Escapement, Yeast, and Trim - Three Ways to Stop Steering

Escapement, Yeast, and Trim or Three Ways to Stop SteeringThere is a particular kind of executive who is never not needed. Ask them how the quarter is going and they will tell you, with the weary pride of a field surgeon, that they are "in the weeds right now" - as though the weeds were weather rather than landscaping. They arbitrate every trade-off. They are copied on everything. Their calendar looks like a ransom note. And their organization, which cannot go four days without them, is offered as proof of how essential they are. It is proof of something. Just not that. A mechanical watch, a fermenter full of yeast, and an aircraft in trim all share a property that most companies do not. They keep doing the right thing while nobody is touching them. Not because they are simple, and not because they are lucky, but because somebody did the regulating in advance and then had the discipline to take their hands off. Three different fields, three different centuries, one identical insight -…