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Last week, I was privileged to be given an early copy of the latest book by Gene Kim, Wiring the Winning Organization. This happily coincided with a solo weekend trip to the Washington coast I had already planned–what I would soon learn was my version of personal slowification, simplification, and amplification.

This latest book is aimed at the most senior leaders of an organization, those responsible for the wiring of its sociotechnical system, and I can’t recommend it to them enough.

Miswire your organization by failing to complete social circuits, introducing latency and errors through complexity, or ignoring essential sensors, and the people you are accountable for will feel the futility of working in a broken system…with results to match. Get it right, and your people will experience a, perhaps, once-in-a-lifetime experience of working in a well-functioning, self-stabilizing system and achieving exceptional outcomes.

This book dives into these sociotechnical systems and wiring them for success through the lens of slowification, simplification, and amplification:

  • Slowification: Pausing your operational tempo to reflect and learn.
  • Simplification: Break problems into smaller pieces to solve them more straightforwardly.
  • Amplification: Make it impossible to miss that a problem needs attention, and make it clear that the problem has been seen and solved.

Throughout the book, you’ll notice familiar practices in the many case studies illustrating these three mechanisms. However, this is the first time I’ve seen the dials needed for successfully modifying a sociotechnical system presented holistically in such an easy-to-consume way. And, for those like me who love to geek out on the underlying fundamentals, the appendix offers a deeply researched list of source materials that will keep my “To Read” queue well populated.

But, back to my trip to the coast to disconnect. In the past, I always thought taking a break to be with my thoughts was simply an opportunity to recharge with some intentionality. What I found fascinating was that I could apply the mechanisms of slowification, simplification, and amplification to this time.

By slowing down and pausing my operational tempo- disconnecting from work and home- I made space to reflect on the last several months and focus on what I could learn from my recent experiences. It became possible to simplify what had previously seemed like intractable problems, and I could ensure I was amplifying the most critical signals and coming up with a response to them.

Overall, it was a successful weekend, and I promised myself to stay clear of the tyranny of maintaining operational tempo and instead pausing to reflect.

Wiring the Winning Organization by Gene Kim and published by IT Revolution will be released on November 21st. You can preorder it from Amazon.