Truth About Today
Part of the Planning Week chain · previous: Planning Week for a Workforce Function · next: Strategy on a Page
Truth About Today is the method by which a leadership room states the current condition of a workforce function in a form everyone in the room can sign, before it decides anything about the future. It matters because the alternative, a data study presented to the room, arrives as somebody's finding and is argued line by line; a funnel filled in by the room arrives as the room's own statement and is argued once. The page produces the truth funnel (TF), three lists (situations, barriers, the question) with a maturity band beneath them, and is worked in a session with Wiki:Packs/Strategy on a Page (CP-WFM-011). It is the first of the three pages walked on Day 1 morning of a planning week, after the two pre-reads.
Why a funnel and not a study
The Case for Operating Model Planning gives the reason a function organized by inheritance runs on unwritten answers: each part of the estate arrived with its own answers to the operating-model questions, each correct for the business it was built for, and the answers disagree. A current-state study written before the week would have to describe that disagreement, and a description written by one party reads as an accusation to the others, however carefully it is worded. The funnel avoids the problem by construction. Nothing in it is a finding. Each of its parts is a sentence a director in the room says about their own part of the estate, written down as said, and the convergence to one question is done by the room, not by an author.
The funnel is a simple device: a set of "current situation" boxes flowing through a band of barriers and narrowing to a single key question. The form is kept because it produces a non-accusatory current state in under an hour without a data study; the content is written for a workforce function. The device is fast because it asks for what people already know and refuses what they would have to prove.
Three rules govern every line in it.
- Each line is true for the business it describes. A regional function that plans on spreadsheets is not behind; it is planning the way its business asked it to. The funnel records the situation, not a verdict on it.
- Each line is contributed, not discovered. Every director offers one true thing about their own part of the estate. No one offers a true thing about a colleague's.
- Nothing is written as absent or broken. A practice that often is not done formally is written as "often not done formally," which is a fact about the process; "not done" is a claim about the past that the room cannot check and should not sign. This is the calibration rule the whole chain follows.
The five situations
The top of the funnel holds five situations, each written as a pair of things that are both said in the estate and cannot both be the whole truth. The five below are the generic set for a workforce function assembled from several heritages; a room replaces the wording with its own and keeps the pairs.
| # | The situation, as a pair | What the pair reveals |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Our clients are unique" / "our clients are like everyone else's" | The estate has not yet agreed which properties of a body of work matter for planning it, so both statements are true of different properties |
| 2 | "We own that" / "who is accountable for that?" | Ownership is held by practice rather than by a written decision right; the same question gets a different owner depending on who is asked |
| 3 | "The number is right" / "whose number?" | Two definitions of one metric are in use, each internally consistent; the disagreement is definitional before it is anything else |
| 4 | "We are short" / "we are over" | Surplus and deficit are read at different grains in different parts of the estate, so both are true at once and neither can be netted against the other |
| 5 | "The partner is the problem" / "the partner is the answer" | A partner node is being asked to do several jobs at once (absorb variance, hold base load, carry a market), so it is judged on a job it was not given |
The pairs are deliberately symmetrical. A situation written as one side of a pair is an opinion; written as both sides it is an observation about the estate that no one in the room has to defend.
The four barriers
The band in the middle of the funnel groups what stands between the situations and a single answer. Four groups are enough; more than four reproduces the org chart.
| Barrier | What sits in it | Example lines from a room |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial | What the offer promised, what the contracts permit, how value is priced | "Targets differ by location because that is how the contracts were signed" · "the offer sells a service tier; the plan is built by site" |
| Culture | What each heritage believes planning is for; who is trusted with a number | "Each function trusts its own forecast and audits the others" · "a decline is argued, not recorded" |
| Operations | The practices in daily use, and the tools they run on | "Most of the estate runs on spreadsheets beside the short-term WFM engine" · "intraday automation runs in pockets" · "the long-term capacity engine and the reporting platform hold different totals" |
| Management systems | Definitions, forums, decision rights, the calendar | "Occupancy has two definitions in use" · "there is no single door an ask comes through" · "the capacity cycle runs on several calendars" |
Each barrier line is graded in prose as the chain grades claims: Established where an artifact can be produced, Inferred where it follows from established lines by stated reasoning, Asserted where it rests on one person's statement, Open where the room does not know. A barrier line at Asserted is not weaker as a contribution; it is a line the validation circuit will check. The claim scale is the one Executive Issue Register and Data Synthesis Before Decision use, and the funnel adopts it rather than inventing its own.
The one question
The funnel narrows to one question, and the test of a good question is that every situation above it is a special case of it. For a workforce function moving toward a global ROC, the shared service that owns the methodology for forecasting, scheduling, real-time steering and work placement across every node, the generic form is:
- Where should each body of work sit, by what method is that decided, and who owns the decision?
Situation 1 is the "which body of work" part; 2 is the "who owns" part; 3 and 4 are the "by what method" part; 5 is all three applied to one node. A room that arrives at a different question has usually found that one situation dominates the others in its estate, and that is itself a finding worth writing down. The question is carried forward to Strategy on a Page, where the vision answers it, and to Instantiating the GRPI-T Framework, where the five pillars are diagnosed against it.
The maturity band
Beneath the funnel the room records where the function stands on the WFM Labs Maturity Model™, and it records a band, never a point. Two reasons. A staged model is a gated ladder: each level presupposes substantial satisfaction of the level below, which is why the staged representation exists at all.[1] Interpreting WFM Maturity Assessments draws the interpretive consequence — a level is bounded by its weakest gating dimension, and a flat average across dimensions manufactures a middle position nobody occupies — and gives the bounded-position form; this page does not restate the rule. And a self-reported score inflates in a way the rater cannot see,[2] so the honest statement of a function's position is a range with the binding gate named: "Level 2, bounded by Process," rather than a decimal.
