A Radical Enterprise: Pioneering the Future of High-Performing Organizations

by Matt K Parker

The fastest growing and most competitive organizations in the world have no bureaucracies, no bosses, and no bullshit.

The tomato sauce in your pantry. The raincoat in your closet. The smart TV hanging in your living room. What do all of these products have in common? Chances are they were created by organizations where colleagues self-allocate into teams based on intrinsic motivation. Where individuals self-manage their commitments to each other without the coercion of managers. And where teams launch new products and ventures on the market without the control of leaders.

These organizations represent a new, radically collaborative breed of corporation. Recently doubling in number and already comprising 8% of corporations around the world, scientists and researchers have discovered that radically collaborative organizations are more competitive on practically every meaningful financial measure. They enjoy higher market share, higher innovation, and higher customer satisfaction than their traditional corporate competitors—and they also enjoy higher engagement, loyalty, and motivation from their employees.

In this groundbreaking book, technology thought leader and organizational architect Matt K. Parker breaks down the counterintuitive principles and practices that radically collaborative organizations thrive on. By combining the latest insights from organizational science, sociology, and psychology, he illuminates four imperatives that all radically collaborative organizations must embrace in order to team autonomy, managerial devolution, deficiency gratification, and candid vulnerability.

Millions of workers around the world are collapsing under the weight of command-and-control culture. The crisis has reached its breaking point. Now is the time to embrace radical change. Discover the revolutionary shift to partnership and equality and the economic superiority that follows with A Radical Enterprise.

Genres: Leadership, Management, Business, Nonfiction, Cultural

187 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 22, 2022

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title suggests that we're just about to face something new, breathtaking, game-changing. But this is not the case. If you've read books about "teal" organizations, holacracy, or other flat-org-structure concepts, you won't find anything new here.

OK, let's assume you haven't - is the book worth your time/money? Hmm, it depends. It can definitely inspire, as it's full of beautiful, but theoretical and quite naive ideas. Wait, so aren't there any examples/testimonials for the ideas covered? There are few, but:
- they are very one-sided (e.g. holacracy itself didn't work out well in MANY organizations: it's not even mentioned here, there's no deep dive into why that happened)
- the organizations mentioned are quite specific: I don't recall any single one that was building a product (but maybe it's just my bad memory) - there were outsourcers (nearshore), very small orgs (30 heads), or organizations that may have been very big, but the level of needed communication/coordination between units was negligible (nursing) - in such a case you can easily scale the org. in a flat way
- they way hierarchy is presented is very one-sided: hierarchy doesn't have to mean neo-feudalism; in fact, hierarchy is helpful if you need various detail levels for effective management/governance of the organization - it's like bloody Google maps - you scale it in/out to adjust your perspective
- the author doesn't even use the word leadership - it's all about the management which is inherently bad; but there was a conceptual shift that was a real game-changer several years ago: managers don't have to manage people, they can manage (be accountable for) "systems of work" - autonomy and applied "promise theory" do not mean that there are rules and the ones who are ruled

I really don't want to offend Matt K. Parker (especially because his intentions seem very good and just), but this book looks like written by some consultant who has always seen things from external perspective and has never got any skin in the game (yes, I've waited until the very end of the audiobook, so I've heard that Matt was a Head of Engineering/Delivery in some organization - but that's the impression I just can't get rid off).

[Chris Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the author's energy and his intent, as he is clearly passionate about this subject. It's an inspirational book that gave me some good ideas on how to empower my teams and build more autonomy into our team structures, softening some of the structure from Team Topologies and similar books.

It focuses heavily on the Why for these changes, but doesn't spend quite enough time on the How, except through inspirational examples and a suggestion that the How will be different for each organization, and that it should be a grassroots effort with each member researching options and discussing those ideas while building consensus about the new approach they'd like to try. I appreciate that piece since it avoids the trap of well-intentioned people forcing a new system on people, though more notes on how to pursue this path would have been good. I found "Sooner, Safer, Happier" more useful for this.

The major failing is one that most business books share - cherry picking examples of when an approach worked, with a very minimal "case study", without spending any time on cases where it did not work. If you assume that people reading the book are interested in this approach then it's far more useful to explore attempts that did not work, identifying the difficulties that organizations experienced and what they did in response. I love "Brick by Brick" for this, and am looking forward to "The Halo Effect".

I don't think I learned anything new since it leans on books that I've already read, e.g. Drive (intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation) and Agile Conversations (which is excellent). It was still a good refresher that led to some new thoughts/notes, so it's a 3.5 for me.

[Scott Muc]

Listened to the audiobook, but feel like I need to read the physical copy.

Not submitting a rating since I'm affiliated with the author since we both worked at Pivotal.

The topic of the book is fascinating. The case studies of these "Radical" enterprises is interesting and gives me some inspiration... at the same time, I'm left wondering what I can actually do.

