Belief is a wound that knowledge must heal. – Ursula Le Guin

The Tidal Wave

Throughout my career, I've had a recurring dream.I am standing alone in a tall cave. Moisture drips onto my clothes from the stone walls. I am facing the wide mouth of the cave … watching a tidal wave head towards me. I am shouting at it. That's the entire dream. Yelling at a tidal wave that never arrives but is always encroaching. Perhaps you’ve felt like this too; shouting at forces you can’t compel? This chapter gives you a map of things to focus on instead. Six truths and their matching paths that help you stop yelling at the wave and create something different.“Gaslit” is what you feel when you are being manipulated into doubting your own perception of reality. The true Gaslight Masters are the Six Dominant Delusions (of Tidal Wave Size). They can be so big, The Notorious RBG couldn’t get hired as a lawyer.The power of the delusions comes from our attention. We invest our time, energy, and attention reinforcing them, rather than building the system we need.I no longer dream of tidal waves. The dream stopped when I stopped believing that if I could just catch a break, I’d finally get some work down. I no longer stand in front of the oncoming pain train, ready to stop it like I’m Superman. Only to get run over, again and again, while the train just keeps on rolling.

Instead, I invest my time, energy and attention in generating knowledge flow. And, I hope, helping you to do the same.Consider this:How might you stop yelling at the tidal wave and instead, reclaim your time, energy, and attention?

The Six Inconceivable Truths

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -- The Princess Bride

This chapter is an orientation. A high-level map of our journey forward. You’ll be introduced to the truths and pathways that you’ll be exploring.

Truth (worldview)

Spiral Path (practices)

Knowledge is Shaped by Time, Energy, and Attention

Navigating Temporal Currents

Knowledge is Relational Reciprocity

Cultivating Coherence

Knowledge is Emergent Meaning

Architecting Emergent Meaning

Knowledge Leadership is Facilitation

Stewarding Distributed Decisions

Knowledge is Many Ways of Knowing

Mastermind Cognitive Ecologies

Knowledge is Engineered Through Learning

Designing Learning Loops

Reading this chapter might feel a bit like a tidal wave. Don’t try to memorize any of it. I just want you to get the feel, the rhythm, of the book. We’ll break each one down in subsequent chapters, you can take your time.These are not perfect frameworks. They don’t address every challenge that every organization will ever face. The truths are road signs pointing away from the dominant delusions, towards smarter systems. The paths describe, and encourage, the divergent activities that together, generate modern knowledge work.You’ll need fundamental competencies, regardless of which path you take. In the next chapter, I’ll describe those competencies. And recommend that you start, right away, practicing activities that help you cultivate them. In Chapter 5, we’ll return to the paths. You’ll take one step onto each by adopting a keystone practice. For now, welcome to a world where the delusions are right sized. Serving a knowledge system rather than shaping, defining and strangling it. Where we follow the paths that re-architect how we invest time, energy and attention. Don’t worry if you find this world difficult to imagine at scale. We’ve all been doing things the same things for a long time. There’s no hurry to “get it”. You are not deploying a new system, replacing the old one. You are taking one step at a time. One step at a time is enough to transform the world entire.

Knowledge is Shaped by Time, Energy, and Attention

Knowledge is not a static possession, a Confluence page waiting to be discovered. Knowledge emerges as we invest our time, energy, and attention in meaning-directed, practices , taking feedback-informed action. Time is not a uniform, one-way line. Choices cause ripples, not fixes. A single event can trigger time loops (recurring decisions), delays (blockers), acceleration (emergencies), and cascades (fire drills) in a chaotic way. Rather than managing time, controlling it with Gantt charts and set-in-stone plans, we adopt practices that view time as a living medium we are moving through. We develop temporal intelligence, the organizational capacity to design asyncronous systems. The path we follow is navigating temporal currents. Navigating Temporal CurrentsDeveloping the temporal intelligence needed to design dynamic patterns of meaningful responses to real-time events, in context.An example of temporal intelligence is Async Event Response Design: Pick a single significant event (e.g., the internet goes down, a big sale launches, changing shipping vendors) and design an asynchronous response plan. The plan must keep meaning coherent across roles and times; in other words, don’t hack the software or people systems, identify which operation patterns shift. How do they shift? If it helps, model the event as if it’s pushed to an event queue or topic stream. How would other parts of the system (software and teams) respond?You have designed temporal intelligence when systems talk back through feedback. Dynamic listening patterns make the impact of energy and attention visible, in real time.

