Learning Center / The Foundations

Course 1 · Lesson 4 of 5

The onion

The bridge is open. That is one outcome, and it is held by a person with a title and a budget. Now look underneath it. The steel is delivered. The concrete has cured to specification. The inspection certificate is issued. The road is connected at both ends. The final account is settled. Each of those is a finished state that somebody else is responsible for reaching.

The layers nest. That is the whole idea.

Why it nests

An outcome is reached when something is finished. But "finished" is rarely one event. It is a handful of conditions that have to be true at the same time. Ask the question *what has to be true for this to be finished?* and the answer is a short list of smaller outcomes.

Ask the question again of each item on the list and a third layer appears. Three layers is usually enough. Four is usually a sign that somebody has stopped asking what has to be true and started listing tasks instead.

The two mistakes the onion prevents

*The first mistake is working at the wrong layer.* The person who owns the bridge spends the day chasing a delivery date for one order of steel. That is a job for the site manager, and the person who owns the bridge has just stopped holding the outcome to do somebody else's work. This is what most overloaded days actually are: the top of the work drowning in the bottom of it.

*The second mistake is holding a layer with no idea what it is for.* The person raising the purchase order does not know the bridge opens on a date, does not know that the concrete pour slips if the steel is late, and cannot make a sensible decision when the supplier offers a cheaper alternative. Layers work better when each one can see the layer above.

An example worth leaning on

An architect has taken on a commission to design a house on a difficult plot. The outcome, as the client understands it, is that the house is built. As the architect understands it, the outcome is that the house is designed, consented and built to the client's brief and budget.

The second layer is a set of outcomes belonging to other people:

• The planning authority grants consent, with conditions the design already satisfies.
• The structural engineer certifies the roof and the retaining wall.
• The contractor prices the package and signs a contract with a start date.
• The client's lender releases funds against a valuation.

The third layer belongs to individual items: the site survey, the drainage assessment, the tree survey, the party wall notices. Each one is a state; each one has a date by which it must be true; each one has a name attached.

Ownership changes as you go down

The architect is answerable for the consent. The architect is not answerable for the structural engineer's certificate, only for having engaged somebody who can produce it. The architect is certainly not answerable for the lender's valuation.

Confusing the layers produces two familiar complaints. "Nobody told me it was urgent" comes from a lower layer that could not see the layer above. "I have to do everything myself" comes from a top layer that kept reaching down.

How far down to go

Go down until you reach a layer where a single named person, working alone, can make the thing true, and a check exists for whether it is. Then stop. Below that point you are listing tasks, and tasks belong in a to-do list rather than in an outcome.

A useful habit for the middle layer is to write, beside each outcome, the name of whoever owes it to you. That one column turns a vague project into a set of things that can be chased, measured, or replaced.