The first time Sarah looked at her cloud, it felt like a verdict.
The second time, on the train back from London the following Thursday, it felt like a question.
She had the pages on her lap, the cloud drawn in pencil so she could erase the arrows and redraw them. She read the C–D′ arrow aloud — the sentence connecting her need to know her contributions would land with her habit of rehearsing internally until the moment passed. A week ago she had read that same sentence and felt the truth of it land like a stone. Now she read it and found herself asking a different question.
Is that the only way to get certainty about how my contributions will land?
Every cloud feels like a prison while you believe its arrows are necessary. The moment you ask whether the arrow is necessary, the cloud becomes something else — a set of hypotheses you can test, one by one, until you find the one that gives.
For what follows, David's and Sarah's clouds sit alongside the method, because the method only really makes sense when you watch it work. Here is what they had built by the end of Chapter 8:
David's Cloud
A: Sustained leadership impact — a function that scales beyond me, led by someone the organisation continues to trust
B: A team that can run without me, bandwidth for strategic work, scalability, sustainable leadership, the kind of impact that outlasts me
(To achieve A, I need B)
D: NOT take back work after setting up delegation
(To have B, I need D)
A: Again, sustained leadership impact
C: Certainty about quality, control over the standard, protection of credibility, a clean track record the organisation trusts
(To achieve A, I need C)
D′: Take back work after setting up delegation
(To have C, I need D′)
The conflict: D and D′ cannot both be true at the same time.
Sarah's Cloud
A: Sustained senior influence — the standing to shape what this business decides, over time
B: Expertise informing decisions, a voice in the room, influence with the CEO and her peers, recognition for contribution
(To achieve A, I need B)
D: NOT stay quiet in leadership meetings and defer to whoever spoke last
(To have B, I need D)
A: Again, sustained senior influence
C: Belonging in the inner circle, the seat itself, protection from being seen as difficult, preserved relationships
(To achieve A, I need C)
D′: Stay quiet in leadership meetings and defer to whoever spoke last
(To have C, I need D′)
The conflict: D and D′ cannot both be true at the same time.
The arrows are not facts
Here is the move that changes everything.
The arrows in your cloud are not facts. They are assumptions.
Each arrow is a belief about necessity:
- A → B: "I must have these benefits to achieve my outcome."
- A → C: "I must also have these benefits to achieve my outcome."
- B → D: "I must be in D to secure B."
- C → D′: "I must be in D′ to secure C."
There is also a D↔D′ relation in the cloud, but it is not a necessity belief we test — it is built in by construction. D was defined as the negation of D′ back at Chapter 5, so the two cannot both be true at the same time. That is structural, not assumptive, and the chapter does not work it.
Every one of these arrows feels, in the moment, like an iron law. That is why the cloud has held for so long. It is not that you have been weak. It is that the logic has been invisible.
Beliefs are assumptions about how we think things are. Mandela, on leaving prison, spoke of two prisons — the physical walls with a release date, and the mental walls that had none unless he chose to set them free. Our mental traps are the worse of the two, because we cannot see the bars. David and Sarah now have a way to see theirs.
And here is the principle this chapter rests on: every cloud is dissolvable. Goldratt's foundational claim — and the experience of every Perry Approach Practitioner since — is that conflict is not ontological. It does not exist in how things are. It exists in how we are thinking about how things are. Every cloud is held together by assumptions; loosen the assumptions and the cloud dissolves.
This is why we say dissolve, not resolve. Resolving accepts the conflict as real and seeks a settlement within it. Dissolving says the conflict was never real — it was a structure built from erroneous assumptions, and once those loosen, the structure falls away.
The engine of dissolving is abductive inquiry — the creative move of asking what other way is there? The question itself opens the possibility space the assumptions had closed. Whether the first answer is good or not does not matter; the question has already done its work.
