The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World [Hardcover]

Donald Sull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2009

Traditionally, leadership has been equated with vision. We look to leaders in business and government to have the genius to know the future and lead the rest of us to where that vision becomes a reality. We look for goals to beckon us and rely on strategic plans to guide us, all the while knowing how unreliable and unpredictable the future might be. Emerging realities (the financial crisis of 2008, the rise and fall of oil prices, the creative destruction of the Internet, for instance) often distort and destroy established maps. How do we plan when plans become irrelevant?

Through his celebrated career as a professor of business and a medicine man to companies big and small, Donald Sull has studied how best to reconcile this paradox. The essence of leadership, in the deep logic that underpins this book, relies on a leader's flexible tenacity to plot a course that can withstand and even be propelled by the complexity and dynamism that the modern business terrain contains.

Based on a decade of research, historical case studies, and intensive work with established enterprises and start-ups, this book lays out the fundamental logic of opportunity and provides a series of practical steps to translate insight into action.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sull (Why Good Companies Go Bad), professor at the London Business School, inveighs against the business world's terror of change and habitual response of accelerating activities that have worked in the past, a dynamic he terms active inertia. Sull demonstrates how turbulence—his term for rapid and unpredictable changes that influence a firm's ability to create value—provides opportunity for growth (his odd analogy describes how Italians originally thought tomatoes were poisonous; only when they were willing to experiment did they discover the root of their distinctive cuisine). Noting the exceptionally turbulent times we live in, Sull offers practical suggestions (and work sheets) to enhance a company's agility and ability to improvise. Our theories about the future, he reminds us, remain subject to revision or rejection in light of new knowledge that might arise in the future. All our theories will let us down; we just don't yet know how or when. With success stories from such companies as Microsoft and Carnival Cruise Lines, much of the information within is sound, but the lofty tone might make this a tough sell in an already shell-shocked marketplace. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“It is a “must read” for all those that wish to understand the dynamics of managing through turbulence in order to capture the opportunities and limit the threats.” (Mohamed El-Erian, author of When Markets Collide )

“Like the agile organizations he describes in The Upside of Turbulence, Donald Sull leaps deftly among ideas and examples... Will help senior executives act and succeed in a world where the future is always foggy, plans are inherently unreliable, and opportunities and threats come seemingly out of nowhere.” (Tom Stewart, author of Intellectual Capital )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1 edition (October 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061771155
• ISBN-13: 978-0061771156
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,011,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don Sull is a professor of strategy and the faculty director of executive education at the London Business School. He received his bachelors, masters, and doctorate from Harvard University, where he taught entrepreneurship. Prior to his academic career, professor Sull worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and as a management investor with a leveraged buyout firm. He blogs for the Financial Times (www.blogs.ft.com/donsullblog).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read only one business book this year, this is the one..., October 21, 2009

By 

James Beswick (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World (Hardcover)

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Having been forced to read Porter and Chandler's weighty tombs in business school, and found little connection between academic studies and business success, I'm always skeptical of books that claim to help discover opportunities or define business strategies. Professor Sull however combines well-researched studies with a lucid writing style that builds his case chapter-by-chapter and mixes old ideas together in a new and compelling way. There an absence of absurd diagrams that frequently litter books like these, and Dilbert-esque "what on earth does that mean?" acronyms and buzz phrases.

The essential idea is that agility is the key to business success especially in difficult times. While this may not seem groundbreaking, the author elaborates on this concept by comparing winners and losers in various industries, and looking at the inherent cultural elements in organizations that decide their ability to be agile. Personally, I'm a huge fan of this concept, having cheer-leaded agile software and project management concepts for years, and the book makes a strong case for scrapping the 5-year corporate plan and taking a more nimble approach to seizing opportunities.

Also, in all the business books I've ever read, no author has had the confidence to accept that luck plays a significant role in the success of strategy. Porter brushes this under the carpet with the "environmental factors" umbrella, but Sull grasps the idea firmly and credits chance with the significant role it deserves. Rather than undermining his theory, in many ways random chance provides the endless environmental change that makes an agile response so essential.

Overall, apart from being an enjoyable read, I'd highly recommend this to anyone who is looking to change traditional thinking in their organization - there are many interesting case studies and concepts that will challenge standard strategic thinking.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction of feedback based thinking - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act - repeat, October 21, 2009

By 

Eric D. Brown "Technology Consultant" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World (Hardcover)

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I just completed reading The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World. Great book.

