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This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Summary
- Disruptive technologies, and disruptive practices, can cause good managers to fail.
- Good managers fail when the rate of change disrupts their ability to cope using existing management practices.
- High speed is easy. The high change caused by high speed is much harder to manage.
- The ability to adapt to high-change environments can be a significant competitive advantage.
- In extreme environments, change becomes the norm and stability becomes the exception. While many people sense that the world is changing faster, most management practices still reflect linear mental models.
- At some level of change, Command-Control management based on predicted results falls apart. Beyond this breakpoint, self-organizing systems provide better solutions.
- Good managers fail when they attempt to use silver-bullet solutions to complex problems.
- There is no silver bullet, but there are Lone Rangers who have an arsenal of bullets for different situations.
- Silver bullets give us the illusion of stability, thereby reducing anxiety associated with the unknown. We use silver bullets to attempt to hide from reality.
- The optimization paradox shows that fads like TQM and BPR still rest on an underlying deterministic model. By trying to impose control on the uncontrollable, these programs are doomed to a downward spiral.
- The solution to the optimization paradox is to embrace an adaptive approach—one that recognizes and works with uncertainty.
- Good managers fail because their management practices were developed to solve complicated problems, but their problems are complex.
- Good managers fail because they don’t understand the need for “requisite variety” in complex situations.
- Requisite variety is the antithesis of silver bullets. It states that managers must have a large number of coping mechanisms to combat the variety of changes in the environment.
- Good managers fail because they don’t understand the business ecosystem in which their projects must live.
- Value discipline involves establishing a single business strategy for success: operational excellence, customer intimacy, or product leadership.
- Tornado marketing is about understanding the Technology Adoption Life Cycle and how companies have to change strategies quickly.
- Value discipline and tornado marketing help software developers understand extreme environments.
- The aesthetics of complexity are more important to us than the false security of silver bullets.
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