Define the
actual problem.
The question presented first is not always the question that needs answering. Establish what is known, what is assumed, who matters, and where uncertainty is affecting the decision.
An independent practice
Some problems
stop belonging
to a department.
They cross technology, institutions, infrastructure, and human behavior. Eventually the original category becomes less useful than the system surrounding it.
Explore the practice01 / A wider frameIllustrative model
The system determines what is possible.
Strategy · Technology · InstitutionsThe office for difficult problems.
01 / The practice
Difficult problems rarely remain inside the category where they began.
A technology decision can become an organizational question. An operational problem can reveal an institutional dependency.
A strategic initiative may turn on infrastructure, incentives, or behavior outside the organization responsible for it.
STOTES examines problems whose boundaries have become uncertain: the assumptions behind a decision, the constraints that actually matter, and the consequences that the initial question leaves out.
A point of view02 / Method
First, make the
structure visible.
Different matters require different methods.
Three questions keep the work directed.
Define the
Build
the model.
Map the relationships that shape the situation: technical realities, institutional constraints, actors, incentives, and dependencies. A useful model explains what changes when something moves.
Find
the decision.
Research is useful when it improves judgment. Resolve the analysis toward choices: what to do, what to prepare for, and what evidence would cause the answer to change.
03 / Fields of interest
Look across
the boundaries.
The divisions are conventional.
The relationships are consequential.
Power
How authority, incentives, and responsibility shape what can actually change.
Technology
Where technical capability changes the choices available to an organization.
Infrastructure
The physical and digital systems upon which other systems quietly depend.
Information
How knowledge is produced, interpreted, distributed, and acted upon.
Institutions
The rules, habits, and constraints that outlast individual decisions.
Uncertainty
Situations in which action is required before certainty becomes available.
04 / Perspective
Infrastructure
is a choice about
the future.
Before an organization chooses its next move, its dependencies have already narrowed the field.
Infrastructure does more than support a strategy. It establishes which strategies are practical, which require permission, and which are too expensive to attempt.
Read the perspective05 / Notes
Observations
from the edges.
All notes The practice
We use whatever
discipline the
problem requires.
The method changes with the question. The objective remains the same: establish enough clarity to make a better decision.
How the work takes shape