Week 6 Session: Week 6: Silence Is a Position — Sometimes

Reading what a record omits, and the several different things an abstention or a missing name can mean.

29 March 2027

Before the session#

This is the week the Decision Autopsy assessment is due. Bring your finished autopsy, including whatever gaps you found and could not close.

The case document for this week#

Minutes excerpt, LSS Rollout Working Group, 13 March, circulated 20 March:

Item 2: Phased rollout sequence. Tomas Herrera presented the proposed three-phase sequence. Sanjay Okoro asked whether frontline staff would have a chance to raise concerns about phase order before it was finalised. The sequence was confirmed as presented. Item closed, 6 minutes.

In the session#

An abstention, a name missing from a distribution list, or a minute that records “discussion held” with no summary are all silences — and all of them are compatible with several different explanations. Someone abstains because they are conflicted, because they disagree but don’t want it minuted, because they weren’t paying attention, or because abstaining is the position their role requires regardless of their private view. The record alone cannot tell you which.

Read the minutes excerpt above: Okoro’s question is recorded; nothing between it and “confirmed as presented” is. Working in pairs, list every distinct explanation for that gap that the minutes alone cannot rule out — before the class compares lists and checks whether anyone’s Decision Autopsy this week resolved a similar gap by assumption rather than by evidence.

The session then runs a short peer exercise: swap autopsies with a partner and try to find a silence in their chosen decision that admits a reading they didn’t consider. The goal is not to win an argument about what “really” happened — it is to widen the set of explanations a reader is required to consider before treating a silence as evidence of anything in particular.

After the session#

Nothing is due immediately after this session. Weeks 7 to 9 build toward the Alignment Lab, where you will produce and read exactly this kind of ambiguous record yourself, from the inside.