Frame Engineering — Part 1
Why outages and postmortems fail when authority replaces regulation. A systems view of power, frames, and decision-making under load.
This essay reframes authority through the lens of incidents and outages.
We model teams as systems under load.
We establish why title-based authority fails.
And how regulation maintains coherence under load.
We look at conversational frames as a tool of regulation.
Just lawful dynamics.
Authority: Are You Listening?
Hi.
What is "Authority"?
According to Miriam-Webster:
power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior
Does that definition resonate?
Let's try this one:
power to get you to change direction.
Who do you listen to at work?
Do they have a fancy title?
Do they command the room?
Do they actively integrate what you're saying?
What makes them worth listening to?
Who do you rely on when, excuse me, shit hits the fan?
That one major outage.
(You remember which one.)
TL;DR: Depending on your title. This might sting.
When Regulation Enters the Room
Active Integration:
the capacity to metabolize fragmented realities under load without shedding responsibility (coherence).
Are you good at giving summaries?
For a friend?
For your family?
For your team?
What's the purpose of your company?
Of your team?
(Of you?)
When regulation enters a room.
The field relaxes.
Literally physics.
When a collection of nervous systems come together.
And really start to get sweaty.
They synchronize.
(Yes, like at a concert.)
Stock:
A stock is an accumulation—a pool of things you can count at any instant. Stocks give systems memory and inertia.
Regulation, is a stock.
Regulation, is a function.
And only regulated systems stay coherent under load.
No thoughts, just vibes.
When shit hits the fan, people turn to the calmest person in the room.
Not the one in the most expensive suit.
What Happens When Power ≠ Regulation?
The lawful cascade: loss of coherence, unstable decisions, expanded possibility space, slower execution.
🔥🤵🔥🧑🚒🔥
Who do you choose?
When things are burning.
You're choosing the fire fighter.
When things are burning.
You're turning to the most regulated nervous system.
Physics.
When unintegrated fragmentation is not being held.
But the responsibility for it is shifted around in the org.
While the org is already overloaded.
Management has become.. unhelpful.
Regulation 📉 Entropy
Entropy 📈 Fragmentation
Fragmentation 📈 Possibility Space
It's lawful.
Reframing Regulation
Frame:
the expected possibility space of an interaction,
that which can be expressed freely,
without causing dysregulation.
You remember that one time?
The whole room went quiet.
Everyone looked at the source of the noise.
Did that really just happen?
That was an implicit frame violation.
Let's get techy.
There are two types of frames:
- Implicit Frame:
Assumed by participants.
Based on past interactions
and relevant social frames. - Explicit Frame:
Explicitly communicated
through language,
e.g. meeting agenda.
Remember that one incident?
Did anyone remember the agenda?
Was there even one?
Frame drift.
Entropy.
Regulation:
Maintaining system coherence under load.
Coherence requires a shared frame.
So when shit hits the fan.
You better have regulated leadership.
Frame Engineering
Let's orient:
- Title-based authority fails under load.
- Regulation is a system function and a stock.
- Leadership operates through regulation.
- Frames constrain regulation.
Ouch.
Next on Systemic Engineering:
2. Frame Catching
3. Frame Enforcement
Cheers.
Call-To-Action
This work can be done deliberately.
Systemic Engineering is how I help teams and leaders
restore coherence in complex systems.
You can reach me at:
📧 alex@systemic.engineer