About Viability Systems
We build intellectual infrastructure for organizations under pressure.
Organizations worldwide are optimizing themselves into irrelevance. We build new frameworks for when assumptions dissolve, diagnostic tools that identify structural patterns, and software that makes concepts actionable. We create new conceptual foundations that work when the old ones collapse.
Our Core Principles
Viability Over Growth
Sustained capacity to function under pressure matters more than size
Growth without viability is elaborate failure. We focus on your ability to maintain coherence, adapt to constraints, and develop capabilities when conditions change. A smaller organization that survives disruption creates more value than a large one that fragments.
Reality Without Illusion
Organizations must see conditions as they are, not as they wish
Most dysfunction stems from refusing to acknowledge reality: maintaining obsolete business models, optimizing meaningless metrics, following strategies based on conditions that no longer exist. We help you see your actual situation. You can only navigate from where you are.
Structural Solutions
Address root patterns, not surface symptoms
Reorganizations and new processes fail because underlying structures remain unchanged. We rebuild the root patterns: feedback loops that suppress information, boundaries that blur accountability, resource flows that fund yesterday. Architecture changes last.
Client Autonomy
Build capability, not dependency
Consultants profit from your continued need. We build your capability to navigate future disruptions independently. Our frameworks become yours. Our tools become your methods. Success means handling the next existential challenge without us.
Our Approach
We diagnose the structural patterns creating dysfunction such as: misaligned feedback loops that ignore critical signals, boundary failures that blur accountability, and resource allocation that funds obsolete capabilities while starving emerging ones.
Our approach integrates three layers. First, we provide philosophical frameworks that offer systematic ways of understanding reality. Think of philosophy as conceptual engineering: building mental models robust enough to handle radical uncertainty. Second, we design organizational architecture that aligns different teams around shared understanding rather than conflicting metrics. Third, we develop software tools, like Verver, that embed these frameworks into daily work, turning concepts into trackable practices. New thinking without new tools remains theoretical.
We build your capability to navigate future disruptions independently. Our success means you no longer need us. While others optimize for growth assuming stable conditions, we optimize for viability: your capacity to maintain function when those conditions evaporate. The result is intellectual infrastructure that changes how your organization processes information and makes decisions. This isn't another initiative layered onto failing foundations. It's rebuilding the foundations themselves.
The Philosophical Foundation
Viability Systems emerges from Autogenic Realism, a philosophical framework for navigating complexity without appealing to illusion or ideology. Developed by founder Darryl Kanouse, this approach treats philosophy not as abstraction but as the engineering of thought itself.
Key Essays That Inform Our Work
- Autogenic Realism: A Framework for Viability, Vitality, and Structural Ethics
- When Systems Break: Diagnosing Dysfunction Through an Autogenic Lens
- The Metrics Trap: When Measurement Distorts What It Aims to Improve
- The Irreducible Choice: What Remains Human in Strategic Decision-Making
- Choice Without Free Will: A Framework for Meaningful Agency
This philosophical work provides the intellectual infrastructure that makes our practical frameworks possible. It enables us to see organizational dysfunction clearly, navigate competing values consciously, and build systems that strengthen rather than break under pressure.
Founder | Darryl Kanouse
For over two decades, Darryl Kanouse has built and scaled data systems and capabilities that enable large, complex organizations to make better decisions, optimize performance, and operate with precision at scale. He has led enterprise-scale data science, AI/ML, and analytics product development at global organizations including AWS, Amazon, Canva, and Activision. Throughout his career, Darryl has built cross-functional teams that bridge engineering, product, analytics, and business strategy, focusing on structural alignment over strict process.
In recent years, Darryl has evolved his work in systems thinking to focus on the structural foundations of organizational success. As a Viability Architect, he identifies and addresses the underlying causes of dysfunction: misaligned feedback loops, boundary ambiguity, and resource allocation failures. His systems-level approach helps executive teams move beyond surface-level fixes to implement durable, high-leverage structural change.
Ready to Build New Foundations?
If your organization is facing the disruptive pressure of the shift in assumptions about work, value creation, or competitive advantage, we can help you build the intellectual infrastructure needed to navigate this transition.