Overview
Coherence at Velocity: How Leaders Build Customer Experience that Scales Without Fragmenting the Enterprise is a forthcoming book by Greg Kihlström, scheduled for publication by De Gruyter Brill in February 2027, with forewords by Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief of CMSWire, and Don Schuerman, CTO and head of marketing at Pega. Its subject is the gap between how fast enterprises launch change, including AI programs, and how much of that change their people and systems can absorb into stable operating behavior. It is written for executives and CX, marketing, and operations leaders who are accountable for customer experience across functions that each run their own transformation agendas. Kihlström has been publishing the book’s ideas in advance through a blog of the same name on his site.
See also: Absorptive Capacity · Business Lifetime Value (BLV) · Organizational Change Management (OCM) · Customer Experience (CX)
Publication details
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full title | Coherence at Velocity: How Leaders Build Customer Experience that Scales Without Fragmenting the Enterprise |
| Author | Greg Kihlström |
| Forewords | Dom Nicastro (editor-in-chief, CMSWire); Don Schuerman (CTO and head of marketing, Pega) |
| Series | None announced |
| Publisher | De Gruyter Brill |
| Publication date | February 2027 (announced) |
| Edition | First |
| Formats | Expected paperback and ebook (PDF/EPUB), consistent with the publisher’s other Kihlström titles; not yet confirmed |
| ISBN | 978-3-11-222360-4 (listed on the publisher page; format not yet labeled) |
| Length | Not yet published |
| Where to buy | De Gruyter Brill (pre-publication listing) |
Summary
The argument, as Kihlström has stated it in pre-publication writing, is that change capacity is a strategic asset and most enterprises overspend it. Every launch, whether a new platform, a reorganization, or an AI program, draws on the same finite pool: managerial attention, training bandwidth, exception handling, redesign effort, and judgment at the front line. Enterprises routinely launch more change than their people can turn into stable operating behavior, and the result shows up in the customer experience as inconsistency. Different functions, each moving fast on its own, produce a fragmented experience for the customer who deals with all of them.
“Coherence” in the title refers to the customer experience holding together across those functions. “Velocity” refers to the pace of change the enterprise wants to sustain. The book’s claim is that leaders can have both only if they treat absorption as something to plan and measure rather than assume.
The analytical frame borrows absorptive capacity from the management literature: an organization’s ability to recognize the value of new knowledge, assimilate it, and apply it to produce outcomes. Kihlström proposes measuring absorption across three layers. Efficiency covers avoidable effort, rework, and resolution time. Experience covers customer friction and consistency of outcomes. Equity covers the protection of Business Lifetime Value by removing the recurring costs of poor adoption and workarounds.
The pre-publication blog gives a sense of the book’s practical register. Posts cover who decides where AI-saved hours go (a capacity ledger per program, with named owners), who is accountable when a model is wrong, how to report AI programs to finance in dollars, days, and owners, when an agent has drifted and who notices, and which function gets to decide what a customer hears next when marketing, sales, and service each deploy AI against the same person. The full table of contents hasn’t been published.
Key concepts and frameworks
Change capacity as a strategic asset. The book’s thesis: the enterprise’s ability to absorb change is finite, consumed by every launch, and should be budgeted like money.
Absorptive capacity. The management concept (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) the book uses as its frame. See Absorptive Capacity.
Three layers of absorption measurement. Efficiency, experience, and equity, with the equity layer tied to Business Lifetime Value. Originates with Kihlström.
Capacity ledger. A per-program record of the hours an AI or automation initiative frees, the work those hours are assigned to, and the owner. Unassigned hours are treated as a planning gap rather than savings.
Coherence and velocity. The two goals the book holds in tension: a customer experience that stays consistent across functions, at a pace of change the enterprise can sustain.
Who it’s for
A Chief Customer Officer or CX lead whose experience metrics are flat while every function reports its transformation as on track. A CMO or COO sponsoring multiple AI programs with no shared view of what they cost in attention, training, and exception handling. A CHRO being asked to join the body that approves AI programs, which the pre-publication writing argues should happen. The book is positioned above the function level; readers who want the MarketingOps-specific operating model should read MarketingOps 3.0.
Edition history
| Edition | Year | Publisher | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coherence at Velocity | 2027 (forthcoming) | De Gruyter Brill | First edition, announced for February 2027. |
How this book compares
| Title | Author | Year | Focus | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coherence at Velocity | Greg Kihlström | 2027 | Enterprise change capacity and coherent CX across functions | Executives sponsoring multiple transformations |
| MarketingOps 3.0 | Greg Kihlström | 2026 | Hybrid human-agent operating model for marketing | MarketingOps and RevOps leaders |
| House of the Customer | Greg Kihlström | 2023 | Customer-first, employee-driven transformation blueprint | Leaders designing a 1:1 CX operating model |
| The Agile Brand Revisited | Greg Kihlström | 2025 | Organizational agility as a brand attribute | Leaders defining agility for the whole company |
| Leading Change | John Kotter | 1996 | Eight-step change model | General change leadership |
| Accelerate | John Kotter | 2014 | Dual operating system for speed and stability | Leaders balancing pace and control |
FAQs
When is it being published? February 2027, by De Gruyter Brill, per the author’s site. The publisher has a pre-publication listing.
What does the title mean? Coherence is a customer experience that holds together across functions. Velocity is the pace of change the enterprise wants to sustain. The book is about achieving both.
What is “change capacity”? The finite pool of managerial attention, training bandwidth, exception handling, redesign effort, and front-line judgment that every launch consumes. The book treats it as a strategic asset to be budgeted.
Who wrote the forewords? Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief of CMSWire, and Don Schuerman, CTO and head of marketing at Pega.
How does it relate to MarketingOps 3.0? MarketingOps 3.0 is about the marketing operating model in an agent-driven market. Coherence at Velocity is about the enterprise’s ability to absorb change of any kind, with customer experience as the outcome measure. They share concepts such as Return on Agent.
Is there a way to read the ideas before publication? Yes. Kihlström publishes a blog of the same name on his site, with posts drawing on the manuscript.
Is it about AI? AI programs are the most common example of change in the book’s framing, but the argument applies to any transformation initiative.
Related Terms
- Absorptive Capacity
- Business Lifetime Value (BLV)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Customer Experience (CX)
- Organizational Change Management (OCM)
- Change Management
- Decision Rights
- Commercial Operations Orchestration (CO2)
- Culture Debt
- Return on Agent (ROA)
Related Books
- MarketingOps 3.0 (2026)
- Marketing Operations: Strategy, Implementation and Optimization (2026)
- The Agile Brand Revisited (2025)
- House of the Customer (2023)
- Priority is Prediction (2025)
This is a forthcoming title. Edition, format, length, and availability details will be filled in on publication; the De Gruyter Brill page is the authoritative source.
Sources
- De Gruyter Brill — Coherence at Velocity (pre-publication listing): https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/isbn/9783112223604/html
- Greg Kihlström — Books overview: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/writing
- Greg Kihlström — All Books: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/greg-kihlstrom-books-1
- Greg Kihlström — The Coherence at Velocity Blog: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/coherence-at-velocity-blog
- Greg Kihlström — “Who decides where all that saved time goes?” (October 27, 2026): https://www.gregkihlstrom.com/coherence-at-velocity-blog/who-decides-where-time-saved-goes
- Goodreads — Greg Kihlstrom author blog (mirror of the above post): https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15940365.Greg_Kihlstrom
- Martechipedia — Absorptive Capacity: https://www.agilebrandguide.com/wiki/models/absorptive-capacity/