By Kevin McDonnell   You’re Not Stuck—Your Thinking Is Most leaders like to think of themselves as adaptive, creative problem solvers. But under pressure—during integrations, restructurings, or periods of rapid growth—we tend to default to what’s familiar. The frameworks that once made us successful become shortcuts. Experience becomes a filter. Instead of increasing clarity, it quietly narrows situational awareness . Situational awareness is not just knowing what’s happening

As organizations scale, leaders often struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: What actually changes about managerial ability as careers progress?  Titles grow, scopes expand, and decision rights widen—but many organizations lack a coherent model explaining how  thinking, judgment, and time-horizon must evolve. More than three decades ago, Elliott Jaques  offered one of the most rigorous answers to this question in his seminal work on Stratified Systems Theory (SST)

As organizations grow, the nature of executive work changes. In smaller enterprises, top leaders often make key operational calls directly—approving projects, allocating budgets, or resolving issues in real time. But as a company matures, this model quickly reaches its limits. The volume and complexity of decisions expand exponentially, and no small group of executives can (or should) decide everything. At scale, the true role of the executive team shifts from decision-making