## Working (verbs run, in order)

**1. lift (step back to underlying structure).**
Stripping the domain vocabulary: an organization wants to drive a *hard-to-observe true outcome*. The true outcome cannot be measured directly, so any number used to drive behavior is a *proxy* for it. The choice is between (A) inferring the true outcome from several triangulating signals and treating any single number as provisional + recalibrating, versus (B) attaching strong incentives to one clean proxy and holding people to it. The success test has two parts: the *true* outcome must improve, AND the measure must not be hollowed out by people optimizing its letter. So the meta-model is: *a target inferred from imperfect signals, placed under optimization pressure, where the measure and the goal can diverge.*

**2. match (retrieve via the domain-stripped meta-model).**
- `search_prime` query: "strong incentives attached to a measurable proxy cause the proxy to diverge from the true target as agents optimize the measure itself." Top neighborhood: **Mechanism Design and Incentive Structure**, **Conflict of Interest**, **Goal Congruence (Alignment)**, **Incentive Compatibility**, **Adverse Selection**.
- `search_by_facets` (oblique, multi-structure) over five facets. Per-facet and fused hits surfaced: **Observer Effect** (top fused), **Measurement Uncertainty / Observational Noise**, **Triangulation**, **Goal Congruence (Alignment)**, **Variability**, **Wisdom of the Crowds**. The "incentive degrades the measure's validity" facet pulled **Conflict of Interest** and **Falsifiability**; the "recalibrate to prevent drift" facet pulled **Regime Change / Temporal Dynamics**.

**3. salience-rank + prune.**
Most load-bearing structures, ranked:
- **Goal Congruence / "rewarding A while hoping for B"** — the canonical pathology: agents retreat to the measurable local metric and abandon the harder-to-measure system contribution. *Directly on point.*
- **Observer Effect** — the act of measuring (and rewarding) a quantity perturbs it; under strong incentive the proxy stops reading the true state. The measure-becomes-the-target structure.
- **Triangulation** — robustness from multiple independent signals; a single source carries the bias/blind-spot of its one method.
- **Overoptimization Guardrail** (archetype, related to Goal Congruence) — when a proxy is pushed under optimization pressure, gains come from exploiting the measurement system; the fix is to treat the metric as provisional, protect the broader purpose, monitor side-effects, and recalibrate.

Pruned as off-axis: Adverse Selection, Information Cascade, Herding (about signal-following, not proxy-optimization).

**4. decompose (framed prime → structural core).**
"Goal Congruence" is framed (organizational). Its structural core: *when a measurable proxy stands in for a hard-to-observe goal and is placed under optimization pressure, agents optimize the proxy's letter and the proxy decouples from the goal.* This core is domain-independent (it recurs in test-score gaming, sales-velocity-vs-lifetime-value, throughput-vs-quality, model-benchmark-vs-real-task).

**5. lower (instantiate to the two approaches).**
- Approach B *is* the failure structure named above, run on purpose: one clean proxy + strong direct incentives + hold-to-it. This is precisely the configuration that maximizes the decoupling pressure. Its single number gives no independent reading to detect when the letter has diverged from the outcome — and there's no recalibration step. It will likely move the number while hollowing out the true outcome → fails the second success criterion.
- Approach A *is* the counter-practice: multiple triangulating signals (no single signal can be cheaply gamed without the others contradicting it), each metric treated as provisional (the proxy stays subordinate to the purpose), and periodic recalibration (so when a signal starts being gamed or drifts, it gets swapped). This satisfies both criteria: convergent signals track the true outcome AND resist letter-optimization.

**6. evaluate-fit (gate against known failure conditions).**
- *Triangulation's hazard:* it is costlier and slower, and can be "method pluralism" without integration. Approach A explicitly *judges the actual outcome* from the signals and recalibrates — it integrates, so it clears the hazard. Cost is the real price, but the success criteria are about outcome-quality and non-gaming, not cost.
- *Overoptimization-guardrail hazard ("guardrail theater"):* a provisional-metric stance is inert unless someone has authority to swap signals. Approach A's "periodically recalibrate which signals are used" supplies the decision-consequence, clearing it.
- *The distractor:* leadership loves a single clean dashboard number and finds it motivating. This is a real organizational pull toward B, but it is exactly the seductive surface that the failure structure exploits — the cleanliness of one number is what makes it gameable and recalibration-free. Motivational appeal does not change the structural verdict; it is a reason to *present* A's composite judgment in a digestible way, not to adopt B. Gating on the success criteria, this preference does not flip the choice.

**7. reconcile.**
Both retrieval paths (semantic neighborhood + facet decomposition) and the archetype all converge: the single-proxy-under-strong-incentive configuration is the named pathology; the multi-signal, provisional, recalibrated configuration is the named counter-practice. The only pressure toward B is the dashboard preference, which the fit-gate identifies as the very trap. Decision is sound. **STOP.**

===DECISION_BEGIN===
DECISIVE_FACTOR: When a hard-to-observe goal is replaced by one rewarded number, people optimize the number's letter and it stops tracking the real outcome, so the measure must stay plural, provisional, and recalibrated rather than singular and binding.
CHOICE: A
JUSTIFICATION: Tying strong incentives to one easy proxy reliably produces a rising number alongside a hollowed-out true outcome, because effort flows to whatever the single measure rewards and there is no independent reading to catch the divergence. Judging the real outcome from several cross-checking signals makes gaming far harder, since cheating one signal shows up as contradiction in the others, and treating each number as provisional keeps attention on the actual goal. Periodically changing which signals are trusted closes off any proxy that starts being gamed or drifts out of date. The pull toward a single clean dashboard is exactly the temptation that causes the long-run hollowing-out, so it should not drive the choice.
===DECISION_END===
