The Canon
The Canon is the execution standard behind everything we install: five stages, always in the same order, for every workflow in every business we touch, including our own. It starts at intake, because that is where the mess begins.
Work enters through structured capture, not ad-hoc requests. If it arrived by WhatsApp, it is not in the system. It is in someone’s pocket.
Decisions are made once, upstream, with explicit criteria and thresholds. The rules are set before the work starts, not negotiated in the middle of it.
Approved work is routed with named owners and defined handoffs. Nothing moves because somebody happened to remember it.
Work completes into a defined state: approved, live, shipped. Vague activity is not a state, and neither is done-ish.
Outcomes update the rules and thresholds, so the system improves without heroics. Results change how you work, instead of just getting reported.
Why the order matters
Point it at a mess and you get the mess, faster. The Canon exists to stop execution amplifying chaos: nothing gets automated until the stage before it is solid, and nothing reaches works without the decision already made. It is why the fixes on this site hold, and it is enforced in our own companies before it is ever installed in yours.
The full thinking behind the standard lives with our sister practice, Renew Method. The fifteen-minute diagnostic scores your business against exactly these stages.
