Why This Framework Works the Way It Does

Most business books assume you’ll read Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, holding concepts in memory as you build toward mastery. They assume sustained attention. Linear progression. Quiet focus.

That’s not how transformation leaders actually work.

You’re grabbing ten minutes between crisis meetings. Scanning for something applicable to tomorrow’s leadership session. Trying to make sense of why the last intervention backfired while three people wait outside your door or hovering around your desk.

I built CIRCA-CLEAR for how you actually process information under pressure—because it’s how I need to process it too.

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The 1999 Thread

This started twenty-five years ago. Not with transformation frameworks—with survival.

I was a principal consultant for a 4,000-person services business—the firm’s first hybrid consultant, wearing hats from business development to thought leadership. Simultaneously, I was programme manager on a 100-person engagement with Royal Bank of Scotland. Complex programmes. Multiple stakeholders. Vast documentation that assumed I’d read sequentially and remember everything.

My brain doesn’t work that way. Never has.

So I found information architecture. Information mapping. Disciplines built around reducing cognitive load, enabling non-linear navigation, creating structure that serves actual human attention patterns—not idealised ones.

These weren’t academic interests. They were necessities. I needed to make sense of vast amounts of information in ways my brain could actually use. A structure that didn’t require me to remember page 47 to understand page 203. Navigation that let me enter where I needed to, not where publishing conventions assumed I should.

Twenty-five years later, that same need shaped how I built this framework. The 5×5 structure. The pattern recognition approach. The diagnostic entry points. None of it is accidental. It exists because I needed it to work this way for myself first.

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What This Produced

Specific design choices emerged from this constraint:

5×5 symmetry. Five conditions, five responses. You don’t need to hold elaborate mental models. The structure itself reduces working memory load. Complex enough to be useful; simple enough to recall under pressure.

Multiple entry points. Start at your presenting symptom, not Chapter 1. Someone facing a stalled transformation needs to identify their condition—Complex? Insecure? Rapid?—and find the matched response quickly. No prerequisite reading required. Three reading paths supported: practice-first, theory-first, and crisis mode. All paths work.

Pattern recognition over mathematical formalism. Concepts like “Organisational Reynolds” work as metaphor-based early warning, not equations requiring calculation. You recognise the pattern; you don’t compute it. Metaphors are metaphors—not faux maths.

Micro-moves executable this week. Not elaborate planning horizons. Something you can try Monday, observe Friday, adjust the following week. If it can’t be seen, measured, or tried within days, it doesn’t make the page.

“60% misdiagnosis expected.” This normalises struggle rather than demanding perfection. Approximately 60% of teams get it wrong first cycle. That’s not failure—that’s learning. The framework doesn’t require you to be right immediately. It requires you to notice and adjust. Short cadences mean misdiagnosis costs little and teaches much.

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The Invitation

I suspect many of you process information similarly.

Not because there’s anything wrong with you—because sustained linear attention is a fiction for anyone operating under real operational pressure.

The transformation leaders I’ve worked with across banking, government, retail, utilities, logistics, and technology aren’t reading in calm study conditions. They’re constantly context-switching, juggling too many priorities, and making decisions with incomplete information.

This framework exists because if I can’t navigate it under load, neither can you. That’s not accessibility as accommodation. It’s native design.

When you pick up the book and find you can enter at Chapter 8, or start with the diagnostic tools, or grab a micro-move without understanding the full theory—that’s not a shortcut. That’s the architecture working as intended.

Built by someone who needed it to work this way. For others who do too.