The Connected Company 1st Edition

by Dave Gray (Author), Thomas Vander Wal (Author)

113 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1449319052

ISBN-10: 144931905X

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The future of work is already here.

Customers are adopting disruptive technologies faster than your company can adapt. When your customers are delighted, they can amplify your message in ways that were never before possible. But when your company’s performance runs short of what you’ve promised, customers can seize control of your brand message, spreading their disappointment and frustration faster than you can keep up.

To keep pace with today’s connected customers, your company must become a connected company. That means deeply engaging with workers, partners, and customers, changing how work is done, how you measure success, and how performance is rewarded. It requires a new way of thinking about your company: less like a machine to be controlled, and more like a complex, dynamic system that can learn and adapt over time.

Connected companies have the advantage, because they learn and move faster than their competitors. While others work in isolation, they link into rich networks of possibility and expand their influence.

Connected companies around the world are aggressively acquiring customers and disrupting the competition. In The Connected Company, we examine what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why it works. And we show you how your company can use the same principles to adapt—and thrive—in today’s ever-changing global marketplace.

Dave Gray
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Dave Gray
622
Paperback
111 offers from $3.40
Dave Gray
309
Paperback
22 offers from $17.84

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Anatomy of a Social Network

Network researcher Ron Burt has identified two types of activities that create value in small-world networks: brokerage and closure.

Brokerage is about developing the weak ties: building bridges and relationships between clusters. Brokers are in a position to see the differences between groups, to cross-pollinate ideas, and to develop the differences into new ideas and opportunities.

Closure is about developing the strong ties: building alignment, trust, reputation and community within the clusters. Trust-builders are in a position to understand the deep connections that bond the people together and give them common identity and purpose.

These two kinds of activity, bridging and trust-building, demonstrate two very different ways that people and organizations can bring value to a network: Bridging leads to innovation and trust-building leads to group performance. The value that comes from these activities is known as social capital. Like every other form of capital, social capital represents stored value—in this case, relationship value—that can be translated into meaningful and tangible benefits. The power of an individual node in any network can be considered along three dimensions: Degree, closeness and betweenness.

Degree is the number of connections a node has to other nodes; for example the number of people in your family, or on your team at work, or the number of “friends” attached to your Facebook account. For an organization it could be the number of sales affiliates or business partners.

The value of a high degree is potential: the potential to connect and interact with a great number of other nodes in the network.

Closeness is a measure of how easily a node can connect with other nodes. For example you are probably very close to your team at work because it’s easy to connect to them: you can contact any person at any time. But you might be further away from other people in your company. Some you might be able to catch by walking down the hall or popping into their office, while to see others you might need an appointment, or you might need to be introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Anyone who has tried to make a connection on LinkedIn knows that the greater the distance, the harder it is to make a connection.

The value of closeness is ease of connection: The shorter the distance between you and other nodes, the fewer network “hops” you need to make, the easier it is for you to make connections when you need to.

Betweenness indicates the degree to which a node forms a bridge or critical link between other nodes. For example, many executives are protected from distractions by executive assistants or secretaries who act as gatekeepers, who control access to the executive’s time and attention.

The value of betweenness is the power you have to block or grant access to others. The more nodes that depend on you to make connections for them, the greater your potential value to them and thus the greater your power.

Thus, the most powerful person or organization in any network is one that has a high number of potential connections, all of which are relatively close and thus easily accessible, while at the same time enjoying a position within the network such that it can choose to block or grant access to other nodes.

Review

"I was blown away by The Connected Company. Simply stated, I suspect it will go down as one of the most important management books of the early 21st century. It is a remarkable treatise on the new optimal organizational framework for businesses of the Information Age." - The Park Paradigm

If you buy only one business management book this year, make it this one. It's that good, and definitely timely.
Whether your organization chart stretches across continents or consists of just you, your smart phone and your computer, you can learn important insights and paths for new action from this well-written book. - Books, Books and More

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (October 2, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 144931905X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1449319052
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.31 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,680,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #515 in Business Infrastructure
- #823 in Business Communication
- #2,355 in Business & Organizational Learning

Customer Reviews:
113 ratings

About the authors

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Thomas Vander Wal
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Dave Gray
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Dave Gray is the founder of XPLANE, the visual thinking company, a consultancy focused on building clarity, understanding and alignment in organizations.
His first book, Gamestorming, has sold more than 100,000 copies and has been translated into 16 languages.
Dave can be found on the web at http://xplaner.com
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Ron Immink

Every now and then you get a business book that hits the spot.

