From chaos to clarity: This model keeps my clients organized as they scale.

As companies grow, deciding where to focus and what to fix becomes a trickier question.

Having a Strategy only matters when we can effectively deploy it.

What helps my clients is the metaphor of Flight Levels ✈️

Imagine your org as three levels: 🤔

- Strategy - The 10 000m view 🌎
- Operations - close to the ground, in the details. 🔍
- Coordination - in the middle creating connections between them all. 🔗

When you fly high, you're zooming out and seeing the breadth but little detail.

Fly closer to the ground, and you'll get the details, but give up the broader view.

Let's look at each level in more detail:

1. The Strategy level. 🎯

Here we see the organization's goals and directions of travel as a whole. Zooming out for the maximum breadth.

Our focus is Steering the org.

Purpose:
• Select the high-level bets and levers of impact
• Setting appropriate constraints, rhythms, and feedback loops.

Leverage Point: Creating focus from the top by selecting a portfolio of initiatives that amplify each other and avoid creating internal competition.

Tip - Stick to direction setting and avoid prescriptive deliverables.
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2. The Operational level. 🔍

Zooming in, we see the details of a marketing campaign, hiring plans, or product development team.

Here our focus is usually on bringing a small group of specialists together to get work done effectively.

Purpose of Operational Levels:
• Creating productive collaboration between the humans and skills needed for delivery.
• Resolving local dependencies within each team.

Companies do this well when they avoid overloading teams.

Most problems here are smoke signals. Look for the fire at the other two levels.
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3. Coordination Level 🧩

In between, we find the projects, programs, and initiatives that unite many teams.

Purpose of Coordination:

• Surfacing dependencies between teams and initiatives
• Tackling the options and trade-offs that emerge.

Key Leverage Points:

- Creating focus across many teams by having a single global to-do list.
- Reduced cognitive load for everyone as we focus and get interrupted less.
- Connecting to the Strategy level so that strategic efforts amplify each other instead of competing.
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So what are the topline benefits?

Individuals in teams spend less time blocked on dependencies and other groups because prioritized work flows faster.

For executives, you have the visibility to learn about problems early enough, giving you confidence in delivery. You're free to concentrate on Steering instead.

With each Flight Level connected, we've built the systems for effective Strategy Deployment.