What would it mean to lose a capability#

two facts wearing the same word#

An organisation can hold every drawing, every specification, every report it ever produced about how it once did something, and still be unable to do that thing. That sounds like a contradiction the first time you hear it. It isn’t one — it’s just two different facts wearing the same word.

“we know how we did it”#

• can mean: we have the file
• can mean: we could do it again tomorrow

Most institutions cannot tell you which one they mean until the capability is needed and turns out not to be there.

a method, tested eleven times#

This course is a method for telling the two apart, tested against eleven cases where an institution found out the hard way. The subject is institutional memory at the scale of an organisation — not your own habits, not your own memory.

discussion#

• Pick a system you know well. Is “we know how it works” there a file or a doing, for you specifically?
• Could you tell which one your organisation means, before being asked?
• What would count as evidence you actually have the capability, not just the record of it?
• If a capability and its record can come apart, what would it take to notice the gap before you need the capability and find it isn’t there?

activity: guess documentation vs capability#

Setup (5 min). Hand out the one-line titles of weeks 2–12, with no case detail. Each student privately guesses, in one sentence, “documentation problem” or “capability problem” for each.

Pairs (20 min). Compare guesses with a partner. Where you disagree, argue it out — the reasoning matters more than the label you land on.

Share-back (15 min). A show of hands per case, tallied on the board.

debrief#

Look at whichever case split the room most in the share-back. What did the disagreement actually turn on — a fact nobody had yet, or a genuine ambiguity in the distinction itself?

wrap-up#

A capability and its record can come apart, and most institutions can’t tell you which one they’re holding until it’s too late to matter. Week 2 gives the sharpest version of this: a capability that was never on the record to begin with.