Canonical Everything
One canonical doc, one vocabulary, one owner per stream — the source of extreme clarity.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
A discipline for driving 'extreme clarity' on complex projects: maintain exactly one canonical document as the single source of truth, enforce canonical nomenclature (a written glossary), name a single-threaded owner per work stream, and consolidate communication channels. Extreme clarity means everyone shares the same understanding of the facts — even when they disagree.
Origin
Gleit's signature set of 'Naomi-isms' developed over ~20 years at Facebook/Meta.
Core principles
- 01Extreme clarity = shared understanding of facts, which is not the same as agreement
- 02Ambiguous words make people talk past each other — define terms explicitly
- 03Every work stream needs one single-threaded owner
- 04Recurse: sub-work-streams each get their own owner
- 05Process exists to move faster, not for its own sake
How to run it
- 1
Create the one canonical doc
Establish a single canonical document that holds the basic information for the project and links to all other docs. Everyone must know where it lives.
Pro tip When joining a project, ask everyone to send you 'the canonical doc' — if five people give five different answers, that's the problem to fix first.
Watch out Hundreds of docs may exist, but there must be exactly one canonical entry point.
- 2
List work streams and single-threaded owners
Break the project into discrete work streams, each with one named owner. For large streams, add sub-work-streams each with their own owner.
Watch out If people don't know who owns something, it's not really owned.
- 3
Write canonical nomenclature
Literally write out all key terms and their definitions so everyone uses the same vocabulary (e.g. distinguishing 'consistency' from 'accuracy').
Pro tip Distinguishing consistency (reviewers agreeing) from accuracy (matching ground truth) prevents optimizing the wrong thing.
Watch out Same or different words for same or different things is a top cause of talking past each other.
- 4
Consolidate channels and use numbered lists
Define the canonical meetings, email list, and chat so you don't recreate the same audience ten ways. Use numbered (not bulleted) lists so items are referenceable.
Pro tip Use numbered lists always — you can say 'number two' but you can never refer to a bullet.
In the wild
In a review of Global Operations performance, the team was using 'consistency' and 'accuracy' interchangeably. Gleit defined them: consistency is how often reviewers agree; accuracy is how often the decision matches ground truth.
→ The team realized they should optimize for accuracy, not consistency — because you can be consistently wrong.
Common mistakes
Confusing conflict with misunderstanding
Much apparent disagreement is actually people misunderstanding each other's facts — an enormous waste of time that canonical nomenclature and a shared doc eliminate.
Process for process's sake
The docs and structure aren't bureaucracy; if they don't ultimately make the team move faster with fewer meetings, they've failed their purpose.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and leads dropping into complex, cross-functional projects who need to align many stakeholders fast
Not ideal for
Tiny teams or trivial projects where the overhead of formal canonical docs outweighs the clarity gained
From the transcript
“there needs to be one canonical dock everyone should know exactly where the canonical dock is that's the one place I can go to to…”
“the basic information that you need to know is what are the discrete areas of work I call those work streams”
“it's very important to have a single-threaded owner”
“I never use bullet Ed lists because you can never refer to a bullet I always use numbered lists”
“consistency refers to how often different reviewers agree on the decision accuracy refers to how often the decision is correct according to ground truth”
From the episode
Meta’s Head of Product (and 29th employee) on working with Mark Zuckerberg, early growth tactics, why PMs are like conductors, and more
Naomi Gleit