Altitude: Personal
Surfacing Moves by Posture
Companion reference for Applied End-to-End Flow: Personal.
By Curtis Hibbs and Joshua Barnes
You have one dysfunction in your log and a dated read from Chapter 7. The read gave you a posture, a recipient or an open target, and a margin note. For each of the book’s ten dysfunctions, this page shows the surfacing move in each posture. Use it after the read, not instead of it.
This page is written to be used with the book.
Before you use an entry
Your read decides three things. Safety sets the posture. Capacity Margin, yours and your recipient’s, sets the size and timing of the move, but it never raises the posture. Competing Signals sets the recipient. If your Safety reading is still provisional, so is the posture. A provisional posture supports only adding evidence about your recipient.
| Posture | What it supports | What thin margin changes |
|---|---|---|
| Direct (high Safety) | Take the problem, your record and the decision you need straight to your recipient. | Cut the account to one issue and one request, or wait for a week with more room. |
| Evidence-first (medium Safety) | Prepare and learn before any larger move. Start small and specific, in the setting your response history shows to be safest. Show only the part of your record that the first move needs. | Make the first move smaller still, or keep observing until there is room. |
| Protective (low Safety) | Hold and observe. Keep the issue and your record private. Test only where your history shows a concern raised without cost. | Skip even the test. Keep your record light enough to sustain. |
Holding is a result of the read, just as Direct is. A turn that ends in a hold is still a full turn. In every Protective entry, you also date the read, write down the target and note what would prompt a fresh read. Protective allows one outward act, the test in the table. Raise it on a separate, low-stakes concern, never on the held item, and show nothing from your record. A change in the room is a reason to read again, not to send. Keep only what your work rules let you retain.
Evidence-first opens with your account offered for review, with your own share in it and no proposal. The proposal comes later, after a fresh read. Two entries open differently. Priority Collision opens with the ranking request. Bad News Is Unsafe opens with the smallest safe test, on a different, low-stakes concern, never the held item.
In each entry, “The move” is the chapter’s surfacing move in full, and it says where the decision usually sits. The posture entry decides whether you make that move, when, and how much of it. Chapter 7’s four direction cases tell you who holds the decision in your case.
- Direction is missing. Bring a question to whoever should provide it.
- A reconciler is already ranking asks. Bring the collision to that person.
- The authority exists but hasn’t been used. Ask that person to choose. Silence before anyone has clearly asked them is not a refusal.
- Nobody holds the authority. Check first that it isn’t shared, and if it is, go to whoever can bring the holders together. Otherwise go to whoever could assign the decision. If you can’t name that person, the target stays open, and there is no move yet.
Every outward move draws on Chapter 8’s five-field packet: the named dysfunction, in the recipient’s words as well as yours; dated counts, with your own share visible; the cost in the recipient’s terms; the smallest change; and one decision that is the recipient’s to make. Direct brings all five.
An ally’s agreement isn’t permission to quote them. Asking an ally is a move of its own, with its own small read.
Each entry applies the book’s method. None is a tested treatment. Preparation shows what you would be risking, not how your recipient will respond.
Alignment Drift
You end the day busy and can’t say whether you worked on the right thing.
Priority Collision
Two or more asks arrive as the top priority, and nobody with the authority to rank them has ranked them. Chapter 3 covers it.
The move. Package the collision as a decision for someone whose answer both senders have to accept. Often that’s whoever ranks your time. Sometimes it’s someone above both senders, or the two senders together. Take it to one sender alone only if that sender’s answer is the one both must accept. Otherwise you hand them your evidence for their side.
Direct. Bring the two asks, both dates and the decision, as in Chapter 3’s example: “A and B are both due on the 14th, and I can finish one by then. Which one, and what date do I give for the other?”
Evidence-first. Two checks come first. Your response-history entries that involve this recipient should support a medium or high Safety reading. If none involve this recipient, add evidence about them first. And nobody should have already asked them to rank these asks and been refused. If both checks pass, make the ranking request itself. Time it to the recipient’s margin, and show only the dates it needs.
Protective. Keep the collision log. For each collision, record each ask’s priority and deadline in the sender’s words. Add the date the collision became visible, and your choice with its basis. Review the log on a set day each week. Draft the decision request, but don’t send it.
Accountable Without Authority
You answer for a result that depends on inputs and decisions you don’t control. Chapter 3 covers it.
