What do you think?
Rate this book
Organizational Physics - The Science of Growing a Business
There are hidden laws at work in every aspect of your business. Understand them, and you can create extraordinary growth. Ignore them, and you run the risk of becoming another statistic. It's become almost cliché: 8 out of every 10 new ventures fail. Of the ones that succeed, how many truly thrive-for the long run? And of those that thrive, how many continually overcome their growth hurdles ... and ultimately scale, with meaning, purpose, and profitability? The answer, sadly, is not many. Author Lex Sisney is on a mission to change that picture. After more than a decade spent leading and coaching high-growth technology companies, Lex discovered that the companies that thrive do so in accordance with 6 Laws - universal principles that govern the success or failure of every individual, team, and organization.
230 pages, Hardcover
First published June 21, 2012
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 15, 2017
Organizational Physics feels like a condensed version of Dr Adizes' Managing Corporate Lifecycles. Which we later found out makes sense, since Sisney was a pupil of Adizes.
In some ways, Organizational Physics conveys the ideas better, like energy and how each management styles fits into the functions of an org, but in other cases not so much, like the actual lifecycles of a company. It's not as actionable as Managing Corporate Lifecycles. However it conveys the concepts better.
My favourite takeaway was how vital energy is in an org. If you spend more time maintaining the system (conflict, misalignment, decision making debt), you'll spend less time satisfying customer needs.
If you're busy, I'd recommend this, but if you want to go deeper I'd recommend Adizes book.
In some ways, Organizational Physics conveys the ideas better, like energy and how each management styles fits into the functions of an org, but in other cases not so much, like the actual lifecycles of a company. It's not as actionable as Managing Corporate Lifecycles. However it conveys the concepts better.
My favourite takeaway was how vital energy is in an org. If you spend more time maintaining the system (conflict, misalignment, decision making debt), you'll spend less time satisfying customer needs.
If you're busy, I'd recommend this, but if you want to go deeper I'd recommend Adizes book.
May 7, 2026
sucker for a good Sisyphos reference - good start to the may reading list
come back to this for art biz
set aside management theories for a moment and view your business as a complex adaptive system – a living organism
quotes:
- “The key differentiator, then, between happy high achievers and the rest is that happy high achievers are extremely vigilant about only allowing relationships into their lives that add to their energy. This includes their marriages as well as their relationships with their families, companies, boards of directors, key staff, and important clients. They make it a point to only allow relationships that are net additive. If a relationship isn’t net additive, it’s no longer one of their primary relationships. It gets shifted or it is gone.”
- make it a habit to regularly sniff out and eliminate energy drains in your life and work. Energy drains are a symptom of entropy. Energy gains are a symptom of integration. Your goal is to keep the gains high and the drains low.
- effective leadership is the art of saying the same thing 1,000 different ways
general notes:
- argues your organisation as a predictable energy system governed by universal laws (good analogies, Every leader knows the feeling of running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. The cause of that exhaustion? It’s literally physics)
- Inertia – Newton’s First Law, alive and well in your org chart. In the physical world, mass measures weight. In organizations, it measures resistance to change. A small startup where everyone sits in one room? Low mass. You shift direction by talking across a table. A large corporation with entrenched incentives, legacy systems, and thousands of employees? That’s enormous mass.
- Try to force a change without accounting for it, and you’ll bounce right off. Push harder without alignment, and the system pushes back with confusion and exhaustion.
- respect the laws of your lifecycle. When that happens, you stop fighting the current. The potential energy trapped in friction gets released as forward motion.
on thermodynamics & entropy:
- It tells us that every system has a finite amount of available energy at any given time. You can’t create energy from nothing. For a business, this energy shows up as money, resources, market clout, and the mental bandwidth of your team. To survive, you have to keep extracting new energy from your environment: customers buying, investors funding, talent joining.
But here’s the catch. There’s a thief stealing that energy before you can even use it. Physicists call it entropy – the second law of thermodynamics, which says everything naturally drifts toward disorder. A sandcastle crumbles into the surf. A car rusts in the driveway. A team slowly loses focus.
You get the idea. And this brings us to the single most useful rule of organizational physics: available energy always flows to manage entropy first. The system has to pay its internal maintenance bill before it can do anything productive.
- Your friend doesn’t have the excess energy to hold a conversation. Internal demand is consuming the entire supply. This same dynamic plays out in organizations. Think about a business where the co-founders have lost trust in each other.
- The leadership team might have a massive market opportunity sitting right in front of them – and they can’t seize it. Eighty percent of their energy goes to keeping the internal peace.