The band is written with the pillar that binds it, using The Maturity Diagnostic and Pathways for the quick placement. Where the room's units disagree, the disagreement is recorded as a range across units, not averaged. Ranges rather than points is the same discipline a calibrated estimator applies to any uncertain quantity,[3] and it is the habit every later page of the chain depends on.
How directors contribute
The funnel is filled in one pass, in order, in about forty minutes. The facilitator reads the five generic situations; each director rewrites one in the words of their own estate, or adds one, and the room keeps five. Each director then offers one barrier line about their own function, graded aloud. The facilitator proposes the question; the room amends it until every situation reads as a case of it. Last, each director places their own unit on the ladder as a band, and the room records the range.
The rule that makes this work is that a director speaks only about the estate they run. A line about a colleague's function is returned to its owner to state or decline. Nothing is voted; the funnel is agreed when no one in the room wants to remove a line. The output is read back at the close of the block and travels with decision D-01 on Strategy on a Page as the current-state statement the strategy answers.
Worked example
The chain's worked example is a workforce planning function of a service organization formed from three heritages: roughly 40–50 planners [E], serving about a dozen books of business across voice, chat and email, with in-house and partner teams; two short-term WFM engine instances; one partner-held scheduling team. Its planning week ran Mon 20 Apr – Thu 23 Apr 2026, pre-reads sent Wed 15 Apr.
On Day 1 morning the room kept the five generic situations with two rewordings: situation 3 became "the handle time is 452 seconds" / "the plan says 412 seconds" (the series' migrating book carries 452 s [M] measured after phase 1 against 412 s [A] carried from the sending platform), and situation 4 became "phase 2 doubles the population" / "phase 2 doubles the plan," which the room recognized as the same statement read at two grains. The barrier lines included "two definitions of contacts per transaction in use, CPT-01 at 0.42 and CPT-02 at 0.31" (Established: both definition records exist) and "the partner-held scheduling team plans on its own calendar" (Asserted: one director's statement, checked in the validation circuit). The question was kept as written above. The band was recorded as Level 2 as a band, not a point [A], bounded by Process, with one unit indicating Level 3 on real time; the validation circuit closing Fri 8 May 2026 was asked to confirm the binding gate. Nothing in the funnel named a team.
The artifact this page produces
The truth funnel (TF), three lists, one row per line. It is filed with the decision record for D-01. One filled example row from each list:
| List | Row | Grade | Contributed by (seat) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Situation | "the handle time is 452 seconds" / "the plan says 412 seconds" | Established (452 s [M]) against Asserted (412 s [A], carried) | the portfolio planning seat for the migrating book |
| Barrier (management systems) | two definitions of contacts per transaction in use, CPT-01 0.42 and CPT-02 0.31 | Established | the definitions owner |
| Question | where should each body of work sit, by what method is that decided, and who owns the decision? | — | the room |
Produced in a working session with Wiki:Packs/Strategy on a Page (CP-WFM-011); the filled set is part of blueprint v0.1.
What would change this
The page's central claim is that a room-filled funnel produces a current state the room will act on, where a study handed to the room does not. The observation that would overturn it is a validation circuit that returns the funnel's lines materially wrong, in more than one barrier, on artifacts the room could have been shown in advance. If that happened twice, the method would need a short evidence pack before the week rather than after it, and the funnel would become the room's reading of a study rather than its own statement.
How this connects
- Previous in the chain: Planning Week for a Workforce Function — the launch page; this page is the third pre-read
- Next in the chain: Strategy on a Page — the vision that answers the one question; D-01 carries the funnel with it
- Defers to: The Case for Operating Model Planning (why the unwritten answers disagree, and why alignment precedes deliverables) · WFM Labs Maturity Model™ (the five levels by canonical name) · The Maturity Diagnostic and Pathways (the quick placement instrument) · Interpreting WFM Maturity Assessments (gated ladders, not averages; claimed versus verified) · Inherited Sourcing Doctrine in Merged Service Estates (why each heritage's answer was right for its business)
- Feeds: Instantiating the GRPI-T Framework (the pillar diagnosis) · Resizing a Workforce Function After an Acquisition (the same non-accusatory stance applied to size)
Maturity Model Position
The funnel is a Level 2 to Level 3 method on the WFM Labs Maturity Model™: it is the first written current state a Foundational function produces, and the band it records is the starting position for the climb to Progressive that Level 2: Structured Workforce Management and Level 3: The Automation Layer describe. A function already at Level 3 (Progressive) uses the funnel to record which pillar binds it. Four scales on this wiki use the word "level"; Planning Week for a Workforce Function states which is which. This page uses the maturity Levels 1–5.
See Also
- Planning Week for a Workforce Function
- Operating Model for Workforce Management — the ring the funnel is the second beat of
- Data Synthesis Before Decision — the claim grades the barrier lines carry
- Executive Issue Register — the same grades in daily use
- Navigating WFM Maturity Transitions — what the band implies for the next move
References
- ↑ Paulk, M. C., Curtis, B., Chrissis, M. B., & Weber, C. V. (1993). "Capability Maturity Model, Version 1.1". IEEE Software 10(4), 18–27. doi:10.1109/52.219617.
- ↑ Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(6), 1121–1134. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121.
- ↑ Hubbard, D. W. (2014). How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Chapter 5, "Calibrated Estimates: How Much Do You Know Now?". ISBN 978-1-118-53927-9.
