Operating Theory
Staleness and expiry
Facts age at different speeds. Date them, give the fast ones a review interval, and treat an unreviewed reflection as an unknown rather than a truth.
Three speeds
Slow facts change rarely: founding, structure, core products, long held principles. Medium facts change yearly: priorities, pricing, executives, contracts. Fast facts change weekly: open problems, live initiatives, relationship health, current work.
Attach a review interval to the class, not to each line, and record the date each section was last confirmed.
Detecting drift
Claim: unknown
We do not yet have a reliable way for an organisation to notice that its own reflection has stopped matching reality. Candidate signals include corrections made by readers, disagreements raised during work, and facts contradicted by systems of record. Whether any of these predicts drift early enough to be useful is untested.