Four thinkers answered the same question: how an organisation coordinates without a conductor.
The Toyota andon
On a Toyota line, every station has its light: a problem is signalled where it is born, while it is small, and does not pass to the next station. cadänce gives a light to every deadline — fluid, to watch, under strain — and shows how far a delay will go.
Herbert Simon
The Nobel economist showed that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. A management system produces tables; cadänce counts attention: what holds stays calm, and what needs a look speaks, with its cause.
Stafford Beer
For this cybernetician, a healthy organisation reads the same way at every level. In cadänce, the person, the team, the company and the group read alike: each tells its state and its cause, at its own scale.
Alan Kay
The inventor of object-oriented programming saw objects as cells sending each other messages, with no conductor. cadänce is built that way: each deadline hears what concerns it and updates itself; no central program calls the others.