It's a brave book which takes part of its inspiration from Barack Obama's current use of drones and apply it to business strategy.
The speed of change in the current business environment is widely recognised both by those in business and by those who advise and write on business. In fact, it's been the theme of the last couple of books we've reviewed here – Peter Lawrence's Enterprise In Action and in Rita Gunther McGrath's The End Of Competitive Advantage.
The current era of hyper competition means that by the time you've analysed the external environment, had a look at your current resources, worked out what your core competencies are and then devised a five-year strategy, everything has changed and you're back at square one or, perhaps even worse, been rendered completely irrelevant.
But you can't throw away the idea of strategy – after all, it's a plan, and without a plan, you're just reacting to what's happening out there without a long-term aim. So what's the solution?
To Bouee, it's the same problem that military planners have recognised and found an acronym for. The US army believes that the external environment is VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Looking at the current situation in the Middle East, it's hard to disagree.
So how to react? Well the Bush doctrine was overwhelming force. Whether that worked or not is debatebale, but what's certain is that Barack Obama's strategy is very different – and Bouee characterises it as the "light footprint" of his title. He sees it (in the military context) as having three components — the use of drones, cyber weapons and special forces.
Again, this isn't the place to argue about whether a) this is a good doctrine or b) you'd think it was "light" if you happened to be the inadvertent target of a drone strike. Instead, let's just focus on whether the doctrine can be applied successfully to business, and in that I think Bouee is on stronger ground – so much so that in a way I wish he didn't keep coming back to military matters.
As he puts it in the introduction: "Being lighter has a number of attractions in a volatile, unpredictable world. It makes an organisation more agile, accurate and precise in its movement; by shedding low-grade work, it increases value-added per employee; it allows the organisation to tread more lightly, and so cause less disruption."
Interestingly, Bouee sees the new management style emerging in China as an example of this light footprint, since China "began its evolutionary journey at the dawn of the VUCA age and therefore should be seen as having been invoked by VUCA to some extent."
The four distinctive characteristics – its structure (both centralised and decentralised); its propensity to collaborate with, rather than hire or acquire others, its associated predisposition to trust; its reliance on surprise as a competitive weapon, it's awareness of all the consequences of its actions.
Chapter one takes us though a brief history of different management theories right up to the present age and identifies some of the challenges they are currently under as a result of the fast-changing environment. There's nothing controversial there, and it's a very good summary. Chapter two brings in the military background, then in chapter three we get to the bit where it applies to business VUCA and business (page 56), which is excellent.
As Bouee says: "Crisis management is mainstream management now. When all managers can be sure of is that unexpected events will occur frequently and will have unpredictable consequences, they need to make their plans provisional and become nimble."
Businesses need to adapt by dispensing with old ideas, such as the assumption that the task of management is to seek adaptation to equilibrium. There is no equilibrium. They must learn to live with what one Canadian CEO calls "unmanageable complexity".
As Bouee says in the following chapter: "The problem with strategies is that they are inflexible plans, for unknowable futures. They are attempts to stabilize organisations (and so make them less agile, flexible, alert and creative) in an increasingly turbulent world."
I've quoted at length from this because it strikes me that this is the real value of the book – the accurate diagnosis. The case studies are well chosen. I particularly liked pages 88-96 on the management philosophy of Steve Jobs: "He was a Daoist, content to 'go with the flow'."
As for the characteristics of the Light Footprint organisation, I think there are some interesting ideas, but it will make many managers shudder to read the following: "If an organisation is to be sufficiently agile to thrive in a VUCA world, it must be close to the edge of uncontrollability." Try that one in the next management meeting.
That said, Bouee recognises that it is necessary to maintain a balance between "hope and fear", the in-depth discussion of zero-based budgeting and accelerated zero-based budgeting. It's a testament to how well Bouee writes, that not only is this a great explanation of both concepts, but he also has a box explaining how LFP-adapted interventions are signified by an addition of a word to their names taking them from three letter to four letter acronyms – "These transformations... are meme analogues of gene mutations: the addition of a single DNA base to the DNA sequence that makes up the meme."
I've never thought of it that way, or as management ideas as memes (he discusses this on pages 13 and 138), but I think he's right.
There's much more here, and much of it is excellent. This is an extremely thought-provoking, even controversial, book in its choice of language and analogies, as well as its argument. It makes you sit up and think, "Do I agree with that?" I'd recommend it for that reason.
