Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption

Product Information

To be successful each manager should be given clear KPI from a single zone. If he/she is given KPI from two zones there will be contradiction and the focus will be lost… This is another strong analysis of tech industry dynamics and a framework for segregating work within established companies between their core business and new areas of growth and incubation. This is a fascinating book but kind of hard to read because it seems to depend pretty heavily on Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past. The main reason I bought and read this one is because Gene Kim had discussions with Moore in Kim's recent podcasts, and praised this book quite a bit as an influence on Kim's The Unicorn Project. I can see that.

Any surfer knows that you’ve got to catch a wave at just the right moment. The same holds for companies. To grow, they need to catch the next wave of innovation before a competitor does. Explanation of key kind of work done while making performance improvements in Zone 1 (great mnemonics about HORSE, RIDER, TRAIL): Well structured – You’ll find this to be particularly well organized to support its reception or application. This is not a book for every business. Rather it is specific to businesses whose industry is being, or has a real potential to be, disrupted. Being the big dog in such a business has advantages and disadvantages: the advantages are clear: name recognition, business relationships, and inertia; the disadvantages are also clear: you are a target for the other dogs ... and inertia. Inertia is good because it will carry you for a while while someone else disrupts your industry; it is bad because it makes it hard to do the disrupting, or to respond properly when disruption comes from outside. How do we identify what is a sustaining innovation vs. what requires activation of the transformation zone? My business is currently attempting to bring a new product to scale that creates a new (sub-?)market, but sold to our traditional clients, and the buyers with those clients are sometimes the same, sometimes different. My CEO isn't really leading it (although another powerful person is), and it seems to be succeeding. Does this count as our transformation project for this 2-3 year period? Can we scale other products concurrently?When successful at scale, it should represent a net new line of business for the enterprise, as opposed to an adjacency to an existing line of business. on areas that are significantly behind plan, the key question being do we double down on our current efforts or change course? Course changes can be grouped into three kinds under the mnemonic horse, rider, trail. That is, if our current plan is failing and we want to make a change, should we swap out the horse (the product or service we are offering), the rider (the manager in charge of the function that is underperforming), or the trail (the market segment we are targeting)?…" The real truth is most companies take run after run at this hurdle, but each time, at the critical juncture, that moment when you have to either go big or go home, they shy away. Plan along 3 horizons: H1 (current FY), H2 (2~3 years), H3 (3~5years) ==> most companies do yearly plans based on H3 horizon which is usually too far ahead.

I’ve used this model for company and product planning at several organizations, and it is a popular framework. Alternatively, the Transformation Zone may be occupied. This puts the whole enterprise on Red Alert. The CEO is at the helm, hand directly on the tiller. This is the time for bold leadership, with prudent management just having to hold on for dear life. You have put a single opportunity into the chute. All other potential disruptions have been put on hold. The entire executive team is obsessed with getting this one business past the tipping point of contributing ten percent or more of total enterprise revenue. You will not be denied. Programs" help improve EFFECTIVENESS (doing the right things). They are important during transformation and changes, and ave more agility built in. Notable. A helpful and/or enlightening book that stands out by at least one aspect, e.g. is particularly well structured.

External Summaries

Very good book full of management wisdom. I read this book as per recommendation of my friend from EO (eonetwork.org) and due to business related organisational issue. Before reading this book I was adept of all-rounded CEOs who would do both - achieve great operational results and open new products/markets.

The "incubation zone" is the most interesting zone, to me. It is the development area for new products and services. Significantly, these products and services should not be owned by the performance zone; rather, they should be owned by "independent operating units," each with one initiative, and the goal of each IOU is to prove that its initiative is, first, doable, secondly, potentially profitable, and thirdly, scalable to be a major revenue stream for the larger company. Incubation zone initiatives may be cut off sharp if they fail in any of these things. Author succeeded in shaping my mind… The key idea is about focus and alignment between management to run company effectively in all aspects.

The company I work for is in a state of transition, so this book was helpful in understanding management's recent choices. As for the content of the book, the language is for those who spend their lives writing PowerPoint slides, taking golf lessons, and reading Malcom Gladwell books (the reuse of the phrase "tipping point" killed me). If that doesn't describe you -- and you aren't required to read this book -- you may want to pass. There are better written business books out there. This isn't a fun read for the average layman. But for the ideas that have the ability to scale, a company should focus on bringing one of those at a time into the business as part of a transformation effort led by the executive team and CEO. In the "productivity zone" are the programs and systems which, while they don't directly produce revenue, support the performance zone and make the revenue it produces profitable. Moore suggests that the activities of the productivity zone should be considered largely as _programs_ and _systems_. Systems are continuous and should be funded by corporate; programs should be funded by the entities in the performance zone which expect to use and benefit from them. The productivity zone covers regulatory compliance, efficiency ("doing things right"), and effectiveness ("doing the right things"). Initial seed round: Validate the technology. Series A round: Build a minimum viable product and validate the market. Series B round: Target a beachhead market, build a viable whole-product solution, and win a dominant share of new sales within that segment. Series C round: Scale into adjacent markets in preparation for an exit into the transformation zone…"