Stage 6: Evolve: There is No Final State – Using the Squint Factor to Jump the Next Curve

Jun 9

By the time a life science organization reaches Stage 5: Stewardship, there is a quiet confidence in the system. The product is approved. The site is running. The processes work. People know what “good” looks like. The organization has built a rhythm strong enough to deliver consistently in a regulated environment. (A meaningful achievement in biopharma!)

For a while, this can feel like arrival. But in truth, there is no final state. All growth requires evolution.

In life sciences, the moment you lock in “what works,” the world starts changing around it—patents expire, pipelines shift, new sites are needed, acquisitions reshape the system, and the next set of capabilities becomes non-negotiable. New complexity emerges everywhere.

What comes next isn’t a new phase with clean edges. It’s an ongoing discipline - Evolve: Continuous Improvement—the space where leaders must learn to squint toward the future while still stewarding what works today.

Managing New Complexity & Multiple Growth Curves

In scaling life science organizations, you’re never managing just one curve. As organizations grow, new complexity emerges. You’re stewarding what works in one part of the enterprise while another part is already being pulled into a new curve.

For instance, a new site, new therapy, new function, or even a merger and acquisition could send parts or all the organization back through the Continuum Jump Model stages again. New messy middles will present across all the microcosms as you continue to grow.

Leaders must lead across multiple curves simultaneously—with the maturity to let different parts of the organization be in different places and meeting them where they are. The work is to lead through it intentionally—without panic, overcorrection, or nostalgia for “how we used to do things.”

Evolve asks leaders to:

Protect today’s performance without calcifying it
Invite experimentation without destabilizing
Honor institutional knowledge without letting it dominate the future

The question isn’t whether change returns—it’s whether you’ll see it early enough to lead it on purpose. What’s different now is that leaders have language, pattern recognition, and experience. The cycle doesn’t disappear—but it becomes easier to navigate, less personal, and far less destabilizing.

Leadership Jump Move – The Squint Factor

This is where leaders must activate what we call the Squint Factor: the ability to look beyond today’s success, spot the early signals of what’s coming, and take one-degree shifts that keep the organization ahead of the curve.

The Squint Factor is the leadership muscle required throughout the growth journey, but especially after Stewardship. It’s the ability to look at today’s success and ask: “If we keep operating exactly this way, where will we be in two to five years?”

Squinting doesn’t produce certainty. It produces new opportunities, direction, and the ability to prepare for what is ahead and get in front of risks before reality forces you there, and your organization is left in the overwhelm of change whiplash or decline.

It’s recognizing a simple truth – what got us here, might not get us there. In every challenge you face, new possibilities for impact present themselves. Evolve is not about abandoning what works. It’s about loosening your grip on it, experimenting, and preparing for the future.

Here are some Jump Moves to flex your squinting muscle:

Schedule regular and ongoing leadership strategy meetings dedicated to looking and working toward the future
Look out for what is emerging in and on the edges of your field
Proactively scan and prepare for new novel unknowns (supply chain disruption, AI, pandemics, environmental impacts, etc.)
Monitor emerging workforce needs (multi-generation workforce, attracting and retaining talent)
Host organizational or team wise events focused on experimentation, innovation and alignment toward the priorities of the future
Find opportunities for leaders and staff to experiment on new things
Develop your talent pipeline

There Is No Finish Line—Only the Next Curve

Evolve is not a “Stage 6” in the traditional sense. It is an acknowledgment of reality:

Growth is ongoing.
Change is cyclical.
Decline is inevitable without evolution.
Experimental is essential.
Human dynamics are the constant.

Organizations that thrive long-term Life Science don’t chase permanence. They build organizational muscles—the ability to squint to the future, sense decline early, and jump the curve before performance erodes.

Stewardship keeps the system strong. Evolution keeps it alive. And the leaders who embrace this truth stop asking, “When will this be done?” They start asking, “What is this system being asked to become next?”