When Seeing Clearly Changes Everything: Legibility in Corporate Projects

The corporate world has a visibility problem. Not the kind executives worry about in quarterly reports, but something more fundamental: most organisations can't actually see what they're doing.

James C. Scott's concept of legibility—originally applied to how states govern—offers a provocative lens for understanding why so many corporate projects fail. In "Seeing Like a State," Scott argued that systems need to make their subjects "legible" to manage them effectively. But the act of making something legible doesn't just help you see it better. It transforms it entirely.

The Corporate Legibility Gap

Consider a typical digital transformation project. Leadership wants to "modernise operations," but what does the organisation actually know about its current state? Often, remarkably little.

This becomes acute when organisations rely on long-term employees to paper over gaps in standardised processes. That property lease sitting in someone's filing cabinet, the title certificate that exists only as a physical document—these create dangerous dependencies. The knowledge of how to navigate these gaps lives in people's heads, inaccessible to others. When that employee leaves or is unavailable, the system breaks. The organisation has single points of failure masquerading as institutional knowledge.

The Future Government Institute's FGX Rating System recognises that you can't improve what you can't measure. But measurement itself changes the game. When organisations create frameworks to assess capability, they're not just observing—they're creating a new reality where previously invisible elements become concrete, discussable entities.

Making the Invisible Visible

The Behavioural Insights Team's work demonstrates how environmental design shapes behaviour. But first, you need to see the environment clearly. Their field guides emphasise deep observation—actually watching how people interact with systems rather than assuming you know.

This is where corporate legibility becomes transformative. When a company finally maps its actual customer journey (not the idealised version in PowerPoint), patterns emerge. Bottlenecks become obvious. Workarounds reveal themselves. The very act of documentation creates shared understanding that didn't exist before.

The Dark Side of Legibility

Scott warned about "high modernism"—the belief that rational, top-down systems can improve on organic complexity. Corporate projects fall into this trap constantly. A new CRM system promises to make customer relationships "legible," but in forcing messy reality into neat categories, something essential gets lost.

The sales rep who remembers a client's daughter graduated last year? That knowledge doesn't fit the schema. The informal deal structure that kept a difficult customer happy? It gets standardised away. Legibility enables control, but control isn't always beneficial.

BIT's emphasis on iterative testing and "radical incrementalism" acknowledges that you can't design perfect systems from the centre. You need feedback loops between top-down legibility and bottom-up reality.

The Transformation, Not Just the View

You can't see something clearly without changing it.

When an organisation implements proper project management tools, they're not just gaining visibility. They're changing how teams work. New categories emerge. New metrics become possible. New behaviours get rewarded. The environment becomes legible, and in becoming legible, it becomes different.

The FGI's capability frameworks do this deliberately. By defining what "Government 3.0" looks like, they're not just measuring—they're creating a shared language that shapes how organisations develop. The rating becomes aspirational. The invisible becomes not just visible, but actionable.

Designing for Productive Legibility

So how do corporate projects harness legibility without falling into Scott's traps?

First, recognise the limits. BIT's emphasis on field research balances quantitative metrics. Your dashboard shows project completion rates, but can it show morale? Creativity? The informal knowledge-sharing that makes teams effective?

Second, make legibility participatory. Real-time feedback from users of corporate processes is crucial here. Those actually navigating property leases or processing title certificates know where the system breaks. They see the workarounds. Rather than imposing legibility frameworks from above, organisations should create mechanisms for frontline users to continuously define what "good" looks like. This isn't a one-time requirements gathering exercise—it's an ongoing conversation about what matters and how to measure it.

Third, maintain illegible spaces. Scott celebrated "metis"—practical, local knowledge that can't be codified. Smart organisations preserve room for improvisation and practices that work but can't be fully explained.

Fourth, iterate constantly. BIT's experimental approach—testing variants, measuring outcomes, refining—acknowledges that first attempts at legibility are always partial. Your initial project framework won't capture everything important.

The Power of Clarity

When organisations genuinely make their environment legible—not through crude metrics but through thoughtful observation and categorisation—transformation follows naturally. The knowledge trapped in long-term employees' heads gets externalised. The physical documents get digitised. The informal workarounds get examined and either formalised or eliminated.

People can see problems they couldn't articulate before. Patterns emerge from chaos. Coordination becomes possible across boundaries. Single points of failure become visible, then addressable.

Your corporate project isn't revealing a hidden reality—it's creating a new one. The question isn't whether to pursue legibility. You're doing it already. The question is whether you're doing it thoughtfully, with awareness of both its power and its dangers.