Narrative Collapse

The system loses a shared explanatory story for why decisions are made and how actions connect to outcomes. Work continues, but meaning fragments. Alignment becomes performative, and execution persists without conviction.

Shared sense-making. People can no longer explain why the system behaves as it does, even if they know what to do.

Narratives are treated as artifacts rather than infrastructure. As decisions accumulate, the causal logic linking intent, tradeoffs, and outcomes is not actively maintained.

• Frequent re-alignment meetings
• High agreement with low conviction
• Multiple "versions" of the strategy by audience
• Continued execution despite confusion

Motion masks meaning loss.

• Poor communication
• Resistance to change
• Cultural weakness
• Execution failure

These diagnoses increase noise instead of restoring coherence.

• Leaders cannot explain strategy without slides
• Teams ask "is this still the priority?"
• Decisions justified by precedent instead of intent
• Strategy language becomes abstract or circular
• Alignment increases while belief decreases

• "This is a communication problem"
• "People just need more clarity"
• "Change fatigue"
• "The strategy is fine, execution is lagging"
• "We need to re-launch the narrative"

Fatal misread: Messaging is treated as the problem instead of broken sensemaking.

• Re-articulation of original intent
• Explicit tradeoff acknowledgment
• Reduction to a small set of causal claims
• Plain-language explanation of "why this, not that"

Narrative returns when people can explain the system without artifacts.

Single, credible narrative reconnects strategy, reality, and action.

Suspend change initiatives until narrative coherence is restored.

Upstream: FM-13 Capability Atrophy, FM-11 Metric Authority Drift

Downstream: FM-02 Escalation Inversion, FM-10 Leadership Saturation, FM-15 Trust Exhaustion