- there are no shortcuts here. You can’t outgrow a high-entropy problem by simply selling more. Adding revenue to a chaotic system without fixing the leaks often accelerates collapse. Real growth happens when you systematically reduce those energy drains – the mistrust, the bad processes, the confusion – so your finite fuel flows outward, toward opportunity
four forces of management:
- In the physical world, motion is shaped by gravity and friction. In organizations, four forces do something similar. They drive behavior and determine how a system responds to change.
- These forces are the Producer, the Stabilizer, the Innovator, and the Unifier – PSIU for short
- First up: the Producer. This is the force of pure motion. Shout “row,” and the Producer grabs the oars and pulls hard. They care about the “what” – what needs doing, and doing it right now. Fast, decisive, locked onto results. They don’t care about the route or the technique. They want the boat moving. In a business, this is the force that closes deals and ships code. It’s the engine of short-term execution.
- Stabilizer. When you shout “row,” the Stabilizer pauses. They want to analyze stroke efficiency, check wind currents, and make sure supplies are properly stowed. Their focus is the “how. ” They bring order, process, and accuracy. Where the Producer creates speed, the Stabilizer creates efficiency – and keeps the boat from going in circles. Without this force, a company becomes chaotic activity that burns out fast, with no structure to support scale
- Then there’s the Innovator. Hand them the oars and they look unimpressed. “Why are we rowing at all? Why not put up a sail – or invent a motor? ” This force lives in the “why not. They take risks to secure the future. Without them, the boat might be efficient and fast, but it rows perfectly toward a destination that no longer matters
- the Unifier. They’re not watching the water or the oars – they’re watching the crew. Their concern is the “who.
” When the Producer gets frustrated with the Stabilizer’s caution, or the Stabilizer panics at the Innovator’s chaos, the Unifier steps in. They create cohesion and shared culture. Without them, internal friction tears the organization apart from the inside.
- But there’s a catch - these four forces compete for the same energy. You can’t max out all of them at once, because they often pull in opposite directions. Innovation creates change, which disrupts stability.
- Most organizations lean heavily in one direction. A startup loaded with Innovation and Production but short on Stability will flame out. A legacy corporation dominated by Stabilization drifts toward comfortable irrelevance.
- The real skill of management sits right here – in versatility. In reading which force is missing and applying it at exactly the right moment
the lifecycle strategy:
- businesses follow a predictable lifecycle
- Every successful product starts in what’s called the Pilot It stage. This is where the Innovator thrives. The goal here is modest: prove that a solution exists for a real problem.
- The biggest mistake at this stage is applying the Stabilizer too soon. If you demand rigid processes before validating the product, you’ll kill the thing before it breathes. The only objective is to learn, iterate, and survive long enough to find a pulse.
- You go from selling to visionaries to early adopters, people with actual budgets and actual pain points who need proof your solution works. This transition is where things get dangerous. Many founders stay addicted to the rush of constant invention.
- once you’ve nailed the product – proven that customers pay, stay, and refer others – you earn the right to enter Scale It. That’s the Stabilizer’s moment
- Every product eventually reaches the Milk It stage. The market is saturated, growth slows, and the technology becomes commoditized. The Unifier force now becomes your edge. You compete on brand loyalty, customer service, efficiency – extracting maximum value from the asset to fund the next pilot.
- The tragedy of many legacy companies is forgetting that this money is meant for reinvestment. They get stuck protecting the status quo, refusing to let the Innovator back in. They become highly stable, highly unified – and completely unable to adapt
people try to skip steps – and they always try to skip steps
- Face Plant. This is what happens when a high-innovation team falls in love with a product idea and ignores market reality
- Those customers aren’t looking for breakthroughs. They want the cheapest, most reliable option available. No matter how good the product is, the capabilities are completely misaligned with a shrinking opportunity.
- The second is the Flame Out, and it’s the most common tragedy in startups. This is what happens when the Nail It stage gets skipped entirely. A pilot product shows promise, a few visionary customers love it, and excitement takes over.
- The investment in systems needed to scale never came. A competitor copies the model, adds the operational muscle to handle volume, and takes the mass market. All the hard work of discovery, handed to someone else on a platter.
- Four metrics matter here: market growth, competition, pricing pressure, and cash flow. If cash flow is negative and pricing pressure is high, you’re still in the pilot phase – don’t hire that sales team yet. The Long Way Around takes patience
how do you generate momentum?
- There’s a model called CAPI, this meaning Coalesced Authority, Power, and Influence. Before any major decision, you need to identify and align these three elements. Authority sits with the person who signs the check – the one who says yes.
