The Age of Agile

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Stephen Denning, the former program director of knowledge management at World Bank, now works with various organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia on leadership innovation, Agile management, and organizational storytelling to discover the unfolding age of agile. This book focuses on how some organizations are learning to operate in a way that is much better for those doing the work, recipients of the work, the organization and the society.

The author discovered the default operating system for almost every medium-sized business and large-scale business to be bureaucracy (an organization system that discriminates between the managers-thinkers and the employees-doers). This system of management was designed to produce a consistently average performance to a set of internal rules. Its vertical chain of command was never designed nor is it capable of moving fast enough to respond to what is known as VUCA Markets. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous marketplace also referred to as ‘Agile.’

 

The agile movement began decades ago in the manufacturing arena but gained traction recently in an unexpected place; software development. It was published in Agile Manifesto in 2001. The unusual part is that no one would associate the Information Technology department with such a robust management system. The author affirms that organizations that operate as agile are capable of being highly innovative and pragmatic. Take, for instance, an organization like Morningstar. The world’s largest tomato processor has no manager and all the key decisions are made by the “Blue Collar” employees. The company has move competence down to the individuals who have information and the context to make the best decision instead of moving it upward.

The Age of Agile offers insight on how to get individuals to think and behave like owners and reap the financial benefits that flow from this. One of which is the organization must be transformed into small localized units, each with its profit and loss responsibility. Most importantly, traditional management practices such as manipulating staff and trying to manipulate the customer must be dumped and replaced with treating people like an adult. The Agile paradigms are neither easy to understand nor easy to implement for traditional managers. Agile has become widespread and popular over the past decades with tens of thousands of organizations around the world. The author explains that the new paradigm is a journey, not an event. It involves unending innovations regarding specific innovation generated by the organization for the customers and steady improvement to the practice of management itself. He further explains that Agile Management is based on three laws; the law of the small team, the law of customer and the law of network. The law of small team requires that work is done in small, autonomous, cross-functional teams, working in short cycles on relatively small tasks and getting continuous feedback from the ultimate customer or end user. When you work in such teams, situations can be analyzed, decisions can be made and action taken as a single uninterrupted motion. Work can be fun and everyone will flow with it.

 

The law of customer is that the highest priority is to satisfy the customer.  Many managers are aware of the common phrase “The customer is number one”! While continuing to be internally focused, bureaucratic and fixated on delivering shareholder value. In an Agile organization, everyone is passionately obsessed with delivering more value to customers.

The third law according to Stephen Denning is the Law of the Network where leaders are not fierce conquering warriors but rather like curators of gardens.  When an organization truly embraces Agile it is less like a giant warship and more like a flotilla of tiny speedboats. This law is the recognition that competence resides throughout the organization and outside the organization. A problem can be solved and innovation can emerge through networking inside and outside.

Age of Agile furthermore cites common mistakes leaders make when planning to implement and derive the benefits of Agile. These include introducing agile as just another business process with top management hedging their bets on its success by a less than fulsome commitment.

The author affirms that agile can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and will result in terrific returns to the organization.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Agile helps organizations to be highly innovative and efficient as well as passion filled and pragmatic.

Key point #2: Agile management, when done right, can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work and yield a substantial result.

Key point #3: Agile organizations also have a hierarchy, but one of competence and not authority.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Peter Drucker is known to be the most famous management author of the century. This book does not treat innovation as an academic subject but outstandingly written with rich organizational life examples using management view. The author focuses on how innovation and entrepreneurship can be learned and applied by anyone. He wants everyone to have the mindset of changing how they do things to make a massive difference. ​

This book gave a meaningful and provocative definition of innovation. Peter Drucker began by teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in the mid-1950’s putting into writing his experience from the past three decades of testing his ideas. He derived his examples from the experiences he had as a consultant and the experience of people he mentored and taught. ​

He started by drawing his readers attention to a mystery: why in the American economy between 1965-1988, despite the recession, oil shock, inflation in some government and industry, there was still a massive job growth. Most people describe the growth as “hi-tech”. The key technology driving job growth is not widget or gadget but entrepreneurship management. The force of entrepreneur is always more significant than the current state of the economy suggest Drucker. Huge successes recorded by great influencers such as McDonald were majorly due to better management of a service previously run by mom and pops owners.  Everything, from the production of the product, selling technique, the way it was served and the package was refined beyond belief. It was not the ‘hi-tech’ thing but doing things in a different, better and meaningful way and in the process creating new value. 

In this book, Drucker sees entrepreneurship has a way of doing things differently. It is not a personality trait but a feature to be observed in people’s actions and functionality. Entrepreneurs are made to upset and disorganized. He/she is a wild card that generates wealth through creative destruction. They deal with uncertainty but still have the ability to explore change and respond positively and intelligently to change.  Embracing changes and trying out different things is the best way to invest resources. Entrepreneurship becomes risky when simple and well-known rules are violated. They become less risky when it is systematically managed and purposeful.

