Trickle-Down Model

A model is a toy version of the world, built so you can afford to make mistakes in it. Trickle-Down Model is a sturdy toy.

The model's real service is conversation. It gives a group of people the same picture to point at. Half of management is just getting everyone to look at the same wall.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

The best school principal is visible at the gate in the morning and invisible during the teachers' period. Presence at the right hour, absence at the right hour — that is the whole craft.

An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. The idea has done its job if, the next time it happens to you, you smile before you react.