“Your first competitor is the prospect that your users will simply continue to do whatever they’ve been doing in the past to address that need. The number one competitor to your invention is the alternative of not having it.”
What?
In this book the author uses lots of case studies to argue for a more flexible approach to management and decision-making. He describes a situation in 2003 where a well-equipped US Army found itself consistently outmanoeuvred by a group of Afghan insurgents who were quicker to reorganise, change plans, adapt to changing circumstances and do so whilst staying focused on their task. He argues that businesses have to be more like the insurgents in how they organise and adapt if they are to thrive in a volatile world.
So What?
“At the heart of 20th-century management…is the notion of a corporation as an efficient steady-state machine aimed at exploiting its existing business model.”
Complex initiatives often fail because companies can’t change their plans fast enough. The author offers three principles for an Agile organisation. They are
- The law of the small team – agile organisations create small cross-functional teams with autonomy and a focus on ‘getting to done.’
- The law of the customer – the agiles select their primary customer base and, through product malleability, constant experimentation and simple customised solutions, keep them happy
- The law of the network – agiles create a network of teams which emulate their small teams
Competence, not rank, should determine who makes the decisions. The second part of the book becomes more abstract and discursive, less helpful in a practical sense. That said
Now What?
The authors contend that conventional managers may initially find it difficult to implement agile management. Top-down won’t work, bottom up might take forever. You may have to have the courage to ask the small teams and if there’s one big idea it might just be –
“Don’t just fail fast, learn fast.”