The Velocity Framework

Foreword: Fieri Iussit

This foreword is a confession. In here I want to tell you three things:

1. This book is a derivative work of art,
2. What you read in here is not true,
3. I didn't write it.

If any of these items turn you off, I apologize and ask you to find literature that better fits your preferences.

You have been warned.

Violently Derivative

This book is violently derivative. It depicts my own observations, experiences and reflections, but many components of the concepts in here are not new. They have been used in other places for years.

Several of the practical mechanics introduced in later chapters of the book are heavily inspired by the EOS - the Entrepreneur Operating System - that has spawned a school of consultancy and taught thousands of entrepreneur better ways of running their businesses.

Many of the concrete ways to build Golden Paths (if you haven't run off screaming by now and stick to it, you'll read more about them in many of the chapters to come) are proudly stolen from companies like Netflix and Spotify.

Even the subheading to this foreword, and its implications, were snatched off a recent LinkedIn post by Ethan Mollick, professor of Entrepreneurship at Wharton.

If you think about it, being original is pretty difficult. Across several thousands of years, billions and billions of people have walked this planet. All of them have had thoughts, all of them have left some mark behind, and the vast majority have had the opportunity to be creative in some way. Coming up with a truly unique idea is becoming... challenging. And to tell ourselves otherwise is just plain self deception.

Throughout history, some of the world's most renowned creators have blatantly stolen from other sources. If you know the story behind the original Star Wars movie, you know that George Lucas was heavily inspired by Errol Flynn and the matines he used to go to as a child. Once you know this and watch the film again, the experience is very different and virtually littered with "aha!" moments.

What made Lucas and Star Wars interesting, was not that he had created something that in its components was original, but that he combined them in new ways and placed them in a context we hadn't really seen before.

Not aspiring (at this point in time) to be George Lucas, this book is not set in a galaxy far, far away, but it does share that trait with Lucas' creation - this book is a child of its time. It is inspired by great women and men that came before it, and it puts battle tested pieces of organisational design and mechanics in the context of an unprecedent era. It tells the story of how to apply these mechanics in the age of agents and generative AI.

No self respecting consultant would reuse vernacular however, so many concepts are renamed and tweaked to fit the framework. I believe that this serves practical purpose beyond stroking my own ego - I think that words carry power and that with a consistent terminology it will be easier to implement these ideas into an organisation context. That said, I am not claiming to have invented them, but by jove, I will put my finger prints all over them none the less!

On artistic liberties

This book is littered with anecdotes and stories from inside organisations. Throughout these pages, you'll encounter several types of examples:

Named company examples: Where specific companies like Moderna, GSK, or Gilead are mentioned, the information comes from publicly available sources—earnings reports, press releases, published studies. These are as factual as public information allows.

Composite portraits: Characters like "Dr. M" or "Sarah from Clinical Operations" represent amalgamations of patterns I've observed across dozens of real people in similar roles. They're not one person, but they're everyone. Any resemblance to specific individuals is coincidental—though if you recognize yourself, you're probably not alone.

Hypothetical scenarios: Clearly marked projections of what's possible when velocity principles are applied. These paint the picture of potential futures based on current trajectories.

Complete fabrications: Some stories are entirely made up to illustrate a principle.

"Eh, what?", you ask, with some right. When you read a book that doesn't explicitly exclaim "fiction" on the cover, you do expect and deserve a degree of factual correctness. That, my friend, is however not the point of this book.

What you hold in your hand (or read on your screen) is no more, nor less than an allegory of the trials and tribulations of life in a biotech environment. The purpose of the stories and anecdotes told is not to give accurate accounts, but to illustrate and illuminate the points of the concepts presented.

I dare say that across the book, the artistic liberties are relatively minor, and the stories do reflect events as they unfolded accordingly in most cases, but held at gunpoint I wouldn't claim any of it as precise or accurate. Such is the nature of memory, story telling and the power of ideas.

Instead, I want you to enter this book in the mindset of someone preparing to read a fable. A big fan of Aesop since the age of four, I imagine that clin ops director as a bear, the cunning marketing director as a fox and the poor CEO as a rabbit (not flattering in any instance, I know, but this is how my brain works). I encourage you to take these stories, not as literal, but as learnings—tales that emphasise the real world importance of what you are reading within these pages.

