The first thing Lena Ortiz writes when her maneuver opens is what she wants: the dispatch budget, and control of the night desks. The last thing written, after the chief operating officer, Daniel Okafor, has approved the move and the cycle has closed, is what she obtained. In a maneuver that went to plan the two entries say the same thing, and it is tempting to treat the second as a formality.
In The Lam System for Political Interaction the second entry is the maneuver's test of itself. Set beside the interest at the top, it shows whether the cycle delivered what it was opened for. It can do that only because the system never fills it in from the interest. It waits for what came in, and when the two match, the match is information, since it could have failed. Nor does a match say the maneuver paid: a cycle can return exactly what it was opened for and still cost more than it returned.
The constituents of a maneuver
Structure. Each line joins a constituent to one it contains.
The map shows what contains what in one actor's maneuver, from the actor down to what flows back when the cycle closes. It illustrates the structure only.
Actorα / a · A name only, performed by no oneThe person who opens the cycle and acts within it.
AgendaΑ / A · A name only, performed by no oneThe actor's long-running aim, which holds every cycle the actor opens.
Interestι / i · Performed by the actorWhat the actor stands to gain from the cycle.
- Detectionδ / d · Performed by the actorThe actor finding out who controls the resource wanted.
Targetτ / t · A name only, performed by no oneThe person whose decision completes the cycle.
Decision MatrixΔ / D · A name only, performed by no oneThe options open to the target, each weighed by what it offers and what it asks.
Preferred Positionπ / P · A name only, performed by no oneThe option that leads to the outcome the actor wants.
Adverse Alternativeψ / X · A name only, performed by no oneAn option that leads away from the outcome the actor wants.
- PerceptionΓ / G · Performed by the targetHow the target compares the options' worth before choosing.
- SelectionΣ / S · Performed by the targetThe target's choice among the options.
Objectiveω / o · Performed by the actorThe direction the actor wants the target's choice to take.
Intentionγ / g · Performed by the actorA specific action the actor chooses to move the target's options. A cycle holds one or more.
- Required Resourcesθ / q · Performed by the actorWhat the actor must hold to carry out the intention.
- Executionε / e · Performed by the actorThe actor carrying out the chosen action.
- A sub-cycle's interest, when the gate fails↺ Interest, under AgendaWhen the actor lacks a resource the intention needs, a sub-cycle opens whose interest is exactly that resource. It is an ordinary interest, drawn here a second time.
OutcomeΩ / O · Performed by the cycle itselfThe state the cycle closes in, one of the futures that were possible.
- Obtained ResourcesThis essayΦ / Q · Performed by the actorWhat the actor gains when the cycle closes.
- Obtained UtilityΛ / U · Performed by the targetWhat the target gains from the outcome.
- Current ResourcesΘ / R · A name only, performed by no oneWhat the actor holds now, counted.
What flows back
Obtained resources are what the actor gains from a cycle once it has closed. They are the actor's: the actor declared the interest, played the levers and spent what they needed, and the actor takes in what comes back. They are also counted. Each one obtained is added to what the actor holds, one for one, and from then on it is available like anything else the actor holds.
Often what flows back is something the target controlled and gave up. The budget Lena obtains was Daniel's to assign, and taking it off the depots is one of the costs he weighed in approving the move. For a resource of that kind the target's cost is the actor's gain, which is why Lena's levers had to make the preferred position worth more to Daniel than everything it asked of him, that cost included.
Inside the system, flowing back is the only way an actor's holdings grow. Executing a lever spends resources, while the gate and escalation leave them as they were. Only a closed cycle adds to them. Whatever an actor holds beyond what they started with came in this way, from some cycle, at its close, and the record says which.
A resource can also flow back and be gone again before the maneuver ends. The sign-off from the controller, Priya Natarajan, came back to Lena when the sub-cycle closed, and the second lever spent it on the way to Daniel. At the end Lena holds the budget and the authority and nothing of the sign-off. Only the record shows that she obtained it, from which cycle, and which lever spent it.
