Concepts are useful. They give us names for things we could previously only feel. But the real work begins when a leader sits down, tells the truth about where they are, and we start to look at their architecture together.
The Architecture Lens is what I bring into that room. Leaders bring their lived experience: pressure, responsibility, quiet doubts about whether the system can keep going as it is. My role is to hold the map while they describe the terrain, and then show how the two fit together.
How I use the Architecture Lens with leaders
Every Reveal Arc begins in the same place: with the leader’s felt experience. Before we talk about models, I listen for how it actually feels to sit in their role. Where does the weight land? Where does energy leak? Where does trust hold or thin?
As they talk, I am quietly mapping. Their stories point to specific Foundations and A’s, even if they never use those words. A pattern of exhaustion without progress often points to Pulse and Energy. Repeated conflict around decisions usually traces back to Geometry, Assignments, or Access. My job is to notice which Foundations are cracking, and through which of the 5 A’s that crack is showing up in practice.
Once we have enough of their lived examples on the table, we begin to place them on the Architecture Lens together. Not as a diagnosis from above, but as a shared picture of what is actually happening in the system they are holding.
What a Reveal Arc feels like in practice
Two anonymised examples give a sense of how this works in real life. In both cases we used the same Architecture Lens. The difference was where it led.
Example 1: When the architecture begins to hold the leader
A senior leader came into a Reveal Arc just after stepping into a new role. On paper, it looked like a promotion. In their body, it felt like a test of endurance. They were working longer hours, saying yes to everything, and quietly wondering if they were the problem.
As they described their weeks, three themes kept repeating: unclear expectations, relentless pace, and a tendency to take on whatever others dropped. Through the Architecture Lens this translated into specific signals: blurred Agreements, an unsustainable Pulse, and thin Containment around what the team would and would not hold.
We did not start by telling them to “lead differently”. Instead, we redesigned a small part of the architecture around them. Key Agreements were made explicit and visible. The team’s Pulse shifted from frantic weekly shifts to a steadier monthly cycle. Clearer Containment was set on what work would be taken on, and what would now be held at a different level in the organisation.
Within weeks, they reported a quiet but decisive change: less firefighting, more grounded decisions, and the sense that “the role finally fits me, instead of me forcing myself to fit it.” From an Architecture perspective, what had changed was simple: the structure started holding them, instead of them holding the structure alone.
Example 2: When cracks in the architecture become visible
A founder arrived with a different story. Revenue was strong, demand was high, but the human cost was rising. People were tired. Duplication was everywhere. Meetings ran late into the night. They had already tried strategy resets and team offsites. Nothing seemed to touch the underlying pressure.
As we mapped their examples onto the Lens, a clear pattern emerged. Assignments overlapped, with no clean line of ownership. The Geometry of the organisation had warped so that every significant decision curved back toward the founder. Access to real information was narrow; a small inner circle saw the full picture while others worked with fragments.
Once the founder could see this, the story changed. The issue was not their resilience or the team’s commitment. It was an architecture that still reflected an earlier stage of the business, when centralising everything around one person had been necessary.
The work that followed was architectural: clarifying roles and Assignments, widening Access to information, and redrawing the Geometry so decisions could genuinely be held elsewhere. The immediate effect was a drop in pressure and a noticeable shift in the founder’s energy. The deeper effect was a system that no longer required them to hold everything together by force of will.
What leaders actually take away
Although I hold the Architecture Lens, the outcome of this work is not a dependence on me. The Reveal Arc is designed to do two things at once: relieve immediate pressure by making specific structural shifts, and give the leader a new way of seeing their system that they can carry forward themselves.
By the end of a Reveal Arc, most leaders can name where their Foundations are strong and where they are thin. They know which of the 5 A’s tend to distort under strain. They recognise the difference between a people problem and an architecture problem. And they have experienced, in their own context, how small, honest adjustments to Agreements, Pulse, Geometry, or Access can change the feel of the whole system.
The point is not that they become architects overnight. It is that they no longer have to carry the system blindly. Once they have seen their architecture clearly and rebuilt it around their real essence, they have a lens they can use for themselves. The ongoing work then becomes refinement, not rescue.