Meaning
Relational actions are measured by their ability to restore a connection after a breach of trust or a failure in performance. The act of repair involves acknowledging the delta between the expected behavior and the actual event. It is a process of resetting the terms of an arrangement so that the work can continue without the weight of the past disruption.
Without this intervention, the friction between partners increases until the joint effort becomes impossible to sustain, regardless of the financial or technical resources available to the project.
Restoration Term
Restoring a relationship requires a commitment of time and energy that is separate from the technical work. When a failure occurs, repair starts with a statement of what went wrong and what will be done to prevent it from happening again. This term is the foundation upon which the partners rebuild the trust required to co-operate in the room.
Stability Target
Returning to a baseline of cooperation is the primary goal of any intervention. The record of repair is found in the decrease of tension between the people in the seat and those around them. If the intervention is successful, the energy of the room shifts back from managing the conflict to producing the work.
Effort Vector
Directing energy toward fixing a broken arrangement takes capacity away from other tasks. The cost of repair is the total amount of hours and attention required to reach the stability target. Because this energy is non-productive in a technical sense, it represents a loss that the operation must absorb to maintain its long-term viability.