Bloomsbury, £24.99
Tom Otley
It's a brave book which takes part of its inspiration from Barack Obama's current use of drones and apply it to business strategy.
The speed of change in the current business environment is widely recognised both by those in business and by those who advise and write on business. In fact, it's been the theme of the last couple of books we've reviewed here – Peter Lawrence's Enterprise In Action and in Rita Gunther McGrath's The End Of Competitive Advantage.
The current era of hyper competition means that by the time you've analysed the external environment, had a look at your current resources, worked out what your core competencies are and then devised a five-year strategy, everything has changed and you're back at square one or, perhaps even worse, been rendered completely irrelevant.
But you can't throw away the idea of strategy – after all, it's a plan, and without a plan, you're just reacting to what's happening out there without a long-term aim. So what's the solution?
To Bouee, it's the same problem that military planners have recognised and found an acronym for. The US army believes that the external environment is VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Looking at the current situation in the Middle East, it's hard to disagree.
So how to react? Well the Bush doctrine was overwhelming force. Whether that worked or not is debatebale, but what's certain is that Barack Obama's strategy is very different – and Bouee characterises it as the "light footprint" of his title. He sees it (in the military context) as having three components — the use of drones, cyber weapons and special forces.
Again, this isn't the place to argue about whether a) this is a good doctrine or b) you'd think it was "light" if you happened to be the inadvertent target of a drone strike. Instead, let's just focus on whether the doctrine can be applied successfully to business, and in that I think Bouee is on stronger ground – so much so that in a way I wish he didn't keep coming back to military matters.
As he puts it in the introduction: "Being lighter has a number of attractions in a volatile, unpredictable world. It makes an organisation more agile, accurate and precise in its movement; by shedding low-grade work, it increases value-added per employee; it allows the organisation to tread more lightly, and so cause less disruption."
Interestingly, Bouee sees the new management style emerging in China as an example of this light footprint, since China "began its evolutionary journey at the dawn of the VUCA age and therefore should be seen as having been invoked by VUCA to some extent."
The four distinctive characteristics – its structure (both centralised and decentralised); its propensity to collaborate with, rather than hire or acquire others, its associated predisposition to trust; its reliance on surprise as a competitive weapon, it's awareness of all the consequences of its actions.
Chapter one takes us though a brief history of different management theories right up to the present age and identifies some of the challenges they are currently under as a result of the fast-changing environment. There's nothing controversial there, and it's a very good summary. Chapter two brings in the military background, then in chapter three we get to the bit where it applies to business VUCA and business (page 56), which is excellent.
As Bouee says: "Crisis management is mainstream management now. When all managers can be sure of is that unexpected events will occur frequently and will have unpredictable consequences, they need to make their plans provisional and become nimble."
Businesses need to adapt by dispensing with old ideas, such as the assumption that the task of management is to seek adaptation to equilibrium. There is no equilibrium. They must learn to live with what one Canadian CEO calls "unmanageable complexity".
As Bouee says in the following chapter: "The problem with strategies is that they are inflexible plans, for unknowable futures. They are attempts to stabilize organisations (and so make them less agile, flexible, alert and creative) in an increasingly turbulent world."
I've quoted at length from this because it strikes me that this is the real value of the book – the accurate diagnosis. The case studies are well chosen. I particularly liked pages 88-96 on the management philosophy of Steve Jobs: "He was a Daoist, content to 'go with the flow'."
As for the characteristics of the Light Footprint organisation, I think there are some interesting ideas, but it will make many managers shudder to read the following: "If an organisation is to be sufficiently agile to thrive in a VUCA world, it must be close to the edge of uncontrollability." Try that one in the next management meeting.
That said, Bouee recognises that it is necessary to maintain a balance between "hope and fear", the in-depth discussion of zero-based budgeting and accelerated zero-based budgeting. It's a testament to how well Bouee writes, that not only is this a great explanation of both concepts, but he also has a box explaining how LFP-adapted interventions are signified by an addition of a word to their names taking them from three letter to four letter acronyms – "These transformations... are meme analogues of gene mutations: the addition of a single DNA base to the DNA sequence that makes up the meme."
I've never thought of it that way, or as management ideas as memes (he discusses this on pages 13 and 138), but I think he's right.
There's much more here, and much of it is excellent. This is an extremely thought-provoking, even controversial, book in its choice of language and analogies, as well as its argument. It makes you sit up and think, "Do I agree with that?" I'd recommend it for that reason.
Bloomsbury, £24.99
Tom Otley
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