The Organizational Hierarchy

Recently, I went searching for this tweet. I remembered Ryan had written down the framework that gave us both so much value over the years, but I couldn't remember the specifics.

In my head, I had ordered the hierarchy as:

• Vision
• Mission
• Strategy
• Team
• Planning
• Execution

I think either could work.   The point is to have a framework for diagnosing inevitable issues as an organizational grows.  

Organizations are always evolving.  Learning comes in through customers, employees, investors and other channels. As new information and perspectives appear, the a decision must be made (explicitly or implicitly by ignoring it) whether to incorporate that new information/perspective or not.  This hierarchy provides a path to do that.

Ryan's tweet storm goes on to say that the higher up the list you go, the less frequent changes should be made. I agree with this. My only change in the framing Ryan provides is that this isn't just useful for when problems arise. The hierarchy is a tool for constant organizational adaptation to changes in the environment.    

I repeat it here so I have now have it in this file, as I plan to use it wherever I go.