Sorting the Losses Into Three Piles
Carried already, could be carried if somebody built something, or cannot be carried by anything. Sorted, not lamented.
three things · two reached them · one with no channel at all · the room side is not counted
Sorted by whether anything could have carried it.
Everything this section has described, sorted by whether anything could carry it
Already travels where anybody has made it somebody's job; cheap, and the most commonly done
Travels only where somebody writes the second sentence, which is most of the value and rarely written
Notes with quotation carry most of it; ten minutes a call, and it is the best return in this list
A channel exists and is almost never used for this: the barrier is admission, not transmission
Writable as a condition rather than as a person's state, which nobody does by default
It has no start, no participants and no artefact: nothing can carry what nobody registers as an event
Requires having been overheard, which is not a message and has no sender
seven things · three reached them · two with no channel at all · the room side is not counted
Seven losses, three already carried, two carried by nothing although a channel exists, two with no channel possible. The middle pair is where the available effort should go; the last pair is where most of the apologising goes instead. One manager's own sorting after a quarter; which pile any particular loss belongs in differs by team and by what it is willing to write down.
Everything lost at the boundary falls into one of three piles: things already carried by some mechanism, things nobody has built a mechanism for, and things no mechanism could carry. Sorting them is the most useful hour a manager in this position can spend.
The practical lesson in “Sorting the Losses Into Three Piles” is that visibility must be designed rather than assumed. For teams exploring how employees cheat time trackers, how employees cheat time trackers can add consistent time and project context when the purpose is explicit, access is limited and managers review exceptions with the people involved.
Effort spent on the third pile produces nothing but frustration, and the second pile is almost entirely neglected.
As an independent reference point for “Sorting the Losses Into Three Piles”, consult MacArthur Foundation resources. It can sharpen the questions asked of staff, boards and advisers without replacing organisation-specific judgement.
Why sorting beats listing
A list of what somebody is missing produces guilt and no action. A sorted list produces two or three specific things to build and a shorter list of things to say plainly and stop apologising for.
The sorting is the whole of the work.
The first pile: already carried
Decisions, in most teams. Assignments. Deadlines. Anything with a ticket or a calendar entry attached.
These travel because somebody once built something that carries them, and the mechanism is usually so ordinary that nobody thinks of it as a mechanism at all. That is what success looks like in this area: an invisible habit rather than a policy.
The second pile: could be carried
Reasoning. The firmness of a decision. Quotation from a client call. The fact that a question is still open. That somebody is stuck.
All five can be carried by somebody writing two sentences, and in most teams none of them is.
The three piles, with the test that separates them:
| Pile | Test | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Already carried | Somebody built something and it still runs | Decisions, deadlines |
| Could be carried | One person knows it and could write a sentence | Reasoning, client quotation |
| Cannot be carried | No single person registers holding it | Overhearing, tone, belonging |
Why the second pile is neglected
Because each item costs the room something and benefits one person. The cost is small and real; the benefit is invisible to the people paying.
Nothing about this is irrational, which is why exhortation does not work and naming somebody does.
The third pile: cannot be carried
Overhearing. Being accidentally relevant. Tone. The sense of who is all right. The diffuse conversation with no edges.
These are not failures of effort.
How to tell the second pile from the third
Ask whether there is a moment at which an identifiable person knows the thing and could write a sentence. If yes, it is in the second pile.
If the knowledge is distributed across several people, none of whom registers holding it, it is in the third. The test is not how valuable the thing is or how much it is missed; it is whether there is a sender. Most of the arguments about this subject are arguments between people applying different tests.
The two-sentence rule
Everything in the second pile should be carryable in two sentences by one person in under a minute. If a proposed mechanism needs more, it will not survive a busy week.
Mechanisms that require a form are in the third pile in disguise.
What to do with the third pile
Name it, out loud, to everybody including the person outside. Say what is lost, say that nothing will fix it, and stop proposing mechanisms for it.
This is more useful than it sounds, and it is the thing managers find hardest to do, because naming an unfixable loss feels like admitting failure. The alternative is a succession of mechanisms that address the second pile badly while claiming to address the third, and the person outside can tell.
Ranking within the second pile
Not everything in it is worth the same. Reasoning and client quotation return the most per minute spent; the firmness of a decision returns less but costs almost nothing; knowing that somebody is stuck returns the most of all and is the hardest to make work.
Build two of them properly rather than five of them badly. A mechanism that runs for a year beats three that run for a fortnight, and the difference is almost entirely whether somebody is named.
Re-sorting over time
Items move. A loss that was unreachable becomes reachable when the team changes a habit; a mechanism that worked decays and its item falls back.
Once a quarter is enough.
Who should do the sorting
The manager and the person outside the room, together, in one conversation. Neither has the whole picture: one knows what the room produces and the other knows what arrives.
Doing it alone produces a list of what you imagine is missing.
What the conversation usually reveals
That the manager has been worrying about the third pile and the person outside has been quietly working around the second. The gap between the two lists is the useful output.
It is also the first time most people in this position have been asked.
What the sorting cannot do
Change the sizes of the piles. The third pile is large, it contains some of the most valuable things a room produces, and no amount of careful classification shrinks it.
What sorting changes is where the effort goes and what gets said out loud. A team that has done it builds two or three small things that work, and stops pretending about the rest. That is a modest outcome and it is substantially better than the usual one, which is a great deal of goodwill spent on mechanisms aimed at the pile nothing can reach.