In this series so far, I’ve argued that:
quality is what customers actually need, not what organisations label as “good”
efficiency is impossible without understanding the work
learning systems sense and adapt to change
coherence is the measure of whether that adaptation strengthens or drifts
and in Article 5, architecture is what creates the structural conditions for coherence to emerge
This article moves to the next layer:
If architecture creates coherence, what maintains it?
The answer is simple:
Decisions.
Decisions are the metabolism of an organisation.
They reveal the system’s real behaviour, not its stated aspirations.
Most organisations don’t fragment because people make poor decisions, but because the decision system produces noise faster than the architecture can absorb it.
Why Decisions Matter More Than Structure
Structure sets the possibility space.
Decision-making determines the actual trajectory.
Every leader has seen:
a decision made for one purpose unintentionally creating harm elsewhere
committees approving the same thing in different ways
KPIs that pull teams in opposing directions
escalations caused not by risk, but by unclear decision rights
good decisions arriving too late to matter
“shadow authority” networks making real calls while formal processes play catch-up
These aren’t people problems.
They are system problems expressed through decisions.
This is decision drift: decisions gradually diverging from the organisation’s purpose, principles, and intended design.
Decision drift is the most reliable early indicator that transformation is failing - long before budgets, restructures or technology are blamed.
The Five Failure Modes of Decision Drift
Mapped directly to the five coherence dimensions from Article 4:
1. Misalignment: Decisions optimise local performance (or local pressure), not system outcomes. Purpose and performance lose their connection.
2. Low Resonance: A decision is made, but its signal doesn’t travel cleanly: people don’t hear it, don’t understand it, or get conflicting versions.
3. Low Resilience: A decision in one part of the system destabilises another part because interdependencies weren’t visible or understood.
4. Drift: Exceptions, workarounds, delegation confusion and “just this time” calls accumulate. Over time, the organisation’s actual operating model diverges from its intended one.
5. Redundancy: Multiple groups repeatedly make the same category of decision differently, creating duplicated effort and contradictory pathways.
When transformations “lose shape,” these five dynamics are usually the cause.
How Decision Systems Actually Work (Formal vs Informal)
Every organisation has two decision systems.
The Formal System
delegation frameworks
operational policies
committee structures
approval workflows
documented pathways
This is the system executives think they run.
The Informal System
who people actually trust
the experts others quietly go to
tacit norms (“we don’t do that here”)
“if you want something done, talk to…” networks
social authority, not positional authority
This is the system that actually runs the organisation.
In coherent organisations, formal and informal reinforce each other.
In incoherent organisations, they compete and every decision becomes noise.
The Four Conditions of a Coherent Decision System
A coherent organisation does not eliminate complexity; it organises it.
That requires four structural conditions:
1. Clarity of Mandate: Every category of decision has a clearly articulated purpose and intent. It answers: What is this decision for, and what must it reinforce?
2. Clarity of Authority: Authority is matched to expertise and context: who can decide, on what basis, and within what limits.
3. Clarity of Pathway: Decisions travel through the system in predictable ways:
inputs → analysis → consultation → outcome → communication → implementation.
4. Clarity of Constraint: The guardrails that cannot be breached: mission, standards, quality, risk appetite, coherence rules.
Where these four conditions exist, decisions reinforce the system.
Where they don’t, decisions silently rewrite it.
How WorkLattice Models Decision Systems
To design for coherence, leaders must be able to see coherence.
This is where WorkLattice shifts from theory into capability.
Using a GraphRAG architecture (retrieval-augmented generation over a relational graph, not documents), WorkLattice models an organisation as a living, evolving network.
Every decision becomes a graph node with attributes:
decision category
required evidence or inputs
affected processes
approval legs and delegation layers
interdependencies and constraints
propagation pathways across roles, systems and policies
WorkLattice then applies quantum-inspired perturbation analytics to test:
Decision Lag: How long decisions take under different loads and structures.
Propagation Integrity: How cleanly decisions travel across the organisation.
Resilience: How a decision in one area affects stability in another.
Drift Detection: When actual decisions begin to diverge from intended principles.
Contradiction & Redundancy Detection: When two decisions conflict or when parallel processes repeatedly duplicate effort.
This is not AI sitting “on top” of the organisation.
This is AI acting as the organisation’s nervous system:
sensing
interpreting
stress-testing
reflecting the system back to itself
It transforms architecture principles into measurable system behaviour.
Punchline: Decisions as the Metabolism of Coherence
Architecture gives an organisation its shape.
Decisions give it its movement.
A system becomes what it repeatedly decides.
If decision flow is coherent, the organisation stays aligned, adaptive and resilient.
If decision flow drifts, the organisation fragments, even with good people, good intentions and good technology.
Coherence is maintained or lost one decision at a time.
Looking Ahead: Article 7 - Governance as the Choreography of Coherence
Article 7 will explore:
how committees amplify or suppress system signal
why delegations succeed or fail in practice
how governance becomes adaptive instead of bureaucratic
how to design “just enough structure” without killing agility
how WorkLattice tests governance load, alignment and propagation
Governance is how organisations choreograph coherence.
We will explore how to redesign it for the world we now work in.
Reflection Question
When you trace a recent major decision back to its origin,
do you find a clear system or an archaeological dig?