The definitive guide to implementing new ways of working. Flow is a striking new philosophy for how to make organisations more adaptive and successful, based on the author's pioneering work in organisations such as Paddy Power, Lastminute.com, Aviva, Fujifilm and many more. It introduces you to new tools and techniques for bringing customers closer, outlines new ways to innovate for the hyper competitive economy, and shows you novel value management tools. Goulding and Shaughnessy are practical and yet empathetic guides to the new personal and social characteristics of the post-agile workplace. They explain why we need more innovation, how our learning needs are changing, and then how to manage the process of value creation from inception (the idea) to delivery. At all times, they emphasise the value of good social interaction and the unparalleled power of harnessing the collective intelligence of the workforce. Every organisation needs to be more agile, but few know how to make culture change an enjoyable and rewarding journey. The authors, both experienced practitioners in new ways to work, introduce novel, visual techniques that take the friction out of change programs and instead draw the very best out of people on the way to a new and productive agile work environment. Buy this book if you are in any way involved in a digital transformation or agile transformation program. It contains all the information you need in order to rise to the challenge of change. Flow should be read in conjunction with 12 Steps to Flow, a primer on each of the steps necessary to create a digital and agile culture. It helps large enterprises prepare for this essential change. But uniquely for a business book it does so through highly graphical illustrations that reflect a core message of the visualise everything.
Inspiring reading. The book describes FLOW as a number of things. From what I gathered it’s a process, or a set of guidelines for innovation, and workplace and business transformation.
Fin and Haydn didn’t invent FLOW, but they did a good work with the book, which seems to be a collection of steps, advises, and study-cases that they learned from their own experience.
They say that FLOW is a new WoW. I think that very few things are actually new these days, I agree more with Lavoisier -
Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme.
Philosophy set aside, although I didn’t see anything actually new under the sun, it’s inspiring to see how they’ve been transforming, adapting, and adopting to enhance people's capacity to create value for customers, make work better for employees, and more productive for the company.
The heart of FLOW, it seems, is the idea of using walls for all kinds of visualisations, for ex.: a Customer Wall, a Risk and Issues Wall, a Cool Walls, etc)
They discuss culture change, leadership, the need for social gathering and interaction (in front of the walls) in order to bring about collective intelligence, the need for a transformation in traditional HR departments processes/workflows (HR traditional processes can be a barrier for creativity and development) in an era where “the pace of change is reaching light-speed”.
I liked very much the design of the book: it’s colored, good font-size, makes use of elements such as list, tables, images, and so on, to make the reading less boring and more engaging.
This is an era of decentralized information. This is an era of decentralized leadership.
The pace of business requires synchronous response to changes within the business ecosystem. Being responsive and being a conduit both inside and outside the organization are required.
To respond to this level of responsiveness organizations need to build trust and robust feedback loops.
FLOW is an excellent resource to help organizations design for this level of adaptability.
A great deal of design intention went into the architecture of FLOW as the examples are grounded in real situations so you get a sense the authors are walking with you in your own work. Nothing better than having Cyrano de Bergerac in your ear as you navigate change in your teams, with your customers, with the market.
Finally, the book is beautiful. It is so nice when authors model the way and are working examples of what they are teaching.
Business is fluid, Jennifer Sertl @jennifersertl #a3r
PS: To keep pace with #platformeconomy follow Fin Goulding @fgoulding & Haydn Shaughnessy @haydn1701
It is a great book, easy to read, with loads of useful information for every person no matter what level you are in the company. Loads of good and easy ideas to implement!
I really struggled to read and finish that book (6 months for 200 pages!). The topic is appealing, the premises also but the structure of the book is incredibly confusing. Everything seems logic and I agree with the analysis of the current state of the business world, but the authors make it very difficult to really understand what the Flow techniques are. Is it still a work in progress, missing the confrontation with real corporate life?
Interesting read - I like the ‘working out loud’ approach
From an end to end perspective in a companies knowledge discovery process, this book makes some great suggestions on how to visualise the journey and bring co-creation into the thorny process of transformation. I liked it even though in places it was verbose and loaded with opinion
Didn't think that such a solution can exist. Thought that lean is the ultimate value creation process. This book opened my eyes to beyond lean and agile. Definitely worth a try, esp the customer wall and the academy wall. Convincing CEO for executive wall is going to be tough! 😁
Great breakdown of the essentials of communication, creativity, and interaction in innovation - things we shy away from to stay in comfort zones, but MUST embrace for real change and project. This book helps guide through the messiness of it all, providing principles and tools to empower.