The lineage runs further back than TOC. Peirce, who coined the term abduction, placed it as the engine of all inquiry. Andersen (2024) traces the line from Peirce's synechism through to Goldratt's Theory of Constraints.
The work of this chapter is to ask that question of the right arrow, and to meet the assumptions the question loosens.
The arrows that change the present
Four necessity arrows. Two of them hold the present in place. Two of them describe the future we are trying to move into.
The two arrows that hold the present in place — and where the assumption-surfacing work of the Perry Approach lives — are these, in this order:
- C → D′: the belief that the current behaviour is the only route to what C is protecting. The heart of the present. This is where this chapter does its work.
- A → C: the belief that what C is protecting is genuinely required to reach A. The deeper layer underneath C→D′. This is where the next chapter does its work.
The other two — A → B and B → D — describe the future. They tell us what B will deliver and how D will deliver it. In a change context we are not trying to dissolve those arrows. We are trying to reach the state they describe. They will be tested by what we build in the chapters that follow, and refined as the change takes hold; that is a different kind of work and it belongs to the chapters ahead.
The assumption-surfacing of the Perry Approach therefore focuses on two arrows, in order: C → D′ first, then A → C. The leverage to dissolve the present cloud lives there.
Going directly to the source of inertia
This is another distinction of the Perry Approach. Traditional TOC tests every assumption on every arrow — rigorous, but slow, and the leverage can be lost in the inventory. Once D′ is established as the current state, you already know where the system is stuck.
Goldratt called this inertia — the force that keeps a system in place long after the original reason for being there has gone. The Perry Approach goes directly to the source: C→D′ first, then A→C.
Two kinds of assumption
Not all assumptions do the same work. In the Perry Approach, we sort them into two categories — and almost every cloud worth bringing here has both.
Technical assumptions are claims of the form "this is the only way to deliver this." They are means-end claims. They describe routes — the route, the way the practitioner has been seeing the path from need to behaviour. "I must personally check this to know it has been done properly." "Approval requires the Director's signature." "If I do not catch the error, no-one will." Technical assumptions respond to options. Show another credible route to the same end and the necessity claim loosens.
Adaptive assumptions are claims of the form "this is how things are." They are ontological claims, often fused with identity. "A serious professional checks everything." "I am the only person who can hold the quality line." "The seat cannot survive dissent." They feel like seeing rather than believing, which is why they are hardest to surface. Adaptive assumptions do not respond to options — they respond to a shift in how the person relates to what they thought was just the way things are.
A value, in this method, is not a separate category from a belief. A value is a belief that has become emotionally fused with identity. The cognitive content is still belief-shaped; the fusion is what makes it feel ontological. That is why the same surfacing work reaches both layers — and why the deeper assumptions tend to surface later in a brainstorm than the shallower ones.
Almost every cloud has both. The technical layer sits on top, defended by means-end logic; the adaptive layer sits underneath, defended by identity. The work of this chapter is the technical work. The adaptive work comes in Chapter 12. We start with the technical for a structural reason: technical work softens the adaptive ground. When you brainstorm credible options on C→D′ and the necessity claim loosens, three things happen at once. The possibility space opens, which loosens the absolute weight of the adaptive claim. The safety to examine what is underneath increases. And the adaptive assumption itself becomes visible — because the technical defences have been moved out of its way.
That is why we always start technical. Not because the technical work is more important, but because it is the route to the adaptive.
A simple sorting test. When you read the assumption back to yourself, ask which response would feel most accurate.
- "There is another way to do this." — Technical.
- "That is just how things are." — Adaptive.
If both feel accurate, the assumption is layered. Most persistent assumptions are. The technical layer surfaces first; the adaptive layer surfaces underneath. Name them both, and work the technical first.
A note on thinking modes
Three modes of reasoning are useful here, and most practitioners default to one without knowing the others are available.
- Deductive — if this assumption holds, what must follow? The mode of testing. Use it on technical assumptions.
