Scientific Definition
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
Plain-English Definition
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
Feynman Explanation
Lean works until it doesn't, and then nothing else does either.
Core Principle
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Squeezing all slack from a system optimizes throughput but eliminates resilience.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Efficiency and resilience are tradeoffs, not synonyms.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Lean works until it doesn't, and then nothing else does either.
Examples
- Post-COVID supply-chain fragility.
- Efficiency and resilience are tradeoffs, not synonyms.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Engineered slack. Redundancy budgets.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Engineered slack. Redundancy budgets.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Once-a-year feedback rewards once-a-year behavior.
The more a quantitative indicator drives decisions, the more it distorts the process it measures.
Donors penalize 'overhead'; charities under-invest in capacity.
Donors penalize 'overhead' and starve capacity that produces outcomes.
A reward designed to reduce X produces more X.
'Equal value' exchanges incentivize subjective appraisal gaming to trade low-utility land for high-value public assets.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Deep specialization improves local output but breaks cross-domain understanding.
Greedy improvement loops climb hills that aren't the highest hill.
When rewards don't match stated values, culture quietly decays toward what is rewarded.
Insulation from risk changes the risks people take.
Systems with weak corrective feedback drift unchecked into failure modes.