Change and Constants Framework

Overview

Every strategy contains elements that must change and elements that must not. The failure mode is misclassification: treating habits as principles, or principles as outdated conventions. The framework sorts on two axes: 变 (Must Change) and 不变 (Must Stay Constant) — they are complements, not opposites.

Skill composition: AFTER [first-principles] to strip convention; WITH [second-order-thinking] to check if "constants" are only temporarily stable; BEFORE [okr-goal-setting] — goals = 变; core values = 不变.

When to Use

• Major environmental shift demands strategic response and the team is paralyzed on what to adapt vs. preserve
• Organizational identity is unclear: cannot distinguish "this is who we are" from "this is what we've always done"
• Leader/board asks: "What should we never compromise on?" or "Is this signal or noise?"
• Retrospective after failure: distinguish bad implementation of a sound constant vs. faithful adherence to an outdated variable

When NOT to use: purely operational decisions (vendor, tool) without strategic identity implications; genuine emergencies (use OODA instead); using the framework to avoid deciding by treating all elements as equivalent.

Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door)