Everyone knows their position.
The AP team knows AP. The production team knows production. The IT team knows the system they built. The consultant knows the module they implemented.
They know it cold.
And the operation still breaks.
Not because people don't know their position. Because nobody is reading the field.
The ball goes somewhere unexpected — it always does — and everyone is exactly where they're supposed to be doing exactly what they're supposed to do while the gap between them swallows the problem whole.
I've spent more than forty years watching this happen in organizations of every size, every industry, every level of sophistication.
The fix was never hiring smarter people. The people were already smart.
It was never a better system. The system worked fine in isolation.
It was never more training in the position. Everyone already knew their position.
It was field awareness. The understanding of how your position connects to every position around it. What happens upstream when you make a decision downstream. What breaks at the seam between your function and the next one when you optimize your corner without seeing the whole.
You can't play your position well if you don't know what your position is for.
Reading the field is how you find out.
Dominic Luzi · Chief Answer Grape, Management Alchemy
