When leadership pressure gets attributed to people — someone not stepping up, someone over-controlling, someone not communicating well enough — the conversation stays stuck at the level of behaviour.
Sometimes behaviour is the issue. But more often, what looks like a people problem is being produced by the way the work is structured.
The 5 A’s are the second half of the Architecture Lens. If the 7 Foundations help read the invisible conditions in a leadership field, the 5 A’s help locate the tangible parts of Architecture where pressure is often being produced, carried, or distorted: Agreements, Assignments, Arrangements, Artefacts, and Access. The question they ask is simple: which part of the structure is asking people to carry what the Architecture should be holding?
Agreements — what has really been agreed
Agreements look at what people believe has been agreed — not only what has been written down.
Some are formal: a mandate, a contract, a governance decision, a set of operating principles. Others are informal: what people assume they can say, what they believe the real priorities are, what they know not to question.
When Agreements are weak, old, vague, or inconsistent, people operate from different versions of the work while believing they are aligned. The gap between those versions is often where the pressure lives.
Assignments — who carries what
Assignments look at ownership, responsibility, authority, and expectation.
Who is expected to carry what? Do they have the authority and support to carry it? Is responsibility sitting where it should?
When Assignments are unclear, work tends to move through personal effort, goodwill, repeated follow-up, or quiet compensation. People may look as if they are failing when the structure has simply not assigned the work clearly enough for them to succeed.
Arrangements — how the work is held
Arrangements look at the practical containers for the work: meetings, forums, review rhythms, governance spaces, decision routes, escalation paths, working groups, and the boundaries and interfaces between teams or partners.
When Arrangements are poor, the work may look active. Meetings happen. Reports are produced. But decisions recycle. Pressure has nowhere useful to go. People spend more time keeping the work moving than the work itself should require.
Artefacts — what carries meaning and direction
Artefacts are the objects that carry the work between people: plans, dashboards, reports, decision logs, risk registers, roadmaps, narratives, operating models.
Good Artefacts make reality easier to see and act on. Weak Artefacts can preserve a managed version of reality — showing activity without movement, confidence without clarity, or agreement without real ownership.
When Artefacts do not show what is true, people further from the centre make decisions based on a picture that does not match the one those closer to the work are living.
Access — who can reach what matters
Access looks at who can reach the information, authority, context, resources, people, and decision routes needed to do the work properly.
Poor Access often creates hidden strain. People may be accountable for outcomes while being too far from the conversations that shape them. They may receive decisions without the context needed to act intelligently. They may carry consequences without enough influence over the conditions producing them.
When Access is wrong, Trust thins — because people are forced to interpret, wait, chase, or work around the formal structure rather than through it.
How the Diagnostic uses the 5 A’s
In a Leadership Architecture Diagnostic, the 5 A’s are read alongside the 7 Foundations as the Architecture Lens.
The Foundations show the condition of the field. The 5 A’s show where the pressure is sitting in the design of the work. Together they help move the conversation away from blame and toward design — not who is struggling, but what part of the Architecture is making the struggle more likely.
“The 5 A’s help show where the structure is asking people to carry what the Architecture should be holding.”
Used well, they make leadership pressure more workable — and the first move toward rebuild more precise.