Minimum Viable Performance
The smallest set of capability, support, and conditions required for people to perform independently and safely.
Internalize what must endure because recognition, safety, judgment, or speed depends on it.
Practise and adapt what requires judgment, context, feedback, and repeated application.
Retrieve what changes faster than memory can safely stay current, using authoritative point-of-work support.
Why it matters
Organizations often teach more than people need, later than they need it, and without the supports required at the moment of work. A useful design distinction is what belongs in the Durable Core, what sits in an Adaptive Layer that must be practised and refined, and what belongs at the Volatile Edge where accurate retrieval is safer than memory.
The executive decision
What deserves to be learned, what should be supported in the workflow, and what conditions must exist before independent performance is safe?
Operating model
Decision rules
- Begin with the work, not the content.
- Durable Core: internalize what must endure because recognition, safety, judgment, or speed depends on it.
- Adaptive Layer: practise and adapt what requires judgment, context, feedback, and repeated application.
- Volatile Edge: retrieve what changes faster than memory can safely stay current.
- Keep enough knowledge in the person to recognize risk, judge retrieved guidance, and act when support is unavailable.
- Keep changing guidance current through an authoritative source and accountable owner.
- Expand learning after independent performance is established.
- Time must earn its place.
What it is not
- A lower standard
- The shortest possible course
- A shortcut around compliance
- A reason to remove essential practice
Framework at a glance
- Purpose
- Accelerate safe, independent performance
- Primary decision
- What is the minimum sufficient capability system?
- Best applied
- Onboarding, role transition, compliance, operational readiness
- Executive audience
- Operations, HR, Learning, Risk
Reference & citation
Tulsiani, R. “Minimum Viable Performance.” Ravinder Tulsiani Executive Evidence Portfolio. Available at https://rtulsiani.com/frameworks/minimum-viable-performance.
Scaling an Enterprise Corporate University
Increasing enterprise learning capacity while building a more strategic, governed capability system.
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