Claude's Book Review - March 2023
Dr. Claude Diderich
Business Model Innovation and Design Thinking Expert & Sparring Partner with strong Computer Science Knowledge. Author of "Design Thinking for Strategy"
Amp It Up
Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity
John Wiley & Sons, 2022. 184 pages
Springtime is coming on March 20th. Frank Slootman’s recent book Amp It Up – Leading for hypergrowth by raising expectations, increasing urgency, and elevating intensity is an interesting read for a sunny afternoon on your balcony (or your front-yard, a coffee shop terrace, or a bench near a lake, or any other place where you fee comfortable, your choice). The book is based, according to its author, on a popular post he wrote about how organizations can considerably improve without having to make extensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model. The calls his framework Amp It Up.
The presented framework is built around five pillars of focused change:
Slootman, originally from The Netherlands, spent all his careers in the United States, which, from my perspective, plays a key role in shaping his line of thinking. In addition, Amp It Up is based on insights from his tenure as CEO of three technology companies, DataDomain, ServiceNow, and Snowflake, which are all active in fast growing markets. As such, I am unsure to what extend the framework presented is applicable to more mature industries as well as non-technology sectors.
Business success is built on two primary dimensions, that is, growth and change, supported by a solid mission foundation. This may be true in fast-paced industries, like soft- ware, but I would challenge these premises in other industries, like transportation, energy, or food.
领英推荐
The author gives the educated reader numerous anchors for critical thinking. As such, the book contains multiple statements that I do disagree with. For example, the author argues that execution is more important than strategy. “If you don’t know how to execute, every strategy will fail, even the most promising one.” While this may sound intuitive, I would counter that argument by “if you don’t have a promising strategy, any execution will be random.” Both statements contain relevant insights, but non represents the wholly truth. Success depends on a sound combination of strategy and execution. Similarly, the author claims that group thinking and confirmation biases are incredibly dangerous, a statement that I agree with. But only two pages later, he argues that companies should develop strategy on their own, rather than seek external critical support (to avoid group thinking and confirmation biases). Furthermore, the author claims that operators in charge of business must also be strategists. This, to me, is a fallacy, as people good at execution are typically poor at strategic thinking and vice versa.
These are only a few of the challenges I spotted in this nevertheless interesting book to read. To me, this book is a yes, but book. It contains a lot of critical observations. Correlations are often taken for causalities. Insights cannot be relied upon holistically. They need adaption to specific businesses, markets, and industries and even sometimes fact-checking! This requirement is especially relevant to the nine takeaways presented in chapter 14.
Amp It Up is a book written by a successful CEO whose home-turf is the high growth technology sector. With its 182 pages and use of large fonts, the book is a lightweight read. To me, it is an in between read, with entertainment value but little more. It is well suited for a sunny Sunday afternoon but fails to offer sufficient meaningful value to its readers. It will definitely not hold a top spot on my reading list.
As always, this is my personal subjective assessment of the book Amp It Up with which you may or may not agree. Any well-argued opinions, whether in agreement or not, are welcome!
? 2023 innovate.d llc