​Innovation, on the other hand, is simple and often has nothing to do with technology or inventions. Science and technology are the least promising of all sources of innovation, Drucker suggests. He says in reality, innovation result to success when you take advantage of an unexpected change in the society. Innovation becomes a great deal when it meets the market through the catalyst of entrepreneurial management then your start creating things of great value.  Good innovation is always much focused. It is not about trying to do many things but just one thing excellently well. The most successful products are those that save effort, time, money and save their users from thinking. People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before. The book concludes with Drucker giving a clearer picture of what the future holds.

The Big Three - Key Points ​

Key Point #1: Entrepreneurship and it advises to invest in resources, explore change and respond positively to it. ​

Key Point #2: Innovation and it advises to innovation should save time, energy and provide satisfaction where there is none. ​

Key Point #3: People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before.

One Last Thing

“Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of course, there is a risk they may not succeed. But if they are even moderately successful, the returns should be more than adequate to offset whatever risk there might be.”

― Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

SPRINT Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

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Jake Knapp a Google venture partner, alongside John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz birth the idea of Sprint which majors on how to solve problems and test new ideas in just five days. This book is a practical guide to choose among many best ideas and make most out of the experience.  The concept of sprint came up when Jack had to come up with an essential feature for Gmail which would automatically sort messages. He had to innovate fast. To do that, he came up with three key aspects to manage the project process:

DEADLINES: Tight deadlines eliminate procrastination. The shorter the time, the faster the result because every allotted time is filled with an activity

GET PEOPLE WITH DIFFERENT SKILL SETS: Get people with a different skill set into one room. The more diverse a team is, the better.  A better sprint team usually consists of seven categories of people and less irrespective of their hierarchy level.

THE RESULT: The result must be a concrete prototype. What gets you real feedback is when you present a functional idea. Brainstorming vague ideas is easy but not worth it.

These three-fundamental concepts work well when each sprint get together one on one and work together to produce something of actual value.

Jack furthermore explains sprint as a method that helps define a problem, compare ideas, prototype one of them and get feedback from customers all in five days. Though it might seem like an intensive process, it has a great potential for a big payout.

Before the sprint process, a recommended number of seven people with a different skill sets must be included:

 

  • The Decider (someone who have enough information on the problem or the leader of the company

 

  • The Marketing Expert
  • The Finance Expert
  • The Customer Expert (someone who has a unique customer view preferably from the customer care unit)
  • An Engineer or Logic Expert
  • The Troublemaker (Someone who always have contrary opinion)
  • The Facilitator (someone who is unbiased about a decision and keeps things on time). Usually a project manager).

 

 

 

The idea is to make sure everyone on the team understands the problem that needs to be solved and create a purposeful start on Monday.

Jack did a great job by defining the purpose of each day and what needs to be accomplished.

Monday’s goal is to create a discussion around the set goal, map out the challenge and define the problem that will be tackled on the sprint

Tuesday’s goal is to find a solution to the problem identified on Monday. Each person on the team writes down their proposed solution on a piece of paper and is given at least three minutes to present the solution to the whole team out of which the best there will be selected.

Wednesday’s goal is to make a decision. The best way is to critique all ideas and choose the one that will be explored in the sprint. This can be done by discussing sketches and then participants can get to vote via color stickers for their favorite idea. It is advisable to keep all ideas anonymous to avoid skewing of people’s opinion. Once the idea is picked, the team can then storyboard the prototype

Thursday’s goal is to make a prototype of the concept selected on Wednesday. Not a perfect prototype but a reality. The team can make use of keynotes or interactive prototypes other than professional tools. Professional tools take longer time and make you focus on too many details.

Friday’s goal is to see the customer’s reactions by interviewing them. You do not need thousands of customers to carry out the interview; five to six people is enough to expose 85% of the problem and get qualitative feedback. Record your conversations so the team can see the result. Jack gave some hints on how the interview process should go like interacting with the customer, putting the customer at ease, etc.

Once the interview is concluded, the team should go ahead and analyze the result to know if the prototype us promising and deserves further development or if the prototype fails.

Either way, design sprint is a way of finding answers to big questions, bring attention to work that matter, reduce risk and get better solutions.

THE BIG THREE - KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  Design Sprint reduces risk, proffers the answer to significant problems and brings about a better solution.

Key point #2: Sprint is not a one-man business; it can best be carried out by a team made up of different skill sets.

Key point #3: The core concept of Sprint is to decrease the waste of resources (time, energy and money) on the wrong ideas.

One Last Thing

“By asking people for their input early in the process, you help them feel invested in the outcome.”

