The Art of Decent Structure™

To get a quick feel on guiding principles, we've created The Art of Decent Structure™ - an Art of War inspired summary of the Decent Framework™.

If you'd like the official copy - check here

Finally - a reminder, this is copyrighted stuff. We love community building and open discourse, but ask that you use the official copy and reference the usage policy when sharing.

An enterprise is a system.

Owners design a solution, officers manage it, customers consume it.

An enterprise is a value engine.

Capital is leveraged to solve a problem. Returns are realized by scaling the solution.

The market determines value.

If you create real value, the market will reward it – with cold, hard cash.

Iteration and innovation are not the same.

Iteration delivers value. Innovation creates it.

Risks are persistent, existential threats.

They can’t be fixed, only managed.

Scope is the fundamental unit of value.

Investments, decisions, authority, and accountability are built on top of it.

Process is a side effect of scope interaction.

And it is almost never the solution.

Scopes are explicitly defined.

Boundaries. Expectations. Terms. Constraints.

Scopes have a single, accountable officer.

Recognition for the good, and the bad.

All decisions have exactly one stakeholder.

Consensus and alignment are dead.

All necessary scopes are equally important.

What good is a brain without a heart?

Value chains trace capital to outcomes.

Spend is tied to revenue by linking scopes together.

Scopes are merged, branched, or pruned.

Growth and optimization aren’t exciting – they’re systematic.

Scope Branching™ is the competitive advantage.

You make a lot more when you reuse existing resources to solve new problems.

All officers are financially accountable.

If you can’t trust them with money, why do they work for you?

Shareholders have basic expectations.

You don’t get a gold star just for keeping the company afloat.

Every enterprise has a maximum structural efficiency.

Restructure is an actual requirement for growth. Stewardship requires intentional design. If a product doesn’t have extra pieces, your company shouldn’t either.

Methodology lives within scopes.

If you’re delivering value, within the required constraints, who cares how you got there?

Waiting for signal is dead.

The future belongs to organizations that proactively design and manage value.

Clarity is coming.

The operational landscape is changing too fast to indulge ambiguity and formality.

The enterprise serves the shareholder.

You were hired as a steward. You were entrusted with shareholder resources. You are expected to leverage those resources to the shareholder’s benefit. You are obligated to maximize the return on shareholder investments, in accordance with their directives.

If you don’t like that idea: • Be rich. • Become a majority shareholder. • Make your own directives.

Scope the future. Then own it.

Understand what you have, and where you’re going with it.