The Light and Fast Organisation

CHAPTER 9 Three skills

Taking yourself, your team and your organisation to the next level in a VUCA world requires some skills. This chapter is about:

• the Alpine Style Model
• the sensemaking process
• learning how to engage in full-spectrum decision making
• making teams critical.

While the aim of climbing a mountain in alpine style is to move light and fast with minimal equipment, there is some very specialist gear the alpinist relies upon to make it off the mountain alive. From lightweight technical ice tools made from futuristic compounds through to mountaineering boots containing Kevlar and thermo-reflective aluminium, alpinists' lives depend on their equipment.

Today anyone can jump online and kit themselves out with the latest gear. Just like the expedition-style organisation parading in alpinists clothing, though, simply looking the part is not enough.

In order to bridge the gap and transition our organisations beyond the unaware, reactive and dependent stages, and to move from an expedition- to alpine-style approach, there are three skills we need to learn, three insights that we need to have about ourselves, and three character traits that we need to possess. These are illustrated in figure 9.1. It's only once we have mastered all nine of these components that we will be able to reach independence and interdependence and create an alpine-style organisation.