Knowledge is Relational Reciprocity

Knowledge doesn’t trickle down, it flows across systemic relationships: people, teams, and tools exchanging perspective and context.

Reciprocity is the mechanism, how the parts working together. Well-designed reciprocity translates context across roles and leverages tacit know‑how (the hands-on insights we can’t easily explain). Well-designed reciprocity integrates machines into human activities. Without it, our time, energy, and attention fall into the gaps — like throwing money into a well.Sociotechnical systems describe how human, organizational, and technical dynamics intertwine. Social process and our technology systems co-create each other. And co-create coherence or lack thereof. Coherence lives in the relationships between people, tools, practices, and contexts. It enables parts of a system move in relation to one another and still make sense together. Coherence creates resonance, enough autonomy and adaptation to operate like a jazz ensemble rather than six-year-olds playing the kazoo. You are cultivating coherence when you intentionally design patterns of relationship. Cultivating CoherenceDesigning patterns of relationship, between people, tools, practices, and contexts, so that meaning can travel across boundaries.Most systems, including human systems, thrive when tmeaning can travel across boundaries without excessive need for executive command and control. Developing an ontology is an example of coherence building. Making the core concepts that structure meaning in an organizational domain visible, include the properties and relationships between them.

Use AI to analyze artifacts used by three or four diverse parts of the organization. (For example, engineering teams, product, finance or HR and operations.) Highlight the most-used terms and their relationships. Review as a group, are they consistent? Do some concepts cross boundaries? Do some concepts shift in ways that dissolve shared understanding?An ontology is an example of enabling constraints. Constraints are not constrictions or commandments. They are structures that make creativity possible in living systems.

Knowledge is Emergent Meaning

When we value only efficiency of execution, we minimize interaction and reflection. We seperate meaning, why something matters to do and what impact it has, from the work we are doing.The antithesis of efficient execution is not endless deliberation. Endless deliberation is the inevitable result of over-focusing on efficiency. The true opposite is executing effectively while reshaping dynamic patterns to avoid the New Solution reinforcing the Same Old Problem.Knowledge architecture structures the movement of knowledge so decisions and actions are informed, timely, and connected to context. It is designing patterns of interaction, habits, constrains, and mental models that generate emergent meaning — knowledge sharing that creates coherence in decision making.Architecting Emergent MeaningBuilding processes that are intertwingled by design, enabling meaningful action within the flow of knowledge.Designing the connective practices (ontologies, interrelated artifacts, rituals shared vocabularies, and pattern libraries) that create coherence is architecting emergent meaning. These practices ensure that actions are grounded in insight. People connect events to patterns, stories to knowledge structures, experiences to shared frameworks for understanding.

For example, capability-story mapping: Connect key capabilities, what the system system must do (publish article, ship products, notify users) to real examples of the capability in use. Tell the story of an article from conception to consuming, a product from ordering to unpacking, an event that a user cares about to their response. Identify the gaps, pain points, positive patterns and sociotechnical structures that support (or constrict) the story.Architecture of meaning shifts endless re-invention, bikeshedding, and PowerPoint presenting towards a strong, shared web of emergent insight and innovation.

Knowledge Leadership is Facilitation

Command and control leadership compresses what can be known into the shape of what a few people know. Without learning and growth, changing shape, there is no emergence. An organization can’t become greater than the sum of its parts.

Relational leadership facilitates decision making by designing processes that distribute the right information, to the right people, at the right time. Facilitation removes friction and encourages relational coherence while still providing governance and structured inquiry. Distributing authority without losing coherence is the path of stewarding distributed decisions.Stewarding Distributed DecisionsDesign patterns and legitimize processes that distribute authority without losing coherence.For example:A team recommends a change that involves cross-functional decision making. The team is asked to map the decision process: who’s involved, what inputs do they need, what is unknown and how will they explore, where might delays occur; what conflicts exist and why are people pushing in different directions?Distributed decisions are not delegations. They weave perspectives, ensure transparency and are governed by fairness.

