Customer Reviews

The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World

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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.

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.

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.

At a time when the American economy is in recovery from the epic shambles it was, we all must find a way to scrape our way back to better than we were before. "The Upside of Turbulence" is a great book to read to figure out how and when to take advantage of some of the problems of today's economy. The fact is, business is never stable. If it is stable, there's a very good chance something's about to happen. Most of the time, we're either in the boom or the fall, never on a plateau. It's about figuring out how to take advantage of ALL elements of business.

Give this book a read if you're interested, at all, in business.

I think this book does a great job reminding us that especially in these times of turbulence, we need to be agile. Business changes at lightning speeds, if you continue to do what you did yesterday, you will fall behind. Sure the economy stinks at the moment, but there are plenty of people and companies that are changing the way they operate and succeeding.

This book has many stories and case studies that show how different companies faced challenges and succeeded by being agile. There were at least a dozen examples in this book that are going on in my company at this very moment. We used to preach about being the leader and not getting lulled into the status quo, too bad we forgot all that once we became the industry leader. Maybe we will remember it on our way back down the ranks? I get the feeling my constant emails and phone calls regarding improvements and changes are falling on deaf ears. Its too bad, those changes helped us improve immensely in the past.

I do like that the author talks about luck being a factor. That is good news for me because I consider myself the luckiest person on Earth. Most business books never mention the word luck, because you cannot quantify it. But how many times have you seen luck factor into your life and the lives around you? Work hard, get lucky, get rich. Sometimes you work hard, do not get lucky, and you get to continue to work hard forever. Sure life is not fair, but the smarter you are, the more you adapt to change, the harder you work, the more it seems that luck comes your way.

Truth in reviewing: I have written a number of business books and my forthcoming one shares some of the themes of this book

This is well above the average for business books of its type. It has some of their general weaknesses. Strategy books tend to be read by strategy consultants though they aim at an executive leadership audience. This is very much the case here. It's not quite clear who the target audience really is and what agenda for action they should take from it.

The main ideas center on individual leaders who view turbulence and bad times as opportunities and innovate by risk-taking, agility and filling gaps in the market. The examples are interesting and often striking, especially the rise and decline of US Steel and imaginative counterbehavior of Lakshmi Mittal, who founded Mittal. He created the largest steel firm in the world, the position once held by US Steel; the analysis here communicates his personal decisions as an exemplar in making turbulence an opportunity. The author brings to his central themes of such leaders' mental maps the strengths of his Harvard Business School, McKinsey and investment consulting experience, and also its tricks in making examples more than just that and the resulting sometimes superficial appearance of scholarly grounding. Examples he uses are often grabbers, such as Mittal taking over and taking on the risks of owning the dreadful Kazakhstan steel mill, operating at half its capacity,spanning an earthquake fault, lacking a base of paying customers and real markets (its established buyers of its steel were captive producers in a communist economy)and being representative of turbulence that Mittal turned into opportunity. The author adds other examples such as Mittal snapping up government-built mill capacity that had cost it $500 million for $70 million and his using a "novel" combination of technologies ih leveraging his first plant in Indonesia. His comparable story of the founder of Carnival Cruises exploiting timing and luck in dominating the emerging global cruise industry and Firestone failing to seize opportunities and relying on "active inertia" are both idea-provoking and insightful.

They tend, though to be illustrative moral fables in the Harvard style and not too convincing in their generalization and as the base for the grounded theory they claim to offer. The argument about mental maps the book plays with is pretty weak and too casually uses Karl Popper's ideas on provisional knowledge and science as permanent revolution where every theory is "simply" a hypothesis that has not yet been disproved. Popper is far more substantive in his thought and the book looks more intellectually rigorous than it really is. It becomes bit of a grab bag of assertions and challengeable statements and it overrelies on terms that need too much explanation. The "active inertia" idea usefully draws attention to the marked tendency of large industry incumbents to pile up M&As but the phrase is not self-explanatory. There's too much of this: "passing surfaces" and "swarming gaps" (terms taken from the US Marines),a company being "farmer-rich and Viking poor" in its agility, "organizational hydraulics", "reconnaissance pull" and the like.

The best of the experience-based case examples (a good analysis of Zara's collaborative use of data, for example) don't need theory and don't provide a base for general models. They are most useful for insights and alerts. When they are force-fitted into a framework or claim to theory, they tend to be unconvincing and in a few cases oversimplified and open to challenge. The use of Blue Circle as an example of a firm that lagged in globalization and took a sure-thing view of investments gives such a short phrase "more aggressive competitors, such as CEMEX" to the company that reshaped industry dynamics for a full decade that it invalidates the entire example.