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2013

Verified Purchase

Every now and then you get a business book that hits the spot. One that makes you think, puts things into a different context, with some compelling and well thought through concepts on how to improve your business.

"The connected company" is one of these books.

What is the context?

There is a great "reset" happening. We have a system problem. 80% our economy is service based. However, if you look at how we organise our businesses, most of them are based on manufacturing principles:

With pre-defined inputs and outputs
With a one way flow
Linear
Optimised
Predictable
Is your company designed to deliver customer delight?

The problem is that services by their nature need a very different approach. Delivering services is an interactive process. Dealing with unpredictable clients, having unreasonable demands. With rising expectations. In an interdependent, complex ecosystem. The question you need to ask is. Is your company designed to deliver customer delight?

Probably not.

Less than 1 and 10 companies are exceeding expectations. Service companies are the most hated companies in the world. 3 out of every 4 clients don't trust you. How many companies you deal with, do you love? You can probably only mention one or two. That is an indictment to all of us.

You are in a red queen race

On top of the service revolution, businesses are dealing with increasing pace of change. The red queen race. You need to run at your fastest to stay at the same place. To move forward you need to run faster than fastest. We have reached a complexity tipping point. Your optimisation peaks don't work any more. You are climbing the wrong peak. In fact the mountains have become waves.

Your own organisation

You need to have a hard look at your own organisation. How close are you to your customers? Do you treat your staff as idiots? (Idiots can't solve problems). How eccentric are you activities at the margin? How strong are your shared values and culture? How decentralised are you? How adaptable are you? Do you make good profit or bad profit? Is your organisational structure linear?

Net promoter score

If you want a hard metric here is one; what is your Net Promoter Score? On a scale between 1 and 10 how many of your customers would they recommend you to others? The Net Promoter Score correlates strongest of all indicators with sales and profits.

Let a 1000 flowers bloom

In a fast changing customer centric world you need a different type of organisation. You need to create a flexible adaptive system that can self organise around the clients. Here is how it can be done:

Base it on a system of small autonomous units (pods). Research have shown that pods are 30-50% more efficient.
Organise like networks rather than as a chain (a chain can break).
Make it part of a community of purpose, with strong shared values and culture
Allow staff to operate on guiding principles.
Pace layer your organisation (some part of your business need to change quicker than others. A version of vhe value chain of Porter based on pace of change)
With emphasis on connectivity and proximity (in effect building a city of purpos, business can learn a lot from how cities are organised)
Treat staff as players not employees
Focus on natural learning growth through reproduction and evolution ("Let a 1000 flowers bloom")
It has been done.

More and more companies are doing it. And not just by the smaller companies (there is no doubt that this approach is an opportunity for small business). Nordstrom, Amazon, Valve, Second Life, Morning Star, Semco, Whole foods, etc. Self organised, pod based, strong culture, completing trusting people.

Nordstrom's employee handbook consist of one paragraph

WELCOME TO NORDSTROM. We're glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have the great confidence in your ability to achieve them. Nordstrom rules: Rule #1: Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time

Biology

Ants and bees have been organised like this and survived for the last few billions years. This is business Darwinism. Adapt or die.

What can you do?

Split the companies into the smallest parts possible. Apply the two-pizza rule (if you can't feed the team with two pizzas your team is too big). Study ants and cities. Remove all bureaucracy. Re-examine your purpose and passion. Create happiness. Become self-organising. Start small, begin with a pilot pod outside of the organisation. Let go.

Compelling

I am not sure if I do the book justice. You need to read it to get the real sense of depth of their conclusion that connected companies are the future. Which is why I have bought a batch of copies to give to our clients. Must read.

Compelling!

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

More business consultation from the Dachis Group

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2012

Verified Purchase

In April I reviewed "Social Business by Design" by EVP Dion Hinchcliffe of The Dachis Group, noting that Dachis seems well positioned to guide its clients into the social business realm. Now we have "The Connected Company" by Dave Gray, SVP of the Dachis Group, offering another perspective on how companies must engage their employees, partners and customers if they are to survive in an environment of continuous change. Hinchcliffe's book was distinctive in dedicating much less focus on the technology aspects of adopting social business than other books like it. Gray's book is even more focused on the business, cultural and motivational necessities if companies are to succeed.

