A year earlier, Andrea had run T02 and accepted what the map told her: deepen craft, let leadership clarify, do not force the Branch yet. She had done exactly that. She was still a Staff Designer at the healthcare SaaS company, and she was good at the job. Her interaction patterns had been adopted by two other product teams. She had coached three junior designers through their first solo projects. She had strong views about who the team should hire next and why. She had said none of it to anyone, because none of it was her job.
In the same week in October, two things happened. Her Head of Design announced they were leaving for another company, and the CPO asked Andrea, in a short hallway conversation, whether she would consider an interim Design Manager role. The team had six designers and no leadership above them. Someone had to hold it, at least for now.
The second thing: a recruiter she trusted contacted her about a senior individual-contributor role at a Series B company, defining the design language of a new product category. It was exactly the kind of deep, category-defining craft she had imagined when she pictured craft depth at its fullest. The compensation was higher, and the company was early enough that her craft decisions would matter from the first month.
Andrea ran T03. The Branch Decision Card asks a practitioner to score six signals on the strength of their presence over the past year, counting only what the energy pattern has actually shown. Her scores: