Coherence
The Circulation
In a time when businesses are rewarded for growth-at-all-costs, most ventures suffer not from a lack of talent or tools, but from internal misalignment.This chapter introduces the second layer of the energetic architecture beneath every venture: Coherence. If Essence is the life-force, Coherence is the circulation. The internal harmony that lets a business move with clarity, trust, and signal integrity.
It offers a path for leaders to energetically audit and align their business, so their ventures don’t just operate efficiently, but resonate from the inside out.
For decades, Microsoft thrived not just because of software, but because of coherence.
It gave the world a complete computing ecosystem, where Windows, Office, and developer tools spoke the same language, and hardware partners thrived inside the same orbit.
When Bill Gates was once asked what he most attributed Microsoft’s success to, he didn’t point to product-market fit or raw technical brilliance. He spoke of systems and culture, the internal architecture that kept the whole in sync.
But as the 2000s unfolded, the energy fractured.
Smartphones and cloud services began reshaping the digital world, and Microsoft turned the competition inward.
They installed the now infamous stack ranking system, pitting employees against each other, draining trust. Product groups became walled fiefdoms. Windows here, Office there, Xbox, mobile, and Bing, each defending its turf. The culture was captured perfectly in a satirical cartoon: Microsoft’s org chart drawn as divisions pointing guns at one another.
The sound of the company began to scatter. And the echo was sharp.
Microsoft missed the smartphone wave entirely. Its market value fell from over $600B in 2000 to just over $200B a decade later. Once the gravitational center of computing, it had become a constellation of disconnected parts.
In 2014, Satya Nadella stepped in as CEO.
He didn’t start with a rebrand or a new ad campaign. He first realigned to Microsoft’s essence of “empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.”
But his second objective was just as important: He restored internal coherence.
He collapsed silos and rebuilt cross-functional collaboration, even embracing open source. He dismantled stack ranking, removed disincentives, and fostered psychological safety. He reorganized teams, stripping away outdated layers of management.
By 2024, Microsoft’s market cap had passed $3 trillion.
Microsoft’s return wasn’t a shift in marketing or even a successful reorganization.
It was a realignment of Coherence.
Coherence ≠ Structure
Internal coherence is to a venture what circulation is to the human body.
In physics, coherence is when waves on the same frequency amplify each other. In bioenergetics, it’s the synchronization of parts into peak performance. In systems theory, it’s the interconnection that lets a complex whole move as one.
In venture, it’s not just having a good structure: good people, smart operations, elegant systems, AI tools, or a vibrant culture. Plenty of companies have great structure, and still no aliveness.
Coherence isn’t just intelligent organization. It’s entrainment. It’s when the parts of a business are aligned; to themselves, to each other, and most critically, to the deeper frequency of Essence.
It’s the harmonization of that structure, how the parts of a business synchronize, reinforce, and amplify when tuned together.
True coherence isn’t just operational unity, it’s energetic alignment.
A business is always broadcasting. Not what it wants to be, But what it is.
What is incoherent within will inevitably reverberate without. When the internal is fragmented, the external becomes confused. When the structure is misaligned, the signal arrives distorted.
Customers feel confusion they can’t articulate. Employees burn out without knowing why. Culture drifts. Traction stalls. And what once felt magnetic… goes flat.
In coherence, teams move with mission. Systems hum with precision, flexible, not fragile. Operations support momentum instead of resisting it. Culture becomes a living ecosystem, self-sustaining, not synthetic. And perhaps most significantly, the world feels it.
Because coherence isn’t just how a business is built, it’s what the world experiences. It is the felt transmission of a business aligned with itself.
This is what creates trust. This is what attracts aligned talent. This is what magnetizes customers beyond the funnel. This is the energy of a business that knows itself.
And coherence is how that frequency stays true.
What Incoherence Feels Like
Quibi, the short-form streaming mobile app, launched with every advantage. $1.75B in funding from top-tier investors. A dream team of Hollywood execs, tech veterans, and elite creators. Premium content starring A-list actors. A slick, mobile-optimized platform with innovative features like turn-style viewing.
On paper, Quibi’s structure was flawless. Its components were world-class. Its product, polished.
But as they learned the hard way, power doesn’t live in the parts. It lives in the relationship between them. In their coherence.
Behind the curtain, Quibi’s leadership was marked by power struggles and top-down decision-making. The tech and content teams were siloed. Major calls were made at the top, with little room for bottom-up feedback or real-time recalibration.
Quibi launched a billion-dollar product the market never asked for, and had no ability to pivot once it landed flat. They closed the business 7 months later.
In 2009, Yahoo had lost market share, but still had everything it needed to win. Millions of users. Billions in cash. Some of the best engineers and most-visited properties on the web.
When Carol Bartz took over as CEO, she brought operational firepower. She streamlined org charts, cut costs, and optimized systems.
Yahoo ran like a machine. But its culture dimmed, innovation stalled, and inevitably, talent left.
Yahoo didn’t recapture it’s prominence because it lacked structure, or even effectiveness. It faded because it lacked coherence.
Coherence isn’t just good organization. It’s an attunement to essence, the frequency that gives a business life. Not just aligned, but alive.
What Coherence Feels Like
Apple radiated coherence during the iPhone’s rise. Not just in the product design, but in the seamless dance between hardware, software, retail, marketing, and supply chain. Everything felt connected. Integrated. Inevitable.
Internally, Jobs tuned every team to the same wavelength of excellence and user obsession. Cross-functional alignment was mandatory. Product and marketing weren’t silos. They were mirrors. Design and engineering didn’t pass batons, they built together. Even in the midst of a less-than-ideal tyrannical style, leadership pushed a unified vision, holding Apple’s essence, and the operational structure pulsed with it.
Stripe flows with coherence. From its developer documentation to its APIs, its onboarding to customer support, the entire experience feels like one breath, one motion. But that outer simplicity is powered by an internal system designed for coherence.
Stripe prioritizes developer empathy at every level. Their internal culture is obsessively aligned around clarity and reduction. Their systems aren’t just efficient, they’re poetic in their architecture. Every team knows the user is the north star, and every decision is structured to orbit around that.
Chick-fil-A, polarizing or not, operates with eerie coherence. From the values of its leadership to the speed of its drive-thru, the energy is consistent. Predictable. Alive.
Behind the scenes, every operator is steeped in a clear set of principles. Training isn’t just procedural, it’s spiritual. Roles are tightly tuned to purpose, and frontline culture is empowered to carry the brand’s essence with care and clarity. The internal order becomes external reliability.
When a venture is coherent, it doesn’t just work. It resonates.
And in that resonance, the essence amplifies.
The Invitation
You’ve likely built with great effort. You’ve optimized, systemized, scaled. But coherence is more than efficiency.
This is not about optimization. It’s about orchestration.
The goal is not more control or predictability. It is more resonance.
This is your invitation to build differently. To attune, not just assemble.
Because a business does not broadcast what it says it is. It transmits what it is.
And if you want the world to feel your business, its purpose, its clarity, its heartbeat, you must first feel it inside the walls.
It requires a unique builder. One who doesn’t just architect strategy, but tunes structure. Who doesn’t just lead the team, but conducts coherence.
Can we hear what our business is truly broadcasting? And will we take the time to tune the internal rhythms, not just the metrics?
Because until we do, the world won’t feel it. Only the static.
Coherence becomes an channel for Essence, not a blockage, but a vessel. And as we’ll see, it becomes a foundation for Force, not just reactive, but responsive. A conductor for Signal, not a container, but a current. And an amplifier for Aura, not a projection, but a transmission.
This is how a business becomes alive, not just an empty signal.
Field Notes →
Key Instruments of a Coherent Venture
Cultivating Coherence
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