Judgment, relationships, and expertise only pay off past a time threshold

The most valuable professional assets, judgment, relationships, and domain expertise, all compound. But compound curves have a shape: the extraordinary returns come late.

Cut the timeline short and you exit before the curve steepens. Trust with a team isn't built in a quarter. The institutional knowledge that lets you see second- and third-order consequences before they happen takes years to accumulate.

The eighteen-month cycle optimizes for the early, flat part of the curve and skips the part that actually matters.

Source claim: Judgment, relationships, and domain expertise compound over time, and leaving before the curve steepens means never accessing the extraordinary returns.