- Power belongs to those who can’t say yes but can absolutely say no – the people who’ll sabotage implementation if they feel sidelined. And influence belongs to those with no formal role but the ear of the tribe – technical experts and cultural leaders.
- Most struggling organizations do the opposite – they make decisions quickly behind closed doors, then spend months battling resistance and wading through passive-aggressive non-compliance
- The physics of momentum demands something different. Spend time upfront gathering the CAPI, debating the data, aligning the vision. It feels inefficient. But once that alignment locks in, the decision belongs to the mass. Resistance fades. The organization moves with startling speed.
come back to this for art biz
set aside management theories for a moment and view your business as a complex adaptive system – a living organism
quotes:
- “The key differentiator, then, between happy high achievers and the rest is that happy high achievers are extremely vigilant about only allowing relationships into their lives that add to their energy. This includes their marriages as well as their relationships with their families, companies, boards of directors, key staff, and important clients. They make it a point to only allow relationships that are net additive. If a relationship isn’t net additive, it’s no longer one of their primary relationships. It gets shifted or it is gone.”
- make it a habit to regularly sniff out and eliminate energy drains in your life and work. Energy drains are a symptom of entropy. Energy gains are a symptom of integration. Your goal is to keep the gains high and the drains low.
- effective leadership is the art of saying the same thing 1,000 different ways
general notes:
- argues your organisation as a predictable energy system governed by universal laws (good analogies, Every leader knows the feeling of running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. The cause of that exhaustion? It’s literally physics)
- Inertia – Newton’s First Law, alive and well in your org chart. In the physical world, mass measures weight. In organizations, it measures resistance to change. A small startup where everyone sits in one room? Low mass. You shift direction by talking across a table. A large corporation with entrenched incentives, legacy systems, and thousands of employees? That’s enormous mass.
- Try to force a change without accounting for it, and you’ll bounce right off. Push harder without alignment, and the system pushes back with confusion and exhaustion.
- respect the laws of your lifecycle. When that happens, you stop fighting the current. The potential energy trapped in friction gets released as forward motion.
on thermodynamics & entropy:
- It tells us that every system has a finite amount of available energy at any given time. You can’t create energy from nothing. For a business, this energy shows up as money, resources, market clout, and the mental bandwidth of your team. To survive, you have to keep extracting new energy from your environment: customers buying, investors funding, talent joining.
But here’s the catch. There’s a thief stealing that energy before you can even use it. Physicists call it entropy – the second law of thermodynamics, which says everything naturally drifts toward disorder. A sandcastle crumbles into the surf. A car rusts in the driveway. A team slowly loses focus.
You get the idea. And this brings us to the single most useful rule of organizational physics: available energy always flows to manage entropy first. The system has to pay its internal maintenance bill before it can do anything productive.
- Your friend doesn’t have the excess energy to hold a conversation. Internal demand is consuming the entire supply. This same dynamic plays out in organizations. Think about a business where the co-founders have lost trust in each other.
- The leadership team might have a massive market opportunity sitting right in front of them – and they can’t seize it. Eighty percent of their energy goes to keeping the internal peace.
- there are no shortcuts here. You can’t outgrow a high-entropy problem by simply selling more. Adding revenue to a chaotic system without fixing the leaks often accelerates collapse. Real growth happens when you systematically reduce those energy drains – the mistrust, the bad processes, the confusion – so your finite fuel flows outward, toward opportunity
four forces of management:
- In the physical world, motion is shaped by gravity and friction. In organizations, four forces do something similar. They drive behavior and determine how a system responds to change.
- These forces are the Producer, the Stabilizer, the Innovator, and the Unifier – PSIU for short
- First up: the Producer. This is the force of pure motion. Shout “row,” and the Producer grabs the oars and pulls hard. They care about the “what” – what needs doing, and doing it right now. Fast, decisive, locked onto results. They don’t care about the route or the technique. They want the boat moving. In a business, this is the force that closes deals and ships code. It’s the engine of short-term execution.
- Stabilizer. When you shout “row,” the Stabilizer pauses. They want to analyze stroke efficiency, check wind currents, and make sure supplies are properly stowed. Their focus is the “how. ” They bring order, process, and accuracy. Where the Producer creates speed, the Stabilizer creates efficiency – and keeps the boat from going in circles. Without this force, a company becomes chaotic activity that burns out fast, with no structure to support scale
- Then there’s the Innovator. Hand them the oars and they look unimpressed. “Why are we rowing at all? Why not put up a sail – or invent a motor? ” This force lives in the “why not. They take risks to secure the future. Without them, the boat might be efficient and fast, but it rows perfectly toward a destination that no longer matters
- the Unifier. They’re not watching the water or the oars – they’re watching the crew. Their concern is the “who.
