As companies grow up and scale out, understanding where to focus and what to fix is a huge challenge.

Flight Levels is the model I use to help companies stay organized as they scale.

We canl ook at the org as three interconnected levels. When you zoom out or Fly high, you'll see the breadth but little detail. Fly low, get detail, but lose breadth.

The Strategy level.

Here we are Zooming out for the maximum breadth. The focus is on Steering the org. We aim to see the organization's goals and directions of travel as a whole.

Purpose:

• Select the high-level bets, and levers of potential for impact

• Setting appropriate constraints, rhythms, and feedback loops. 

• Creating sufficient focus to get results and enough options to have a balanced portfolio.

We want to respond fast enough to avoid extensive failures such as market shifts or layoffs. Stick to direction setting and avoid prescriptive deliverables. 

The Operational level. 

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

Here your focus is on bringing a small group of specialists together and getting a unit or work done effectively.

Purpose:

• 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. Failure here often signals a poor job at the other two levels.

Coordination

In between, we have projects, programs, and initiatives that bring many team's works together.

Purpose:

• Surfacing dependencies between teams and projects

• Tackling the options coherently and handling the trade-offs that emerge.

How does this model help

Your strategy will only matter when you can deploy it.

For executives, each Flight Level working and connected means having confidence in delivery. You're free to concentrate on Steering instead.

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