One of the blessings of spending the past few months working from home, with my daily commute suspended, is that I have had time to start to tackle some of the tomes on my bookcase. Oh, and yes, I know that it is ironic to be talking about physical books in a blog dedicated to all that is digital and connected. Truth is that I find that my trusty Kindle cannot match the uniquely tactile experience of scribbling comments and doodles on paper. Indeed, one thing I can honestly say about the following books is that they have all been extensively scribbled on. What these books have in common is that, in their own way, they provide valuable perspectives on Digital Transformation. In other words how to meet customers’ expectations in today’s increasingly interconnected, chaotic and unpredictable world.
Note, a couple of years ago I posted a review of five other noteworthy books. To see the full list of books, look here.
The Invincible Company
Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Fred Etiemble, Alan Smith
From the creators of the Business Model Canvas, comes the Invincible Company, a beautifully-curated journey through how the principles introduced in Business Model Generation can be applied at a company level. It describes the dynamics between what the authors call the Explore and Exploit Portfolios. The former includes the entrepreneurial and often speculative activities aimed at discovering and establishing the products and business models that will drive future profits. The Exploit portfolio, on the other hand, is focused on driving today’s profits.
Although the authors are at pains to emphasise that invincible companies must master both portfolios, it is clear that their heart is in the innovation funnel and on the key building blocks of fostering an innovation culture. Nevertheless, they propose a set of practical tools for selecting and managing innovation portfolios as well as for tracking their performance.
It is however worth buying this book for what its ‘Pattern Library’, or case studies. These range from the done-to-death (e.g. iPhone App Store) to the should know more about (e.g. FujiFilms’s foray into cosmetics). This is probably the most compelling collection of strategy and business model case studies I have seen in a single place and covers all sorts of scenarios, from creating platforms, rearchitecting cost structures to transforming and shifting business models. The disrupted and the disruptor are both considered. You will be hard-pressed to find a ‘pattern’, or indeed a collection of them, that will not in some way resonate. And in the unlikely case that they don’t, the quality of the artwork and graphics will still make this a satisfying purchase.
The Design Thinking Playbook
Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, Larry Leifer
As can be expected from a book with ‘design’ in the title, the Design Thinking Playbook is richly-illustrated, full of diagrams that stylistically would not look out of place in a kids’ reading book. The book, which follows on research in the area at Stanford University, aims to provide a set of tools to allow businesses to take a more user-centric and problem-oriented approach to coming up with and executing on new ideas.
As such, the book certainly does not lack toolkits. Many of these are not original, but are influenced, or indeed, adopted wholesale from other sources. Hence we re-acquainted with the business model canvas, the lean start-up cycle, scrum, the Spotify development model, mindfulness, the double diamond, systems thinking and more. All these make their way into the Design Thinking Playbook. While many business books are criticised for endlessly repeating a single new concept, this book is perhaps guilty of the opposite, throwing in so many ideas that at times the narrative arc can be difficult to discern.
Nevertheless, this is a small criticism for what is effectively a crusade at bringing the needs of the user to the heart of what a truly digital company must do and be. The key theme is that multiple perspectives and multidisciplinary approaches are needed as a company moves away from linear systems (e.g. supply chains and innovation funnels) to more chaotic and interlinked systems which should be addressed by marrying the rationality and logic of a systems thinker with the intuition and emotion of a design thinker.
Accelerate!
John Kotter
From a book that brings too many concepts, to one that focuses on a single one – namely how to operate large organisations at speed. In Accelerate! John Kotter argues, quite convincingly, that the hierarchical structures and organisational setups that form the foundation of modern corporations fundamentally fossilise a solution for a given market or problem. What they don’t do half as well is to drive successful change initiatives or deal with rapid change.
The solution according to Kotter is to set up companies with a dual organisation structure. Kotter suggests to complement the existing hierarchy with a loose ‘strategy’ network that is organised in the amorphous way typical of a startup, but is crucially set up to be the equal of the hierarchy. While a number of people will be in both systems, most leaders and team members will be a member of one or the other. In time, businesses created by the network will be absorbed into the hierarchy.
