Coordination offices do not lose neutrality because people are corrupt. They lose neutrality because structural dependencies create gravity toward the dominant stakeholder. Budget, location, hiring, political cover, systems, and metrics slowly turn a “neutral coordinator” into an extension of one side while keeping the facade of serving all.

This episode names eight concrete capture mechanisms that cause this drift, including: budget dependency, physical colocation, hiring pipeline, political air cover, system dependency, response time differential, vocabulary drift, and performance metrics. Once these stack up, neutral coordination becomes structurally impossible, even if the team’s intentions are good.

You will also get the key warning: captured offices are often the last to recognize their own capture. The smaller stakeholders see it clearly and disengage first. The office experiences it as “efficiency” and “support.” Others experience it as bias.

Practical takeaway: treat independence as a design requirement. If a stakeholder can defund you, isolate you, staff you, protect you, or grade you, they can capture you. Your job is to make those dependencies visible and intentionally diversify them before your credibility collapses.

Reflection: If you claim neutrality, can you prove it structurally, or are you relying on good intentions?

https://anthonyveltri.com/guide/doctrine-24-companion-the-eight-capture-mechanisms/