Much of the book made me think about why I would want to be in any of these Radical Enterprises, over starting my own tiny company. Then again, I wouldn't be an entrepreneur energy provider, so being able to act like your own mini-enterprise in such an industry does sound compelling.

The book gave me the feeling that I'm so lucky that I can write software because there are so many things that I can do as an individual. It reminds of the MicroISV conversations from 15 years ago.

In my next read of this book, I want to approach it from the perspective of "what can I do?" now that I have a passing understanding of the 4 imperatives:

Team Autonomy
Managerial Devolution
Deficiency Gratification
Candid Vulnerability

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard about this book in a podcast and thought I would give it a try. It turned out to be a positive surprise. The book questions how the large majority of organisations are lead, managed and operated and what the alternatives are. The book also gives hints on how a domination based organisation can be transformed to something entirely different where collaboration and cooperation is the main feature of the leadership. The book not only describes the theories, but also gives several examples or case studies how companies have adopted new ways in stead of traditional power oriented dogmatic management systems.

This book is for anyone who finds themselves questioning power oriented and bureaucratic domination hierarchies at work and elsewhere and would like to see change. The book is easy to read, but in order to get a better understanding i found myself re-reading sections immediately again. I would actually highly recommend that every person reads this book, although it might be painful for traditional leaders to see the alternative.

[Julien Lavigne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt this book was not adding much to the existing literature and thus not worth the time investment. It's very similar to reinventing organisations from Fred Laloux (quoted only mid way through the book even though the similarities are striking) with a punch of "great resignation" to justify the novelty (I was unconvinced by the argument here, the data is weak particularly considering this is a work in progress event). Except that the former was published 8 years ago. Other "inspirations" seem to include Management 3.0 (Appelo) , Brave New Work (Dignan) or Holacracy (Robertson).

It's not a bad book if you are looking for an intro on the topic but there is no original content here and I would recommend the above books instead.

[Jack Vinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does the future of work look like? How do high-performing organizations need to operate - how to do they need to shift themselves? This book describes a new way of working that is emerging (with several example companies) that is very different from your parents' world of command-and-control. I was both excited by the possibilities described, and baffled as to get from where most organizations are today to this new future.

More details on my blog review: https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2022/...

I received an advanced review copy of this book.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly inspiring book for organizations and culture. Matt's writing style is super approachable and engaging. This was a super easy book to read and I already want to read it again. I was nerding out with all of the amazing organizational structures in this book that really highlight what is wrong with so many dominator hierarchy type companies really exist today.

[Radostina Tsvetkova · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...instead of aligning teams to codebases, we aligned teams to outcomes. As a department, we'd say, 'We're going to work on achieving this outcome.'

Then a new team would self-organize around that outcome and make any changes necessary to any codebase. This enabled us to rapidly respond to an influx of new innovation and product ideas from our business partners."

[Niklas Heer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explores how companies can function without a dominator hierarchy. It highlights several companies which are already on that journey and leads through what they learned along the way.
I can recommend this book to everyone interested in exploring alternative ways of working.

[Tim Gebhardt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skims the surface of the four pillars it talks about. Spends a ton of time espousing holacracy which I think doesn't really scale, and it's demonstrated by the examples in the book where most of the companies only have about 40 employees.

[Diogo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good ideas, some I already knew about. I think this book is more useful to managers than employees, because an employee can read this and dream about it but doesn't have any power to implement it. But the good is book. I like how it asks you questions at the end of each chapter.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long on theory, light on practice.

[Dino Jurina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanted to hear more about the path that led to success. I am sure it was not a one step change as it may be deduced from the book

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

For full disclosure I received a free copy of the book in advance of publication in exchange for a review. The content of the review are still my own independent thoughts.

For anyone who has read Reinventing Organisations this book goes into more example of teal organisations. Initially highlighting the challenges with dominant organisational hierarchies and highlighting the positive benefits which changing our perspective has on both people as well as the performance of companies.

The book presents four strands. Providing people more autonomy and flexibility (e.g. in their role, how and what they work on) this is more fulfilling for people and can maximise their contribution to the organisation. Devolving management into the organisation (including pay which gets its own chapter in the book). The importance of candid vulnerability instead of the more common defensive reasons aka the need to win personally. The fourth is deficiency gratification allowing people to be themselves and say what they think rather than being political or guarded.

This book is a good challenge for us to think about how we work currently, what world we want to build and some help for us to get there.

[Terry Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating take on organisations and work

There are many elements of this book that will be a struggle for those (like me) who have only experienced hierarchical organisations. That said, it’s an insightful read, even if you aren’t aspiring to be a radically collaborative org. Lots of culture lessons throughout.

[Andrew]

I think this book describes the way our industry is moving. However I think the time we take to get there may vary wildly. Perhaps anything from 10 to 100 years. This book lacks enough data points to make a compelling case but the vision is clear and persuasive.

[Billie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great inspirational stuff, but a little lacking on the detail, also a little too positive, no pitfalls to avoid or anything like that.