| Introduction |
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xiv | |
| Acknowledgments |
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xvi | |
| Foreword |
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xviii | |
| Part One Why change? |
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2 | (73) |
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Customers are adopting disruptive technologies faster than companies can adapt. |
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3 | (10) |
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Customers are connecting, forming networked communities that allow them to rapidly share information and self-organize into powerful interest groups. Companies will have to be more responsive to customer needs and demands if they want to survive. |
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13 | (10) |
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Industrialization is a phase, and in developed nations that phase is ending. Growth in developed economies will increasingly come from services. |
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3 Everything is a service |
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23 | (8) |
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Services cannot be designed and manufactured in isolation, like products. They are cocreated with customers and are interdependent with wider service networks and clusters. |
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31 | (10) |
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Services introduce customers into operations, which creates a lot of complexity and variability that is hard to plan for in advance. Companies must find ways to accommodate variety at the edge of the organization, where people and systems interact directly with customers, partners, and suppliers. |
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5 How companies lose touch |
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41 | (14) |
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Companies tend to lose touch with customers as they grow, for a variety of reasons. They must find ways to create, maintain, and develop deep connections as they grow. |
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6 Structural change is necessary |
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55 | (8) |
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Growth and evolution leads to increasing specialization, which limits a company's ability to adapt and evolve. If your company is at or near peak effectiveness for a particular purpose and the environment around you is shifting, you may need to undergo fundamental structural change in order to become adaptive. |
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7 Complexity changes the game |
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63 | (12) |
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The complexity of the new networked, interdependent economy creates an ambiguous, uncertain, competitive landscape. Companies must be flexible enough to rapidly respond to changes in their environments, or risk extinction. |
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| Part Two What is a connected company? |
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75 | (46) |
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To adapt, companies must operate not as machines but as learning organisms, purposefully interacting with their environment and continuously improving, based on experiments & feedback. |
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8 Connected companies learn |
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77 | (12) |
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We are accustomed to thinking of companies as machines. But machines cant learn, and therefore they can't adapt. Learning is a property of organisms. |
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9 Connected companies have a purpose |
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89 | (10) |
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Learning happens in the context of a goal, an attempt to do something or to make something happen. Without a purpose to drive learning, it is haphazard, not much more useful than blind flailing about. The purpose of a company is to do something for customers while making a profit. |
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10 Connected companies get customer feedback |
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99 | (12) |
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Learning requires feedback in order for performance to improve. The most important judge of service quality is the customer. Therefore, the most important feedback is customer feedback. |
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11 Connected companies experiment |
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111 | (10) |
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When the environment is variable with many unknowns, it is impossible to know in advance what kind of performance will be needed or what kind of learning will occur. If people are to learn, they must be free to experiment and try new things. |
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| Part Three How does a connected company work? |
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121 | (74) |
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A connected company learns and adapts by distributing control to the points of interaction with customers, where semi-autonomous pods pursue a common purpose supported by platforms that help them organize and coordinate their activities. |
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123 | (12) |
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The good news is that many of the problems of addressing complexity and change have already been solved by the very people who started the complexity problems in the first place: technologists. They solved these problems because they had to. |
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135 | (12) |
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Connected companies are not hierarchies, fractured into unthinking, functional parts, but holarchies: complex systems in which each part is also a fully functional whole in its own right. A holarchy is a different kind of template than the modern, multidivisional organization. It's popular. |
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14 Pods have control of their own fate |
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147 | (8) |
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The core building block of a popular organization is the pod: a small, autonomous unit that is authorized to represent the company and deliver results to customers. Pods are flexible, fast, scalable, and resilient. |
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155 | (12) |
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A popular organization requires support structures that network the pods together so they can coordinate their activities, share learning, and increase the company's overall effectiveness. Platforms are support structures that increase the effectiveness of a community. |
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16 How connected companies learn |
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167 | (16) |
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Connected companies grow and learn over time. Like all life forms and complex systems, their growth is governed by natural rhythms and patterns. As individuals and teams learn, they must find ways to share their knowledge with the larger community. As communities learn, platforms must learn how to support them. |
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17 Power and control in networks |
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183 | (12) |
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Connected companies are networks that live within other networks. To be effective in a networked world requires different ways of thinking and acting. It's less about predictability and control, and more about awareness, influence, and compatibility. |
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| Part Four How do you lead a connected company? |
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195 | (44) |
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Connected companies are living, learning networks that live within larger networks. Power in networks comes from awareness and influence, not control. Leaders must create an environment of clarity, trust, and shared purpose, while management focuses on designing and tuning the system that supports learning and performance. |
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18 Strategy as a pool of experiments |
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197 | (12) |
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Strategy is usually considered the province of senior executives. But senior executives are in some ways the least qualified to envision the future, because they are the most invested in the past and the least likely to be around in the long term. In a connected company, strategy happens at all levels, across diverse groups and different time scales, generating a rich pool of experiments for senior leaders to draw from. |
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19 Leading the connected company |
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209 | (14) |
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A connected company is a network of loosely coupled, semi-autonomous units. So what is the role of a leader? Leaders should focus on creating an environment of clarity, trust, and common purpose, so members know what the company stands for and how it intends to fulfill its promise to customers. And then leaders should get out of the way. |
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20 Managing the connected company |
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223 | (16) |
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The job of management is to design and run the systems that support the company in achieving its purpose. Managers must carefully balance individual freedoms with the common good, involve people in platform decisions, and tune the system to keep the company's metabolism at the right temperaturetoo cold and the company sinks into rigid bureaucracy; too hot and the company breaks apart into anarchy and chaos. |
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| Part Five How do you get there from here? |
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239 | (29) |
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Any enterprise involves risk, and connected companies are no exception. Connected companies can fail. But in times of change and uncertainty, their ability to learn and adapt faster than their competitors gives them an edge. If you want to become a connected company, there's no reason you can't start today. |
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21 The risks of connectedness |
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241 | (10) |
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The speed and flexibility of connected companies gives them clear advantages over slow-moving adversaries. But no advantage comes without associated risk. How can connected companies go wrong? There are three ways: failure at the pod level, failure at the platform level, and failure of purpose. |
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251 | (17) |
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Connected companies today are the exception, not the rule. But as long as the environment is characterized by change and uncertainty, connected companies will have the advantage. There are four ways your company can start that journey today: organic growth; top-down, leader-driven change; pilot pods; and network weaving. You can take the first steps on Monday morning. |
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| Discussion questions |
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268 | (4) |
| Bibliography |
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272 | (4) |
| Index |
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276 | |