The move. Ask the person who assigned the result which job they meant. Give them three workable answers: you decide more, the people who decide give you dated commitments, or you answer for less.
Direct. Bring the dated record of what the result waited on. For each input and decision, show when you asked, when you needed it, the date its owner agreed to and when it arrived. Then put the three answers to the person who assigned the result, as one question.
Evidence-first. Offer the dependency record for review first, with your own part in it. Did you name the dependencies, ask for the right to decide or for dated commitments, and ask to renegotiate scope when the answer was no?
Protective. Keep the four-date record and a list of who can decide what for this result. Draft the three-answer question, but don’t send it. Reporting late inputs in your status waits for a read that allows it.
Vague Work Intake
Work arrives without enough definition to start. Nobody has said what done looks like, or who answers the open questions. Chapter 3 covers it.
The move. Propose an intake agreement for your own work. It sets what done looks like, when the work is needed and who answers questions. Present it as a way to get people what they wanted the first time, with your rework count as the reason. The agreement is for the people who send you work, and Safety decides which of them hears it first. Where asking is safe, restating what done looks like and getting a yes is something you can do yourself, before any proposal.
Direct. Bring the rework count and ask to try the agreement. Count only rework traced to a requirement left out of the ask, because an agreement won’t fix a requirement that changed later.
Evidence-first. Offer the record for review first. Include each ask quoted as sent, the round trips and the traced rework. Include your own share too, meaning the asks you did and didn’t restate.
Protective. Keep your restatement of each ask in your own log. Without a confirmed definition, go ahead only on work you could afford to redo. Count only round trips that happened.
Choked Flow
Most of your open work is waiting on someone else, and the waiting decides your dates.
Borrowed Urgency
Something you depend on reaches you late, but your deadline doesn’t move. The urgency was created upstream of you. Chapter 4 covers it.
The move. On the day the input goes late, take it to whoever owns the end date as a schedule risk. Bring the arithmetic. Chasing the late input isn’t an outcome. Ask the owner which outcome they choose if the days don’t come back: the date moves, the scope shrinks, or quality absorbs the difference. If date and scope both stay, state your quality floor, meaning the checks you’ll still do and the part you won’t reach.
Direct. Bring the promised date, the days overdue so far and the days the delay takes out of your window. Then bring the three outcomes and your floor. Your read picks the forum.
Evidence-first. Offer the input timeline for review first, with your own part in it. Did you flag the dependency early, start the parts that didn’t need the input, and plan for the wait as well as the work?
Protective. Log each shrinking window on the day it happens, because an entry written after the error reads as an excuse. Log what you cut to make the date, too. Draft the three-outcome question and your floor, but don’t send them. The record can show the upstream delay’s part in a later error, but it won’t clear you of every error.
Approval Limbo
Finished work sits waiting for a sign-off while the clock keeps running. Chapter 4 covers it, and Chapter 8 runs it through all three postures in one worked case.
The move. Talk about the wait, never the approver. Bring the cost and one proposal: a set time each week for decisions, a limit under which your lead decides alone, or smaller requests that take minutes to approve. The proposal goes to whoever sets when approvals get decided. Your own fix comes first. Send a complete request the day it’s ready.
Direct. Bring the packet and ask for one trial, with its success criteria agreed in advance. Chapter 8’s example is a weekly decision window run for three weeks. The window is worth keeping if complete requests are decided inside it and fewer proposals end in a rush. The approver also has to be willing to carry the cost.
Evidence-first. Ask what your counts have missed. A peer who has seen the same wait can corroborate, but asking them is its own small move. The proposal comes later, in a separate conversation. Any response that changes the read can stop the sequence.
Protective. Keep the log and your fix. Prepare the packet, dated and in the form you’d send, and hold it. If you keep a waiting list, keep it private, because it names people.
Invisible Glue Work
You carry information between people and systems that don’t connect. Nobody assigns that work or counts it. Chapter 4 covers it.
The move. Lead with the gap, not your output, because leading with output reads as a productivity confession. Say what doesn’t connect, what you move by hand and what stops when you’re out. Then propose the durable fix, whether an integration, a documented procedure or a named owner. Say how you’d hand the manual work over. Your read identifies who can approve the fix.
Direct. Compare a week’s hours on glue with hours on the work your role is measured on. Bring the fix and its handover plan, and ask for a decision on the fix. If you’ve been out, add what stalled while you were.
