meeting notes

Objects and Models: Why Work Never Matches the Diagram

Plans, roadmaps, and operating models help us explain work — but they’re never the work itself. This newsletter explores why delivery rarely matches the diagram, and what leaders can learn by paying attention to how work actually happens.

Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / University of Toronto Libraries

Hey,

I hope you are safe and well. It's pretty grim weather in the UK – lots of rain, but hey, my spirits are high. This week I was pondering models and systems after working with a client who had a delivery problem (don't many businesses?) 😄

I also wrote a reflective travel/work photo essay about how the same principles that make work humane – also make life navigable. I thought, how could I express the principles behind my business in a different way. Let me know what you think.

For those new to the Meeting Notes newsletter, welcome, I’m Rob, Chief Modelling Officer at Cultivated Management. This newsletter is about mastering the art of clarity, communication and creativity - and cultivating a bright future of work.

Objects and Models: Why Work Never Matches the Diagram

There’s a simple but uncomfortable truth many people struggle to accept about work:

Any observation of any object is always limited.

Sometimes we’re not even seeing the object itself — only a representation of it. A diagram. A plan. A model. A neat abstraction that allows us to point, explain, and feel a sense of control.

And if our observations are limited, so too is our interpretation. What we think we’re looking at is shaped by what we already know, what we expect to see, and what the object is trying to tell us.

At some point, observation alone runs out.

We hit the limit of what the object can explain.
And that’s where most organisations quietly get stuck.

I once worked with a leader who had built a truly beautiful model of his part of the organisation.

It covered an entire wall. Five metres wide. Three metres tall. Boxes, lines, colours, arrows. He needed a step ladder to reach the top. It was meticulous. Thoughtful. Clearly the result of weeks — maybe months — of care.

He was proud of it.
And he should have been.

He ran the business from that model. Made decisions based on it. Used it to explain how work flowed, where accountability sat, how value moved through the system.

The problem was simple. The model was wrong.
Not because it was careless — but because we know that all models are wrong.

He knew that, intellectually.
What he didn’t know was by how much it was wrong.

He drove the business into decline from behind his desk, using his model as the truth.

In another organisation, I watched a group of coaches celebrated for shaving six months off a delivery plan.

Six months. £20 million saved — on paper. High fives all round.

But the work hadn’t started yet.

The plan had not yet met reality.
No people. No dependencies. No complexity. No unforeseen problems — of which there are always many.

What if they delivered the wrong thing?
What if it took longer once real work began?
What if the cost returned later, with interest? (Which, BTW, it did - it ended up costing them $40million more to deliver).

This too was an object-centred approach to work.
The plan had become the achievement, not the value that is generated by the business. (I cover this in-depth in the idea to value course).

To make sense of this, I tend to think about work in three layers.

This, too, is a model — and therefore wrong.
But like all models, it can still be useful.

1. Objects and models

At the top layer sit the things we create to explain work:

Plans.
Roadmaps.
Operating models.
Org charts.
Frameworks.

These are objects. They abstract reality into something communicable. They tell us what should happen. They reflect design, direction and business intent.

There is real value here. Without these objects, coordination would be impossible. We need them to align, explain, and orient ourselves.

But they are incomplete by design.
Details are smoothed away.
Unknowns are hidden.
Reality is simplified.

And those missing details matter more than we like to admit.

2. How the objects are actually used

Then there is the second layer: what people actually do.

How the roadmap is interpreted.
How the plan is implemented, bent, ignored.
How decisions are really made.
How work truly flows.

Org charts don’t show influence.
Job descriptions don’t show contribution.
Process diagrams don’t show negotiation, improvisation, creativity or workarounds.

This is why off-the-shelf frameworks so often disappoint. They are objects designed for a generic utility, not the lived reality. They obscure the nuance that actually determines whether work succeeds.

Studying what already happens is almost always more valuable than importing a new model.

3. What the object was meant to represent

The third layer is the most interesting.

It asks a quieter question:

Why did we create this object in the first place?
What was it meant to represent?

That enormous diagram on the wall wasn’t really about boxes and arrows. It was trying to show how work gets done. Who does it. How value reaches the customer.

The tragedy is that we often stop at the object — and forget to test whether it still represents reality.

Objects and models are essential.
But work does not happen in them.

Work happens in the space between design and use.
Between intention and interpretation.
Between what we draw — and what people actually do.

Good leadership lives in that gap.

Not defending the model.
Not worshipping the plan.
But staying curious about where reality refuses to conform to the plan and what people actually do when they come together to do creative action — and then learning from it.

That’s where improvement starts.
That's where a learning culture excels.
That’s where the system becomes truly visible.
That’s where better work becomes possible.

From the Studio (Behind the Scenes)

I’ve been busy with the new Cultivated Notes YouTube channel.

One thing I’ve learned from being on YouTube for the past seven years is that it takes time. YouTube needs a while to understand what you’re making, who it’s for, and where it should surface your videos. The beginning is always slow. That’s just how the medium works.

Someone recently asked me why I chose video.

The honest answer is that it’s a mix of strategy, future-proofing, and passion.

Blog posts — my core form of expression for years — have become commodities. AI can write them. And yes, people do lift my posts, rework them slightly, and pass them off as their own.

Video is different.

It can be done with AI, of course, but it’s far trickier. And more importantly, video creates a different kind of connection. Seeing someone — their mannerisms, pauses, and small nuances of communication — builds a depth that words alone often can’t.

I also just love the process.

Planning on paper. Recording. Editing. Losing myself in the flow of it all. Video has always captivated me, and when I’m in it, time disappears.

Short videos, especially, feel like a way to connect more directly. More human. More present.

And honestly?

I just enjoy it. 🙂

Cultivated Notes is not a flash in the pan piece of work, it is my long term project of building a library of useful insights to make our workplaces better, more human and more engaging.

Until next time.

Take care of yourself and others.

Rob..