Keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) maintenance work and technical debt paydown are treated as their own always-funded category, kept structurally separate from the org's chosen strategic focus areas (see Concurrent Strategic Bets Cap and Parallel-Work Dynamics).
If KTLO and tech debt have to compete for the same capacity as the current strategic bets, they get starved whenever focus tightens — and unaddressed debt eventually undermines the strategic work itself. Ring-fencing a baseline allocation for this category protects both: the strategic bets stay genuinely focused (see Three Ingredients of Good Strategy: Focus, Transparency, Bet), and the system doesn't silently rot underneath them.