An executive preparing for a difficult decision tends to count arguments. One reason for the chief operating officer to agree feels thin, and three feel safer, with a fourth held back in case the meeting goes badly. Counted that way, a lever is a unit of persuasive force, and adding one costs only the time it takes to prepare.
The Lam System for Political Interaction counts a lever as an intention: a projected shift in the way the target weighs the choice in front of them, played through something the actor holds. Declaring one spends nothing. It does bind the cycle, because the target's selection cannot be written until every lever declared has been played and read or deliberately set aside. So a second lever widens the attack on the target's comparison and lengthens the cycle in the same stroke. It shares the cycle's close with the first, it waits whenever any lever in the cycle stalls, and it stays out of the first lever's way only if the two spend different things.
One comparison, several passes
The Maneuver sets out the shape. Each lever gets its own pass through the middle of the cycle: the lever is declared, its required resources are named, the gate tests them, the lever is executed, and the target's reading of it is taken. The order inside a pass never changes, and the number of passes is the number of levers. The passes then converge on one selection, one outcome, one gain for the target, one close and one flow back, because the cycle has one target and one decision.
Lena Ortiz goes into her maneuver on Daniel Okafor, the chief operating officer, with two levers. The first shows him that a single dispatch desk brings down the overtime that has earned him criticism, and the second puts in front of him a savings figure signed by Priya Natarajan, the controller. Each lever has its own address under Lena's objective, its own required resources, its own gate and its own spending. The levers share everything above and below the middle: the interest, Daniel as the target, the options detection named, the objective, and in the end Daniel's single answer.
Whatever a lever owns can go right or wrong for that lever alone. A failed gate on the second lever says nothing about the first, and what the first spends comes out of nothing the second needs. The shared parts are where one lever's trouble reaches the others, and they are easy to miss because nothing in a list of arguments shows them.
Each lever's own, or shared by the levers?
Illustrative. The people and the company are invented. Ten things in Lena's cycle with Daniel, which has two levers. Guess whether each belongs to one lever alone or is shared by both, then select each to see why.
Select each item to see the verdict.
Each lever is a projection of its own, at its own address under the objective. The overtime case projects one change, the signed figure another.
They are named lever by lever. The overtime case needs the overtime data and Lena's standing with Daniel; the second lever needs Priya's sign-off.
The overtime case passed its gate and the second lever failed its own. A failed gate says nothing about any other lever.
Each execution spends what its own lever named, and only that.
There is one target and one decision matrix, named once by detection, and both levers work on the same comparison.
Both levers are declared under it. A lever that led anywhere else would belong to another cycle.
Only one cycle moves at a time. When one lever's gate fails and Lena escalates, every lever in the cycle waits.
It waits until every live lever has been read or set aside. One lever left unplayed holds it for both.
The cycle has one close and one flow back, and two levers on one decision cannot each claim the approval.
With room for one more lever, declaring it uses the place for every lever that might have followed.
- Each lever's own
- 4 of 10
- Shared by the levers
- 6 of 10
Of the ten things in the figure, four belong to one lever alone and six are shared by both.
Why the number follows the detection
A single lever changes how the target sees one thing. Daniel's choice has three options in it: the move Lena wants, leaving dispatch with the depot managers, and handing it to the automation program. The overtime case beats the depot managers comfortably, since they run the overtime. Against automation, which can promise lower overtime too, it does much less, and the signed figure gives Lena's desks a number finance has tested, which the automation program's promise lacks. Detection follows what happens when an option is left off the list. The same list sets the work the levers have to do: a lever for each option the target might choose instead, or one for each weight in the comparison that has to shift.
An actor who settles on three levers before detecting has fixed the size of an argument they have not yet measured. The system puts detection and the objective ahead of any lever, so the count can be read off the decision matrix once it exists.
