Monday 06:4201
External signal
Companies Are Flattening Management Structures to Accelerate Decisions
Read at breakfast
Executive Altitude / Private notes on leadership
- Location
- Zürich
- Organization
- 4,218
- Response window
- 3.6 Days
The best decisions often feel obvious afterward.
I have spent my career working with leaders during moments of complexity, transition, and consequence. Over time, certain patterns became difficult to ignore.
This is a collection of those patterns.
A personal project, assembled between meetings.
4,218 People31 Teams8 Functions6 Resources5 Priorities
0 FT38,000 FT
4,500 FT01The premise
Leadership looks different from up here.
A few principles I return to.
Some observations from the work.
I had no intention of formalizing any of this. People kept asking.
- Current location
- Zürich
- Next board session
- Tuesday
- Direct reports
- 9
- Organization
- 4,218
- Current focus
- Organizational simplicity
- Response window
- 3.6 Days
- Office presence
- Strategic
Plate 01
From the operating record
As observed- Maya Operations Covered operations. Answered what came in, fixed a billing error, kept the queue moving. 74 Hrs
- Sam Product Made the product calls. Reviewed the pricing change, delivered the fix. 68 Hrs
- Theo Finance Prepared the quarter close. Reconciled the last three accounts by hand. Closed
- Nina Customer Took three customer escalations. Called each customer back the same day. 3 Resolved
- Ines Finance Moved the money. Took what was left of the Northstar implementation budget and put it on the customer migration work. 1 Budget line
- Dana Commercial Redid the launch plan. Pulled it out of the two new regions and pointed it at the enterprise customers we already have. 2 Regions dropped
- Six people Strategy Operations Built the deck. Wrote it, revised it seven times, resolved 118 comments. 64 Hrs
- Two managers Floor 14 Talked by the coffee point for seven minutes. A decision stalled for twelve days got made. 7 Min
8,200 FTIStrategic Recovery
Operations — Distributed ownershipProduct — Decision rights activatedFinance — Close continuity preservedCustomer — Escalation authority distributed
Your absence should demonstrate leadership, too.
High-performing leaders understand that sustainable impact requires intentional recovery.
Whether disconnecting at a lakeside chalet in the Alps, spending several weeks reconnecting with family, or stepping away somewhere without reliable service, absence creates an important opportunity for the organization: ownership.
Resist the urge to remain constantly available. Trust the organization you have built. Your team may not be able to join you geographically, but they can participate in the clarity your time away creates.
Framework
DisconnectDelegateReturn with clarity
Model the balance you want others to believe is possible.
Plate 04
From the workA decision I made.
- Year
- 2019
- Moment
- Quarter close
- Action
- Intentional absence
Three days before an important quarter close, an eighteen-day Alpine trip planned months earlier was still on the calendar. Several issues remained open. The obvious response was to cancel it, or to stay reachable throughout.
“I realized that remaining available would only preserve a dependency I had helped create.”
Decision rights were assigned instead. Maya held operational authority. Sam held product authority. Theo owned quarter close. Nina owned customer escalations. One boundary was set: contact me only if the issue is genuinely existential to the business.
The quarter closed. The organization continued.
“Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can remove from a system is himself.”
Distributed ownership events
Recovery window — 18 DaysMaya
Operations
74 Hrs coverage
Sam
Product
68 Hrs coverage
Theo
Finance
Quarter close
Nina
Customer
Escalation owner
Team coverage — 284 HrsExecutive interruptions — 0Outcome — Organization continuedPrinciple carried forward — Strategic Recovery
12,500 FTIIInsight Internalization
Customer operations — On record 6 monthsProduct — On record 4 monthsManager forum — On record 7 weeks
Recognize the pattern before it has a name.
Information becomes leadership when it passes through judgment.
In practiceA principle I return to.
- Customer operations note — 6 months earlierApproval paths adding days to customer decisions
- Product retrospective — 4 months earlierToo many approvals required for routine changes
- Manager forum — 7 weeks earlierRaised again
Tuesday 09:1002
Personal observation
“I've been thinking about whether organizational layers are slowing decision velocity.”
Source — not referenced
Thursday 14:0003
Internal framework
The Velocity Model
Authored internally
Following Tuesday04
Strategic initiative
Project Horizon
Building a flatter, faster organization.
Exposure → Synthesis → Articulation → Alignment → Ownership
Implementation owners — 37 / Workstreams — 12 / Dependencies — 184
“A leader's responsibility is not merely to receive information. It is to recognize when separate signals are describing the same underlying pattern.”
Pattern — Repeated
18,000 FTIIIDelegated Articulation
Delivery — Coverage activeCommercial — Decision rights distributedCapability — Close discipline heldCustomer outcomes — Within tolerance
The idea is not the artifact.
At senior levels, responsibility shifts from producing artifacts to establishing the ideas those artifacts must communicate.
Delegation is not distance from the work. It is the transfer of intent through capable people.
Plate 02
Executive input
We have too many layers.
Monday 08:17 — 9 Words
Working session
Duration — 93 Min
Strategy operations
- Slides
- 46
- Revisions
- 7
- Comments resolved
- 118
- Contributors
- 6
- Working hours
- 64
- Attribution
- Shared
Executive presentation
What we're really talking about is simplicity.
Applied leadershipAn operating belief.
