The Field Manual

Abstract

The chapters so far have explained the second brief, tested it against its critics, read it as a living system and watched it work in a café, a carpet maker, a Danish port and an outdoor clothing company. This chapter is the sequence. It sets out, week by week across a year, what a leader does to run a regenerative programme in an organisation of between ten and a few thousand people, who does each part, and which decisions have to be made at which point. It is written to be followed, and it is also written to be adapted. A café will move through the first quarter in a month. A manufacturer with several sites will need the whole year for the first cycle and will run several of the steps in parallel at different sites. What should not change is the order. Every step depends on the one before it, and the commonest way these programmes fail is by starting in the middle: launching an initiative before anyone has chosen the stock it serves, or committing money before the plan has been put through the test.