Four named tools behind the work

Symbolic-to-Structural Index

The Symbolic-to-Structural Index is a 24-item scored diagnostic that shows whether an organization's equity commitments live in its structure or only in its statements.

It scores six domains: Commitments and Governance, People and Power, Money, Incentives and Accountability, Protection for Dissent, and Evidence. Representation, including leadership with lived experience of the community served, is scored within People and Power.

The instrument draws on research on institutional decoupling (Meyer and Rowan), symbolic compliance (Edelman), accountability structures (Kalev, Dobbin, and Kelly, 2006), and lived-experience participation (Parsell, Kuskoff, and Constantine, 2024).

The Index is the instrument. The Symbolic-to-Structural Assessment is the Diagnose-tier engagement that applies it with a client.

Delay as a Design Choice audit

The Delay as a Design Choice audit tests whether a delayed commitment is delayed by necessity or by design.

• Delay inventory: the announced commitments that have not happened yet.
• Five audit questions per commitment: origin, beneficiary, cost-bearer, rigor, and the design test.
• Three-way classification: imposed, chosen and defensible, or drift.
• Standing Delay: program-level questions on theory of obsolescence, exit metrics, upstream share, and who benefits from permanence.
• Redesign decisions: what changes, and who decides.

It draws on research on administrative burden (Herd and Moynihan), the planning fallacy, and implementation science.

Translation Stack

The Translation Stack is As-I-Am Consulting Group's operating model: four layers that every scope of work maps to.

• Evidence: needs assessment, outcome definition, and evaluation your board can defend.
• Engagement: processes where communities shape strategy, not just react to it.
• Narrative: translation of complexity into stories that move decision-makers.
• Infrastructure: the knowledge systems, including AI, that keep working after the engagement ends.

If a scope item doesn't map cleanly to one of the four layers, it needs sharper definition.

Harm as a Design Risk

Harm as a Design Risk treats the harm an intervention could cause as a property of its design, not an accident.

For each significant decision, it records the benefit intended, the harm possible, who bears each, and what was decided. Well-intended programs can leave people worse off: a Campbell systematic review of nine randomized studies found that Scared Straight-style programs likely increased delinquency compared with doing nothing (Petrosino and colleagues, 2013).

It draws on the Belmont Report's principle of beneficence (do not harm; maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms), Mary Anderson's Do No Harm framework, and "dark logic" models of intervention harm (Bonell and colleagues, 2015).