Common questions
Can I use the framework for free?
Yes. The full protocol is on this site. Read it. Use it. The tools and facilitation start at five hundred dollars. The ideas are free.
Is Triangle a religious framework?
No. The principles are structural — they work in a church, a startup, a hospital, a council, anywhere humans make decisions together. The biblical tradition is one source that articulated them early. Social science, organizational psychology, and decision theory got there independently. Same insights, different vocabulary.
Why it works
These principles aren't faith-based. They're structural. They work in a church, a startup, a hospital, a council — anywhere humans make decisions together.
Social science, organizational psychology, and decision theory got to the same insights. Same results, different vocabulary.
Competence governs the room
Decisions made by people with relevant expertise outperform decisions made by consensus. This is expertise research, not hierarchy.
Read more on the evidence →Condorcet Jury Theorem (1785): A group of competent decision-makers is more likely to reach the correct decision than a larger, less skilled group. Competence scales better than headcount.
Google's Project Aristotle (2015): Psychological safety plus competence drove high-performing teams. Not just safety. Safety with skill.
Expertise research: Decades of work by Anders Ericsson and others show that domain-specific knowledge predicts decision quality far better than group deliberation.
Deliberative democracy theory: Structured input from knowledgeable participants outperforms both pure voting and pure consensus-seeking.
Fairness governs the vote
A vote isn't tyranny of the majority when the frame is right. You're not choosing what you prefer. You're choosing what best serves the mission, given real constraints.
Read more on the evidence →Deliberative polling (Fishkin, 1991): When people are informed and deliberate on shared goals, their judgments improve measurably. A well-structured vote is not a popularity contest — it's a collective reasoning exercise.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem: No voting system is "perfect," but systems with clear frames and defined options outperform open-ended discussion in both speed and satisfaction.
Organizational justice theory: People accept outcomes they disagree with when the process is transparent and the frame is clear. Fairness is procedural, not just distributional.
Record the decision
Organizational memory is fragile. Decisions get reinterpreted for political advantage. A written record creates accountability that informal agreement can't.
Read more on the evidence →Decision Records in software engineering (ADR): Architecture Decision Records have been standard practice since 2011. They capture context, options, and rationale. Teams that use them report fewer re-litigated debates and faster onboarding.
Organizational memory research (Walsh & Ungson, 1991): Organizations "forget" decisions over time. Retention structures — written records, role assignments, standard procedures — are the only reliable way to preserve decision quality across turnover.
Accountability theory: When names are attached to positions, people make better decisions. The act of recording changes the quality of deliberation before the decision is even made.
Agenda as DAG, not list
Decisions have dependencies. You can't decide the what before the why. Map the tree. Do the root nodes first. Every meeting should have a clear parent decision.
Read more on the evidence →Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs): A mathematical structure for dependency resolution. Used in task scheduling, build systems, and causal inference. Decisions are dependencies — solve the root causes first, and downstream decisions become trivial.
Cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988): Working memory is limited. Trying to decide the "what" before the "why" overloads cognition. Clear dependency ordering reduces cognitive load and improves decision quality.
Decision tree analysis: Visualizing choices as trees with conditional dependencies is a core tool in operational research. It forces clarity about prerequisites before action.
Pricing
The full protocol. The principles. This website. Use it yourself if you know what you're doing.
- The Triangle decision framework
- Decision canvas template
- Vote recording format
- Agenda DAG guide
One meeting. A real decision. We watch, show you where time was lost, and give you full tool access. Credited to month one if you proceed.
- Live observation of a real decision
- Where time was lost — identified
- Who doesn't need to be in the room — named
- Full tool access during the session
- Credited to month one if you proceed
Ongoing facilitation. Culture embedding. Someone who flags it when you revert to old patterns.
- Real decisions facilitated live
- Culture embedding over time
- Accountability when you backslide
- Full tool access — always
- Customization to your context
Begin with a live decision.
Bring one decision that exposed the problem and one decision coming up. We will see whether there is a credible test.