveal where the architecture supports coherent action and where it does not. I would nevertheless be cautious about interpreting an incomplete verb automatically as evidence of untrustworthiness. It may indicate that, but it may also reveal conflicting priorities, missing information, insufficient capability, unavailable authority, an unresolved dependency, or an unrealistic operating window. The distinction matters because one explanation points toward reassignment, while another points toward redesigning the conditions under which the work is being performed.
In that sense, Five Verbs may do more than operate within the architecture: it can expose it, test it, and create pressure for it to change. But whether that pressure produces sustainable improvement still depends on whether the organization is willing and able to alter the authority, incentives, resources, governance, and decision structures that the framework makes visible.
A useful forcing function can reveal where organizational architecture enables or constrains coherent action. Sustainable improvement depends not on the framework itself, but on whether the organization preserves or redesigns the conditions that the framework has made visible. Saving Changes...
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