- Abductive — what else could explain this? The mode of alternatives. The C→D′ work lives here.
- Inductive — what pattern is showing up across cases? The mode through which adaptive assumptions announce themselves.
Most practitioners get stuck in deductive mode and cannot find the leverage. The leverage usually appears abductively, after deductive testing has done its work.
Always start with C → D′
In the Perry Approach the sequence is fixed. You always start with C→D′.
The C→D′ arrow — the belief that your current behaviour is the only way to secure your current benefits — is where the breakthrough assumption almost always lives. Start there.
There is a structural reason for this. A cloud endures because both sides are genuinely needed. The thing that locks it in place is rarely the needs themselves. It is the conviction that your present behaviour is the only way to meet one of them.
C is real. C is legitimate. C must be honoured. But D′ is the route you have built to C — often years ago, often after a painful event, often without ever testing whether another route would serve C as well or better. Over time the route becomes indistinguishable from the destination. David's "taking the work back" stops being a strategy for quality and starts feeling like quality itself. Sarah's "staying quiet" stops being a strategy for belonging and starts feeling like belonging itself. That is the move that makes C→D′ the tightest arrow in almost every cloud worth bringing here. It is also why we work it first — get it open, and the rest of the cloud usually follows.
The C → D′ question
The question to ask on C→D′ is not the general one — what must be true for this arrow to hold? It is sharper than that.
What options are there to deliver C without D′?
These options are technical solutions or tactics — practical alternatives that prove there is another way to meet C. There are always options. The work is to find them.
This is an abductive move. You are not testing the arrow head-on. You are searching for alternative routes to the same C. As you list options — and as you feel which ones you accept and which ones you immediately dismiss — the assumptions on the arrow surface of their own accord. The resistance to each alternative is the assumption. You do not have to dig for it; the imagination does the work for you.
List options without editing. Some will be obvious. Some will feel uncomfortable. Some you will dismiss in the same breath you write them. Write them down anyway. The ones you dismiss fastest are usually the ones standing closest to the assumption.
For each option, notice the response in your body and in your head. "That would not work because…" — finish the sentence. The completion is the assumption.
Aim for at least six or seven options. The first three or four tend to be sophisticated versions of D′. The later ones are where the real alternatives appear, and where the adaptive assumptions surface.
David's C → D′
Here is David brainstorming options for delivering C without D′ — certainty about quality, protection of credibility, a track record the organisation trusts — without taking back work after setting up delegation.
- Review only the final deliverable, not the work in progress. "I'd miss the drift. By the time it's final, the damage is done." — Quality can only be caught early, not late. (Technical — and on inspection, a belief about his team's ability to self-correct, not about quality itself.)
- Set explicit quality criteria the team applies before the work reaches him. "My standard isn't a checklist. It's a feel." — My quality judgement is a felt thing, not a teachable one. (Technical, with an adaptive layer beginning to show.)
- Peer review within the team before delivery. "They'd miss what I'd catch." — No-one in the team can see what I see. (Technical — sharply at odds with the fact that he hired several of them for exactly that capability.)
- Selective review by risk level — check the high-stakes pieces, release the rest. "I'd be the one who let the small one through." — Credibility is destroyed by the case I was not looking at, not the cases I was. (Technical — based on a single event from early in his career where something he did not check went wrong publicly.)
- Coach the team to develop their own quality instinct over time. "That'll take years. I don't have years." — The time horizon for capability is longer than the time horizon for the work. (Technical — and a convenient one, because it justifies indefinite continuation of D′.)
- Step back entirely and let the function deliver without his hands on it. "That would be irresponsible." — A responsible leader is the last line of defence on every piece of work. (Adaptive. The first hard one.)
- Hand the quality line to someone else — a deputy, a quality lead. "No-one else would hold it the way I hold it." — I am the only person who can hold the quality line for this function. (Adaptive. The sentence that explains the cloud.)
The C→D′ arrow buckled.
