These resources (which include the content from the book, and where appropriate, downloadable tools) are only available to folks who have purchased the book. Get in touch if you’d like access.
Organizations contain multiple simultaneous realities
Insisting that tomorrow’s urgent tasks and ten-year strategic bets march in lockstep is the fastest way to create organizational whiplash. This approach flies in the face of reality: Different kinds of work naturally move at different speeds. Some initiatives demand quick iteration and “fail fast” experimentation; others require long-term patience and deep reflection. By layering these time horizons instead of flattening them, organizations become both more stable and more innovative.
Building on Elliott Jaques’s stratified systems theory and Stephen Drotter’s leadership pipeline, we can identify at least six layers operating in parallel, each with its own typical time frame and value to the organization. Jaques’s says work falls into six strata, each defined by the longest time span a person can responsibly own—from 90-day tasks to 20-year stewardship. Drotter mapped six matching passages of value creation, moving from delivering your own output to steering the whole enterprise. Stewart Brand, riffing on Frank Duffy and Brian Eno, framed six “pace layers” where the fast ones innovate and the slow ones stabilize. Stack those three lenses and a clear six-horizon model emerges, captured in the table below.