I just finished watching part 6 of a 6 part documentary shot for the BBC, written and directed by Stewart Brand (the president of the Long Now Foundation), based on his book – “How Buildings Learn“.
You can watch the entire series here. If you only want to watch the part 6, that I will talk about in this post, you can watch that here.
When you watch this video, just swap the buildings with organisations or businesses and you will find that the entire video and you will realize that everything that Stewart talks about buildings is also true for businesses.
His model is based on the model created by an architect named Frank Duffy. Frank shares that there are 4 layers of any building: The Shell (lasts about 50 years or so), Services (changed every 15 years or so), Scenery (changes every 5-7 years or so) and the Set (can change much faster).
Just like buildings have multiple layers, businesses have multiple layers as well.
Just like different parts of the building changes at different pace, the parts of the businesses also have their own pace of change and adaptation.
Just like buildings adapt to their residents, businesses adapts to the people who work in the and on the businesses.
I have thought about these layers and have my list ready. What about you? What do you think are the layers that you think your business or team is made up of? What changes fast and what changes slow? What, when changed has the most significant impact on the business?
Understanding what aspects of your organisation or teams change at what pace allows us to be intentional about the kind of change we want to drive. This also allows us to understand the kind of change we are trying to bring about and allow for the requisite amount of time and pace it based on the inherent pace of that kind of change.
I will share my layers in a blog post that will follow soon. What about you? Can you share your’s here by leaving a comment?
