Protocol watching

Training · about a hundred business protocols over the year

Alongside the reading, members watch for business protocols at work, as customers, or in public records, and post what they find in #protocols-for-business during each session. If the case studies are the heavy lifts, these are the reps.

Protocols are hard to see. Good ones fade into the background, and what they produce are non-events: the error caught, the dispute that never started, the shipment that arrived. You usually notice a protocol only when it fails. So watching takes practice, and a few good questions. It is how each of us builds protocol vision.

How to see a protocol

• Where to lookWhere people meet technology. Coordination hubs: approvals, queues, handoffs, marketplaces, front desks. Places where people meet forces they can't control, such as weather, markets, and deadlines.
• What to askWho is involved? What is it constraining, and what is it for? Is it written down, or learned by use? How playful is it?
• What doesn't happenWhat would go wrong if it disappeared tomorrow? Who would notice first?
• What kindSocial or material? Atomic or systemic? Budding, juvenile, mature, or dead?
• How healthyIs it Whitehead, where people give up a little agency and get a lot done? Kafka, where people are trapped in a maze they can't understand or escape? Or Bartleby, where people keep so much agency that nothing complex gets done?
• What AI is doingIs software already reading, routing, or deciding inside it? Where does an agent hold discretion, and who checks it?
• EtiquetteDon't disturb the wildlife. Don't take protocols for granted; they are usually there for a reason. Try to improve the protocol, not the people in it.

Bigger questions

Carry one of these from the Protocol Reader while you watch:

1. "What is the relationship between protocols and agency?"
2. "What makes a protocol legitimate?"
3. "How do protocols mutate?" What are the limits beyond which a protocol loses coherence, identity, and usefulness?
4. "What are general principles of good protocol stewardship?"
5. "Can protocols be immortal?" If not, what sets their natural lifespan?

Recording

1. Log it. Use the field guide's notation: a name, health status, lifecycle stage, and a short description, plus a photo, sketch, or diagram if you can take one.
2. Read it with the Protocol Bicorder. The short form takes a few minutes. You place the protocol between pairs of opposing terms, and it works out how hard or soft the protocol is. Export the JSON.
3. File it. Add both to observations/ with a pull request, using the template. You can also post it in the channel and the facilitator will file it.

Don't name private organizations or people. Use the Bicorder's public upload only for protocols that are already public.

Sources

• Protocol Field Guide, the "Protocol Watching" chapter, and the Kafka Index
• Introducing the Protocol Institute, on protocols as producers of non-events
• Protocol Reader, the source of the bigger questions
• Protocol Bicorder by Nathan Schneider (source)

Inventory

The first entries arrive on 2 November 2026.