Often technology and the sheer coolness of tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon) inspire business leaders to emulate them and all of us to wish we worked for companies like them. The focus in both of these books is on business strategy. The results of companies that have committed to getting connected (IBM, GE, Apple, Google, Vanguard Group, Amazon and others) indicate that working in more engaged ways is becoming mainstream. This seems great for the Dachis group because they can now function as business consultants beyond just technical or Web consulting.

I loved how Gray designed the flow and presentation of the book to practice what he's preaching. His Table of Contents is 15 Kindle pages long, offering links to chapters and subsections of chapters throughout. In addition to the ease of going right to what you're interested in reading, this enables the reader to jump around as they hopefully start planning out how they will apply these strategies in their own companies. Gray also uses his own graphics and illustrations throughout to clarify his discussions--many of which he also uses in his blogs and slideshows elsewhere.

The book is divided into 5 parts. The first part provides the rationale for why companies need to get connected, stating that customers are changing and expressing their opinions so easily and quickly now that only adaptive companies can keep up. Gray establishes his treatment followed throughout the book by starting with case studies about how several companies learned dramatically that they could not keep up with posts and messaging that were coming from both inside and outside their respective organizations. His writing is clear and precise, introducing and establishing examples and metaphors (e.g., cities and cars are examples of connected systems) that he then uses later throughout the other parts. Many of his references come from Gray's readings and interviews, and he references those at the end of each chapter so the reader can dig down for further detail. By the end of Part One, we know that services (or customer experiences) are not strictly under the company's control; customers each have their own definitions and expectations of how they want to be served and companies and their employees must be prepared to deliver different experiences according to each person's expectations.

Based on that good foundation of what customers want in the first 7 chapters, Part Two then explains what a connected company is and how it can respond to those customer expectations. Gray establishes that knowing their true purpose (not just making profits) distinguishes connected companies. He works through famous examples of how IBM and GE re-made themselves and then through additional examples (Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton). He also introduces how many of these companies have adopted the Net Promoter Score as a way to address customers who hate their experiences.

In Part Three we learn how connected companies (Netflix, Whole Foods, Nordstrom's) use pods to interact with customers, and how pods are like smaller versions of the overall company but with the ability and data to make their own self-directed decisions. This part is where there is the greatest focus on systems, software and platforms but it is all done at a higher, more conceptual level to understand how these pods can be supported, not controlled. In Part Four, Gray describes how connected companies are led, differentiating the roles at the pod level, for leaders and for managers. And finally in Part Five, he describes how to get started in transitioning to a connected company and some warning signs along the way.

"Social Business by Design" reassured senior leaders that social media and business was not just a technical play. "The Connected Company" arms them with greater understanding so they can make the organizational changes necessary to make each employee an important contributor. At certain points, I could see how Gray was synthesizing many of the same books I've read into a compelling narrative, and so it was kind of an outsider's perspective on what he sees happening across many companies. This is not typical, as most authors seem to have been more engaged in the inside of the companies and changes they're writing about. What makes it all work is the way he puts it all together to guide companies to the next level.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Will C

Full of valuable insights on the people side of good leadership and how this above all impacts strategic speed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

A compelling read from beginning to end which is why I got through it in 2 days. Excellent insights into the nature of good leadership to generate the right climate for strategic speed

Sandro Mancuso

Must read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is an excellent book and a must read for anyone running a company or in a position of power. It's also useful for any professional that wants to be valued and change things within his or her organisation.

Philip Clark

Spot on

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2012

Verified Purchase

This books nails a central issue for management. We all know we need to change but how do we actually do it?
I became a little frustrated at how long it took to get to the point, ie. the structures and strategies for implementing change. But it gets to those eventually. I'm now actually going to do something different after reading a business book. Result.

Emma

Leadership Book Club

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2013

Verified Purchase

Very interesting read, with clear & thoughtful development from section to section, chapter by chapter. I found the last half of the book quite repetitive with examples and companies from earlier, although this allowed revision and "joining the dots".

Amazon Customer

This reads like one of those books where the author has paid ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2016

Verified Purchase

This reads like one of those books where the author has paid to have it published. There is an interesting concept somewhere in there but he doesn't really manage to bring it out. It gets boring very quickly.

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The Connected Company 1st Edition

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