― Jake Knapp, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Elon Musk Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

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Ashley Vance, a prominent writer on technology ranging from cyber espionage to DNA Sequence and Space exploration, describes an informative and easy-to-flow biography of one of today’s top innovators. While maintaining a lively pace, he delves into Elon Musk’s works with particular passion in a way that is more accessible and exciting.

Elon Musk, one of the most impressive contemporary American “Engineering Entrepreneurs,” has developed a reputation for boldness, brashness and vision in many ways and competence. He is passionate about not just landing people on Mars but creating a new human society there.

Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971 to a Canadian mother and Afrikaner father. Musk’s father was a rare researcher, neither Elon nor anyone else in the family will talk about the ways he was a scarring influence. Musk suffered enough violence as a child both at home and school. The author gave an instance of back when Musk was in eighth or ninth grade, he was kicked in the head, thrown down a flight of concrete stairs then set upon the landing. He was kicked and beaten till he blacked out. He required hospital care and a week at home to recover. Irrespective of that, Elon Musk was a die-hard reader. He exhausted the school library and literally read the encyclopedia. He was good at spotting facts statistics, explanations and most importantly remembering what he read. As an undergraduate, he was an exceptional kid who was versed in space-based solar power plants and its use of ultracapacitors for energy storage with a consistent interest and a goal to make a difference.

Vance underlines the degree to which Musk’s dual-track undergraduate years were obviously reflected in his thinking even in his early 20s. He presented that those Silicon Valley experiences gave Musk both the capital and contacts that he was able to use as a springboard for his more ambitious projects. They gave him an early introduction to corporate infighting which bred a strong impulse going forward to make sure that he kept control of his companies and they taught him at least limited lessons in how to be an effective and hard-driving manager. “I could code way better,” Musk says to the software engineers at Zip2 “And I would just go in and fix their code. I would be frustrated waiting for their stuff, so I’m going to go fix your code, and now it runs five times faster, you idiot”. The author cites another example in which Musk publicly chastised and then corrected an engineer who had miswritten a quantum mechanics equation, “I’m like, ‘how can you write that?’ Then I corrected it for him. He hated me after that. Eventually, I realized though I might have fixed that thing now I’ve made the person unproductive. It just wasn’t a right way to go about things. He learned a profound lesson not to completely ignore how other people feel.

Musk has consistently brought clarity on both the engineering problems and the financial hurdles that have heretofore kept humankind earthbound. The triumvirate of companies most dear to Musk, and with which he is most closely associated is made up of Tesla Motors, which produces electric cars, SolarCity, which produces electricity; some feeds free fueling stations for Tesla owners and SpaceX, a private company which is not entirely low key but aims at making humanity a multi-planetary species.

Vance quotes Antonio Gracias, a friend of Musk, also an investor in both Tesla and SpaceX, founder and CEO of Valor (Equity Partner). He said “I’ve never seen anything like Musk’s ability to take the pain. The year 2008 was a big year for Musk both personally and financially. His first marriage ended; he became perilously close to losing just about every penny he had earned; both Tesla and SpaceX were on the brink of bankruptcy. There are few important bright spots as well. In July, Musk met Tallulah Riley, a British actress 14 years his junior who would end up being his second wife. September, he finally launched Falcon I and most importantly his business was financially reprieved.” Vance wrote, “the deal ended up closing on Christmas Eve, hours before Tesla would have gone bankrupt. Musk had just a few hundred thousand dollars left and could not have made payroll the next day. Musk eventually put $12 million, and the investment firm puts the rest.”

One of the strengths of Vance’s book is healthy skepticism. Within Silicon Valley, he writes in his first few pages, Musk was a “deity.” Wrapping it all up at the end provides a good overview and synthesis. The author concluded with a sentence that was drawn from Vance’s last supper with Musk which includes the following quoted line:

“ I will like to die on Mars, Just not on impact.”

THE BIG THREE - KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Musk invested enough time studying as a child. He believes in effective time management.

Key point #2: He worked with the right people ranging from company employees to the investors

Key point #3: Musk survived through the brink of bankruptcy, divorce, even near-death diseases because of his unwavering drive and passion for his dreams.

One Last Thing

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
― Ashlee Vance

Steve Jobs

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The author, Walter Isaacson was the former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Times Magazine. He wrote this book with Steve Jobs consent which makes it the only authorized biography about Steve Jobs. Isaacson conducted over forty interviews with Steve Jobs over the last two years before his death.

Steve Jobs grew up in a middle-class neighborhood; Job recalls that his father had a good sense of design. As Jobs was showing Isaacson around his childhood home, he couldn’t help but stop to tell a story about the fence his father built 50 years before and is still standing. He said his father had told him that it was important to craft the backs of the things he would build- like cabinets and fences even though they are hidden from view. Jobs carried this passion of creating great products with him throughout his life and career.