The key insight provided by Kotter, is that as companies grow (or as the jargon goes, ‘scale’), the very mechanisms put in place to coordinate the growing organisation prevent it to flex or change. Kotter therefore advocates that the company maintains a start-up like structure reporting to the CEO or executive board. While I have not seen many examples of this kind of permanent dual organisation, the principle remains valid.
Where Kotter is more compelling, is in his recipe for accelerating change. Kotter describes eight accelerators from building and maintaining a coalition to celebrating short-term wins. None of the eight accelerators are in themselves particularly novel, and any change practitioner is likely to be using them to some extent or other. What is effective however is the central theme – creating a sense of urgency around a single big opportunity. Without urgency, there is no need for speed. Without the need for speed, there is no need for the network. This is, in my opinion, the key theme of this book. Urgency is a strong emotional force that can be channelled to drive change.
Reinventing the Product
Eric Schaeffer and David Sovie
I must admit that I nearly did not buy this book on reading that the authors worked for one of the best-known management consultancies around. I have seen enough transformation models being pitched by consultancies as their bullet-proof to help you transform your business. Or, as the cynic would put it, tell you what you already know.
This book was however a pleasant surprise. Neither shallow, nor stating the obvious, it describes how ‘digital’ is transforming our understanding of what a product is, shifting from a one-off purchase to a series of interactions and purchases. It is only by implementing very fundamental changes to the way a company is organised and operates, that an existing company can hope to operate in what is a very different space. The authors focus on how products evolve over an ‘intelligence’ continuum, becoming more connected and autonomous, while at the same time, the experience also becomes more engaging as business models shift to a ‘something as a service’ model.
Many of the examples are drawn from the automotive industry, where I can see first-hand the challenges of shifting from making cars, the most expensive products most of us will ever buy, to a mix of product and service business models. Unsurprisingly, Tesla is the authors’ darling – the closest an automotive company gets to the digital ideal.
One of the strengths of this book is its authors’ clear experience in dealing with large traditional companies, understanding their pain points, and the difficulties that must be overcome. The authors propose the ‘pivotal’ capabilities that need to be mastered, including, unsurprisingly, ‘large scale agile development’ through to ‘as a service’ competencies and a customer-centric organisation. This is complemented by a practical roadmap of steps towards getting the business to one of a number of sustainable end-states.
As a one-stop guide to how to navigate the transition from a product company to a digital company, this is undoubtedly one of the best guides around.
Flow
Fin Goulding and Haydn Shaughnessy
The final book in this collection is yet another landscape-format book, clearly being the orientation of choice for design thinkers and agilists. I must admit that I bought this book on the merits of its title alone. The concept of flow, so crucial to lean manufacturing and lean thinking, is my personal analogy of choice. Just as naturally balanced manufacturing system prevents the build-up of material or parts anywhere in the system, the same is true for software development. Unbalanced teams are constrained by their slowest subsystem, the challenge being simply that a backlog of user stories to be implemented by a team is less visible than a pile of parts on a factory floor.
The authors are clearly trying to pitch this book as an agile manifesto for enterprises and their IT departments, directly drawing out comparisons to the use of lean start-up in large organisations and agile principles. As this is a book aimed at taking start-up culture into the enterprise, unsurprisingly, a lot of the emphasis is on scaling, and in this regards, the similarities to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) cannot go unnoticed. There is however a lot to like in this book.
The authors clearly know how to adapt the working practices, job types, design focus, funky team names and customer orientation, from start-ups into corporate IT departments, and the intent does at times seem to be aimed at making ‘square’ executives feel cool. The methodology is anchored on the use of a large number of Post-It covered ‘walls’ ranging from the Customer Wall through the Projects-In-Play Wall to the Jobs Wall. This ties into the book’s core concept – in order to maximise flow, you need to make work visible. This relentless focus on creating visibility of digital work is what binds the concepts together. As people increasingly work from home, the challenge is ensuring that ‘digital’ walls can be as effective as physical ones.