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Extended Conditions

Purpose of Extended Conditions

The Core Model defines the minimum structural conditions that make cooperation possible:
Common Purpose, Interdependence, Communication, Trust, and Change / Uncertainty tolerance – plus the human needs that interact with them in the Matrix and Pyramid.

In practice, cooperation is also shaped by a wider set of contextual, relational, structural, and developmental influences.
These are the Extended Conditions.

Extended conditions:

  • do not change the Core Model or its Matrix,
  • are not required for cooperation to exist at all,
  • but strongly affect how cooperation feels, how it behaves under stress, and how fragile or resilient it becomes.

They help explain why a system that looks “correct” on paper may still be experienced as unfair, unsafe, or exhausting in reality.

Extended conditions are described along two lenses:

  • Collective vs Individual
  • Political and Psychological impacts

They are most relevant when deciding whether a challenge calls for structural changes, collective renegotiation, or individual support.

Collective vs Individual Conditions

Extended conditions arise at two intertwined levels. Distinguishing them is critical for choosing the right intervention.

Collective Conditions

System-wide patterns that shape the environment in which cooperation happens:

  • Cultural norms and shared narratives
  • Incentive structures and governance mechanisms
  • How decisions are made and communicated
  • How stable or volatile constraints appear to be

Diagnostic Check:
If you replace the people, does the pattern persist? Yes* = Collective Condition.

Individual Conditions

The personal experience of living inside those collective patterns:

  • How predictable the environment feels to me
  • How safe I feel to speak, disagree, or experiment
  • How much control I feel over daily work
  • How much I identify with the group or mission

Diagnostic Check:
Is this person struggling because of their unique context/history, or is their struggle a rational response to the collective environment?*

Both levels matter:

  • Changing only individual attitudes without addressing collective conditions leads to burnout and self-blame.
  • Changing only collective structures without addressing individual experience leads to quiet disengagement.

Types of Extended Conditions

Extended conditions are grouped into four types that frequently show up in cooperation challenges.
They are not new dimensions of the Core Model – they are lenses to understand how the system behaves in real organizations.

1. Contextual Conditions

These describe the broader environment surrounding cooperation.

Collective Contextual Conditions

  • Cultural climate and day-to-day tone
  • Communication norms across roles and levels
  • Predictability of governance and decision patterns
  • Transparency of goals, constraints, and trade-offs
  • Stability of priorities, timelines, and commitments

Individual Contextual Conditions

  • Perceived stability of workload and expectations
  • Personal clarity about “what matters now”
  • Ability to anticipate changes that affect one’s work
  • Sense of control over environment, tools, and schedule

Diagnostic Signals (What you hear):

  • Volatile Context: "The priorities change every week, so we stopped planning."
  • Opaque Context: "Decisions just happen behind closed doors; we just get the orders."

Impact on Core Model:

  • High volatility fractures Level 1 Change Tolerance.
  • Low transparency weakens Level 2 Shared Understanding.

2. Relational Conditions

These describe how people relate, interpret, and respond to one another.

Collective Relational Conditions

  • Norms of reciprocity, fairness, and repair
  • Predictability of behavior across roles and teams
  • Accepted ways of handling disagreement and escalation
  • Shared vs fragmented interpretation of problems and success

Individual Relational Conditions

  • Default trust posture toward peers and leaders (Trust vs. Suspicion)
  • Openness vs self-censorship in communication
  • Capacity for empathy and perspective-taking
  • Emotional responses to tension, conflict, or critique

Diagnostic Signals (What you hear):

  • Transactional Relation: "I'll help them if they help me, otherwise I'm busy."
  • Hostile Relation: "They are trying to dump their work on us." (Narrative of enemy intent).

Impact on Core Model:

  • Hostile relations destroy Level 1 Trust.
  • Transactional relations limit Level 2 Mutual Commitment.

3. Structural Conditions

These describe how formal and informal structures support or constrain cooperation beyond the Core Model’s basic boundaries.

Collective Structural Conditions

  • Boundary clarity: who decides, who contributes, who is accountable
  • How feedback and progress visibility are built into the system
  • Access to resources, tools, and information across roles
  • Alignment or mismatch between formal organization charts and actual working patterns

Individual Structural Conditions

  • Perceived autonomy and real decision authority
  • Ability to escalate issues without backlash
  • Clarity of one’s own role, scope, and dependencies
  • Access to information and support needed for daily work

Diagnostic Signals (What you hear):

  • Gatekeeper Structure: "We can't move until [Person X] approves, and they are always busy."
  • Shadow Structure: "The org chart says Bob decides, but everyone knows Alice really runs it."

Impact on Core Model:

  • Misaligned structures break Level 2 Distribution of Roles.
  • Gatekeepers choke Level 3 Flow & Coordination.

4. Developmental Conditions

These describe how the cooperative system – and the people in it – learn and evolve over time.

Collective Developmental Conditions

  • Learning rhythms (retrospectives, reviews, open dialogue)
  • How the organization remembers and reuses learning
  • Adaptability to changing constraints and opportunities
  • Evolution of shared narratives, identity, and rituals

Individual Developmental Conditions

  • Personal reflection and self-assessment habits
  • Curiosity, openness to feedback, and willingness to experiment
  • Ability to integrate new insights into behavior and decisions
  • Sense of progress, growth, and increasing mastery

Diagnostic Signals (What you hear):

  • Stagnant System: "We have the same problems we had two years ago."
  • Helplessness: "Why bother suggesting improvements? Nothing changes."

Impact on Core Model:

  • Lack of development freezes Level 3 Adaptation & Learning.
  • Stagnation erodes Level 2 Mutual Commitment over time.

Why Extended Conditions Matter

Extended conditions explain variation in cooperation quality that the Core Model alone cannot:

  • why a structurally sound setup still feels hostile or fragile,
  • why teams drift into avoidance, conflict, or apathy without any obvious change in roles or process,
  • why attempts to “fix” cooperation at practice level (Level 4) fail when deeper contextual or relational issues remain untouched.

They help practitioners:

  • Distinguish structural problems from cultural or interpersonal ones.
  • Avoid mislabeling behavior as “resistance” or “attitude” when it is a rational response to conditions.
  • Identify when Encapsulation (narrowing collaboration) is a protective response to unsafe or unpredictable dynamics.
  • Decide whether an issue calls for system redesign, collective renegotiation, individual support, or a dedicated System Mode (e.g., Conflict or Reset).

Extended conditions make cooperation legible at a human level without overloading the Core Model.
They provide the bridge between:

  • the structural “physics” of HCS, and
  • the lived experience of people working inside real organizations.

The next section on Extended Needs builds on this foundation to describe how these conditions interact with deeper human needs, shaping motivation, perception, and behavior over time.