And don't ask me about them afterwards...

What about that latin quote?

Ethan Mollick recently came with this wonderful little tidbit (I strongly recommend you follow him on your favourite social media-he's a phenomenal interpreter of the state of generative AI).

The Romans, as I am sure you are aware, operated a huge, sprawling empire for a thousand years. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

The Emperor's will was carried out across the realm, and when it manifested in a building construction, that building was inscribed with "Fieri Iussit"-"commanded to be made".

Never in human history has this quote become more relevant than today. Through the aid of generative AI, millions, and millions of people command things to be made every minute. Ethan's suggestion was to label AI generated works with this phrase to signal its origin.

Obviously tongue in cheek, Ethan is very pragmatic and clearly understands the limitations of this particular approach without anyone explaining it to him, the idea was incredibly appealing to me and I want to stamp it all over this book.

I started writing about my Velocity Framework (not knowing that's what I was writing about) a few weeks ago. I did it as a series of LinkedIn articles - short and (hopefully) to the point. Then yesterday morning I thought "I should turn this into a book".

This was in the middle of a company recap, we had two significant software launches the same week and I was preparing for chairing our innovation day during our European Milestone meeting in Prague a couple of days later.

I turned to my trusty Claude Code, fed it my material and an instruction of what I wanted, and while I was making PowerPoint presentations, debugging code and entertaining dinner guests, Claude churned away in the background.

After our guests had left in the evening I sat down and started reviewing my new book. At 22:30 the first draft was finished.

Total time spent: 2.5 hours - Total pages: 561

This book's creation is as much a testament to its purpose, as its content is.

Out of the entire book, this foreword is the only part I've actually hand-crafted myself, yet I willed the rest into existence, it carries my ideas and it speaks, very closely, in my voice.

To many people this is controversial in a way that having Walter Isacsson write it for you would not be. Yet it is an incontrovertible fact that not just I, but practically the whole world have now been blessed with their own professional ghost writer, physician, lawyer, programmer or expert in almost whatever field they would choose.

Do you understand what that means?

No, you don't.

I don't.

No one does.

The one thing we can understand is that this means things are about to radically change, and that we need to prepare ourselves for that change.

That's one reason I wrote this book. Continue reading and you'll learn about some of the others soon.

Your Organization Runs at 5% Capacity

The email arrived at 3:47 AM.

"Competitor announces positive Phase II results. Board call scheduled for 8 AM."

The CEO stared at her phone screen, watching her company's future evaporate in real time. Their drug targeted the same pathway. Their data was actually stronger. But their competitor's trial had finished eighteen months ahead of schedule while hers was still awaiting site activation approvals.

Her coffee grew cold as she opened her laptop to find answers. Why were they so slow? What had gone wrong?

She pulled up the project timeline. Site activation: 16 weeks and counting. Protocol amendments: 8 weeks average. Safety reports: 2 weeks per submission. Each delay justified by policy. Each timeline considered "industry standard."

Then she did something she'd never done before. She calculated the actual work time.

Site activation: 6 days of real medical and regulatory work. The other 106 days? Stuck in review cycles. Protocol amendments: 48 hours of scientific review. The other 54 days? Approval chains. Safety reports: 2 hours of clinical assessment. The other 334 hours? Processing delays.

Her hands started shaking as the pattern emerged. In every critical process, actual work represented a tiny fraction of calendar time. The math was undeniable: Her organization was operating at roughly 5% of its potential velocity.

Not 95% efficient with modest improvement opportunity. Five percent. The other 95% was pure, systemic, institutionalized waste. Her competitor hadn't worked harder or been smarter. They had simply eliminated the friction that her company called "process."

This isn't hyperbole. It's physics. And physics doesn't care about your org chart.

The Discovery That Changed Everything

Walk through any pharmaceutical company at 9 PM. The glowing screens tell the real story.

Behind those endless rows of monitors, talented people are drowning in the wreckage of broken processes. They're in their third meeting about the meeting they had yesterday about the meeting they'll have tomorrow. They're updating PowerPoints that update PowerPoints. They're waiting for approvals from people waiting for approvals.

This scene plays out while patients wait for life-saving treatments trapped in the same dysfunctional machinery.

At GSK, someone finally asked the question that changes everything: Why does it take a year to resolve a clinical trial query?

