Ethan looked offended.
"That's not a thing."
"It is absolutely a thing."
She dropped a binder on his desk.
"This fixture guide is one hundred eighty pages. Nobody on night shift is reading this during a fault."
"It's not for fault response."
"Then why is the fault checklist buried on page ninety-seven?"
Ethan opened the binder.
Katherine crossed her arms.
"You're reacting to what happened to you."
He looked up.
"Meaning?"
"You were punished because knowledge wasn't visible to leadership. Now you want every piece of knowledge visible everywhere. That's understandable. It's also making the system harder to use."
Ethan leaned back.
He wanted to argue.
Then he remembered what he had told Vanessa: more authority meant more responsibility to show the work.
He looked at the binder again.
"What do you propose?"
Katherine smiled.
"Layered documentation. One-page response guides, detailed method behind them, derivation appendix only when needed."
"That sounds suspiciously sensible."
"Try not to hate it."
They rebuilt the system over two months.
It became better.
Ethan later told Vanessa about the exchange.
"Apparently I can overcorrect too."
"I'm devastated."
"Keep this confidential."
"Absolutely not."
The ability to be corrected without collapse became one of the quiet measures Blackwood used to judge managers.
Lydia added it to leadership reviews under a simple heading: response to contrary evidence.
The category asked three questions.
Did the manager seek disconfirming information before significant decisions?
Did the manager distinguish challenge from insubordination?
Did the manager change course when evidence justified it?
Nobody scored perfectly.
Vanessa did not exempt herself from the review.
Her first-year rating was strong on changing course and only moderate on seeking disconfirming information early.
She signed the review without argument.
"Accurate," she said.
By the third year, Blackwood's retention improved among senior technical staff. The company also promoted more younger employees because expertise no longer had to compete with management visibility in order to be noticed.
That balance mattered to Ethan.
He did not want reform to become a shrine to long tenure. Fifteen years at a company did not make someone wise by itself. Some experienced employees resisted necessary change, hoarded information, or confused familiarity with correctness.
Ethan removed one senior technician from a lead assignment after the man repeatedly refused to train a younger colleague.
The technician accused Ethan of betraying the old floor culture.
Ethan answered calmly.
"The old floor culture is exactly why one person could become a failure point. I'm not preserving that part."