Friction is a representation problem

Most project friction isn't about people. It's that the system can't represent what the stakeholders actually intend. Misrepresent the intent, and every downstream interaction looks like politics. Represent it faithfully, and the same interactions resolve into navigable disagreement — real differences between real parties, visible enough to work with.

The politics you can't solve usually aren't about conflict. They're about scaffolding that isn't carrying its weight. The meeting that keeps repeating, the priority that keeps getting reshuffled, the stakeholder who keeps feeling unheard — these are symptoms of an absent representation layer. The work isn't mediation; it's instrumentation.

What this lets stakeholders do: diagnose friction without assigning blame. Locate the representation gap before escalating. Build systems that absorb complexity instead of exporting it to humans as stress.

What's still open: what's the smallest useful representation upgrade for a specific recurring friction, and how do you know which layer of the stack needs it?