Coherence Layer
The rhythmic upper half of the two-layer architecture. It runs on a cadence and consists of five tiers — Morning Brief, Weekly Commitment Review, Monthly Learning Loop, Quarterly Recalibration, Annual Foundation Review — each matched to a different rate of change in the strategic architecture. Its job is not to make decisions (those happen continuously in the sensing layer) but to ask, at each level, whether the pile of fast decisions still coheres with the intent above. (Strategy as Infrastructure, Chs 10, 15)
Why it matters
The coherence layer replaces the traditional meeting cadence (weekly status, monthly review, quarterly planning) with a rhythm designed around rates of strategic change rather than calendar convenience. Each tier has a specific job, a specific failure mode, and a falsifiable success metric. The key discipline: a coherence tier never becomes a decision forum. Decisions belong in the sensing layer. The coherence layer only asks whether decisions cohere.
Related terms
Learn more
Ready to turn these concepts into real infrastructure?
See how Stratafy makes every term on this page operational — from machine-readable strategy to continuous alignment.
