Testing recognition of coordination capture by dominant stakeholders
Overview
This diagnostic tests whether you can recognize when your coordination office is becoming aligned with one powerful entity rather than maintaining independence across all stakeholders.
You’ll see 10 scenarios where proximity to a dominant stakeholder (budget authority, physical location, political air cover) gradually erodes neutrality. The pattern to recognize: capture happens slowly through dependencies that feel like support.
Time to complete: 10-12 minutes
Question format: Multiple choice (1 correct answer per scenario)
Scoring: 7/10 = Pass (you recognize capture patterns)
Result interpretation: Generates personalized guidance based on patterns
Note on answer choices: Some scenarios include responses that are technically defensible but preserve structural capture. The “correct” answer represents the response that best maintains coordination independence, not just the factually accurate option.
Want to understand how each capture mechanism operates? You can retake the diagnostic and select different options to see the feedback for each scenario. Each represents a different way coordination offices lose independence.
What These Results Mean
These patterns emerged from observing coordination offices in federated environments (NATO partnerships, federal interagency coordination, coalition operations) where budget proximity, colocation, and political dependencies create predictable drift toward dominant stakeholders.
If you recognized patterns you’re currently experiencing and want to discuss your specific coordination challenges: moc.irtlevynohtna@ynohtna
What This Diagnostic Reveals
If you scored high, you already know that coordination independence requires:
- Recognizing when budget sources create implicit alignment with one stakeholder
- Understanding how physical proximity shapes priorities unconsciously
- Seeing when hiring pipelines create cultural homogeneity
- Detecting when performance metrics reveal who you really serve
If you scored low, capture is probably happening right now and you don’t realize it. The symptoms show up as:
- “Smaller stakeholders complain we’re biased toward the big player”
- “Our priorities align suspiciously well with our funder’s priorities”
- “We spend more time serving one stakeholder than coordinating across all”
- “Other stakeholders stopped bringing us real coordination problems”
These aren’t perception problems. These are structural capture patterns that destroy your ability to coordinate effectively across all stakeholders.
Audit Your Capture Risk
For each dependency, ask yourself: “Is one stakeholder dominant?”
- Budget source: Who funds your office?
- Physical location: Whose headquarters houses you?
- Hiring pipeline: Where do your staff come from?
- IT systems: Whose infrastructure do you use?
- Political support: Who protects you in budget/authority battles?
- Social networks: Whose leadership does your director know best?
- Vocabulary: Whose terminology do your reports use?
- Performance metrics: Whose priorities define your success?
If 4+ dependencies align with the same stakeholder, you have structural capture. Smaller stakeholders already know this. You’re the last to realize.
Next Steps
If you passed this diagnostic: You recognize structural capture. Consider taking the Escalation Sink diagnostic to identify deputization traps, or the Template Trap diagnostic to see when pre-packaged solutions force integration on federation problems.
If you didn’t pass: Start with these foundational resources:
- Read Doctrine 24: Stewardship Places the Burden on the Steward to understand coordination neutrality
- Review Doctrine 03: Interfaces Are Where Systems Break to see how capture happens at boundaries
- Study Field Note: When You Call a Committee a Team to distinguish coordination from serving one party
Remember: Coordination offices develop invisible alignment with whoever controls their resources. Multiple dependencies compound into structural capture. If smaller stakeholders see it and you don’t, they’re right and you’re captured.