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

It was mathematically proven over fifty years ago that it is often impossible to compute a correct and optimal scheduling solution in finite time for schedules of any significant size.§

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

We assert that greatness is created through three mechanisms, which create the difference between success and failure: •slowification, to make solving problems easier to do, •simplification, to make the problems themselves easier to solve, •and amplification, to make it obvious that there are problems that demand attention and whether they’ve been

Our organizational wiring also dictates the type of feedback that is generated. Ideally, everyone gets direct and fast feedback on the work they do, so they can see the effects of their actions, which can be used to stabilize systems and improve. After all, in any complex, adaptive system, there are unexpected events and a general tendency toward e

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

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

It was mathematically proven over fifty years ago that it is often impossible to compute a correct and optimal scheduling solution in finite time for schedules of any significant size.§

the common issue across all situations is creating conditions in which people’s ingenuity can be liberated for its best possible use.

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