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Index
The Connected Company
Dedication
Introduction
Safari® Books Online
We’d Like to Hear from You
Acknowledgments
Foreword
One. Why change?
1. The connected customer
The Balance of Power is Shifting
A Wake-up Call at Starbucks
Something’s Happening Here
Cascading Effects Can be Initiated by Customers
Cascading Effects Can be Initiated by Employees
Cascading Effects Can be Initiated by Enemies or Competitors
Cascading Effects Can be Initiated by Senior Executives
The ATM Revolt
Power in the Network
2. The service economy
The Great Reset
An Age of Abundance
An Emerging Service Economy
Product Saturation
Information Technology
Urbanization
3. Everything is a service
The Industrial Model
Service-Dominant Logic
A Product is a Service Avatar
Products as Verbs
Products as Job Descriptions
Services are Co-created
A Process is Not a Service
Service Networks
4. Services are complex
Demands on Companies are Increasing in Volume, Velocity, Variety
Customers Introduce Complexity and Variability into Operations
Why is it So Hard to Keep Your Service Promises?
Customers Resist Standardization
Customer Support: Efficient for You, Painful for Them
Cost and Quality are Not Mutually Exclusive
Customer Service Doesn’t Have to be Painful
Control at the Edge
5. How companies lose touch
Why Do Companies Lose Touch?
Over-Expansion
How Starbucks Lost Touch
How Krispy Kreme Flamed Out
Blind Spots
How Xerox Missed the PC Revolution
How Kodak Faded Away
Risk-Avoidant Cultures
How GE Revitalized its Business
How IBM Rediscovered Customers
When in Doubt, Get in Touch with Your Customers
6. Structural change is necessary
How Did We Get Here?
Dividing Work
Interchangeable Parts
Conflicting Constraints Lead to Rigidity
7. Complexity changes the game
Return on Assets is Dwindling
Fewer and Fewer Companies are Surviving in the Long Term
What is Causing this Increase in Death Rates?
Faster Change
Competition
Increasing Complexity
The Red Queen Race: If You’re Not Running, You’re Falling Behind
The Red Queen Race
What is a Coevolutionary Process?
Every Adaptive Move by One Organization Affects Others
Adaptive Moves Can be Competitive—and Cooperative
Adaptive Moves Can Create Opportunities for Others
Coevolutionary Relationships Can be Very Complex
Optimization is a Journey that Leads to a Few Fitness Peaks
We are Reaching a Complexity Tipping Point
The Future is Connectedness
Two. What is a connected company?
8. Connected companies learn
The Company as a Machine
Intrinsic Rewards Drive Productivity
People Resist Being Controlled
What Drives Growth?
Closed and Open Systems
Complex Adaptive Systems
The Long-lived Company
Design by Division
Design for Connection
9. Connected companies have a purpose
Purpose Accelerates and Focuses Learning
What is the Purpose of a Company?
How Profits Can Destroy Your Company
Purpose Sets the Context for Organizations to Learn
Purpose is a Moving Target
10. Connected companies get customer feedback
Performance is How Well You are Doing
The One Judge of Service Quality
Balancing Promise, Purpose, and Performance
Service Quality is a Moving Target
Promoters and Detractors
Building Long-Term Relationships with Customers
The Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter at Enterprise
Consistent
Granular and Timely
Serious
Net Promoter at Apple
Net Promoter at Logitech
11. Connected companies experiment
Moments of Truth
The Problem with Procedures
The Front Line is not a Production Line
The Law of Requisite Variety
Reducing Variety
Absorbing Variety
Freedom to Experiment
Three. How does a connected company work?
12. Wrangling complexity
The Complexity Issue
Agile Development
Service Orientation
Service Contracts
Composability
Loose Coupling
Organizing for Agility
Netflix, a City of Services
Whole Foods, an Agile Team of Agile Teams
Most Companies are Not Built for Agility
13. The future is podular
The Parable of the Watchmakers
The Podular Organization
Morning Star’s Self-Organizing Marketplace
The Nordstrom Way
Self-Organizing Teams at Rational Software
Democratic Management at Semco
Can Your Company Go Podular?
14. Pods have control of their own fate
What is a Pod?
Process to Pod
Chains Versus Nets
Pods are Flexible, Pods are Fast
Pods Can Fail
Pods Can Scale Up Fast
What Kinds of Companies have been Successful with a Podular Approach?
3M is Podular
Amazon is Podular
A Podular System Trades Flexibility for Consistency
Why aren’t more Companies Going Podular?
15. Pods need platforms
What is a Platform?
What is the Value of a Platform?
A Platform is a Government
Standards
Attractors
Support
Governance
Balancing the Needs of Constituents
You don’t have to be Big
Well-Designed Platforms Absorb Variety
16. How connected companies learn
The Growth Spiral
Level One: How Entrepreneurs Learn
Level Two: How Organizations Learn
Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
Learning Fields
Level Three: How Platforms Learn
Pace Layers
Front Stage and Back Stage
Balancing the Front Stage and the Back Stage
Making Platform Decisions
Growth Spirals in the Connected Company
17. Power and control in networks
Linking Things Changes Them
What is a Social Network?
Small Worlds
Scale-free Networks
Power and Control in Networks
Power in Networks
Control
Exercising Power in Networks
Situation Awareness
Influence
Compatibility
The Platform
Three Principles of Network Power
Four. How do you lead a connected company?
18. Strategy as a Pool of Experiments
Strategies Don’t Last Forever
Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom
A Portfolio of Experiments
Small Bets: Set a Low Bar for Initial Experimentation
Medium Bets: Many Sources of Funding
Big Bets: The Responsibility of Senior Leaders
More Experiments Means More At-Bats
Be Connectable to Everything
Strategy by Discovery
19. Leading the connected company
Leading from the Edge
Three Types of Strategy
Edge Leadership
People First
Awareness
Adaptive Tensions
Diversity Matters
You are a Learning Field
Influence—Give Meaning and Moral Authority to the Purpose
Purpose
What You Stand For
Moral Authority
Principles Trump Processes
It Takes Trust to Build Relationships
20. Managing the connected company
Management is a Support System
Designing the System
Balance the Individual Freedom with the Common Good
Participation
Build Slack into Central Resources to Ensure Availability
Rely on Peer-to-Peer Reinforcement Whenever Possible
Operating the System
Critical Values in Complex Adaptive Systems
Symptoms
Tuning the System
Adaptive Tensions
Attractors
Information Transparency
Density
Diversity
Permeability
Rate of Flow
Parameters
Structural Change
Emergent Leadership
The Job of Managers
Five. How do you get there from here?
21. The Risks of Connectedness
Networks are Neutral
Pod Failure
Too Much Autonomy
Not Enough Autonomy
Platform Failure
Failure to Invest in the Platform
Over-Controlling the Platform
Failure of Purpose
Customers First
22. Starting the journey
How to Get there from Here
It Won’t be Easy
Do You Work at a Place that Ignites Your Passion?
Design Around Customers
Taking Steps Versus Crossing Chasms
The Organic Path
Top-Down, Leader-Driven Change
Connecting an Internal Group at Marriott
Connecting with Customers at U.S. Cellular
Common Threads
Pilot Pods
Launch a Pilot Pod to Shift to a New Business Model
Launch a Pilot Pod to Serve Unmet Customer Needs
Disrupt Yourself Before Someone Else Does
Disrupting Desktop Software at Autodesk
Disrupting Full-Service Telecom at O2
The Difference Between a Proof-of-Concept and a Pilot
Network Weaving
It’s Time to Change
A. Bibliography
Index
B. Discussion Questions
About the Authors
Copyright
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