” When the Producer gets frustrated with the Stabilizer’s caution, or the Stabilizer panics at the Innovator’s chaos, the Unifier steps in. They create cohesion and shared culture. Without them, internal friction tears the organization apart from the inside.
- But there’s a catch - these four forces compete for the same energy. You can’t max out all of them at once, because they often pull in opposite directions. Innovation creates change, which disrupts stability.
- Most organizations lean heavily in one direction. A startup loaded with Innovation and Production but short on Stability will flame out. A legacy corporation dominated by Stabilization drifts toward comfortable irrelevance.
- The real skill of management sits right here – in versatility. In reading which force is missing and applying it at exactly the right moment
the lifecycle strategy:
- businesses follow a predictable lifecycle
- Every successful product starts in what’s called the Pilot It stage. This is where the Innovator thrives. The goal here is modest: prove that a solution exists for a real problem.
- The biggest mistake at this stage is applying the Stabilizer too soon. If you demand rigid processes before validating the product, you’ll kill the thing before it breathes. The only objective is to learn, iterate, and survive long enough to find a pulse.
- You go from selling to visionaries to early adopters, people with actual budgets and actual pain points who need proof your solution works. This transition is where things get dangerous. Many founders stay addicted to the rush of constant invention.
- once you’ve nailed the product – proven that customers pay, stay, and refer others – you earn the right to enter Scale It. That’s the Stabilizer’s moment
- Every product eventually reaches the Milk It stage. The market is saturated, growth slows, and the technology becomes commoditized. The Unifier force now becomes your edge. You compete on brand loyalty, customer service, efficiency – extracting maximum value from the asset to fund the next pilot.
- The tragedy of many legacy companies is forgetting that this money is meant for reinvestment. They get stuck protecting the status quo, refusing to let the Innovator back in. They become highly stable, highly unified – and completely unable to adapt
people try to skip steps – and they always try to skip steps
- Face Plant. This is what happens when a high-innovation team falls in love with a product idea and ignores market reality
- Those customers aren’t looking for breakthroughs. They want the cheapest, most reliable option available. No matter how good the product is, the capabilities are completely misaligned with a shrinking opportunity.
- The second is the Flame Out, and it’s the most common tragedy in startups. This is what happens when the Nail It stage gets skipped entirely. A pilot product shows promise, a few visionary customers love it, and excitement takes over.
- The investment in systems needed to scale never came. A competitor copies the model, adds the operational muscle to handle volume, and takes the mass market. All the hard work of discovery, handed to someone else on a platter.
- Four metrics matter here: market growth, competition, pricing pressure, and cash flow. If cash flow is negative and pricing pressure is high, you’re still in the pilot phase – don’t hire that sales team yet. The Long Way Around takes patience
how do you generate momentum?
- There’s a model called CAPI, this meaning Coalesced Authority, Power, and Influence. Before any major decision, you need to identify and align these three elements. Authority sits with the person who signs the check – the one who says yes.
- Power belongs to those who can’t say yes but can absolutely say no – the people who’ll sabotage implementation if they feel sidelined. And influence belongs to those with no formal role but the ear of the tribe – technical experts and cultural leaders.
- Most struggling organizations do the opposite – they make decisions quickly behind closed doors, then spend months battling resistance and wading through passive-aggressive non-compliance
- The physics of momentum demands something different. Spend time upfront gathering the CAPI, debating the data, aligning the vision. It feels inefficient. But once that alignment locks in, the decision belongs to the mass. Resistance fades. The organization moves with startling speed.
December 22, 2021
Concise and full of many strategies for organizing a business and working with the people in those businesses. However, that conciseness comes at the cost of not providing any evidence to support the claims or justify the strategies. There is no science involved (i.e. no hypothesis, no experiments, no research cited), only analogies to the physics you'd find in a high school text book (which makes sense given the author doesn't come from a scientific background).
Nonetheless, much of the content aligns with advice from longer books and it's an easy read.
Nonetheless, much of the content aligns with advice from longer books and it's an easy read.
June 11, 2022
Попытка найти «физические законы» менеджмента и стратегии. Похоже на идеи Адизеса
June 8, 2017
Overall, I like the book. The application of laws of physics to how businesses are organized and run provided for an interesting thought exercise and I felt some of the metaphors were useful. As the book drew to a close, I felt as though the original driving metaphors got left behind and the last few chapters were more random connecting thoughts without a strong tie-back to the start of the book.
