Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale

Questions for readers: What framework does your organization use to balance your portfolio of exploring new business models, exploiting validated ones, and developing core businesses? Is there a place where you can see this portfolio at a glance? What performance metrics are used to measure the health of activities in each of these domains? What is

Use the following principles for getting started:14 Ensure you have a clearly defined direction The direction should succinctly express the business or describe organizational outcomes you wish to achieve in measurable terms, even if they look like an unachievable ideal. Most importantly, it should inspire everyone in the organization. Think of HP

We should stop using the word “requirements” in product development, at least in the context of nontrivial features. What we have, rather, are hypotheses. We believe that a particular business model, or product, or feature, will prove valuable to customers. But we must test our assumptions. We can take a scientific approach to testing these assumpt

Governance is about keeping our organization on course. It is the primary responsibility of the board of directors, but it applies to all people and other entities working for the organization. It requires the following concepts and principles to be applied at all levels: Responsibility Each individual is responsible for the activities, tasks, and

In truly decentralized organizations, we follow the principle of subsidiarity: by default, decisions should be made by the people who are directly affected by those decisions. Higher levels of bureaucracy should only perform tasks that cannot be performed effectively at the local level — that is, the authority of higher levels of bureaucracy should

In enterprises, one indicator of too much WIP is the number of people assigned to more than one project. This pernicious practice inevitably leads to longer lead times and lower quality due to constant context switching. Instead of assigning people to multiple projects, have a centralized team that can provide extra specialist support to teams on d

Once we have a prioritized list of target conditions and impact maps created collaboratively by technical and business people, it is up to the teams to determine the shortest possible path to the target condition.

Monetization model

Our mindset is particularly important in terms of our attitude to failure. People with a fixed mindset fear failure as they believe it makes their innate limitations visible to others, whereas those with a growth mindset are less risk averse by seeing failure as an opportunity to learn and develop new skills.