C.40.OD:4.1 - Identify the growth and its receiving continuation

Begin with a consequential situation, not an office proposal. Name the subject whose possibilities are in question, the work or life situations that matter to it, and the available basis for describing its current position. A person, team, organization, technical system and cultural population require different descriptions. A provider, a paying organization and a participant can coincide in one case and differ in another.

Use C.40.OI and C.40.OC to bound and characterize the development inquiry. B.5.PI supplies the entry from an unnoticed or weakly understood difficulty in ordinary work. C.40.PC and C.40.CD help construct the problem and possible contribution when neither is settled. A discrepancy from a target is one entry; a newly accessible possibility, a dependence that has become costly, a changed environment or an unexamined limit after success can be another.

For each intended change, say what the subject could subsequently do or obtain, why that is worth pursuing, what it could lose, and which uncertainty matters now. A slogan such as “become a learning organization” does not yet distinguish changes. Compare, for example, a team that can obtain a qualified answer from an adviser, a team that can make that judgement itself, and a team that can construct and improve its own way of making such judgements. These can all be useful; their costs and evidence differ.

Keep the present work that must continue visible. Development need not suspend useful operation, nor must every limitation be removed before the next contribution. Rest, consolidation, deliberate termination of one direction and protection from overload can preserve the conditions for subsequent development.

An epistemic question can supply the consequential situation. State what knowledge, understanding or way of obtaining results should grow and what new results or questions that growth could make attainable. A scientific explanation can be a worthwhile result before a practical application is found.

Distinguish three claims: the current result became better, the available way or understanding grew, and that growth changes which further problems can be handled. Explain each relied-on connection. A routine service improvement can end with the first claim; it need not be redescribed as open-ended development.