This letter / 01
Twelve deputies were carrying twenty-four promises
Twenty-four deputy entries referred to twelve people. The board needed to see the overlapping commitments behind a complete-looking chart.
Every lead role had a deputy beside it. I had taken that as a useful sign that our succession work was becoming more systematic. The chart covered twenty-four positions, but the names belonged to twelve people, each appearing twice. We had examined whether a colleague might cover an individual role without asking enough about the other responsibilities already attached to that colleague. The result looked complete because the page contained no empty boxes. It did not establish separate capacity the presentation appeared to promise.
