What is Status?

[samuel]

Hey Jarrad. Thank you for your engagement it is honestly lovely to see.

Status is a Super App. Great
IFT is a hierarchy. Great

With that clear, I’d like to follow up on a few things if you’re happy with that.

Information and Decisions

@jarradhope

I provide information for informed decision making and sometimes I have to make interventions, which I do in several phases of “heavy handedness”, with the expectation that the leadership responds sooner rather than later.

Who receives the information? This point is important. Direction should be be transparent to all, but the object experience for many in Status is that it is mediated and filtered through a single person. If leadership trusts teams, then transparency should be the default, not something that only happens when an intervention is required.

The idea of "phases of heavy handedness” has the ostensible quality of strategy, but what it actually communicates is disengagement. Intervening only when things reach a crisis point rather than ensuring clarity from the outset. If course corrections are happening behind the scenes, if leadership decisions are only surfaced after problems have already escalated, then the issue isn’t execution, it is the lack of clear and open alignment from the beginning.

Ownership and Accountability

@jarradhope

I believe this allows for more ownership in the projects, I won’t apologise for placing trust in the teams and their leadership, and like everything, I readily admit that no system is perfect.

The structure you’re describing absolves everyone but the team for the failures of their project. If a project goes off track, it’s implicitly because the team didn’t align, didn’t take ownership, or didn’t execute correctly. Great. And in that case, what mechanisms currently exist for team CCs to hold their project leads to account?

In fact this issue is at the core of my concerns here, and raises many more questions. What is the process for addressing misalignment within leadership? How do CCs challenge a direction they believe is flawed? How do they hold their own leads accountable for decisions that are misaligned, unclear, or outright harmful to the project?

If the answer is that they can’t, and historically that has certainly been the onerous burden the teams have had to bare, then we aren’t talking about real ownership. We’re talking about selective responsibility without reciprocal accountability. A structure where leadership directs, but only teams are responsible for failure, is not a system that empowers ownership, it’s a system that isolates blame.

Education

@jarradhope

You should care about the intentional erosion of Western Society and Global Communications and Financial integration and capture. If you don’t then you likely need education or are a Glowie intentionally trying to undermine the project.

@jarradhope

I will continue to educate, if anything, expect more of it.

I look forward to it, though I’d note one thing here, disagreement isn’t a knowledge gap. Many of the CCs questioning the current and past direction are deeply invested in Status’s success and have been working within it for years. Many are motivated with a deep passion for and an informed understanding of the imperatives.

The issue isn’t though, that they don’t understand, it’s that they haven’t been given a meaningful seat at the table when it comes to shaping the vision they are expected to build. If the only response to criticisms is “You haven’t read the right books.”, then we’re not having a two-way conversation.

Some Actual Actionables

I’d like to take this moment of attention to ask for three things:

1. Decision-Making Transparency

• If direction is being set, then the rationale and expected outcomes should be documented and accessible to all CCs, not selectively communicated through intermediaries.
• Strategic shifts should not be implied or discovered retroactively but explicitly stated with room for input before execution.

2. Mechanisms for Holding Leadership Accountable

• If project teams are expected to own their work, then there must be:
  • a clear process for challenging misalignment within leadership.
  • an explicit and public declaration that projects have autonomy for better or worse, and “heavy handedness” is only reserved for truly exceptional circumstances.
  • a defined and agreed upon path to escalate concerns when decisions made at the leadership level are unclear, counterproductive, or harmful to execution.

3. Formalising a Two-Way Conversation

• If Status is to retain any of its foundational principles, leadership must commit to structured, participatory decision-making. Meaning we create an environment where dissent is possible without being dismissed as ignorance, obstructionism, or even state-sponsored subversion.

Are these commitments something we can formally agree to?

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p.s.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of commendation I receive from my GCHQ handlers, they are thrilled with my performance I’m doing astonishingly well.