I am going to add it to the list of books to read again.
I am going to add it to the list of books to read again.
April 16, 2021
The author's claim that the concepts in the book hold as much weight as Newton's Laws of Motion is a massive overreach.
There are a few good concepts and frameworks in the books, but overall you can them elsewhere in better packaging.
There are a few good concepts and frameworks in the books, but overall you can them elsewhere in better packaging.
May 15, 2021
I decided to read this after I heard Lex Sisney speak on a podcast which I found fascinating and really resonated with situations I had found myself in at work. Overall provides a nice framework (much like physics) to view and assess your organization. And if you’re like me, to have a lot of “yuuupppp” moments while reading.
The book repeats itself a bit, but I chalk that up to being able to skip among the chapters as you see fit depending on what topic you’re interested in.
Loved the ideas of:
- PSIU
- limited time and energy and that always going to stabilize the entropy within an organization first, limiting the time and energy towards growth
- going the long way around for success. No shortcuts
- build the mass and get everyone on the same page, collect feedback. Then execute fast once everyone has buy in.
- long term vs. short term views and how you can’t combine these in a role or team because short term will always win over long term
The book repeats itself a bit, but I chalk that up to being able to skip among the chapters as you see fit depending on what topic you’re interested in.
Loved the ideas of:
- PSIU
- limited time and energy and that always going to stabilize the entropy within an organization first, limiting the time and energy towards growth
- going the long way around for success. No shortcuts
- build the mass and get everyone on the same page, collect feedback. Then execute fast once everyone has buy in.
- long term vs. short term views and how you can’t combine these in a role or team because short term will always win over long term
July 24, 2021
Got a couple of good ideas. Especially around the idea that every creative leaders (dreamer) needs an integrator (someone who can basically project manage their ideas into existence).
I also really liked the idea of certain functions having different "forces" --- strategic finance and accounting shouldn't be held by the same person, because one wants to take risk and the other doesn't. Marketing and sales shouldn't be held by he same person/team. Because one needs to think long term and the other needs to think short term.
I also really liked the idea of certain functions having different "forces" --- strategic finance and accounting shouldn't be held by the same person, because one wants to take risk and the other doesn't. Marketing and sales shouldn't be held by he same person/team. Because one needs to think long term and the other needs to think short term.
October 4, 2017
Good book, with a simple but powerful organizational management framework. I have already started to unconsciously classify motivations and personalities according to the PSIU framework, and it makes a lot of sense.
Be warned: the audiobook version is very difficult to capital F lowercase O capital L capital L lowercase O capital W. I wish I had a physical copy.
Be warned: the audiobook version is very difficult to capital F lowercase O capital L capital L lowercase O capital W. I wish I had a physical copy.
July 8, 2018
a force fitted piece of logic
January 6, 2019
As for the newbie in organizational design this book was great. Recent blog posts from Lex are also worth checking and will serve as a good add-on to the book.
June 7, 2021
nothing new
January 16, 2016
Loved this book. Ok, the writing, meh. But, the concept of long term and short term thinking roles in a company, and the stress of combining them in one person's role in a company - brilliant. I recommend reading this book and considering it before any major re-org, and when building a business. Great read, and worth contemplating...
December 18, 2020
Some good ideas
Had some good ideas. Plenty of fluff; and writing could probably have been edited to provide better flow and ease of understanding in some parts. While the physics parts is a nice way of thinking about organizations, the author doesn't delve deep enough to prove the title justice. Still, this is a lesser known book that was a good read.
Had some good ideas. Plenty of fluff; and writing could probably have been edited to provide better flow and ease of understanding in some parts. While the physics parts is a nice way of thinking about organizations, the author doesn't delve deep enough to prove the title justice. Still, this is a lesser known book that was a good read.
September 23, 2015
كتاب ممتع، ومفيد لرواد الأعمال او بداية نشاط تجاري..الكاتب يحاول من خلال الكتاب ربط العلوم الفيزيائيه بعلوم الإداره من خلال اسقاط مفهوم الطاقه على حيوية الأعمال. مفهوم عميق قد تحتاج لقراءة الكتاب اكثر من مره لفهمه..احتجت انا ذلك على الاقل
March 9, 2016
Oh man what a jewel. Planning on going right back through it again. Some unique paradigms for viewing business growth and products in the market place. I feel like I will use some of these ideas for the rest of my life as an entrepreneur and consultant.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews