Mirrorborn

In a society where speed, efficiency, scalability, and extraction are optimised, many organisations and projects move quickly to solutions without first understanding the problem they are actually trying to solve.

This is a pattern I’ve seen repeatedly, across organisations, teams, and the people inside them.

Timelines are compressed, business cases are written from assumptions, and effort, cost, and scope are estimated from surface understanding.

Later, the same questions appear:
Why is this late?
Why is the scope unclear?
Why does this not solve the problem we thought it would?

This pattern is not a failure of capability.
It is a failure of coherence.

The same dissonance appears in the people doing the work.

Individuals are often asked to deliver outcomes without clear context, shared understanding, or support. They may not fully understand the purpose of the project, how their role connects to others, or what success actually looks like.

When this happens, stress accumulates.
Frustration grows.
People begin to doubt their competence and question their worth.

And this does not stop at work.

We do not leave our nervous systems at the office.
The strain carries into our homes, our relationships, our health, and our identity.

This is how incoherence spreads — quietly, relationally, system by system.

Often without anyone intending it.

So, what is coherence?

Coherence is when actions can be explained without distortion.

What we think,
what we feel,
what we say,
what we do — our actions —
sings the same tune.

There is no unexamined contradiction anywhere.

But coherence also often feels uncomfortable before it feels right — because it interrupts momentum.

Coherence often looks like friction before it looks like flow.
Incoherence can feel productive right up until it collapses.

Where does coherence begin?

Coherence begins somewhere much simpler.

It begins by slowing down enough to ask:
What is the problem we are actually here for?
Why does it matter?
What question is trying to be answered beneath the visible one?

When the problem is clearly articulated and shared, it becomes an anchor.

Design, decisions, roles, and delivery can then orient around it — not around appearances, outcomes, or urgency.

In my experience, coherence shows up quietly, in ways like:

• Each stage of work connects meaningfully to the problem
• Artefacts make sense without constant explanation
• Teams understand why they are together and what they are responsible for
• Transparency and integrity are not values statements, but lived conditions

Coherence is not only organisational.
It is personal.

It shows up as a quiet knowing:
Is this right for me?
Does this fit who I am?
Am I acting in alignment with what matters?

When the answer is yes, coherence is already present.
When the answer is no, the work is not to force change — but to understand why the misalignment exists.

When coherence becomes a primary design principle, something subtle shifts.
People are less fragmented.
Work becomes intelligible.
Systems begin to support, rather than drain, those within them.

Coherence does not demand perfection.
It simply asks that what we are doing makes sense — end to end, inside and out.

Designing for coherence is not about slowing everything down — it’s about making sure that what moves actually knows where it’s going.