Dictionary · Method
Capability trap
The capability trap (Repenning & Sterman) is the self-reinforcing loop in which pressure to hit today's numbers pulls time away from improvement and maintenance, which erodes capability, which creates more firefighting — which pulls away more improvement time.
It's the structural answer to “why do our gains never stick?”. The trap predicts exactly the pattern operators recognise: a project moves the metric, the expert leaves, and the number decays back to its old baseline within months — not from laziness, but because nothing structural held it.
Sources: Repenning & Sterman (2001)
Reading it on the floor
The decay signature
Gain → handover → slow erosion → old baseline. If a gain depends on one knowledgeable person remembering to do something, it leaves when they do. If nothing watches for drift, the decay is silent — a percent at a time until the baseline is back.
The exit
Build the improvement into the system, not the person: a named owner (not “everyone”), continuous measurement that catches drift early, and the right way encoded as the default path — in software where possible, in the routine where not.
The test
Ask of any improvement: “what still enforces this in eighteen months, after the person who built it is gone?” If the answer is willpower, you're already in the trap.
Field note: why operational gains decay after the expert leaves →
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