Image courtesy of Erick Starck
Vertex velocity is simple: Most parts of a system have a purpose, and when they function in that way, it's good for itself and the greater whole. Vertex velocity is that attainment. Let's take a little bit closer look, for the sake of making some bedrock concepts explicit.
Why velocity? First remember that velocity is speed + direction. Every component (of a system) is heading, working, pursuing, pushing, moving in a certain direction. The easy example is the social role of a person, like you. You're headed in a certain direction overall with a certain narrative arc to your life. You have a direction you're heading within your family, your career impact, within your company, your community, your marriage, etc. There are so many ways we could look at this. The key question is.... What role should you play, at any given time or within a time-frame, within a system to optimize it's output? And, how can you optimize your role? Optimization would be the best direction. Anything other than that would therefore be sub-optimal and to some varying degree off-the-mark direction from target. A sub-optimal direction, but a direction, nonetheless.
The other side of velocity is the speed. You're traveling in each direction at some rate, whether a slow ongoing drift of apathy and disengagement with your work team or a high-speed chase in the optimal direction toward a specific goal-destination in your personal life. The point here is that complete stagnancy is highly unlikely, by the nature of life (and even definition). You, me, we, humans are moving at some rate, in some direction, at all times on infinite levels.
The key, then, is to be thoughtful in one's selections for most attention, one's direction, and one's rate of movement in that direction. Put simply, we should distill down to the things we want to focus most of our efforts toward, based upon what we value most, and we should then be as concise as possible with our intentions and efforts associated.
On a given situation, when direction and speed are aligned for optimal performance of the component and greater system, this level of pinnacle performance can be called vertex velocity.
Some key questions to ask:
- What's the role of the organ (so-to-speak) within the greater organism?
- What's the aim of the organism?
- When both are functioning at optimal level, what does that look like?
- How could a change be made to shift in that direction?
- Is there anything imperative for long-term health of the organism that is being compromised based on the current strategy that should be re-aligned?