CONCEPT
Drift (System Behavior)
The gradual divergence between a system's intended behavior and its actual operation — often attributed to complexity but substantially driven by accumulated micro-errors from degraded judgment.
Drift describes the slow, persistent divergence between what a system was designed to do and what it actually does over time. In organizational contexts, drift manifests as the gap between strategic intent and operational reality, between documented processes and actual practices, between the product roadmap and the shipped product. The phenomenon is familiar and typically attributed to complexity, changing requirements, or inevitable entropy. Leroy's attention residue framework suggests an underdiagnosed contributing factor: the systematic accumulation of small errors introduced by evaluations performed under cognitive load. Each residue-impaired judgment approves an output that is adequate but not quite right — a subtle architectural compromise, a strategic decision that serves short-term pressures better than long-term goals, a feature that works but doesn't align with the product's deeper purpose. Individually, these deviations are negligible; collectively, they bend the system's trajectory.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Drift is structurally invisible because it operates below the threshold of any single decision's observability. No alarm sounds when