When a lever can be declared
Once the objective is written, declaring a new lever is a standing option. Lena can declare one at the outset, straight after another lever, after a lever has been executed, or after a reading has failed. Each lever is fresh and takes the next number under the objective. A lever once declared is never declared again, so a second attempt at the same argument is a new lever with a number of its own, and the record shows it as a second attempt.
The option lasts until the target selects. The cycle is still open after Daniel approves, because the outcome, his gain, the close and the flow back are still to be written, but nothing written after his selection can work on it. A lever Lena thinks of on her way out of his office is aimed at a decision already made, and if there is another decision to aim it at, it belongs to another cycle.
A lever's required resources can be named at any point before its gate, and a lever may need more than one thing. Naming them spends nothing and commits Lena to nothing she does not already hold. It changes when she finds out what she lacks. Had she named the second lever's need for Priya's sign-off at the outset, the shortfall would have shown before she put the overtime case to Daniel. Whether that is worth knowing early, or the second lever is better kept loose until the first has landed, is one of the choices the essay Stances Toward Uncertainty takes up.
How many, and who decides
The system sets no limit on levers. Its grammar admits another under any objective, as many times as the actor wants. The limit belongs to the actor, as one of four decisions of scale the system leaves to the person running the maneuver; the others are how often to revise, how deep to escalate and how many cycles to run. A cap would write into the system a number that is the actor's to set, and it would misdescribe anyone who would have tried one more.
Every actor has such a number, set by the target's patience, the actor's own attention, and how much of the maneuver the actor can afford to have seen. Once it is set, the last place in it is a real choice. With room for one more lever and two candidates on the table, declaring one rules out the other, and the election cannot be undone. The essay Interpretation and Sequencing places it among the forks in a maneuver where the order the actor chooses changes how it ends.
What one lever does to the others
Daniel decides once, on the comparison as all the levers leave it, so a lever declared and left unplayed holds his decision, and the cycle, open. If another lever has already done its work, the actor can moot the redundant one, giving it up while the others continue, though never the last live lever, since giving that one up is mooting the cycle.
Only one cycle moves at a time. When a lever's gate fails and the actor escalates, the whole cycle waits at that gate, every other lever in it included. Lena's overtime case had already landed by the time she went after Priya's sign-off, so none of her other work was held up. Had she taken the second lever to its gate first, the overtime case would have sat unplayed for as long as the sub-cycle with Priya took, while Daniel's view of overtime was free to change.
Two levers that spend different things can be executed in either order, and the record holds them as parallel: written one way around or the other, it is the same record, and the maneuver ends the same way. The Record explains why insisting on an order there would invent a sequence that never happened. The independence rests entirely on the resources being different. Two levers drawing on the same thing compete for it, and playing one can leave the other's gate short. The system does not yet represent that case, and the essay What the System Cannot Yet Represent names it as open.
The resource most often shared without anyone noticing is standing with the target. Lena's overtime case spends some of her standing with Daniel. Had her second lever been to ask Daniel for a trial desk on her word alone, it would have drawn on the same standing, and two levers in her preparation would have been one resource in fact.
Is another lever worth declaring?
The actor's judgment, set out as checks; the system applies none of them. Tick each check that holds, from the top, and stop at the first that does not.
What a second lever buys
A second lever lets the actor work a comparison from a second side, on an option the first lever does not touch or a weight it cannot move. Lena's two levers cover Daniel's two alternatives between them, which neither would have done alone. Each also stays answerable for itself, with its own projection and its own reading, so after the cycle Lena can see which lever carried which part of Daniel's decision, provided she read them one at a time. The next essay, Reading Each Lever or Reading the Play, takes up when that is possible.
The price is in the record too. Lena's second lever cost her a sub-cycle, her standing with Priya and a stretch of time during which her whole cycle with Daniel stood still at a gate. It also kept Daniel's selection waiting until the signed figure had been played and read. She judged the cover it gave her against automation worth that, and the record holds each part of the cost at the lever that incurred it.