PHILLIPS FORGETRUTH. CLARITY. ACTION.
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TRIPLE POINT OPERATING DIAGNOSTIC

What condition is constraining the work?

Choose one real decision, handoff, team, or recurring constraint. Do not rate the whole culture. Find the evidence, identify what is endangered, and change one condition.

BEGIN WITH ONE UNIT OF WORK

Name the constraint before interpreting it.

What happened? What decision, delay, return, conflict, or handoff can you point to? What did it cost in time, quality, trust, capacity, or opportunity?

Write one sentence: “The work is constrained when ______, which causes ______.”

THREE CAPACITIES

Inspect what must hold, what must move, and who must act.

For each statement, use one observable example. Mark it present, endangered, missing, or unclear. The disagreement may be more useful than an average.

01 / SOLID

What must hold?

Mission, intent, standards, decision criteria, and human boundaries give the work a stable form.

  • Is the non-negotiable outcome explicit?
  • Can people recognize good performance before the final result?
  • Is a method being mistaken for the standard?
02 / LIQUID

What may adapt?

Plans, roles, methods, sequence, and resources must be able to move when reality changes.

  • Can new evidence change the method without changing the mission?
  • Can someone say the current plan is failing without political punishment?
  • Can roles and resources move when the work requires it?
03 / GAS

Who may act?

Judgment, information, initiative, and influence must extend to the place where the outcome is produced.

  • Are decision rights clear enough for local action?
  • Do people surface problems early and act within intent?
  • Is independent action reviewed for learning rather than treated as disobedience?

CONDITIONS

Pressure and temperature are not prescriptions.

They are conditions to examine. Pressure includes stakes, deadlines, workload, constraints, accountability, and consequence. Temperature includes urgency, attention, pace, emotion, conflict, engagement, and fatigue.

PRESSURE

What demand or consequence is operating?

Is it necessary, chosen challenge, hindrance, acute threat, or still unknown? Is the problem excess demand, missing authority or resources, or both?

TEMPERATURE

What human energy is observable?

Name behavior, pace, conflict, attention, withdrawal, or fatigue. Do not turn a metaphor into a diagnosis of a person.

MATERIAL

What can this team carry now?

Look at competence, trust, history, incentives, confidence, leadership depth, information, tools, staffing, support, recovery, and control.

PATTERNS TO TEST

A pattern is a hypothesis, not a label.

Rigid

The standard is present, but the method is frozen.

Shapeless

Methods keep changing because standards and priorities are unstable.

Dispersed

Energy is high, but intent, concentration, or ownership is weak.

Inert

Initiative, adaptation, and accountable consequence are all low.

Crisis

Urgency and stakes exceed the system's current capacity for judgment.

ONE RESPONSIBLE CHANGE

Do not redesign the organization from a reflection.

Name the missing or endangered capacity. Choose the smallest condition change. Assign an owner with authority. Define the first observable signal within seven days and the business or behavior evidence to inspect at day 30.

Truth identifies the constraint. Clarity makes the boundary usable. Action creates the next evidence.

BRING THE EVIDENCE

Do not force the problem to fit the model.

If one constraint matters enough to examine with the people who own it, bring the event, the consequence, and the competing explanations.

Bring the constraint