Capability Atrophy

The organization retains its structure but loses its ability to execute meaningfully.

Skills decay. Judgment weakens. Work becomes procedural rather than adaptive. The system still "functions," but only within a shrinking range of conditions.

Adaptive execution.

Efficiency pressures reward repeatability over mastery. As experienced people leave, systems compensate with process. Over time, process replaces understanding rather than supporting it.

• Masked by documentation
• Justified by "best practices"
• Framed as maturity
• Hidden by stable short-term output
• Protected by compliance metrics

The system looks orderly while becoming fragile.

• Operational excellence
• Scalability
• Professionalization
• Risk reduction

In reality, it is slow hollowing-out.

• "No one knows how that works anymore"
• Senior people become single points of failure
• New hires rely entirely on documentation
• Teams avoid novel problems
• Exceptions increase while understanding decreases

When learning stops, decay has already begun.

• "We need better training"
• "We need to hire stronger talent"
• "This is a resourcing issue"
• "People just aren't as good as they used to be"
• "The work has gotten more complex"

Core error: The system blames individuals for a failure to maintain capability as infrastructure.

Deliberate reinvestment in judgment.

Not:

• More rules
• More tools
• More training hours

But:

• Apprenticeship models
• Protected time for skill development
• Fewer abstractions between decision and consequence
• Valuing tacit knowledge as a first-class asset

Capability must be cultivated, not extracted.

Capability rebuilt, documented, and exercised.

Stop outsourcing core competence.

Upstream: FM-03 Responsibility Without Authority, FM-12 Strategic Myopia

Downstream: FM-15 Trust Exhaustion