The gap

The distance between what was said and what was done — not blame, but the primary source of learning.

Say what you will do; do what you said; learn from the gap. The third clause is the one most bodies drop, and it is the one that compounds. A gap is not a verdict on a person; it is a reading taken from the system that produced it. Sought honestly, the cause is almost always upstream: a constraint never logged, conditions never agreed, a duration guessed, a word given under pressure that could not have been kept. Sought in the person, the same gap teaches nothing and costs the body its honesty, because the next promise will be shaded to avoid the shame.

It is load-bearing because it is the feedback of the whole machine. Commitment without a gap read afterwards is theatre; The Record exists to hold the gap beside the promise; Kept as a share of made is simply gaps counted. Groups that name gaps plainly move from about half their plans done toward eight or nine in ten within a few seasons — not because they promise less, but because each gap removes a cause.

It is run in the ordinary hour. At The Heartbeat each person says what they said they would do, whether they did it, the gap honestly, and what they learned; one line goes into the Record. A gap that repeats is taken to its root cause rather than its symptom. At the turning the season's gaps are read together, and what they taught is written where the next work will meet it — a defect closed nowhere else is a defect kept.

Also called: learn from the gap Stands on: Commitment · The Record · Zero Blame Environment Opens onto: Kept as a share of made · A3 Reports · Every Defect Is A Gift · Retrospective · Tightly Coupled Learning and Action In play: table · Home Sources: The LIØNSBERG Operating System (book, draft v0) §11–12 · The Seven Moves, Move 4 · Commitment (wiki term page, drafts, unreviewed) · The DNA of Heaven, Parts V and VII — lionsberg.wiki page name: The Record Open: none found.