The Inspector's Instinct
You have agents running in your system. Your first instinct was to add controls. Approval gates before they execute. Escalation policies when they’re uncertain. Manifests declaring what they’re allowed to do. Kill switches for when they go wrong. This is the same instinct that produced the approval queue for humans. You are governing agents the way you governed people, because that is the only governance you know. Deming had a name for the knowledge required to manage a system well. He called it the System of Profound Knowledge.1 Four components, never meant as a checklist: what is the system, where does it vary, how do you know what you know, and why do people behave the way they do. ...