Main idea

Writing "in the event of a conflict between a customer and a supplier, we favour the customer" describes no feature, no screen, no workflow. That is precisely what gives the sentence its reach: it will influence refund rules, dispute policies, support messages, product priorities and customer communication, because it committed to none of them.

Altitude is therefore a functional property, not a matter of style. A rule phrased at the level of the case — "in this journey, this button does this" — no longer transposes anywhere else; it has the shape of a specification without its precision. A rule phrased at the level of the type of situation — "in this kind of situation, here is what we apply" — can be derived by people who were not in the discussion, on cases nobody had envisaged.

The check is simple to run: if the document starts saying what has to be built, it has left its level and becomes a disguised specification, less useful than a real one.

Why it matters

This gives a review test for any decision document: look in it for the verbs of making. Their presence indicates the level has slipped.

It also guards against the opposite error, rarer but real: a rule so general that it relegates nothing — "we seek the best balance between customer and supplier" — has not changed level, it has stopped being a rule.

Nuances and limits

Some rules exist only when embodied: a compliance requirement or a regulatory constraint is phrased at the level of the expected behaviour, and raising it to a principle makes it inapplicable.

And altitude guarantees nothing on its own: a rule at the right level but unknown to the teams is not derivable, it is merely well written.

Open questions

• How, other than through use, can you verify that a written rule is genuinely derivable on cases its authors did not have in mind?