Neil Perkin - Agile Transformation: Structures, Processes and Mindsets for the Digital Age

Neil Perkins book addresses a fundamental leadership challenge how to go from being compelled by the need to reinvent to knowing what the steps in your change plan need to look like. Essential reading.

Bruce Daisley, VP EMEA, Twitter

Neil Perkin has written a masterful book on digital transformation, with many practical wisdoms and nuggets waiting to be found. For any organization trying to create their preferred future, this is a must-read!

Gerd Leonhard, CEO, The Futures Agency and author of Technology vs. Humanity

These days every company wants and needs to change but the answers seem crypic, vague and often biased. As always, Neil Perkin writes brilliantly and clearly in what is an actionable yet inspiring, interesting yet practical, tour de force on how people in all kinds of business can adapt to the modern world.

Tom Goodwin, EVP of Innovation, Zenith, Keynote Speaker and author of Digital Darwinsim

Leading a transformation can be a daunting challenge. With external change happening at such pace and internal change being so complex, it can be hard to cut through the noise. Luckily, Neil Perkin has done that brilliantly with this book, offering plenty of actionable insights that any leader can put to immediate use.

James Haycock, General Manager, Idean UK and author of Bye Bye Banks?

Packed full of amazing insights, case studies and practical examples for implementing agile transformation across any organization.

Duncan Hammond, VP of Transformation, Warner Music Group

Agile and transformation arent just pretty words to say. Its the new way of operating business, and you cant afford to be left behind. You couldnt ask for a better expert guide on the journey than Neil Perkin.

Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem, Hubspot and author of Hacking Marketing

An inspiring and practical guide to the why, what and how of transforming businesses to meet the challenges and opportunities of digital disruption. Neil Perkins clear and succinct writing provides an accessible and comprehensive roadmap for leaders to drive customer focused digital innovation.

Judy Gibbons, Chairman at Which?

Writing my first book on digital transformation was something of a cathartic exercise for me, having worked for many years to help corporates of all types become more native to the digital empowered world in the way that they think and operate. At the time there was plenty of material that talked about the why of transformation, but precious little that talked about the how. The book was designed to fill this gap. And thankfully it seems to have struck a chord.

The work that Ive undertaken since that first book came about, working with a broad range of large global businesses, has served to validate a lot of the approaches that I set out in that book but it has also opened the opportunity to go deeper into some of the fundamental areas of change and opportunity. I fully expect this book to also be a means to catharsis as, whilst the business environment has fundamentally changed forever, many companies still havent truly adapted to face this challenge.

Digital technologies have impacted in countless ways to create a climate of rapidly changing competitive and consumer dynamics, heightened unpredictability and disruptive new market entrants, and yet many businesses remain stuck. Stuck in outdated modes of working that keep them from moving fast. Stuck with structures that originated in a different era and that actively hinder agility and horizontal collaboration. Stuck with processes that make bold innovation difficult if not impossible. Stuck with cultures that reward conformity and status rather than entrepreneurialism and originality. Stuck with approaches that celebrate efficiency over learning.

After several years of corporate focus on digital transformation many organizations still pursue rigid, linear change management programmes that are doomed to fail. Many still prioritize chasing shiny technology over empowering their people to drive lasting change. Many pay lip service to new ways of operating without ever really changing the fabric of how the organization works or building the culture that can genuinely support change.

More recently the potential of agile working and principles to generate business value far beyond technology teams has been recognized by some enlightened companies as a route to greater organizational agility. And yet in so many cases these principles remain poorly understood, undervalued, or badly applied. In some organizations the word agile has become overused and abused to the point where it is no longer helpful, and where it fails to represent the true potential of what is possible. Many businesses are playing at the edges, or scratching the surface, or still failing to grasp the scale of change that is really needed.

If we are to truly reshape organizations for the new world we need to take a more sophisticated, adaptive approach to transformation. We need to rethink embedded assumptions about structures, processes and leadership that were born of a legacy, industrialized world. We need to understand how we can scale agile principles and culture appropriately to support lasting change. We need to take a far more sophisticated approach to the application of different ways of working, both new and old. There is a need to build on what has come before, to go beyond most interpretations of digital transformation and to go deeper into fundamental aspects of organizational structure, process, culture and leadership to help define what organizational agility really means and help leaders of all kinds to build a practical roadmap for lasting change. There is a wider need to reimagine what the organization is, how it operates, and how it is led.

This book is about helping businesses to become unstuck. It is about generating an entirely new level of organizational agility. It is about transforming business to become truly fit for purpose for a very different world.

The narrative is, by now, familiar. It is expressed in conference talks that speak of the Uberization of entire industries, or in catchy soundbites like: the pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.

Just about every business is faced with an operating environment that is riven with heightened unpredictability and rapidly changing consumer, competitive and market contexts. And yet most businesses have grown up in a very different world. A world of greater stability in which contexts changed more slowly and allowed for greater time to sense and respond. A world where advantage came from leveraging scale and locked-down, hierarchically driven efficiency. A world characterized by rigidity in process and structure. A world of top-down leadership where all the answers flowed from the top of the organization downwards.

This new operating environment requires a very different organizational response. More than that, it requires a very different type of organization. Current structures and the dominant ways of thinking are the legacy of a very different environment, and are no longer fit for purpose for the modern world. Businesses of all types have an urgent need to transform to become far more adaptive and responsive to rapid change. They need to innovate not just episodically, but continuously. They need to optimize for the present whilst also designing and creating for the future and they need to do this continuously. They need leadership and cultures that support moving fast, greater experimentation and a wholly different way of operating.