A blocked mandate presents symptoms: slow decisions, missed handoffs, weak adoption, contested priorities, capability gaps, or technology that does not change behavior. Treating every symptom as an independent workstream usually expands the intervention before the system has been understood.
Begin with competing hypotheses. The constraint may sit in authority, incentives, information, capability, capacity, an interface, or a decision that no one is empowered to make. For each hypothesis, state the evidence that supports it and the observation that would disprove it.
Then ask a harder question: if this condition changed while everything else remained constant, would the mandate materially move? If the answer is no, it is important friction, but it is not yet the binding constraint.
A constraint map is therefore a decision instrument. It narrows the intervention, disciplines resource allocation, and makes it possible to tell whether the system changed or merely became busier.
This note is an operating framework, not a client account, legal advice, or a universal prescription.