The capstone wing
The Enduring Realm
A sage's counsel to founders: how to build an institution that outlasts you, told through the realms that endured and the ones that fell.
The founding of an institution or business
Open now
Founders' Circle
A six-week live cohort for founders, run by the author.
Coming later: The wing's threshold and plan, the founder's edition, the parallels room and the charter capstone.
The Enduring Realm
- The number 150 as a natural human group size is contested: a 2021 re-analysis put the plausible range anywhere from 2 to 520.
- The majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans.
Laboratories from the Cathedral used here
- The Late Narrator
- The Cascade Engine
- The Moral Animal (planned)
The book, recast for founders
Each chapter's founder focus is a working brief for the founder's edition.
Part One Seeing your institution as a system
- Ch. 1 The Royal Systems Perspective. Why founders who see patterns outlast founders who see events.
- Ch. 2 The Systems of Rule and the Rules of Systems. Emergence, feedback and why direct control fails in a living institution.
- Ch. 3 The Four Realms of System Complexity. Simple, complicated, complex and chaotic problems, and the different response each demands.
- Ch. 4 Of Nature and Humankind. The people in an institution are cathedrals, literally. The founder's own narrator, rank and belonging, incentives and moral judgement.
Part Two The ground your institution stands on
- Ch. 5 Reading the Book of Nature. Reading a sector as an ecology: flows, keystones, succession.
- Ch. 6 The Lay of the Land. Choosing the ground: market, positioning, place and jurisdiction.
- Ch. 7 Dancing with Climate and Season. Economic cycles and market seasons; reserves and calendars that follow them.
- Ch. 8 Resources, Constraints, and Dynastic Cycles. Runway, capacity and the load an institution pushes onto people who never appear on its ledger.
Part Three The six pillars of an enduring institution
- Ch. 9 The Six Pillars of Enduring Realms. Operations and revenue, risk and safety, knowledge, governance, capital and ownership, culture and meaning, and how imbalance between them creates fragility.
- Ch. 10 From Hunger to Abundance. Operations and revenue: keeping the institution fed through droughts and floods.
- Ch. 11 Order Without Oppression. Risk, safety and governance: legitimacy, decision rights, accountability without coercion.
- Ch. 12 Beyond Gold. Capital and ownership: where money comes from, who holds a stake, and whether those who build the institution share in it.
- Ch. 13 Memory and Foresight. Knowledge: how an institution remembers, learns and forgets.
- Ch. 14 Hearts and Minds. Culture and meaning: story, ritual and values as stronger than rules.
Part Four From founding to enduring
- Ch. 15 Scales of Complexity. Thresholds of growth where structures must be redesigned (the precise numbers are contested).
- Ch. 16 The Dynamics of Urbanisation. Hubs and concentration: headquarters, networks, and what centralisation costs the edges.
- Ch. 17 Beyond Borders. Partners, rivals and regulators: designing the interfaces with other institutions.
- Ch. 18 Adaptive Cycles and Regime Transformation. Growth, conservation, release and reorganisation; choosing renewal before collapse forces it.
- Ch. 19 Succession and Regeneration. Handing on: founders, boards, and the institution after you.
- Ch. 20 Legacies: Designing for the Seventh Generation. The thousand-year charter: mission, safeguards and what must never be traded away.