“At a certain level, the work is no longer creating every artifact. The work is giving talented people an idea worth articulating.”
- Working hours
- 64
- Contributors
- 6
- Attribution
- Shared
23,000 FTIVCulture Beyond Compensation
Talent — Value proposition rebalancedCompensation — Annual benchmark cycleCulture system — Executive sponsored
Build a culture larger than compensation.
Employees will always evaluate compensation.
Leaders must create reasons to stay that cannot be represented on a pay stub.
Field applicationAn operating belief.
- Top retention concern
- Compensation
- Second
- Workload
- Third
- Career development
A quarterly engagement survey placed compensation first. HR brought forward an adjustment proposal.
“Compensation matters. But if compensation becomes the only reason someone stays, we have already lost something more important.”
The proposal moved into the normal annual benchmarking cycle. In the same quarter, a leadership initiative on belonging, purpose, mission and shared sacrifice was personally sponsored.
- Compensation review
- Annual cycle
- Culture initiative
- Executive sponsored
- Leadership sessions
- 14
- Manager toolkits
- 6
- Employee stories collected
- 38
Compensation — 62%Belonging — 12%Purpose — 11%Mission — 9%Shared sacrifice — 6%
“The strongest cultures offer something a competitor cannot simply add to base salary.”
The strongest organizations do not feel contractual. They feel familial.
Compensation benchmarking remains an HR function.
Benchmarked annually.
28,000 FTVEngineered Serendipity
Distributed coverage — ActiveResolution capacity — Same dayCross-functional articulation — CompleteOrganizational connectivity — Measured
Innovation rarely announces itself on a calendar.
It happens between meetings.
In hallways.
Over coffee.
During the five minutes after everyone thought the conversation had ended.
+ Alignment+ Trust+ Innovation
Decision recordA pattern that has held across organizations.
“The interaction that changed the outcome was the one no one scheduled.”
During an office visit, two leaders were talking near a coffee point. The conversation lasted about seven minutes. A decision that had been stalled for twelve days was resolved before anyone sat down.
- Scheduled meeting
- None
- Interaction
- 7 Min
- Previous delay
- 12 Days
- Functions present
- Product / Customer
- Decision
- Resolved
32,000 FTVIProtected Capacity
Operating resources — 7Distributed coverage — 284 HrsOrganizational resilience — HeldProtected decision capacity — 9%
Protect your capacity for the decisions only you can make.
Authority increasesLeverage model — Internal instrumentationAvailability declines
Selected tier
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Why does availability decline with authority?
Because the cost of interruption rises with the leverage of the decision-maker.
Decision recordA principle I return to.
“Not every escalation needs executive intervention. Sometimes the discipline is knowing which room not to enter.”
“Had I entered too early, the organization would have optimized around my presence instead of its own capability.”
An important customer escalation opened in the morning. Three requests were made for executive involvement. The Chief of Staff judged that none met the threshold. The first three meetings went ahead without him.
The operating team resolved it the same day.
- Escalation open
- 08:14
- Executive meeting requests
- 3
- Requests accepted
- 0
- Operating team
- 7
- Resolution
- 16:42
- Customer impact
- Contained
- Principle
- Retained
35,000 FTVIISelective Completeness
People — IntactCapital — RedeployedMarket — RepositionedRisk — AbsorbedVision — Unchanged
A body of work should be judged by the ideas that endured.
Ideas that changed through contact with reality.
From the workA pattern that has held across organizations.
Project Northstar
“Good judgment is not being right forever. It is recognizing when reality has earned the right to change your mind.”
A regional operating model, sponsored on a single thesis: regional autonomy will increase decision velocity. After months of implementation the evidence pointed the other way.
“Northstar gave us the evidence required to stop pursuing a model that looked stronger in theory than it behaved in practice.”
- Adoption
- Below target
- Operating complexity
- Above target
- Expected efficiency
- Not realized
- Program status
- Discontinued
- Confidence
- High
| Ref | Idea | Classification |
|---|---|---|
| A-01 | Regional operating model | ReversedNecessary departure from consensus |
| A-04 | Unified customer taxonomy | FailedEarly exploration |
| B-02 | Platform consolidation | SuccessConcept I helped shape |
| B-07 | Direct channel expansion | MissedConviction before validation |
| C-03 | Tiered service architecture | DelayedIntellectual adaptability |
| C-09 | Category redefinition | CancelledStrategic reprioritization |
Progress is not a record of perfect prediction. It is a record of judgment applied over time.
36,000 FT—Field Notes
Field Notes
Selected from Thinking
Plate 03
-
01 / On DistanceZürich / 06:18
Distance restores proportion.
-
02 / On ListeningMarch / between sessions
Listening is most useful before the decision hardens.
-
03 / On SimplicityBoard notes / unpublished
Simplicity is what remains after complexity has been delegated.
-
04 / On Being EarlyUnpublished
Being early often looks indistinguishable from being misunderstood.
View all notes
Archive — 14 notes / 7 themes
37,000 FT—Origin
The work began with one instruction.
Prompt
Make the ideas visible.
The rest came together surprisingly quickly.
Generated in — 43 Seconds
Transcript fragment
- Prompt
- Make the ideas visible.
- Response
- There is more here than will fit on one page.
38,000 FTOperating Altitude
- People
- Capital
- Market
- Risk
- Vision