The book usefully brings to attention one of the truly great military thinkers of the past century, John Boyd, who redefined air combat. It highlights his invention of the mow commonplace OODA decision loop: Observe, Orient, Device, Act and attributes Boyd's brilliant contribution as mainly being in making agility the new US edge in the Korean War where it had initially been at a distinct disadvantage. That highlights the moral fable but trivializes Boyd and the far broader edge he enabled via a rethinking of the very basics of fighter plane design to address very complex scientific not just engineering considerations of interactions between weight distribution, thrust, speed, acceleration and agility. It's not that the book is "wrong" just that the moral fables are selective slants. There are several companies drawn on that I have worked with at top levels of management, including visiting with one of them just a few weeks ago. My own "slants" are equally selective, I am sure. I read the presentations of the companies here with a "not quite" and "yes but" sense. This makes me doubt the generalizations they lead to but the cases still are useful.

This assessment results in a four-star rating overall. I would give it a 1-star rating as a scholarly research-based book, 3-stars as an original contribution to management thought and practice, and 5-stars as a well-written, interesting and sensible use of the author's experience in provoking thought and offering insights. It's good to have a business book free of cant and that communicates fairly directly with the reader.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in business in general and innovation in particular. It's sensible and clear in its presentation. It's not in the top class of such work in this style as Hamel and Prahalad, Collins, and Bennis (on leadership)and I don't expect to see it widely referenced and used in other writer's development of ideas and research. But it's as good a book on strategy as I recall over the past year.

How well we deal with changes in our business environment is the most important issue that companies face. The Upside of Turbulence is a very riveting book that captures the many times that innovation and agility have to carry a company through some of the hardest issues that a company can face. I could not put this book down; it was that interesting and that good. While companies struggle to compete, and people struggle to compete for jobs, sometimes it is the inexplicable moments where even though the idea is unpopular that carries the company through rough times.

There are sections of the book I do not agree with, but most of the book has enough examples to show why things worked when they worked. Companies are struggling now to work out how to manage in what promises to be a very long recovery, the Upside of Turbulence demonstrates how this is the one golden opportunity for companies that understand how to take advantage of downturns and changes in business environments to not only survive but take advantage of the moment. That is what makes this a very good book to read, we all know when things are going badly, but often we do not know how to take advantage of things going badly. The Upside of Turbulence shows how others have done this, and some of the ideas can be applied to issues happening today. We live in a boom bust economy, this is one of the few books that goes back far enough to show how to leverage the boom and the bust and turn it towards an advantage for everyone who is running a company.

Rated 5 of 5 stars, because I could not put this book down, ended up reading it all day, much to my chagrin.

Donald Sull provides an interesting and timely addition to business and leadership literature with his new book, The Upside of Turbulence. He reminds us that turbulent periods are times of great opportunities for those who are structured and prepared to embrace the ride. He urges flexible, agile organizations that can respond quickly to challenges and opportunities. While this may not seem groundbreaking, the breath of statistical analysis he brings to bear helps the reader to understand that agility has to be more than a buzzword. He also factors in the reality of being lucky into the equation, reminding us that even if all your plans are perfect, a little luck may be required to fully succeed.

The book is well researched, well written and well thought out. As a person who looks to apply concepts from business to a non-business environment I found it to be quite useful. Highly recommend

Sull draws together insights from Chinese, Brazilian, high tech champions but also the marine~s warfighting manual, rules of improvisational theater, professional boxing and the great philosophers. His conclusions and straight forward, and more importantly actionable. I found myself writing an action plan for some of the companies I am involved in, as I read the book (I work in private equity).

The Upside of Turbulence will become required reading for all senior managers in my portfolio companies. Finally, someone writes a business book that reads like a fighting manual.

My life's experience, born in Bolivia during hyperinflation and having built my career around entrepreneurship and investing in Latin Amerca, showed me one thing. Most of what I learned at my Harvard MBA does not apply or is irrelevant to making decisions in a turbulent environment. Sull provides simple rules which can help managers pierce thru the fog of uncertainty.

Like Peter Druker, Sull is able to be a generalist without losing depth and rigor. Honeslty, the best business book I have read in years.

Industrial laundry businesses were prominent strong companies through the first half of the 20th century. They had substantial investment in equipment, manpower, and delivery/pickup service capabilities. As disposables came into play in the 1960s and after, and as hotels installed their own laundries in house, interest in industrial laundry (restaurant tablecloths, uniforms, floor mats, etc.) flagged. Agility was the key to success: how can we use our existing equipment and delivery capabilities in this new age - this was the question managers had to ask. Many didn't ask the question and once-thriving businesses failed.

The Upside of Turbulence focuses on the need for agility, particularly given the rapidity with which the type of change I've described above can happen today. Now, a new technology can replace an old one almost overnight. The need for corporate executives to be able to say "We're going to change what we do" exists even more than it did in the 20th century. And of course one can look at many companies that were unable to make such a jump just as well as one can study companies that were. What differentiates them? How can your company harness the potential gains that exist in a turbulent business environment? This is an enjoyable read suggesting a number of approaches that are straightforward to implement - if you want your company to survive as everything around it changes.