How Carbon14 Works
Deep dive into Carbon14's decay engine, cascade system, and structural transparency
Why Strategic Drift Happens
Here's the pattern: teams work on projects that made sense three months ago. But priorities shift, market conditions change, leadership pivots strategy and teams keep executing because there's no signal to stop. By the time someone asks "wait, why are we still doing this?", you've wasted weeks or months of effort.
Silent Decay
Projects lose strategic relevance over time, but teams continue working because there's no objective signal to stop.
Process Breakdown
Even with Agile and OKRs, review cycles get skipped under pressure, and drift goes undetected.
No Safety Net
Teams see problems but lack a safe, objective way to flag when work no longer aligns with business goals.
What Carbon14 Actually Does
Carbon14 makes drift visible by automatically decreasing confidence in your work over time. To keep projects "healthy," teams have to actively confirm work still matters with evidence, not just hope. If you can't justify it anymore, the declining health score makes that obvious to everyone.
Tracks Decay Automatically
Your projects, goals, and work areas lose health points over time based on their half-life (6 months, 3 months, 2 weeks).
Forces Validation
When health drops, teams must update their KPI scores and provide written justification for why their work still matters.
Resets Health
Valid updates restore health to 100% and reset the decay timer, creating continuous validation cycles.
Shows Impact
Updates cascade through the hierarchy, improving connected projects and goals, with full audit trails.
Where These Mechanics Work Best
The decay engine and structural transparency aren't magic. They work in specific contexts. Being honest about fit:
✓ Best Fit
Decent-but-imperfect cultures where people want transparency but fear consequences. The mechanics reduce the risk of surfacing problems early. This is the vast middle where most organizations live.
⚠ Won't Help
Truly toxic cultures where any dissent is punished regardless of context or timing. No tool fixes that culture change has to come first. Carbon14 can't create safety where leadership actively punishes honesty.
○ Less Critical
Already-healthy cultures with perfect transparency and excellent communication. Still valuable for the audit trail and cascade effects, but the safety mechanics are less critical when trust already exists.
The Mechanism of Cultural Change
The tool helps enable cultural change rather than requiring it first. By creating structural transparency (attribution + context = reduced risk), Carbon14 shifts the risk calculation for surfacing concerns. Over time, this can catalyze cultural improvement. But it's a gradual shift in behavior, not overnight transformation. If your culture actively punishes honesty, start there first.
💡 Want to understand how structural transparency creates safety? See Structural Transparency for the full story.
The Decay Engine
Why "Carbon14"? The metaphor is simple: radioactive Carbon-14 decays at a predictable rate. So does the validity of your strategic assumptions. Market conditions change, priorities shift, technical constraints emerge. Without regular confirmation that work still matters, confidence should naturally decrease. That's what the decay engine does, it makes the passage of time visible as declining health.
Core Principle
Every strategic element has a half-life. Goals decay slowly (6 months), projects faster (3 months), day-to-day work areas quickly (2 weeks). Without evidence that it still matters, health scores drop automatically. This creates a natural prompt: "Is this still true? Has anything changed?" Not punishment, reflection.
Business Goals
6-month half-life
High-level objectives decay slowly, reflecting how strategic priorities can shift over quarters.
Projects
3-month half-life
Project relevance decays faster, requiring regular validation of strategic fit and delivery confidence.
Work Areas
2-week half-life
Day-to-day work areas decay quickly, forcing frequent validation of progress and alignment.
Start Fast, Customize Later
Carbon14 comes with smart defaults that work for most teams. Start with these proven settings, see how they feel, then adjust if your team moves faster or slower. Nothing's required on day one.
Defaults
Business Goals
6 months
High-level objectives shift slowly
Projects
3 months
Delivery timelines and priorities change
Work Areas
2 weeks
Day-to-day execution moves fast
Start here. Most teams use these settings and never change them. If your team moves faster (startup) or slower (regulated industry), you can adjust. But you don't have to decide that on day one.
