“What we want is not necessarily the lowest possible cost level,” he says. “What we want is the optimal cost level, the

If you can set up the rules and bureaucracy such that they allow good innovative ideas to have a path to execution, then you don’t need to distinguish between good ideas that come from a special innovation team from those that come from everyone else.

The humble leader recognizes that he or she has a fiduciary responsibility to deliver outcomes, yet cannot just order the world to be as he or she likes. He or she works for the complex system, rather than the other way around.

Let’s define agility as an organization’s ability to respond quickly—and at low cost—to new circumstances.

Do less: cut out or cut down projects, cut out overhead that doesn’t deliver customer value, cut out or cut down features during release planning, cut out or cut down stories [requirements] during iteration planning, cut down work-in-process to improve throughput. At the same time, focus on delighting the customer by frequent delivery of value.1

Companies whose investment processes demand quantification of market sizes and financial returns before they can enter a market get paralyzed or make serious mistakes when faced with disruptive technologies. They demand market data when none exists and make judgments based upon financial projections when neither revenues or costs can, in fact, be

Do less: cut out or cut down projects, cut out overhead that doesn’t deliver customer value, cut out or cut down features during release planning, cut out or cut down stories [requirements] during iteration planning, cut down work-in-process to improve throughput. At the same time, focus on delighting the customer by frequent delivery of value.1

Some takeaways: Work in small teams, create fast feedback cycles, reduce requirements-in-process, improve security hygiene, deliver small pieces of work frequently.

Instead, digital transformation requires you to take a holistic view of your enterprise’s IT and organizational states. When you do, your transformational process becomes low risk: it’s incremental and consists only of improvements to assets you already own.