Steve Jobs was as fascinating as he was successful. His vision and ability to innovate left a landmark in the universe. His dream started taking form when he set out with Steve Wozniak as they launched Apple computers from their garage in Palo Alto. He was a man who created this massive vision for Apple out of his reality distortion field (RDF). What RDF means was once Steve decided that something should happen, he would bend reality to his will until it came true. This attitude extended to everyone around him. With this, he could convince a sleepless team of engineers to work another 10 hours on Macintosh font because it would become the most celebrated computer in the world.

To Jobs, the product was so important that when he came back to Apple, he decided that Jonathan Ives, the lead designer should report directly to him. In most companies, the design team does not have a seat in the boardroom. The engineering team tells the design team the specs they want, and they build a nice case around it. But at Apple, the reverse is the case; the design team tells the engineering team how they need to configure their contribution to the end product. The dominating theme of any Apple product from the beginning of the company is Simplicity. Job continually forced Apple to search for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.  Jobs believed ignoring reality is fine when you are attempting to get people to see beyond their limit. This ability does not always manifest itself in positive ways. He would demand more from his reams than anybody else could expect, often pushing people over the edge. As people who have worked with him would tell, it often worked. Jobs tells about one of his outsourced jobs which he was supposed to be working on at Atari. It was outsourced to Wozniak telling him that he needed it to be done in few days even though most engineers would take at least a few months. Wozniak finished it in four days and turned in a design that was efficient and elegant beyond belief. Jobs has used this skill multiple times in his career pushing people beyond their limit and producing remarkable results. However, the dark side surfaced when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Steve Jobs, one of the most remarkable visionary product designer and the best CEO’s of all times was a great example worth emulating when it comes to his ability to give attention to details and curiosity about how the world works.

THE BIG THREE - KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Steve Jobs would pull impossible feats into the realm of possible through charisma, persistence, and marketing. He operates in his reality distortion field

Key point #2: Jobs constantly force Apple to search for the simplicity on the far side of complexity

Key point #3: He chose to say no to hundred other ideas that exist by focusing on the most important things and eliminating everything else.

One Last Thing 

“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
― Walter Isaacson

The Lean Startup

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This book conveys the concept of validated learning (trying out new ideas and measuring its effect on potential customers to ascertain its effectiveness) and build-measure-learn feedback loop. It introduces a systematic approach to measure the progress of a project at startup. A start-up has its vision that employs a strategy such as product roadmap, business model, view of partners, competitors and customers. The result of the strategy used is the product. Strategy changes occasionally, product changes continuously while vision rarely changes.

A startup is designed to create a new product under uncertain conditions. Successes from these scenarios come from constant experimentation and learning from experts experience. A lot of learning is involved in the startup process and the most important thing is to figure out validated learning. The goal is to learn and know what the customers want and discard everything else.

As a startup, do not delay charging your customers as many startups do. Eric affirms starting with a low-quality prototype, charging customers from start date and using low volume revenue target for accountability.

One of the cores of Lean Startup model is the Build-Measure-Learn loop. Once an MVP is built, the goal is to make use of user feedback to iterate upon the product. After building an MVP, test the riskiest assumption first and then put it out for early adopters. Then define a baseline metric, a hypothesis to improve the metric and set out experiment targeted towards the same metric. As soon as you get the result, choose whether to persevere or pivot. Wealthfront pivoted from gaming platform/virtual stock trading to E-commerce service that offers money management by money managers.  Most entrepreneurs are afraid of failure thereby delaying the pivot. Also, due to vanity metrics and unclear success hypothesis, most entrepreneurs suffer from unnecessary regret for delaying the pivot. There are various types of pivot, some of which are customer segment Pivot, Zoom in Pivot, Customer need pivot, Business Architecture pivot, Value capture pivot amongst others. It is important to copy the essential features not just the superficial features when pivoting.

As the product grows, customers begin to patronize the product. Customers built overtime inform others about the product or end up purchasing the product again. Consequently, the product grows and achieves a product/market fit. When product/market fit happens, it leaves no room for doubt.

Likewise, as the startup grows, it has to adapt to changing customer base. Every company has to deal with four types of work. These include: launching a new product, scaling it for broad adoption, combating its commoditization by incremental improvement and maintenance of the product in the long run as part of the company’s product line. All steps are essential, but the last step can be a bit difficult for an entrepreneur.

A startup must pass through the learning stage, experiment hypothesis, build MVP, measure MVP, decide if to persevere or pivot, grow to adapt and innovate.  

The Big Three - Key Points

Key Point #1:

Measure the startup progress using the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

Key Point #2:

A startup is designed to create a new product under an uncertain condition, successes from these scenarios come from constant experimentation or learning from experts experience.

Key Point #3:

Every company has to deal with four types of work: Launching a new product, scaling it for broad adoption, combating its commoditization by incremental improvement and maintenance of the product in the long run as part of the company’s product line.

One Last Thing

“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”

― Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses