The sixth principle: the right order of operations matters more than the speed of any single operation.
The Sixth Principle
The instinct toward speed in institutional initiatives is understandable and sometimes correct. Windows close. Momentum is real. The actor who moves quickly captures advantages that the slower actor cannot recover. But speed without sequencing is not fast — it is premature. The action taken before the conditions that make it viable are in place produces not fast progress but expensive failure, requiring the operator to rebuild from a position weakened by the failed attempt.
Sequencing is the discipline of identifying the order in which things must happen for each step to succeed. It requires asking, for each contemplated action: what must be true before this action can succeed? If those conditions are not yet in place, the sequencing discipline holds the action until they are — regardless of the urgency that the moment generates. The action taken in the right order, at the right moment, with the right conditions in place, produces progress. The same action taken out of order, before the conditions are established, produces the expensive demonstration that the conditions were necessary.
What Sequencing Looks Like
Sequencing in practice means identifying the dependency structure of the initiative — which elements depend on which others, in what direction, with what lead times. Relationship building precedes the proposal that depends on those relationships. Credibility establishment precedes the ambitious claim that requires that credibility to be taken seriously. Coalition assembly precedes the vote that requires coalition support. Early wins precede the ambitious expansion that those wins make institutionally viable.
The sequencing discipline is most demanding in the early phases of an initiative, when the urgency is highest and the temptation to skip steps is most acute. The early phase is precisely when the dependency structure is most important to respect, because the early steps create the conditions that all subsequent steps depend on. Skipping early steps to accelerate early progress is the most reliable way to ensure that the subsequent steps fail.
The sixth doctrine: know which step comes first. Do it. Then know which step comes second. The sequence is the strategy. The speed at which any individual step is executed is secondary to the order in which the steps are taken.
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