Getting the Words Right

Summary: Transformation often looks like process change, but underneath it is a struggle over what the organization treats as real: work, goals, value models, teams, and the processes connecting them. This note is an interpretation of TBM 402: The Real-World Journey to Value and Product-Centricity, read through the language of endurants, perdurants, containers, and anchors. One useful way to read a transformation journey is not as a maturity model, but as a sequence of ontology shifts. The visible arguments are about frameworks, funding, planning, or org design. The deeper argument is about what counts as the primary unit of reality. That is why these journeys feel so contested. The organization is not just changing process. It is renegotiating which endurants matter, which perdurants deserve attention, and which containers are being mistaken for anchors. What Is Shifting Across the journey, several things keep changing:

•what the organization treats as the main enduring thing •what kind of progress it thinks it is tracking •what gets rolled up for management •what is treated as an explanation versus a summary In one phase, worklooks like the primary reality. In another, goals take over. Later, value models, teams, platforms, or customer-facing structures begin to matter more. Each shift changes the ontology of the

system. Act-by-Act Pattern Act Dominant endurant Dominant perdurant Typical container Core contention Delivery predictability work item, initiative, dependency delivery flow, intake, throughput project, initiative, work hierarchy is moving work the same as creating value? Early goals work item plus goal delivery plus reporting cycle parallel work and goal hierarchies are goals primary or just annotations on work? Goals come first objective, bet, opportunity discovery, planning, delivery, learning initiative as intervention do goals actually ground action, or are they floating abstractions? Emerging value models goals, teams, journeys, capabilities, platforms re-orgs, alignment, investment shifts, strategy debates stacked models competing at once what is the right anchor for investment and design? Converging value models valuebearing structures, products, platforms, teams continuous adaptation around shared value logic product and funding structures how much alignment is enough before the model hardens again? The important point is that the journey is not just about better tools. It is about changing what the organization believes the system is made of.

Act 1: Work as Reality

In the first act, work is the dominant endurant. The organization treats

initiatives, projects, epics, and batches as the main things to manage. Progress means moving those things through stages. The relevant perdurants are intake, delivery, dependency management, escalation, and throughput improvement. These are all real processes, but the model stays strongly container-oriented. The work item is treated as if it were the underlying reality rather than a packaging of intent. That is why predictability gets conflated with value. The container moves, so the organization assumes value is being created. Act 2 and 3: Goals Reorder the Model The introduction of goals creates a second ontology on top of the first. Now the organization has at least two competing endurant-like structures:

•work hierarchies •goal hierarchies At first, goals are layered onto work. Later, goals come first and work becomes an intervention in service of them. This is a meaningful shift, but it also creates confusion. The problem is that goals can easily become overloaded. They are asked to carry:

•intent •strategy •value •measurement •prioritization That is too much for one concept. So goals become contested objects. They are more useful than raw work hierarchies, but they are not yet stable anchors. Act 4: Contest Over Anchors The fourth act is where the ontology becomes openly contested. Work, goals, value models, customer journeys, capabilities, platforms, and org structures all compete as organizing frames.

This is not just a communication problem. It is a disagreement about

what the enduring entities of the system actually are. Are the important endurants:

• projects?

• objectives?

• products?

• platforms?

• customer journeys?

•stable value nodes? At the same time, the perdurants multiply:

•strategy cycles •planning cycles •funding decisions •re-orgs •architecture refactoring •discovery and delivery loops This is why the stage feels chaotic. The organization is trying to run several ontologies at once. Act 5: Convergence In the fifth act, some of that contention settles. Value models begin to anchor the rest of the system. Teams, funding, goals, architecture, and planning start to line up around more stable value-bearing structures. This does not eliminate change. It changes what is treated as stable enough to organize around. Goals stop floating on their own. Work stops being the sole unit of reality. More of the system attaches to anchors that are closer to how value is actually created. At that point:

•goals attach to value structures •work flows through those structures •investment references them •architecture reflects them The ontology becomes more coherent, even if it never becomes final.

Containers, Anchors, and Overburdened Concepts

One of the strongest patterns in the piece is how concepts get overburdened over time. The organization starts with one container, such aswork. Then it introduces another, such asgoals. Then it tries to make that new container do too much. Eventually another layer appears, such asvalue models, to carry what the earlier concept could not. This produces a recurring pattern:

•a concept is introduced •it becomes overloaded •it is stretched to carry adjacent meanings •it splits or is displaced •a new concept emerges That is why transformation language often feels unstable. The words are not just labels. They are being asked to carry competing models of reality. Why It Is Not Linear Seen this way, the journey is not linear because ontology shifts are not linear. Different parts of the organization can live in different models at the same time. One group may still treat work as reality. Another may treat goals as primary. Another may already be organizing around value models or product structures. The organization is therefore not moving through one sequence so much as hosting multiple competing realities at once. That is also why regression is common. A new market condition, new leadership idea, or technology shift can make the current ontology less useful and reopen the argument. The Core Insight Transformation is not just a change in workflow. It is a change in what the organization treats as real, what it treats as stable, and what it treats as explanatory.

That is why these journeys are full of contention. People are not merely

debating process. They are debating whetherwork,goals,value,teams,

platforms, or some other structure should be treated as the primary

endurant of the system, and which perdurants actually explain progress over time. Try This Now:

•Write down one word people in your organization argue about a lot: for example goal, product, platform, stream, or value.

•Then write down what that word seems to mean in two different parts of the organization.

•Ask: what different reality is each group trying to stabilize when they use the same word?