REBOUNDARY

Redraw what counts as inside versus outside the problem so that hidden dependencies and costs come into the frame.

A project at work keeps slipping, and every retrospective blames the same team. You've analyzed their process three times. But nobody has looked at the vendor who delivers inputs late, or the executive review that sits on approvals for two weeks. The causes you keep finding all live inside the box you drew, while the real dependencies sit just outside it.

REBOUNDARY means redrawing what counts as inside versus outside the problem. The cue: your explanation pins everything on one actor while dependencies and costs sit beyond the frame. Sweep systematically: look one step upstream (what feeds this), one step downstream (what consumes it), at adjacent actors, at excluded resources, at side effects landing on others, and at earlier or later time windows. Then draw the smallest boundary that contains the actual mechanism, not the biggest one you can imagine. It works when a previously invisible dependency, like that approval queue, enters the frame and changes what you'd fix. Don't use it to inflate the boundary until everything is relevant and nothing is actionable; adding context that doesn't improve your causal picture is just noise wearing the costume of thoroughness.