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.

Foreword: The Missing Dimension

I lied to you.

Not about the facts. Not about the physics. Not about the 95% waste choking your organization or the velocity advantage compounding every day you delay.

Those were brutally, uncomfortably true.

But I lied by omission. I wrote The Velocity Framework as if organizational transformation were purely mechanical—remove the friction, redesign the systems, eliminate the committees, and velocity emerges like water finding its level.

I knew it wasn't that simple.

I've been APMG Change Management Practitioner certified since long before most people started worrying about AI. I've led and overseen transformations in several organizations over the last 25 years. I know that every "organizational scar tissue" committee I told you to eliminate has a name attached to it. Someone's career. Someone's identity. Someone who stayed until 9 PM building that process because they thought they were protecting the company.

I know that when you tell a director their entire function will be automated, they hear "you're worthless." When you tell a team their workflow will be redesigned, they hear "you've been doing it wrong." When you tell people to move faster, they hear "you haven't been working hard enough."

I know all of this because I've said those things and watched faces fall. I've seen transformation initiatives die not from technical failure but from human resistance. I've watched CEOs with perfect strategies founder because they treated their organization like a machine instead of an organism.

So why did I write The Velocity Framework as if none of that mattered?

The Deliberate Provocation

Because you needed to be angry first.

You needed to see the waste. You needed to feel the urgency. You needed to stop accepting "that's how we've always done it" as justification for organizational malpractice.

Most management books start with empathy. They acknowledge how hard change is. They validate your concerns. They make you feel understood.

Then nothing changes.

Because empathy without urgency becomes an excuse. "Change is hard" becomes "change can wait." "People need time" becomes "let's form a committee." "We need buy-in" becomes "let's do a six-month communication planning initiative while our competitors pull further ahead."

I've seen too many organizations die the death of a thousand empathetic delays.

So I wrote The Velocity Framework to slap you awake. To show you the math. To make you uncomfortable with your current state. To create the urgency that empathy alone never generates.

It worked. You're here.

You've read about the 95% waste. You've calculated your own numbers and realized I wasn't exaggerating—if anything, I was conservative. You've looked at your organization with new eyes and seen the friction everywhere. You've felt the compound advantage slipping away with every day of delay.

You want to transform. You're ready to transform.

Now comes the part I skipped: How do you actually do it without destroying your organization in the process?

Why This Book Exists

This companion exists because transformation requires both physics and people.

The physics are non-negotiable. If your drug development process takes 336 hours when it should take 90 minutes, that's a physics problem. No amount of change management makes slow fast. No amount of empathy reduces the 95% waste. The systems must change.

But people aren't neutrons. You can't just reconfigure them like you redesign a workflow.

When you eliminate that 336-hour process, you're not just removing waste—you're changing how 15 people spend their days. Their expertise, their relationships, their sense of contribution. Some will feel liberated. Others will feel obsolete. Both reactions are valid. Both require response.

When you implement AI agents to automate regulatory submissions, you're not just accelerating timelines—you're redefining what it means to be a regulatory professional. The people who've built careers mastering regulatory requirements will need to evolve from procedural execution to strategic interpretation. When AI handles the process, their value shifts and they will need new identities. That's not weakness. That's evolution.

When you redesign decision altitudes so managers can actually manage instead of seeking approval, you're not just streamlining governance—you're threatening the power structures that gave certain people safety. They'll defend those structures. Not because they're political. Because they're afraid.

The Velocity Framework told you what to change. This book tells you how to change it without leaving casualties or creating resistance that kills the transformation.

The Integration You Need

Most change management books assume you have time to move gradually, building consensus at every step and minimizing disruption above all else. They optimize for comfort over speed.

You don't have that luxury.

The compound math doesn't care about your change curve. Your competitors moving at 10x velocity don't pause while you run focus groups. The patients waiting for treatments don't grant extensions while you work through resistance.

So this book isn't going to tell you to slow down. It's not going to suggest that urgent transformation is somehow less humane than gradual decline.

Instead, it shows you how to move fast and bring people with you. How to be urgent and empathetic. How to demand excellence and support the transition. How to eliminate the obsolete and help people find new value.

This is change management for people who understand that slow is no longer an option.

It's structured around the same 90-day Rock Planning cycles from The Velocity Framework. Because that's the timeframe that matters. Long enough to make real change. Short enough to maintain urgency. Fast enough to compound advantages.

But now we'll address what happens in those 90 days beyond the system redesigns. How do you communicate? When do you involve people? What do you do about resistance? How do you help people through the identity shifts? When do you push and when do you support?

These aren't soft skills. They're survival skills for transformation.

What You'll Find Here

This book addresses the change management gaps that velocity transformation exposes:

Chapter 1 makes the case: why change management still matters even when you're moving at velocity speed, and what velocity-compatible change management actually looks like.

Chapter 2 teaches you to read resistance properly: the difference between technical concerns that will save your transformation and political resistance that will kill it. You'll learn when to adapt your plans and when to override objections.

Chapter 3 confronts the headcount reality directly: when AI and automation eliminate roles, how do you handle transitions with honesty, support, and dignity? The frameworks and ethical pillars you need.

Chapter 4 shows you how to build change coalitions in 72 hours instead of 72 days. Who to recruit, how to engage them, and why coalition-building is velocity-compatible when done right.

Chapter 5 gets you through the messy middle—Day 45 when doubt peaks, momentum stalls, and leaders almost quit. The specific practices that carry you from launch to permanence.

Chapter 6 solves the sustainability problem: how to make velocity permanent instead of watching it backslide. The systems, culture shifts, and measurement frameworks that make transformation stick.

You'll get frameworks, diagnostic tools, and practical scripts for difficult conversations. Change architectures that match the 90-day Rock rhythm. Real research backing every approach.

But more than that, you'll get permission to be urgent and human.

How to Use These Books Together

Read The Velocity Framework first. Let it make you angry. Let it show you the waste. Let it create urgency.

Then read this book to channel that urgency into transformation that lasts.

Use The Velocity Framework to design your systems. Use On Change to bring your people through the transition.

Reference The Velocity Framework when you need to remember why you're doing this. Reference On Change when you need to remember who you're doing it with.

The original book asks: "What needs to change?" This book asks: "Who needs to change, and how do we help them?"

Both questions matter. Both answers are required.

Urgency without empathy creates casualties. Empathy without urgency creates stagnation.

You need both books because transformation requires both forces.

The Promise

By the end of this book, you'll know how to:

• Launch a velocity transformation that people support rather than sabotage
• Communicate urgency without creating panic
• Help people through identity transitions when their roles evolve or disappear
• Distinguish between resistance that needs addressing and resistance that needs overriding
• Maintain momentum through the inevitable valleys of change
• Build change capabilities that make each transformation cycle faster
• Create a culture where velocity becomes the norm, not the exception

You'll still move fast. You'll still eliminate the 95% waste. You'll still redesign systems and automate processes and collapse timelines.

But you'll do it in a way that brings people with you instead of leaving them behind.

Not because it's nice. Because it works.

The fastest transformations aren't the ones that ignore people. They're the ones that engage people so effectively that human energy accelerates the physics rather than resisting it.

One Last Thing

I wrote The Velocity Framework from my role as innovator and technologist—focused on systems, technology, velocity.

I'm writing On Change from my role as a leader and change practitioner—focused on people, transitions, capability building.

Both roles are mine. Both perspectives are true. Both are required for transformation that lasts.

The question isn't which approach to choose. It's how to integrate both.

This book shows you how.

Welcome to the missing dimension.