Batched Gates and a Mooted Lever

Some executives will not take half a case into a room. Before the decision-maker hears anything, they want every argument settled and every signature in hand, and they go around the building collecting what they need. The habit is usually described as thoroughness. It has a side effect that gets less attention: by the time the case is ready, everyone who supplied a piece of it knows what the case is for, and some of them will have acted on what they know.

The maneuver below follows that habit through The Lam System for Political Interaction. Two levers are declared at the outset and everything each one needs is named before either is tested. Both gates fail, and both sub-cycles run, one after the other. The second sub-cycle comes back with exactly what it was opened to fetch, and its target's decision has meanwhile done the work the lever was going to do. The actor sets that lever aside with its resource in hand and unspent, and the cycle closes on the lever that remains. Followed entry by entry, it puts two levers at different points of one cycle at the same moment. It also produces a handback that delivers more than the gate asked for, and leaves a fetched resource on the record, still counted, after its purpose has gone.

A degree for working engineers

Illustrative. The people and the university are invented. Saoirse Kavanagh is dean of engineering at a public university in a region whose electricity grid is short of engineers. Her aim is a part-time master's degree in power systems engineering for engineers already working in the industry, taught in the evenings and in short on-campus residencies, starting next fall, with its budget and its admissions held in her college.

The decision belongs to the provost, Ewan Hartigan. In Declare, the cycle opens under Saoirse's agenda and its interest is the program's budget and the authority to admit its students. Detection names Ewan as the target and lists his options as Saoirse reads them: he approves the degree for next fall under engineering, which is her preferred position; he defers it to the next academic planning round, a year away; or he approves only a short summer course with no degree attached. The objective is that Ewan approves the degree for next fall, and that the approval brings the budget and the admissions to her college.

She knows what Ewan weighs, because he has told her. Approving would bring tuition from a market the university does not reach and goodwill with the region's largest employer of engineers. Against that sit two costs. A first cohort that fills by half would leave a loss on the central budget, and Ewan has already defended one undersubscribed program to the university's board of trustees. And the academic senate's programs committee approves new degrees once a year, on its own calendar; a provost who asks it to hear one out of turn should expect a quarrel.

Choose levers, and name everything first

Each cost gets a lever. The first is to show Ewan that the first cohort is filled before the degree is advertised, through a signed commitment from the regional grid operator to sponsor every seat with its own engineers. It needs two things: the operator's signed commitment, which belongs to its head of workforce, Desmond Achterberg, and Saoirse's standing with Ewan, which she holds. The second lever is to show Ewan that the senate will hear the degree in the spring without a fight, by bringing him the written agreement of the programs committee's chair, Professor Anneliese Strand, to put it on the committee's spring agenda. It needs one thing, Anneliese's written agreement, and Saoirse does not hold it.

She declares both levers before testing anything, and names what each needs before Ewan hears a word of either. Stances Toward Uncertainty calls this the batched stance: the actor reads the uncertainty as lying in whether the plan can be resourced at all. Saoirse's reading supports it. Ewan named his two worries himself, so she can choose the levers with some confidence. What she cannot know from her office is whether Desmond will sign and whether Anneliese will agree, and Ewan decides programs once a semester. A provost shown the sponsorship and told the senate question was still open would have half a case to sit on until the next semester.

Two gates fail before the provost hears anything

In Test and act, the first lever's gate runs. Saoirse holds her standing with Ewan and does not hold the signed commitment, so the gate fails. She names the second lever's need and its gate runs too, and fails for want of Anneliese's agreement. Both failures go into the record, one after the other, and neither spends anything. At this point the whole bill is known: two resources missing, each held by a different person, and Ewan has heard nothing.

Only one sub-cycle can run at a time, so Saoirse has to choose which to go after first. It is one of the forks Interpretation and Sequencing places on the actor's side, an election that cannot be undone once the first sub-cycle opens. She chooses Desmond. Without a filled cohort the senate question hardly matters, so if Desmond refuses she would rather learn it before spending anything on Anneliese, and the grid operator sets next year's training budget at the end of the month.

Two sub-cycles, one at a time

Saoirse escalates for the signed commitment, and the cycle with Ewan waits at the gate. The sub-cycle with Desmond wants exactly that commitment. Its detection lists his options: sign for a full first cohort, decline, or offer a few seats with nothing signed until the operator's next budget. Saoirse's lever is to walk him through which of his vacant roles in grid protection and network planning the degree's graduates would fill, and it needs only her standing with Desmond, which she holds. The gate passes, the lever is played, and the standing is spent. Desmond reads the degree as an answer to the vacancies he has been unable to fill from outside, and signs. His obtained utility is a supply of engineers he will not have to recruit. The sub-cycle closes and the commitment flows back.

Control returns to the cycle with Ewan, and the first lever's gate tests again. Saoirse now holds the commitment and her standing with Ewan, and the gate passes.

Here she makes a second choice. The first lever could be played now. She leaves it, because the stance she took was to show Ewan nothing until both resources are in, and she escalates for the second lever, whose gate has stood failed since before the first sub-cycle opened. For as long as the second sub-cycle runs, the two levers stand at different points in one cycle. The first has passed its gate and waits to be played. The second waits at a failed gate for a sub-cycle to come back. Anyone reading the record at this moment finds the most recent parent entry about the second lever, and the first lever's position several entries back, still current. The record holds each lever's place separately, because nothing about where one lever stands says where the other does.

