Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification

Simplification highlights how leaders can manage the conditions in which people are operating, so solving problems—particularly complex ones—is quicker, easier, and more productive. Simplification moves people in the direction of the winning zone via the following: •Easier experiments: Simplification creates opportunities to solve smaller problems;

Isomorphism is the quality of related items having similar structures. Design requires isomorphism between Layers 1 and 3§ (between the technology and the social circuitry). Production requires isomorphism in all three layers. This is a recurring theme: the social circuitry (Layer 3) must support the technical work (Layers 1 and 2). Throughout the

Dr. Diane Vaughan’s concept of “normalization of deviance” similarly highlights the risks of diminishing signals that something is amiss. In her work, it’s not so much someone with more authority deliberately silencing those with less; it’s more people becoming conditioned to accept as normal what once was not. Nevertheless, the effect is the same:

In effectively run organizations, the functional leader is responsible for “who” and “how”—providing trained people who are competent in their profession to be used in sequentialized flows. The flow owner (e.g., project leader, program leader, value stream leader) is responsible for the “what” and “when” of how those people are deployed to achieve

The research for the State of DevOps Reports from 2013 to 2019 was a cross-population study that spanned over thirty-six thousand respondents over six years. It showed that architecture determined if it was possible for teams to:58 •make large-scale changes to the design of the system without the permission of someone outside the team or depending

Slowification helps us create better approaches to situations instead of repeatedly exercising old habits and routines. A common objection to slowification is that maintaining operational tempo is the highest, even overwhelming, priority. But, as is warned in Ecclesiastes 10:10, “If the ax becomes dull and he has not whetted the edge, he must exert

As a leader, these examples of slowification should make you ask: Are you regularly looking at situations? And before you must begin performing, are you regularly conducting some version of dress rehearsal? If not, you may be missing chances to identify flaws in your thinking and to see gaps in what you can do. If you miss those chances, they will

As a leader, this should leave you with the following questions about your own organization and social circuitry: In performance, are difficulties, glitches, deviations, and departures called out once seen, swarmed to be contained (stabilized), and solved? And are the lessons learned shared and otherwise systematized for future use?

The best organizations generate more value in less time, at lower cost, and seemingly with less effort. They are simply “wired to win.”

In effect, Gene and Steve started by thinking that their job was to get the movers and painters to fit into and support the system. By the end, they were trying to figure out, with the help of the movers and painters, how to get the system to be as centered around the movers and painters as possible as well as be supportive of their efforts. Such a