Knowledge is Many Ways of Knowing

The myth that knowledge is pure rationality is a powerhouse in my career. I encounter rampant derision towards other ways of thinking (too abstract!). Castle walls designed to keep out any mention of feelings or intuition, as if they are a zombie apocalyspse Reasoning about code is the only form of intelligence needed to solve difficult problems. I am guilty of reinforcing this myth. I prefer rationality over talking about feelings. But thinking systems include diverse cognitive modes: rational analysis, embodied intuition, collective sensemaking, metaphor, storytelling, systems thinking. Organizational intelligence is the integration of multiple modes of cognition. When we design thinking systems, we are masterminding cognitive ecologies.Mastermind Cognitive EcologiesBuild practices that recognize and combine multiple modes of thought.
Existing problems arise from our shared mental models and ways of thinking. We need metacognition, awareness of their own thinking processes and the patterns that block us. For example:Two teams, stuck in a recurring pattern that won’t fix, use the Iceberg Model to identify the core mental models, organizational structures and patterns that contribute to the recurring event. Then they use the same approach, working backwards, to design a mental model that serves them. They identify which structure(s) and pattern(s) needs to shift in order to sustain the change.

Note: I need to make one of these and replace this image, so I own the rights.
Well-designed cognitive ecologies recognize and combine multiple modes of thought (analytic, embodied, intuitive, relational). In that ecology, different types of cognition become allies rather than competitors.

Knowledge is Engineered Through Learning

A knowledge system isn’t a pipeline flowing inexorably and exclusively to delivery. Engineering that system requires thinking in systems. Engineering isn’t limited to writing code or building machines, it includes designing feedback loops, spaces for reflection, and experiments that turn experiences into better systems. Every role participates in this engineering when they shape knowledge with their time, energy and attention. More importantly, everyone is designing learning experiences, that send knowledge back to originators and across the system, making impact visible. Sociotechnical systems that learn grow stronger and more resilient as things change. Designing Learning LoopsEmbed feedback, reflection, and experimentation into organizational practices so knowledge adapts in real time.When we design learning loops, we create conditions where reflection, feedback, and experimentation are inherent in the system. When facing a challenge, a team identities and describes how they will Percieve, Diagnose, Connect, Create, Launch and Learn. (These are the core competencies you’ll learn in the next chapter.) They do not skip steps because they experience the value of each step, especially the Learning step.Knowledge flow recycles energy rather than spewing it out of a delivery pipeline. Instead of linear “plan → build → deliver,” knowledge flow is an evolving loop: notice → test → reframe → act. Organizations become more efficient ... through learning.

Summary

That was a lot of information, coming at you all at once. You don’t need to remember it all, or any of it really. We’ll come back, in a learning loop, to each Truth and Path.

Here’s the lay of the land, where we’re going and why we’re going there. That’s all the matters right now. The rest will come.The Six Inconceivable Truths

1. Knowledge is shaped by time, energy, and attention: it emerges through lived practice, not static assets.
2. Knowledge is relational reciprocity — meaning travels through relationships, not hierarchies.
3. Knowledge is emergent meaning — coherence comes from patterns and context, not efficiency alone.
4. Knowledge leadership is facilitation — authority grows by removing friction, not hoarding control.
5. Knowledge is many ways of knowing — organizations thrive on multiple modes of thought.
6. Knowledge is engineered through learning — systems strengthen through loops of feedback and reflection.

The Spiral Paths You’ll Walk

1. Navigating Temporal Currents — design responses that work across time and uncertainty.
2. Cultivating Coherence — align relationships so meaning flows across boundaries.
3. Architecting Emergent Meaning — create connective artifacts (ontologies, maps, vocabularies).
4. Stewarding Distributed Decisions — legitimize authority-sharing without losing coherence.
5. Mastermind Cognitive Ecologies — weave analytic, intuitive, embodied, relational ways of knowing.
6. Designing Learning Loops — embed feedback and reflection into daily work.

Shape Your Own Flow

The best way to engage what you’ve just read is to reflect on it. Where are the delusions and truths at play in your work? Which truth resonates, and which one made you want to argue?

In Chapter 5, you’ll step onto each path by adopting one keystone practice. Take time to reflect first. Listen to your mind for awhile. That’s where the action is happening.
Consider this:Resonance & friction: Which of the truths are you already living? Which one are you least convinced by? What experiences lay behind your reactions?

Focus attention: Which spiral path interests you most? What could you do differently tomorrow to focus more time, energy, or attention on it? Temporal currents: Think of one real event (launch, outage, structure or policy change). Did everything happen exactly as planned? If not, where would asynchronous actions have helped?Learning loop: In the previous example, where could you add a lightweight “notice → test → reframe → act” loop to make impact visible?

Shared meaning: In your current situation, think of one word that is often misused or misunderstood. What would help you cultivate shared meaning?

Distributed decisions: What is one decision recently made for you that would have been better made by you? How would you structure the process?