Evidence-first. Offer the tally for review first, with your own part in it. Your part includes coordination you volunteered for, knowledge you kept in your head and load you absorbed without saying so. Where Safety allows, also write the connection down in a routing page, a written handover or an FAQ. Those documents show the work exists without a confrontation.
Protective. Keep the tally private, along with any list of what stalled while you were out. Draft the packet naming the gap and the fix, but don’t send it. Don’t drop the glue quietly to make the point, because when the connection breaks, the breakage lands on you.
Broken Feedback
You learn how your work landed by surprise, by rumor or not at all.
Feedback by Surprise
The first real response to your work comes at the end, when changing it costs the most. Chapter 5 covers it.
The move. Propose one early checkpoint on one piece of work to the reviewer. Frame it as lowering the reviewer’s risk, not as reassurance for you. If you offered an early look and nobody took it, log the offer. The offer shows you did your part, but the late feedback is still a problem.
Direct. Bring the rework you can trace to a response that could have come earlier, and ask for the checkpoint. Leave out requirements the sender knew but left out of the ask, because they belong to Vague Work Intake.
Evidence-first. Offer your record of late responses for review first, with your own share: the early looks you did and didn’t offer. Where showing rough work is safe, there’s a smaller first step. Show a slice to someone who can see what the final reviewer would see. A response from anyone else can leave the decisive objection untouched.
Protective. Keep each piece of work’s three dates (start, first substantive response, delivery) and every dated offer of an early look. Show no rough work.
Bad News Is Unsafe
A specific piece of bad news is being held back, because of what saying it would cost. Chapter 5 covers it.
The move. Unless your Safety reading is high for this recipient, don’t begin with the item you’re holding. And don’t assume your most receptive channel is safe. Find a person or forum where your record shows concerns raised without cost. Run the smallest safe test there: one low-stakes concern, backed by evidence. Write down what happens to the concern and to you. If your record shows no such place, don’t test.
Direct. Where your Safety reading is high for this recipient, not just for the room, take the item to whoever owns the problem. Bring its evidence and the decision you need, and record the response.
Evidence-first. Run the smallest safe test, and let the item wait for a fresh read. A calm answer shows how this recipient takes a low-stakes concern in this setting, but not how a contested one will land.
Protective. Test only where your history shows a concern raised without cost. With thin margin, skip even the test. Keep the private record, and protect yourself first. Chapter 9 draws the line on what to stop raising for good.
Green Dashboard, Red Reality
The report says on track. The people doing the work know it isn’t. Chapter 5 covers it.
The move. Present the pair, never the complaint. “The dashboard is wrong” invites a defense, but a dated list of what green has cost is information. Take it to whoever owns the report, with one proposal, a measure or a single report line that would have caught the gap.
Direct. Bring the weekly pairs, each reported status beside the dated facts it didn’t show. Add any hidden problem that surfaced later, with its cost. Ask for the measure or the line.
Evidence-first. Offer the paired log for review first, with your own share. Your share includes whether you marked your own work green under the same pressure. Your reading of each week can sit beside the facts, marked as a reading.
Protective. Keep the paired log, and leave the dashboard unchallenged. Reporting your own work honestly is a control only where that’s safe.
Outcome Fog
You hand the work off and never learn whether it did any good. Chapter 5 covers it.
The move. Ask for one agreed way for results to come back on one kind of work you ship. Frame it around what the people who did the work never learn: what happened to it after it shipped. Check first whether someone already collects the results, and if so, ask them. Often nobody has that job. Then ask whoever could assign it. If you can’t name that person, there’s no move yet.
Direct. Bring the list of shipped work, each item with the date its result should be visible and its known outcome. A blank past that date is the finding. Ask for the agreed way back.
Evidence-first. Offer the list for review first, with your own part in it. Did you settle at the start what result the work was for? Did you ask afterward, or wait to be told?
Protective. Keep the list. Fill in outcomes only with what you know, from figures you already have access to. Ask no one.
Where this page fits
Chapter 8’s weekly review decides, one item at a time, whether to move, hold or gather. Chapter 9 helps you choose which dysfunction gets the first move, and which to leave alone on purpose. Applied End-to-End Flow: Personal carries the full method.
Sources
The moves apply the method of Applied End-to-End Flow: Personal by Curtis Hibbs and Joshua Barnes. Its engine draws on research on voice and issue selling, including the work of Jane Dutton and Susan Ashford.