Advanced: Full Customization Options (Optional)
If the defaults don't fit your team's pace, everything's configurable:
-
Custom half-lives per project type
Set different decay rates for R&D vs. production work
-
Adjust KPI weightings
Emphasize delivery confidence over strategic fit, or vice versa
-
Team-level control
Each team can configure to match their pace and needs
Most teams start with defaults and customize later (if ever). Don't let configuration be a blocker to starting.
Strategic Health Over Time
The solid line shows health with regular updates, while the dotted line shows what happens without intervention.
Evidence-Based Validation System
To reset the decay clock, teams must provide objective evidence that their work still matters. This creates accountability and protects contributors with documented proof.
KPI Updates
What: Quantitative metrics showing progress toward goals
Who: Team leads, project managers, contributors
Example: "User engagement increased 15% this month"
Leadership Directives
What: Strategic guidance or priority changes from leadership
Who: Executives, directors, senior managers
Example: "CEO directive: Focus on mobile-first strategy"
Delivery Updates
What: Progress reports and milestone completions
Who: Project managers, team leads, contributors
Example: "Sprint 3 completed: 8/10 features delivered"
Audit Trail Protection
Every update is timestamped, attributed, and logged. This creates an audited voice for teams, they can raise concerns backed by objective evidence, not just opinion. The audit trail protects contributors and provides transparency for decision-making.
Bidirectional Cascade System
Updates flow both up and down the strategic hierarchy, creating real-time alignment between leadership vision and team execution.
Top-Down Cascade
Leadership → Teams
- Strategic pivots reach teams immediately
- Priority changes cascade to all connected work
- New directives reset relevant decay clocks
- Vision changes flow through the entire system
Bottom-Up Cascade
Teams → Leadership
- Resource constraints become visible upstream
- Technical blockers impact project health
- Team updates improve connected goals
- Execution realities inform strategic decisions
Real-Time Alignment
The cascade system ensures that strategic changes and execution realities are visible across all levels simultaneously. No more waiting for quarterly reviews or status meetings, alignment happens in real-time.
💡 Want to see cascades in action? See Use Cases for detailed before/after scenarios showing how strategic pivots, resource constraints, and delivery blockers cascade through the system.
Business Goals
6-month half-life
Projects
3-month half-life
Work Areas
2-week half-life
Positive Cascade
Work Area team updates KPIs with evidence
Project health improves
Business goal health improves
Connected work areas get health boost
Negative Cascade
Business goal becomes less relevant
Connected projects lose alignment
Work areas struggle to justify work
System forces early detection
KPI Weighting System
Different strategic levels require different types of evidence. Carbon14 weights KPIs appropriately for each level. All weightings are configurable.
Business Goals
Focus: Strategic Relevance
- Market conditions (40%)
- Customer feedback (30%)
- Competitive landscape (20%)
- Financial metrics (10%)
Projects
Focus: Strategic Fit + Delivery
- Strategic alignment (50%)
- Delivery confidence (30%)
- Resource availability (20%)
Work Areas
Focus: Execution Confidence
- Progress confidence (40%)
- Technical confidence (30%)
- Resource confidence (20%)
- Strategic alignment (10%)
Business Goals
Primarily focused on high-level strategic relevance.
Projects
Balanced between strategic fit and confidence in delivery.
Work Areas
Weighted towards execution confidence and progress.
Audit Trail & Pattern Recognition
Every update creates a detailed audit trail: who changed what, when, and why. This isn't just compliance theater, it's organizational memory that usually gets lost in Slack threads. The audit trail makes invisible context visible and creates the foundation for structural transparency.
Complete Audit Trail
Every update is logged: Timestamp, author, evidence, and reasoning for every KPI change.
- Who made the change and when
- What evidence was provided
- Why the change was necessary
- Impact on connected elements
Cascade Visualization
See the full impact: Every update shows how changes flow through the strategic hierarchy.
- Work Area → Project → Goal (upward)
- Goal → Project → Work Areas (downward)
- Project ↔ Goal & Work Areas (bidirectional)
- Real-time health score changes