The book does an excellent job of discussing the world of business and the role that turbulence has played in shaping it. Donald Sull does a great job describing how to embrace turbulence and seize the opportunities that turbulence can bring.

How do you embrace turbulence? By being agile.

Before we continue, don't confuse `being agile' with the agile development methodology....while they may be similar, for the purposes of this article, I'll be talking about a different `agile'.

That said, let me clear up what I mean when I saw agile (and what Donald Sull means when he uses it): Agile isn't about speed. Agile has to do with the ability to change course when needed. Being agile means taking a look at your organizational landscape (strategy, operations, etc) and breaking up the long-term view into smaller samples of time to make it easier to see and respond to opportunities.

Dr Sull defines agility as:

"the capacity to identify and capture opportunities more quickly than rivals" (p. 138).

In addition, he uses the concept of air warfare to help tell the story of how agility can provide tremendous benefits. Out of these stories of air warfare, Dr Sull introduces John Boyd, a military strategist who helped with a lot of the science behind the F-16 and F-18 fighter jets, and Boyd's OODA Loop.

What is the OODA loop? It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Some reviewers have noted that the book provides very little actionable steps. I agree...with a caveat. I see the main purpose of this book as being one of informing the reader on how to change your mindset. To survive in a turbulent world, you've got to step away from the world of linear thinking and move into the world of feedback based thinking.

What is feedback based thinking? Plan appropriately, make decisions and then revisit the plan and decisions to ensure your plan is working and organization is oriented appropriately.

This is a great book...well worth the read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Upside of Turbulence - An Interesting Take On Business, Planning and Change, October 18, 2010

By 

Mark "Technology, Music and Movies" (East Coast) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World (Hardcover)

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The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World is one of the more thought provoking business books I have read in a long time. This is a long term review as I have been digesting this book for quite a while. On the surface, I do not think this book's title accurately reflects the depth and range of ideas that it covers. It may represent the objective that most readers seek in their businesses and careers. All business is about seizing opportunities. But this book covers ideas that go far beyond simply restating the self-evident, "the world is always changing so you have to be agile to seize opportunities."

Now there are certain things this book is not. It is not a "how-to" on business in any sense of the word. It is not a scholarly study of any specific business vertical either. It does reference some studies, but only as needed and when in support of the author's ideas. This is not supposed to be a research study. Those who are seeking those things should look elsewhere.

So what is this book? This book is a collection of very abstract concepts that are supported by various wide ranging examples and case studies. Foundational information is included. Some of the abstract concepts, such as agility & inertia, are defined, disected and segmented in ways that would be best appreciated by a biologist or a philosopher.

My interpretation of this text is that it is meant to make you think about the ways that businesses attempt to deal with unpredictability. All businesses employ various types of planning in order to succeed in the marketplace. What this book does is ask several important questions. Why do certain types of plans work for so long, and then lead to a company's ultimate demise?

How can we plan for the future but concurrently be flexible enough to realize that our plans are not working? This seems like common sense but it is actually very complex. These are contrary objectives. Detailed planning requires visualization, what the author refers to as a "mental map." But those who succeed at seizing opportunities are the firms and individuals who are able to recognize when their map is off target. Yet it's very difficult to deviate from a plan that we have invested so much in. Over time, successful firms can get caught in a state of "active inertia" where they are locked into a plan that suceeeded in the past even though it no longer applies to current market conditions. It is the interplay between these concepts that is at the heart of this book.

There are many overlapping concepts. Some of the examples could have been honed to a finer point. The example in chapter 3, which introduces the idea of the mental map is a case in point. While it does drive the author's point home, the background information seems excessive. Another example, from chapter 5, is the recounting of the Japanese entry into the US motorcycle market in the 60s and 70s. The treatment deals well with Honda's adaptation to the changing market conditions they faced, and is actually one of my favorites. But it takes a circuitous route getting there, and may make it difficult for some people to get to the punch-line.

CONCLUSION

This book is incredibly well thought out and offers a depth of examples to bring some very abstract concepts to life. I have really enjoyed this book, despite the additional historical and contextual information that is not always as succinct as it could have been. I think that the concepts outlined in this book can indeed be appreciated by any audience. Even those who are not reading this book from a business perspective can find interesting ideas here. As long as you are interested in abstract business concepts and are open to approaching case studies from several different angles, I think this book is well worth a read. The time you spend reading it should be only about a quarter of the time it causes you to reflect.

Enjoy.