MECHANISMS

Deprovisioning Event: This is the onset event where the company's infrastructure provisioning is simultaneously removed across all five domains (Self-Definition, Operating-Environment, Meaning-System, Social-World, and Financial-Framework). The crucial factor here is simultaneity; the systems don't disappear one at a time, but all at once in a single event.

Dependency Opacity: It predates the exit and makes the mechanisms of the Structural Deprovisioning Model hard to see because the founder experiences the company's provisions as personal achievements and characteristics, rather than as services the company performs for them. This opacity stems from the founder's dual role: they simultaneously create the infrastructure and depend on it.

Concealment Sequence: This is the causal chain that makes the entire dynamic self-concealing. It explains how the very event that creates the structural deficit simultaneously hinders the founder's ability to perceive it. Specifically, Dependency Opacity blocks Self-Legibility (the ability to accurately read one's own structural needs and capacities), which hides the deprovisioning, ultimately making it impossible for the founder to actively rebuild the specific systems they require.

Compound Deprovisioning: The provisions removed at exit form a highly interdependent system, meaning they do not operate—or fail—in isolation. The decoupling in one domain triggers and worsens it in others. For example, losing operating structure degrades social contact, which eliminates feedback, which subsequently reduces the quality of decision-making. This cross-domain interaction amplifies the total disruption so that it is greater than the simple sum of single losses after the exit.

Compound Surfacing: The full scope of the disruption does not become apparent immediately. Instead, different root phenomena manifest on different timelines. While a "Structural Hollow" might be felt within days, "Selfhood Dislocation" takes weeks, and phenomena like "Intensity Deprivation" and "Community Turbulence" can take months to surface. This delayed onset leads founders to systematically underestimate the scope of their circumstances, as each new disruption changes their understanding of what the exit actually removed.