Wiring the Winning Organization

“Elegant and simple. It’s a teacher’s best companion—a lesson plan for teaching the theory of performance.” —Adm. John Richardson (ret.), from his foreword to the book “This book is a must-read that deeply informs leaders on how to create great systems for outstanding performance and to win.” —Jeffrey K. Liker, PhD, author of The Toyota Way, 2nd edition Shingo Publication Award Winner, a 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist, and shortlisted for the 2024 Business Book Award. Forget vision, grit, or culture. Wiring the Winning Organization reveals the hidden circuitry that drives organizational excellence. Drawing on decades of meticulous research of high-performing organizations and cross-population surveys of tens of thousands of employees, award-winning authors Gene Kim and Dr. Steven J. Spear introduce a groundbreaking new theory of organizational management. Organizations win by using three mechanisms to slowify, simplify, and amplify, which systematically moves problem-solving from high-risk danger zones to low-risk winning zones. Wiring the Winning Organization shines an investigative light on some of the most famous organizations, including Toyota, Amazon, Apple, and NASA, revealing how leaders create the social wiring that enables exceptional results. This is not feel-good inspiration or armchair philosophy but a data-driven prescriptive playbook for creating excellence grounded in real-world results and proven theory. This is the rare business book that delivers concrete tools—not platitudes—to convert mediocrity into mastery. “All organizations, large and small, public and private, are overwhelmed by complexity, multiple priorities, conflicting goals, shifting landscapes, and constrained resources. Kim and Spear lay out an amazing vision of the social circuitry for organizations to not only handle this but thrive while doing so.” —Phil Venables, Chief Information Security Officer, Google Cloud; former Board Director, Goldman Sachs Bank “This book clearly teaches you how to rewire your organization to move with focused, sustained urgency and win!” —Courtney Kissler, SVP Customer and Retail Technology, Starbucks “In a world where complexity is the norm, Kim and Spear provide the essential guide for those in need of a compass for the maze of today’s business environment.” —David Silverman, CEO of CrossLead, coauthor of Team of Teams