Scripts are everywhere. They tell us how to behave, what steps to follow, and what outcomes to expect. They carry the weight of authority, often dressed up as policies, processes, or best practices. At their best, scripts offer clarity: they make the world legible and promise a reliable path forward.
But scripts don’t age well. They’re written for a moment in time, a set of assumptions that rarely hold forever. As the context shifts, the old directions remain pinned to the wall, looking intact but slowly losing touch with reality. The longer this gap grows, the more the script feels like theatre — order maintained on paper, dysfunction multiplying in practice.
That’s when drift takes hold. A system still looks legitimate because the rules are there, but the outcomes start to fray. Participants sense it first: what they’re told no longer matches what they live. The script commands obedience, but the reality beneath it begins to collapse.
Scenario: The Broken Housing Rulebook
Situation
A young graduate follows the official script: A-levels, university, a strong degree, and an entry-level job that pays £30k a year.
Impact
On paper, they’ve done everything right; but the system no longer works as promised.
Where a previous generation could buy a home with a mortgage five times their salary, today’s prices are seven, eight, or even ten times higher.
The maths doesn’t add up — even for someone playing by the rules.
Tension
The story sold by institutions still insists that education and hard work lead to opportunity. Yet legitimacy is fraying: younger generations see the gulf between the rulebook and lived reality.
Authority looks intact, but its credibility is slipping.
Approach
Some try workarounds — shared ownership, government schemes, or parental support — but these fixes keep the illusion alive rather than solving the underlying mismatch.
Others simply step away, accepting that ownership is out of reach.
Resolution
The system drifts further: rules stay frozen, outcomes grow unattainable, and the wealthiest consolidate control of the housing market.
Without rewriting the rulebook, the gap between what is promised and what is possible will only widen.
🪝 The Script That No Longer Delivers
The promise still looks convincing: study hard, get the qualifications, land the job, and the rest will follow. For decades this script carried weight, not because it was flawless but because it felt legitimate. Yet legitimacy can outlast reality. What once anchored social trust now functions as little more than theatre — rules that look intact but no longer produce the outcomes they claim.
This is the essence of systems drift: the widening gap between what institutions prescribe and what participants actually experience. Institutional isomorphism ensures that different organisations recycle the same outdated script, reinforcing the illusion of order while obscuring dysfunction.
For a young graduate, the “education → job → home” sequence no longer adds up, just as in professional settings the “process → launch → success” mantra often proves hollow. The structure of the rulebook is preserved; its credibility is not.
The danger lies in how Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy keeps the system alive. People act as if the script still works — saving for deposits they’ll never reach, chasing metrics that no longer correlate with outcomes — and in doing so, perpetuate the very dysfunction that traps them.
The hook is powerful precisely because it appeals to legitimacy. But when legitimacy is untethered from results, it becomes a lie that leaders must confront head-on.
🪤 Chasing Outcomes with the Wrong Measures
The bait is still dangled in front of the aspiring homeowner: an entry-level salary that appears respectable, government schemes that suggest accessibility, mortgage calculators that whisper possibility. But structurally, the system can’t hold its own weight. The ratio of income to house prices has drifted so far beyond historical norms that no amount of personal effort can bridge the gap. What looks like opportunity is really a mirage sustained by outdated assumptions.
This is where Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety cuts deep. A system must evolve its rules to match the complexity of its environment, or it will collapse under strain. Housing affordability once balanced neatly against wages; today, global capital flows, speculative demand, and policy inertia have outpaced those structures. The architecture hasn’t been redesigned, so the load falls on individuals who cannot possibly carry it.
In business contexts, the same pattern emerges when teams chase proxy metrics — KPIs or sign-off rituals — that once indicated success but now only consume energy without producing value.
The result is an illusion of progress. Just as graduates save furiously for deposits they’ll never reach, employees burn themselves out hitting targets that have lost strategic relevance. Rules are followed, reports are filed, dashboards are filled — yet outcomes stall. Without the courage to revisit the capacity and structure of the system itself, organisations end up baiting their people with the appearance of progress while eroding the very trust and resilience that keeps them afloat.
🐟 When Drift Turns Into Disengagement
At some point, the net comes up empty. For younger generations, the dawning realisation is that the housing script is unwinnable: no matter how diligently they play by the rules, ownership remains out of reach. When the promise collapses, so too does engagement. Why save for a deposit that never materialises? Why invest in a system that refuses to adapt?
This is what happens when legitimacy is allowed to drift into fiction. Systems that cling to old scripts don’t just fail to deliver; they drive people out altogether. In professional settings, this shows up as employee burnout, user churn, or stakeholder distrust. The game feels rigged, so participants opt out. Meanwhile, those with the deepest resources — wealthy property buyers, dominant incumbents — consolidate control, entrenching the very imbalance that created the dysfunction.
The strategic challenge is foresight. Double-loop learning teaches us to re-examine the rules themselves, not just the actions within them. Scenario planning offers ways to imagine different futures rather than clinging to a single trajectory. If institutions refuse to evolve, drift becomes collapse. Leaders who want resilient systems must do more than preserve appearances — they must rewrite the rulebook while there’s still time to restore clarity.
Conclusion
Systems don’t usually collapse with a bang; they unravel with a shrug. The housing crisis shows what happens when legitimacy drifts away from reality: the hook still looks shiny, the bait still dangles, but eventually there are no fish left in the water. What begins as a credibility gap soon becomes full-blown disengagement. And when participants walk away, the system loses not only trust but also its capacity to renew itself.
For leaders and professionals, the lesson is clear: rules are not eternal truths, they are artefacts. Every organisation carries scripts that once worked but now obstruct progress. If those scripts remain unchallenged, they risk eroding both outcomes and engagement. The most dangerous drift is the one that feels legitimate but delivers nothing.
Strategic clarity comes from rewriting the rulebook before collapse. That means auditing the rules you rely on, asking whether they still serve the context you’re operating in, and using tools like double-loop learning, scenario planning, and yes, a willingness to dismantle inherited assumptions.
Rebellion isn’t the point — renewal is. And if leaders don’t write the next script with foresight, they may find themselves running a system that looks intact on paper but has already lost its players.
Strategic Markers
Signals of Drift in the Rulebook Economy
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Legitimacy without outcomes
Rules look intact but no longer deliver results. -
Scripts frozen in time
Processes designed for past contexts are defended as universal truths. -
Measures that mislead
Proxy metrics and outdated ratios mask systemic dysfunction. -
Disengagement as signal
When participants stop playing, drift has become collapse. -
Wealth consolidates in the gap
Those with resources exploit drift to entrench advantage. -
Renewal requires rewriting
Strategic clarity comes only from authoring new rules.