It did not buckle because the options were necessarily good. Several would need work before they could deliver C reliably; the chapters ahead will do that work. It buckled because the existence of credible options — even imperfect ones — broke the necessity claim that D′ was the only route. The conviction loosened.
Sarah's C → D′
Sarah brainstormed options for delivering C — belonging in the inner circle, the seat itself, preserved relationships — without staying quiet and deferring.
- Speak, but only when invited. "I'd still be waiting for permission. And they rarely invite." — Belonging requires not imposing myself. (Technical — and on inspection, a belief about this particular room, not about belonging in general.)
- Raise points privately with the CEO before the meeting. "That's lobbying. It changes who I am in the room." — Influence must be visible to be legitimate. (Technical — and an interesting one, because it contradicts her own D′ behaviour of private dissent after meetings.)
- Disagree on low-stakes items first, to build the muscle. "But the seat isn't at risk on the small calls. It's at risk on the ones that matter. That's a different thing." — The seat is only tested on high-stakes disagreements. (Technical — and possibly true, which is what makes it worth holding for now.)
- Frame contributions as questions rather than assertions. "I already do that. It doesn't feel like having a voice. It feels like asking for permission to have one." — A voice that asks is not a voice. (Technical — layered with an adaptive assumption about what real authority looks like.)
- Build alliances with one or two peers first, so she's not the only dissenting voice. "That takes time I don't have. And it's political." — Building coalitions means playing politics, and playing politics means not belonging. (Adaptive — the first hard one. Her identity as someone who is above politics is part of what keeps her quiet.)
- Speak directly and hold her ground, trusting the seat to survive one disagreement. "They'd reconsider whether I belong." — The seat cannot survive dissent. (Adaptive. The sentence that explains the cloud.)
- Accept that the seat might be less secure, and speak anyway. "I'd rather have the seat without the voice than the voice without the seat." — Belonging matters more than contribution. (Adaptive. The deepest one — and the one Sarah did not expect to say out loud.)
Sarah's C→D′ buckled differently from David's. His loosened when he saw that other people could hold the quality line. Hers loosened when she heard herself say "belonging matters more than contribution" and recognised it as a belief she had never examined, not a truth she had chosen.
A note on AI and the abductive move
The abductive move — what other way is there? — is where AI is genuinely transformational, more than at almost any other point in the work.
A practitioner brainstorming alone can usually produce six or seven options before they run out of imagination, and those options tend to be shaped by the same closed possibility space that built the cloud in the first place. A team produces more, but a team is still bounded by its shared experience and culture. A large language model is different in kind. Asking an LLM for options is like inviting a million opinions into the room — not because it is wise in the way a person is, but because it has read across a vast range of how others have faced similar conflicts and the routes they found through them. It is access to collective wisdom at a scale no individual or team can match.
That changes the work. The bottleneck on the C→D′ brainstorm used to be generation — finding enough options to push past the first four or five. With AI, generation is effectively unlimited. The bottleneck shifts to selection — recognising which options fit your context, your constraints, your people, your moment.
That selection is the human work, and it cannot be delegated. The AI does not know what fits where you stand. The AI does not feel the tightening when a particular option lands on the assumption beneath. You do. The AI opens the possibility space; you do the discerning. The work of the practitioner is not diminished by AI — it is sharpened to its proper task.
Selecting options that dissolve the cloud
Generating options is the first half of the work on C→D′. Selecting from them is the second.
Stay wide while you generate. Do not discard. Selection is a separate move and it happens after the abductive work has done its loosening.
If we find an option that replaces D′ and still delivers C, the conflict between D and D′ dissolves. The either/or is gone, because a third path now exists. But the cloud as a whole only dissolves if that third path also delivers B. The cloud has two needs at the top — B and C — and both must be met for the work to be done. An option that delivers C but not B has not dissolved the cloud; it has only shifted it. The conflict between D and D′ is gone, but the gap between where we are and the outcome we wanted is still there.
