Modern organizations lack a discipline for governing interpretation.
Strategy, alignment, and execution depend on how meaning is decided.
The Transformation Management Institute studies interpretation as a system condition.
Modern organizations lack a discipline for governing interpretation.
Strategy, alignment, and execution depend on how meaning is decided.
The Transformation Management Institute studies interpretation as a system condition.
Most organizational efforts assume shared understanding.
That assumption is often incorrect.
The Transformation Management Institute examines how decisions are interpreted inside organizations, and what happens when interpretation diverges. It studies coordination failure as a structural problem, not a motivational one.
→ View the Domain of Interpretation
Where interpretation fails
These breakdowns appear across organizations even when people are capable, well-intentioned, and working hard:
Decisions are reopened because participants left with different understandings of what was agreed to.
Escalation increases visibility without increasing clarity.
Transformation efforts stall despite the absence of overt resistance.
Time is spent reconstructing what earlier decisions were supposed to commit.
These patterns recur across people, processes, technologies, and automated systems, including AI.
From the TMI Research Library
Featured Publications
El Lissitzky, Proun 19D, 1922.
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Featured with AI as a Meaning System as governance under rotation: multiple frames coexist, and interpretation shifts as the system exceeds any single viewpoint.
Monograph C1
Artificial Intelligence as a Meaning System
Responding to the Crisis of Machine-Generated Meaning
November 2025
This paper explains why AI creates mistrust even when outputs look correct. It shows how machine mediation changes judgment and accountability, not just results. Read this if technical fixes don’t explain the confusion, hesitation, or conflict you’re seeing around AI.
Hilma af Klint, The Swan (No. 17, Group IX/SU), 1915.
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Featured with The Scientific Lineage of Meaning as converging inheritance: separate forms approach, mirror, and resolve into a shared coherence without losing distinction.
Monograph A3
The Scientific Lineage of Meaning
October 2025
This paper traces the discoveries that shaped how humans decide what counts as real, true, and credible. It shows why many fields explained parts of meaning, but left the full problem unsolved. Read this if you want to know why “meaning” is everywhere, yet still hard to explain.
Transformation Management focuses on what happens to decisions during organizational becoming.
Decisions move through people, processes, tools, and automated systems.
This discipline examines whether action remains aligned as they do.
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Additional Institute resources
AN ORGANIZATION CANNOT BECOME ITSELF UNTIL IT KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS.
The Transformation Management Institute | Established 2025