The answer shattered every assumption about organizational efficiency.

It doesn't take a year. It takes 30 minutes of actual work. The other 364.95 days? Waiting. Sitting in queues. Awaiting consensus. Pending approval. Stuck in someone's inbox. Moving between systems that don't talk. Being reviewed by people who add no value. Getting scheduled for meetings weeks away.

The data controller's hands trembled as she calculated the number: 0.006% efficiency.

If your car achieved 0.006% efficiency, you'd walk. If your phone operated at 0.006% capacity, you'd smash it against the wall. But when your organization runs at this speed, you call it "how business works."

It's not how business works. It's how patients die waiting.

The Moderna Proof Point

January 11, 2020. Chinese authorities release the genetic sequence of a novel coronavirus.

January 13, 2020. Moderna has designed a vaccine. Two days.

The entire pharmaceutical industry said it was impossible. Vaccines take 10-15 years to develop. Everyone knows this. It's in every textbook. Every strategic plan. Every investor deck.

But Moderna didn't develop a vaccine in two days. They'd spent a decade building a platform that made vaccine design routine. When the moment came, they just updated parameters. Like changing settings in software.

While competitors were scheduling committees to discuss forming task forces to evaluate response strategies, Moderna was already manufacturing doses.

This isn't about being smart. Every pharma company has brilliant people. It's about velocity—the ability to convert potential into reality without friction.

Moderna operated at 90% capacity. Everyone else operated at a fraction of their potential. The pandemic didn't care about org charts. Natural laws determined the winner.

The Velocity Revolution

This book isn't about incremental improvement. I'm not going to show you how to make your committees 10% more efficient. I'm going to show you why committees shouldn't exist. I'm not going to optimize your approval chains. I'm going to eliminate them. I'm not going to help you manage complexity. I'm going to destroy it.

The Velocity Framework is based on a simple premise: Most organizational activity is waste. Not inefficient work—pure waste. Humans serving as middleware between systems. Meetings that exist to plan other meetings. Processes that manage problems instead of solving them. Entire departments that coordinate what shouldn't need coordination.

When you eliminate this waste, something magical happens: Your organization achieves velocity. Decisions flow at the speed of information. Problems solve themselves through systems. Innovation happens continuously, not quarterly. Work actually gets done during work hours.

What You'll Learn

Part I: The Velocity Imperative
You'll discover why your organization really operates at minimal capacity. You'll see the compound mathematics that make slow companies extinct. You'll understand why speed and quality are partners, not trade-offs. You'll learn a simple diagnostic that tells the truth about your company.

Part II: The Velocity Operating System
I'll show you the five components that create organizational velocity: Activity Charts that replace org charts, The Number that aligns everyone, Rocks that transform in 90 days, the Solve Forever Protocol that eliminates perpetual problems, and the Alignment Pulse that replaces endless meetings with 45 minutes of actual progress.

Part III: The Velocity Foundry
You'll see how regular people become "citizen builders" who create their own solutions. You'll learn why a clinical director with no coding experience can build better systems than your IT department. You'll understand how AI makes everyone a developer and why that changes everything.

Part IV: The Transformation Playbook
You'll get the step-by-step guide to achieving velocity. Pick your worst bottleneck. Fix it in 90 days. Watch success infect adjacent teams. Deal with the headcount reality honestly. Build infrastructure that enables instead of constrains.

Part V: The New Reality
You'll see why velocity isn't optional anymore. The gap between fast and slow companies is becoming unbridgeable. Regulators now expect speed. AI makes human pace irrelevant. Patients demand outcomes, not explanations. You're either moving at velocity or becoming extinct.

Part VI: The Choice
You'll face the decision that determines your organization's survival. First movers are already winning. The cost of waiting compounds daily. Your competition tomorrow doesn't exist today. What you do Monday morning decides everything.

The Promise and the Warning

This book makes a simple promise: You will achieve 10x productivity improvement without working harder. Without hiring more people. Without spending billions. Just by eliminating friction and operating at the speed natural laws allow.

But it comes with a warning: This transformation isn't optional. Your competitors are already implementing velocity. Regulators demand it. Patients expect it. Markets price it in. Talent flows toward it. Every day you delay, the gap widens.