The first selection criterion is therefore: does this option meet the B interests?
But — and this matters — do not discard options that fail this test. If an option would deliver C but does not meet B as currently written, ask the second abductive question:
What injection would make this option meet B as well?
An injection is an additional element — a capability, a structure, a sequence, a piece of context — that when added to the option transforms it from a partial solution into a full one. David's option of stepping back entirely fails B on its own. With the injection "build team capability first over the next nine months" it could meet B. Sarah's option of speaking anyway risks C on its own. With the injection "build allied positioning with one or two peers first" it could hold both.
This is a second abductive move, and it is where many cloud dissolutions actually live. The option that looked discardable is often the one that opens the cleanest path — once the right injection is named. Keep the option, name the injection, and treat the pair as a single candidate for later selection.
There is a second selection criterion as well, which we will come to after the adaptive work in the next chapter: does the option align with the new A→C belief that the adaptive shift produces? The adaptive work expands the A→C belief — broadening what C can include, or how C relates to A. That expansion changes which options now fit. An option that seemed marginal under the original A→C may align cleanly with the expanded one; another may fall away. You cannot apply this second criterion until the adaptive work has been done. That is part of why the technical work comes first — and part of why we keep options wide here.
For now, on the technical side: stay wide, ask the B question, and where B is not met, ask the injection question. The options that survive — directly or with a named injection — are the candidates the next chapter will return to.
A → C belongs to the next stage
You may already be feeling the pull of a further arrow. The A→C arrow — the claim that your current benefits are genuinely required to reach your outcome — often has a deeper assumption beneath it. Part of C may be doing protective work rather than essential work. Identity may be carrying old protection forward into a present that no longer requires it.
That is real. It is also the next level of the work, and it is adaptive, not technical. It belongs to the chapter that follows the technical-solutions step, not to this one.
Name the pull if you feel it. Write down what is surfacing. Then set it aside. The C→D′ loosening you have done here is the foundation that adaptive work depends on; without it, A→C work tends to spiral. With it, the adaptive chapter has somewhere to stand.
What to do if no options surface
Sometimes you walk C→D′ and nothing loosens. The options collapse on inspection. The arrow holds.
There are always options. If you are not finding them, two things may be true.
The cloud itself may need tightening. Most often, D′ is defined too generically (Chapter 4), or B and C are not yet specific enough (Chapters 6 and 7), or A is acting as an aspiration rather than an outcome (Chapter 8). The options will not surface because the elements they are meant to connect are still vague. Take the cloud back to those chapters and sharpen it.
Or the adaptive assumptions are still hiding. The most common reason an honest brainstorm produces no movement is that the practitioner stopped at the first three or four options — the sophisticated versions of D′ — and never pushed into the later ones where the adaptive assumptions live. The early options drew technical assumptions and they all sounded plausible. The arrow held — because the assumptions actually carrying the conflict had not yet been named.
If you suspect this is the case, the next move is not to push harder alone. It is to bring in a Thinking Partner.
The Role of a Thinking Partner
Adaptive assumptions are largely invisible to the person holding them. That is the nature of adaptive assumptions. They feel like seeing rather than believing. They feel like the way the world simply is.
A Thinking Partner does three things at this stage that you cannot easily do for yourself.
They read the cloud back to you without your defences attached. The sentence that sounded ordinary in your head sounds different in someone else's voice. The adaptive assumption that hid in the word "obviously" announces itself when a Thinking Partner asks, "Why obviously?"
They notice the tightening. When you reach the C→D′ arrow, your body changes. The pause lengthens. The sentence slows. A good Thinking Partner notices that and stays there. You may not.
They do not solve. The temptation when watching someone surface an adaptive assumption is to relieve the discomfort by offering an answer. A good Thinking Partner does not. They hold the silence long enough for you to stay with what you have just said. The work of Chapter 12 depends on what you can bear to look at here.
