The reference layer

Every name on this site has a page.

Concepts are the ideas the canvas inherits, explained without assuming you have read the source. Cases are what actually happened at named organizations, with the reporting behind each claim and how strong that reporting is. Nothing here asks you to take a number on trust.

Entries49: 28 concepts, 21 cases

Each entry carriesPlain-language explanation · sources, with strength · the cells it touches

Frameworks scored210, against the twelve cells

CorrectionsIn public, credited by name

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Case1 source 3M Margins up, invention down. What happens when you de-variance a research lab. LearningStrategyEvidence Concept2 sources Agile at scale Frameworks for running agile across hundreds of people: SAFe, LeSS, and their relatives. FlowCoordinationStructure Case2 sources Alibaba's middle office Centralized in 2015, reversed from 2020, split into six in 2023. All three were correct. StrategyStructureResources Case3 sources Amazon's builder ratio An explicit target for proportionally fewer managers, then two rounds of cuts. StructureCoordination Case2 sources Bayer's dynamic shared ownership Twelve layers to about five, and span of control replaced by span of coaching. StructureCoordinationMastery Concept2 sources Beer's Viable System Model Five systems every viable organization runs, whether or not it has named them. PurposeCoordinationEvidence Case3 sources Buurtzorg Self-managing nurse teams, no managers, and substantially fewer care hours used. StructureMasteryCoordination Case3 sources Commonwealth Bank of Australia's reversal Forty-five customer service roles cut for an AI voice bot in July 2025, reinstated within a month as an error. AuthorityEvidenceComposition Concept1 source Cynefin Four kinds of problem, and a different way to act in each. CompositionStrategyFlow Concept2 sources Deming, and plan-do-study-act The improvement loop, and knowing which kind of variation you are looking at. LearningEvidenceIncentives Concept1 source Enterprise architecture as strategy Ross, Weill, and Robertson: the operating model decides what to standardize and what to integrate, and funding follows. StrategyResourcesIncentives Case2 sources Fagor and Mondragon The largest worker cooperative's flagship went bankrupt, and the federation caught most of the fall. IncentivesStructureResources Case2 sources Haier Roughly 80,000 people reorganized into more than 4,000 self-managing microenterprises. StructurePurposeIncentives Case2 sources Handelsbanken No budgets since 1970, and better returns than its peers almost every year since. IncentivesStrategyEvidence Concept1 source Heijunka Level the flow instead of maximizing every station. FlowComposition Concept2 sources High reliability organizations Organizations that run dangerous technology for years without catastrophe, and how they do it. MasteryEvidenceLearning Concept2 sources Holacracy A written constitution for self-management: circles, roles, and governance meetings in place of managers. StructureAuthorityCoordination Concept1 source Hoshin kanri Turning a direction at the top into something a team can act on at the bottom. PurposeStrategy Case2 sources Huawei Let those who hear the gunfire call for artillery. AuthorityCoordinationStructure Case3 sources India's capability centers A whole organizational form replacing another, in about three years. ResourcesCompositionPurpose Concept1 source Jidoka Automation with a human touch. A machine that knows when to stop itself. CompositionAuthority Concept2 sources Just in time Make what is needed, when it is needed, in the amount needed. Then a pandemic arrives. FlowResources Case2 sources Klarna An assistant said to do the work of 700 agents, then a reversal fifteen months later. AuthorityCompositionMastery Concept1 source Massive transformative purpose A purpose big enough that people outside your payroll want to help. PurposeResources Case1 source Megaproject overrun research Large projects run over, predictably, and first-of-kind run over worst. PurposeStrategy Case2 sources Morning Star A tomato processor with no managers, run on written peer commitments. CoordinationStructurePurpose Concept1 source Nemawashi and ringi Do the alignment before the meeting, not inside it. CoordinationAuthority Case3 sources NEOM and The Line A purpose stated at a scale nobody could deliver. PurposeStrategyResources Concept1 source Project Cybersyn Somebody already tried running an economy as a real-time control loop. CoordinationEvidence Concept1 source Requisite variety A controller needs at least as many responses as the situation has surprises. AuthorityCompositionCoordination Case2 sources Semco Employees set their own salaries and chose their managers. It worked. AuthorityIncentivesStructure Concept2 sources Six Sigma A method for removing variation, applied to a place that needed variation. EvidenceLearningMastery Concept1 source Statistical process control Instrumentation instead of opinion, since 1924. EvidenceLearning Concept1 source Teal organizations Laloux's stage model of organizations, in which self-management is the next evolutionary step. PurposeStructure Concept1 source The AI factory When software runs the core, humans move to the edge. CompositionFlowStrategy Concept1 source The andon cord Anyone on the line can stop the line, and stopping it is the job. AuthorityFlowEvidence Case4 sources The great flattening Fewer managers, wider spans, and managers breaking first. CoordinationStructureMastery Concept3 sources The human oversight duty Regulators now require a person who can understand, intervene, and halt. EvidenceAuthorityMastery Concept1 source The moral crumple zone When an automated system fails, blame lands on the nearest human, who often had no real control. AuthorityEvidenceMastery Concept2 sources The Scaffold judgment taxonomy Our own layer: what human judgment consists of, grounded in occupational data. MasteryCompositionLearning Concept1 source The SECI model How what one expert knows becomes something the organization holds. LearningMastery Case3 sources The Spotify model Squads, tribes, chapters, and guilds. Widely copied, and by one insider's account never fully real at Spotify either. StructureCoordinationAuthority Case2 sources The very small, very high revenue team Real, and narrower than the headlines. ResourcesFlowMastery Concept1 source Theory of constraints Every system has one binding constraint. Improving anything else changes nothing. Flow Concept1 source Time-span of discretion How far ahead your longest task reaches before anyone finds out you were wrong. MasteryStructureAuthority Case2 sources Toyota The source of most of what this canvas inherits. FlowAuthorityLearningComposition Concept1 source Wardley mapping Everything you depend on is moving from novel to commodity, at different speeds. StrategyResources Concept2 sources Work deconstruction The job is the wrong unit. Break it into tasks before deciding what to automate. CompositionResourcesMastery Case2 sources Zappos and Holacracy Self-management made a condition of employment, and a third of the company left. StructureAuthorityCoordination

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