The flow back comes last. The target selects, the outcome resolves, the target's obtained utility is written, the cycle closes, and only then do the actor's resources come back. Daniel's approval is not yet the budget. Until the cycle has closed and the budget has flowed back, the budget is something Lena expects to hold, and no gate in her next maneuver can find it. A new top-level maneuver opens only once the last one's resources have flowed back or it has been abandoned, so the new one's gates can find only what earlier closes returned.
Written at the top, filled at the bottom
Obtained resources are written with the capital Greek phi, Φ, as an operation, and the Latin Q as the resource obtained. Q is the capital of the letter for required resources, q, and the actor's current resources take R. The three letters divide resources by role: what a lever needs, what a cycle obtains and what the actor holds.
The interest is written in terms of Q from the start. Lena's interest, in the system's notation:
Read aloud: the actor declares the only interest on the agenda, and what it consists of is the first and second resources to be obtained under it, the budget and the authority. The interest names what it wants by the address of something not yet obtained.
At the close, the flow back fills that address:
Read aloud: the actor obtains the resources of the only interest's outcome, and what was obtained is the first and second resources the interest named. The braces hold the same two designations as the line above. On the normal path they always do: the cycle obtained what it set out for, and anyone reading the record can trace the want at the top to the gain at the bottom.
The system does not construct the flow back from the interest. It records what was obtained, whatever that was, and the identity holds on the normal path because a maneuver that goes to plan delivers what it was opened for. If the system copied the interest, every maneuver would show success at the bottom and the last entry would say nothing.
When the two differ
The failure moves break the identity by design. A cycle that is mooted or abandoned obtains nothing. Nothing flows back, and whatever its levers spent stays spent. The record of such a cycle shows resources going out and none coming in, which is an accurate account of a maneuver given up.
A sub-cycle can obtain something other than what its parent lacked. Suppose Priya had agreed only to review the savings figure next month. Lena would hold something real, Priya's agreement to look, and the parent's gate would fail again, because the sign-off is still missing. A sub-cycle's obtained resources go to the actor, the same actor at every level, and they hand control back to the parent only when they include what the parent's gate asked for. Escalation explains why a sub-cycle's aim is pinned that narrowly.
A top-level cycle can close on a selection that delivers part of what was wanted. Daniel might approve, the budget move, and the night supervisors go on reporting to the depot managers. The honest entry lists the budget alone. Whose error that was is a question for detection, where the preferred position was chosen. What the obtained resources entry adds is the evidence, and only if the actor resists rounding the win up. The temptation at the close is to write the interest again, since the maneuver mostly worked, and an actor who gives in leaves the record showing a full delivery that never happened.
Delivered, and what it cost
What a cycle earns the actor is what flowed back set against everything the cycle spent, and the comparison can come out against the actor. Lena spent the overtime data, her standing with Daniel and her standing with Priya. The sign-off came in through the sub-cycle and went out through the second lever. She obtained the budget and the authority.
The system counts every one of those, and counting is all it does. It can say exactly what went out and what came in, and at which lever and which close. It cannot say whether the budget was worth the standing. That is an appraisal, made by the actor, and it is qualitative: standing with Daniel and authority over the desks are measured in nothing that would let one be subtracted from the other. The record makes the appraisal possible by keeping both sides, and leaves the appraisal to the actor.
Some maneuvers are run to keep a costly alternative from being selected. Had Lena's aim been only to keep dispatch away from the automation program, the maneuver could have been worth running even if what flowed back was worth less than what it spent, because the comparison that settles it is with what the program taking dispatch would have cost her. That comparison appears in no entry, and the actor has to make it.
What does this cycle's flow back say?
A reading aid for the actor at the close of any cycle in a maneuver; the system applies none of it. Check in order and stop at the first that is not true.
What the actor learns
Every cycle leaves a pair at its two ends, the interest and the flow back, and across many cycles the pairs show habits. An actor whose flow backs fall short of their interests in the same way each time, the budget without the authority, the title without the headcount, is either asking for more than the decisions they target can give or misreading which option delivers the whole of it. An actor whose pairs match and whose spending keeps outweighing, in their own appraisal, what came back is winning maneuvers that do not pay.
The flow backs also make up the actor's account of what maneuvering has added to their holdings: each resource, the cycle it came from and the close at which it arrived, kept beside what each cycle spent. The record kept every entry as written, so that account can be checked against the record line by line.