You can do this chapter alone. The book is written so that you can. But if you can do it with a Thinking Partner, do.
Why seeing is not enough — yet
You might expect that simply naming the assumptions would set you free. It rarely does.
If it were that simple, you would already have changed.
Those assumptions exist for good reasons. They were built from past experience, from genuine fears, from needs that once went unmet. They have protected something real. If we dismiss them, they will go underground and continue to run the conflict from there.
The method therefore asks something more careful. Meet each assumption with respect. Understand what it has been protecting. Then, in the chapters ahead, test whether the belief still fits the life you are trying to live now.
That adaptive work belongs to the next chapter — Chapter 12. The C→D′ loosening you have done here is the foundation it depends on.
Practice: Surfacing your assumptions
Take an hour with your cloud. Less than that and the adaptive layer will not surface.
Work through C→D′ first. Brainstorm at least six or seven options for delivering C without D′ — and for each one, finish the sentence "that would not work because…". The completion is the assumption. Categorise it as you go: technical ("there is another way to do this") or adaptive ("that is just how things are").
Push past the first four or five. The early options will surface technical assumptions and the arrow may seem to hold. The later ones are where the adaptive assumptions live, and they are what the next chapter needs. When credible options appear, write the adaptive assumptions on their own line, away from the rest. That is the material the adaptive work will use.
Two cautions for the hour. If your mind jumps to "I could just…", pause — write the proposed solution down briefly on a separate page, then return to the cloud. The urge to solve almost always serves the assumption rather than the cloud. If A→C starts pulling at you, note what surfaces and set it aside; it belongs to the next chapter.
If options still will not surface, do not push. Take the cloud back to Chapter 8 to sharpen the elements, or bring in a Thinking Partner. Both are honourable. Neither is failure.
Closing
Your cloud is now more than a map. It is a map with a marked leverage point.
You have started where the leverage almost always lives — on C→D′ — and asked the abductive question: what options are there to deliver C without D′? The options you generated are themselves the proof that another way exists; they are technical solutions and tactics, and they are the material the next chapter builds on. You have surfaced the assumptions as the resistance to each option. You have separated the technical ones, which loosen when other credible options appear, from the adaptive ones, which will need the deeper work of the next chapter. Where C→D′ loosened and you have at least one option that could deliver both B and C — directly or with the right injection — you have your leverage. The A→C arrow — and the adaptive work it opens — belongs to the chapter beyond the technical-solutions step, not to this one.
That is what a buckled arrow feels like. Not a solution. A loosening.
You do not yet have a plan. That is deliberate. Tactics built before the assumption is named are usually sophisticated versions of the current pattern. Tactics built after are different in kind.
That is the work of the next chapter.
What's Next
In Chapter 12, you'll do the adaptive work — exploring the A→C arrow, the second of the two arrows of inertia. The previous chapter worked C→D′; the next chapter works A→C, in that order. It is the deeper belief about what you need to achieve your outcome that keeps the old pattern in place even after the technical options have loosened C→D′. The technical solutions live here in this chapter; the adaptive shift is what comes next. Everything you need is in the next chapter. You can work through it on your own, at your own pace.
Support for this step
Surfacing assumptions — especially the adaptive layer beneath C→D′ — is the step where most people benefit from not working alone. The options brainstorm looks simple on the page. In practice, the assumptions that matter most are the ones you cannot see because they feel like seeing.
RIC — the Rapid Improvement Coach is an AI agent built specifically to support you through the process. RIC holds your cloud, guides you through the C→D′ options brainstorm, and can generate options alongside you — so you are not relying on your own thinking alone to break past the first four or five. You choose which options make sense to your situation; RIC stays with you when the adaptive assumptions surface, notices the tightening, and does not solve.
The Rising Above the Clouds course includes RIC, a discussion tab with the author, and membership of the Conflict Club.
Rising Above the Clouds - The Course