Frameworks

Two lenses I use on every engagement.

Both exist for the same reason: to name a problem precisely enough that it can be diagnosed instead of guessed at. Definitions are stated plainly and are free to quote — with attribution.

TCG

Technical Credibility Gap

The Technical Credibility Gap is the distance between how credible a business is in the room and how legible it is to the systems that now decide who gets found — search engines, AI assistants, and automated directories. It is caused by infrastructure and data structure, not by marketing effort or quality of work.

The four failure modes →

PVP

Paint vs Plumbing

Paint vs Plumbing is a diagnostic distinction between presentation-layer problems and infrastructure-layer problems. Paint is design, copy, and visibility work applied to the surface. Plumbing is the domain, hosting, data structure, integrations, and entity signals underneath. Paint applied over broken plumbing fails on a predictable schedule.

How the distinction is used →

Every term, defined once.

Each definition has a permanent address. Content gets revised; the addresses don't move.

Technical Credibility Gap TCG: The Technical Credibility Gap is the distance between how credible a business is in the room and how legible it is to the systems that now decide who gets found — search engines, AI assistants, and automated directories. It is caused by infrastructure and data structure, not by marketing effort or quality of work.
Infrastructure Uncertainty FM-01: Infrastructure Uncertainty is the state where nobody in a business can say exactly what runs where, who owns it, or what depends on it. Domains, servers, mailboxes, and accounts exist without a map. The system cannot be secured, moved, or repaired quickly because no one knows its shape.
Tool Fragmentation FM-02: Tool Fragmentation is the accumulation of disconnected software with no integration layer between the pieces. Each tool works; the cost sits in the manual work moving data between them and in the records that quietly diverge, until no single system can be trusted as the authoritative version.
Frankenstein Architecture FM-03: Frankenstein Architecture is a system built from accumulated patches and undocumented decisions, held together by one person who remembers how it works. It functions until that person is unavailable. The defining symptom is that no one can safely change anything without risking something unrelated.
Machine Invisibility FM-04: Machine Invisibility is the condition of being unreadable to the systems that mediate discovery. Without structured data, consistent entity signals, and machine-readable descriptions, search engines and AI assistants cannot confirm a business exists or what it does — so they recommend a competitor they can read instead.
Paint vs Plumbing PVP: Paint vs Plumbing is a diagnostic distinction between presentation-layer problems and infrastructure-layer problems. Paint is design, copy, and visibility work applied to the surface. Plumbing is the domain, hosting, data structure, integrations, and entity signals underneath. Paint applied over broken plumbing fails on a predictable schedule.

4 of these are the failure modes of the Technical Credibility Gap. They are diagnostic categories, not a checklist — most businesses have more than one.