Tagline: When decisions move faster, visibility narrows: a structural analysis of detectability under compressed governance cycles. Paper description: This paper examines whether institutional drift remains detectable when decision cycles accelerate. Building on the Operating Spine framework developed in earlier papers in the Coherence Programme, the study introduces translation half-life (τ½) as a temporal descriptor of how quickly divergence becomes embedded in downstream governance artefacts such as metrics, scoring logic, and allocation rules. The central claim is precise: acceleration does not eliminate translation drift, nor does it alter the underlying translation mechanism. What changes is the duration during which divergence remains observable before becoming stabilized in resource allocation. Under higher decision velocity, small interpretive shifts may be embedded more rapidly in governance infrastructure, narrowing the correction interval. Under slower conditions, longer intervals permit reflection but may also allow drift to accumulate incrementally through procedural delay. The paper establishes the temporal boundary conditions of detectability. It does not introduce new constructs, expand the ontology of the Operating Spine, or propose governance redesign. It isolates decision velocity as a structural variable and tests the durability of observability under compression. This contribution positions Paper 12 as a robustness extension of Paper 11, confirming that translation drift remains structurally traceable even as decision tempo increases. Programme description: This paper is part of the Coherence Programme, a research series examining how institutional decision systems maintain—or lose—fidelity to declared intent under conditions of complexity, scale, and delayed feedback. The programme models institutional governance as an Operating Spine linking Purpose, Capabilities, Value Drivers, Strategy, Portfolio, and Signals. Across this spine, intent is translated through discrete interfaces where cumulative divergence (Translation Drift), measurable alignment (Translation Coherence), and governance intervention (Interpretive Maintenance) can be structurally analysed. Supporting materials, working documents, and programme structure are available via the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/9cvky/ Version 1.0 : First public release (Preprint).
Robin Edgard Ulrik Mertens (Wed,) studied this question.