The comfortable lie is that you can improve incrementally and survive. The uncomfortable truth is that incrementalism is extinction in slow motion—and patients pay the price.

Your Monday Morning Test

Imagine finishing this book on a Sunday. Monday morning, you'll face a choice:

Option 1: Go back to your committees, your approval chains, your PowerPoints. Pretend you didn't learn that you're operating at a fraction of your potential. Hope your competitors didn't read this book. Watch patients continue waiting.

Option 2: Pick your worst bottleneck. Assign someone to fix it. Give them 90 days. Start the transformation. Begin the journey from minimal capacity to 50% to eventually 90% efficiency.

One option leads to irrelevance. One leads to revolution.

Who This Book Is For

If you're a CEO, this book shows you how to transform before your board replaces you with someone who will.

If you're an executive, this book shows you how to lead transformation instead of being replaced by it.

If you're a middle manager, this book shows you how to become invaluable instead of eliminated.

If you're an individual contributor, this book shows you how to multiply your impact and control your destiny.

If you're an investor, this book shows you how to identify winners and losers before the market does.

If you're a patient or caregiver, this book shows you why your medications take so long and cost so much—and how velocity transformations will deliver life-saving treatments faster than ever before.

Who I Am and Why I Wrote This

I'm Johan Strömquist. I've spent 25 years inside pharmaceutical and biotech companies, watching brilliant people waste their talents in broken systems. I've seen the same dysfunction at every company, just with different PowerPoint templates. I've implemented transformations that worked and ones that didn't—I know the difference.

I wrote this book because I'm tired of watching people work until 9 PM to accomplish what should take until noon. I'm tired of seeing life-saving drugs take 15 years when the actual work requires 15 months. I'm tired of patients dying while committees debate and approvals wait in inboxes. I'm tired of organizational scar tissue that accumulates when we manage problems instead of solving them.

But mostly, I wrote this book because I've seen what's possible when organizations achieve velocity. When decisions flow like water. When innovation happens continuously. When people have lives outside work because work actually works. When patients receive treatments years sooner because friction has been eliminated.

The transformation from massive inefficiency to 90% capacity isn't just possible. It's inevitable. The only question is whether you'll lead it or be left behind by it.

The Next 20 Chapters

What follows will challenge everything you believe about how organizations should work. You'll question whether I'm exaggerating. I'm not. You'll wonder if this applies to your "unique" situation. It does. You'll think your organization is different. It isn't.

Every organization operates on the same natural laws. Friction slows things down. Removing friction accelerates them. It's that simple. And that hard.

The simple part is understanding what to do. The hard part is having the courage to do it.

Your Organization Is Watching

Tonight, when you leave your office, notice how many colleagues are still there. If everyone's working late, your organization is broken. Not struggling. Not challenged. Broken.

Late nights aren't signs of dedication. They're symptoms of dysfunction. They're physical proof that work isn't working. They're evidence that patients will wait longer for treatments because your people are trapped in inefficient processes.

Three years from now, your organization will tell one of two stories:

Story 1: Still burning people out. Your organization still operates at a fraction of its potential. Your best people have left for velocity companies. Your investors are asking uncomfortable questions. Your acquisition is being negotiated. Patients wait longer for life-saving treatments.

Story 2: People have lives again. Your organization operates at 50%+ capacity. You're attracting the best talent. You're leaving competitors behind. You're the one doing the acquiring. You're delivering treatments to patients faster than ever before.

The story depends on what you do with what you're about to learn.

The Revolution Starts Now

October 2025. The velocity revolution isn't coming. It's here. While you're reading this, companies are transforming. Decisions that took weeks are happening in hours. Processes that required months are completing in days. Organizations that operated at minimal capacity are achieving 50%.

The natural laws have changed. The tools exist. The playbook is proven. The only variable is courage.

Your organization operates at a fraction of its potential. That's the bad news.

The good news? So does your competition. For now.

The question is: Who achieves velocity first? Who delivers treatments to patients faster?

Turn the page. Learn the natural laws. See the playbook. Make the choice.

Your organization is watching. Your people are waiting. Your patients are hoping.

The revolution starts with the next page.

Or it doesn't start at all.

Welcome to The Velocity Framework. Welcome to the truth about your organization. Welcome to the choice that changes everything.

Let's begin.