The sub-cycle with Anneliese wants exactly her written agreement. Its detection lists three options: she agrees in writing to a spring hearing; she refuses, and the degree waits for the fall cycle; or she agrees only if the provost asks the committee formally. Saoirse's lever is to show Anneliese that most of the degree is assembled from courses the senate has already approved, so a spring hearing would have little new to examine. It needs the college's map of the degree's courses against those approvals and Saoirse's standing with Anneliese, both of which she holds. The gate passes and the lever is played, spending both.

Anneliese reads the degree as mostly approved material and a light hearing, and selects agreeing. Her agreement goes further than Saoirse asked. The committee's practice is that a hearing out of turn is requested from the provost by the committee itself, so Anneliese, as chair, writes to Ewan's office in the committee's name asking him to let the degree be heard in the spring. Her obtained utility is a hearing the committee asked for on its own terms, without the friction of being hurried by the provost. The sub-cycle closes and the written agreement flows back to Saoirse.

The second handback

Control returns to the cycle with Ewan. The handback is in order: the sub-cycle wanted Anneliese's written agreement, and the agreement is what Saoirse holds. The next entry would ordinarily be the second gate testing again, and it would pass.

Saoirse has to judge what the second lever is now for. It was built to show Ewan that approving now would cost him no quarrel with the senate. The committee has just told him so itself, in a letter asking for the very hearing he would have had to request, and a provost gives a request from the senate more weight than anything a dean could bring him on the senate's behalf. Playing the lever would spend the agreement to make a point already made, and it could make the committee's letter look as though the dean had arranged it. She judges the second lever's work done and moots it. The first lever is still live, so the cycle goes on without the second.

The second lever's entries now run: declared, its need named, its gate failed, a sub-cycle opened beneath it and handed back what it needed, and the lever set aside before its gate was tested again. No pass follows the failure. The agreement it was fetched for stays in what Saoirse holds, counted, because mooting spends nothing and returns nothing.

Of the nine moves in the figure, six are open to her at the moment after the second handback and three are not. The system admits the moot and admits the alternatives beside it, and it ranks none of them.

Read, close and carry forward

With both resources in and the second lever set aside, Saoirse plays the first. The signed commitment goes to Ewan, and the commitment and her standing with him are spent. Ewan reads the first cohort as filled before the degree is advertised and the risk of a loss on the central budget as gone, which is what the lever projected.

The selection has been waiting. Ewan decides once, on the whole comparison, so his selection could not be written while any declared lever remained live and unread, and the moot was the entry that released it from the second lever. The first lever has now been read, and Ewan selects. He approves the degree for next fall, under engineering, and the outcome resolves. His obtained utility is a degree that pays for itself from its first cohort, a partnership with the region's grid operator, and a senate that asked for the hearing itself. The cycle closes, and the program's budget and the authority to admit its first cohort flow back to Saoirse.

In all, she started with four things: her standing with Ewan, her standing with Desmond, her standing with Anneliese and the course map. Four came back across the maneuver: the commitment, the agreement, the budget and the authority. Five were spent: her standing with Desmond in the first sub-cycle, the map and her standing with Anneliese in the second, and the commitment and her standing with Ewan at the top. She ends holding three things, four plus four less five, and one of them is a resource fetched for a lever that was never played.

What the maneuver teaches

Gathering every resource before the target hears anything has a cost the batched stance accepts knowingly: every holder of a missing resource learns what the maneuver is for before the target does. Here the same exposure did the second lever's work. Anneliese knew what the degree needed from her committee because Saoirse had to ask, and knowing it, she could take Ewan's cost away herself. The same early warning could as easily have let a holder work against the plan, and which way it goes is the holder's choice, made before the target has heard anything.

A sub-cycle's handback checks one thing, whether the named resource is now held. A sub-cycle can pass that check and change much more, because its target usually works in the same organization as the parent's target, and their decisions touch. Anneliese's selection moved a cost in Ewan's comparison directly. The record shows none of that. It holds the agreement that flowed back and Saoirse's entry saying the second lever's work was done. Whether it was done is her reading of Ewan, and it could be wrong. Had Ewan taken the committee's letter as the senate reaching for control of the degree, the moot would have given up the lever that answered the cost he still felt, and making that point to him again would have taken a new lever with an address of its own.

The choice of which gate to escalate first was Saoirse's, and the record shows it. Had she gone to Anneliese first, the committee's letter would have reached Ewan earlier, and she would have mooted the second lever while the first was still short of its commitment. Given the same readings, the maneuver would have closed the same way, which she could not have known when she chose. Had Desmond refused, the order would have decided what the refusal cost her: going to him first meant learning it before anything had been spent on the senate.

Anneliese's agreement stays with Saoirse, as a fetched resource does when its lever goes unplayed, and may serve another lever or another maneuver, perhaps at the spring hearing itself. What the second sub-cycle cost her, the course map and her standing with Anneliese, bought the agreement she still holds and an effect on Ewan that the record writes nowhere except in his selection. Read later, the record shows the second lever's full price, entry by entry, beside the fact that it was never played.