Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business

by Lex Sisney

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. Organizational Physics is a manual for truly scalable and sustainable business growth. It's simple, practical, and broadly applicable. Even more importantly, it's based not on passing trends, but on what really works.

Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Nonfiction

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 21, 2012

Reviews

[Niel De La Rouviere · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[David Drummond · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Попытка найти «физические законы» менеджмента и стратегии. Похоже на идеи Адизеса

[Doc Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Philip Joubert · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Anu George · Rating 1 out of 5]

a force fitted piece of logic

[Anton Pavlovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Alberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

nothing new

[Kari LaMotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

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...

[William Lodén · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Majed Alabdulkareem · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[John Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.