Distinguish Stocks from Flows
Classify a workplace variable as a stock or a flow and choose an intervention that changes the right one.
Look for structure before blame. At 9:10 a.m., Leo tells the onboarding team, "We did 30 training sessions this month, so readiness should be better." The readiness score is still 61%. Teach Stocks and flows stop teams from confusing activity with accumulated state. A stock is something that builds up or drains over time: trust, backlog, inventory, technical debt, customer understanding, bench strength. A flow is the rate that changes the stock: hiring per month, defects fixed per week, training hours delivered, escalations created, customers activated. The distinction matters because managers often push flows and expect stocks to move immediately.…
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