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10X ORG – Powered by Org Topologies

A Manager's Guide to Elevating Business Performance with People and AI

Alexey Krivitsky, Craig Larman, Roland Flemm

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Learn how to drive your organizational performance with people and AI to 10X and beyond — in impact and relevance.

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About

About

About the Book

What would you do if your CEO bluntly asked:

“When do you think we can turn down new hires by turning up AI?” 

That message from the CEO turned the world upside down for the book's main character, Hanna, the HR Director of an established firm.  

Do you see this happening too: competitors are racing ahead, investors want more with less, and the leadership team expects a breakthrough?

At first, Hanna thought it was a joke.  The acceptance came when she decided to dig deeper and see what was happening in her organization.  

Through the lens of Org Topologies™, and with her leadership team, Hanna began to see what they had missed for years: an org design misfit, causing a constant need for expensive, but short-lived reorganizations.

This book, written as a business novel with a woven 10X ORG theory, principles, elevating katas, and case studies, draws on the authors' decades of experience in product development, management, and consulting.

10X ORG invites leaders to move beyond quick fixes and shortcuts, and to deliberately redesign organizations so people can learn faster, take broader ownership, and stay relevant as work itself changes. It shows how, with a real strategy–structure fit in place, AI becomes a force multiplier—elevating human intelligence rather than replacing it. That shift, however, requires slow systems thinking. 

As W. Edwards Deming reminded us: “There is no instant pudding.”

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LeadershipOrganizational PsychologyAgileBusiness ArchitectureConsultingManagementGPTSoftware Engineering

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Author

About the Author

Alexey Krivitsky, Craig Larman, Roland Flemm


Contents

Table of Contents

We Are Grateful

From the Authors: Our Success Metric

How to Read This Book

Prologue: Defining 10X

  1. 10X: Why?
  2. Expectations and Suffering
  3. Parity and Race
  4. 10X: Who?
  5. 10X: Now!

Chapter 1: Wake-Up Call

  1. Out of the Blue
  2. The Currency of Success
  3. High on Hype
  4. 19-Seconds Research
  5. Missing Pieces
  6. Key Chapter Ideas
  7. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 1: Own, Not Rent

  1. From Within
  2. Avoid Renting
  3. Renting Draws Resistance
  4. Owning Fosters Caring
  5. Avoid Transformation Projects
  6. Change with the People
  7. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 2: Seeing the System

  1. In the Cafeteria
  2. Walk of Wonders
  3. Puzzle
  4. Ferrari Effect
  5. AI
  6. Moving Targets
  7. Key Chapter Ideas
  8. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 2: Drive Performance with Org Design

  1. The Leadership Challenge
  2. Unintentional Nationwide Org Design A/B Test
  3. Org Design as a Management Practice
  4. Strategic Alignment
  5. Organizational Design
  6. “Agile Is Dead”?
  7. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 3: Org Topologies

  1. Old Wine, New Bottles
  2. Discovering Org Topologies
  3. Scope of Skills Mandate
  4. Multi-Learning
  5. Scope of Work Mandate
  6. Customer Impact
  7. Flashback: The Hive
  8. Key Chapter Ideas
  9. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 3: Shape Intelligence with Mandates

  1. Defining Mandates
  2. Complete Means Independent
  3. Outcomes Mean Value
  4. Organizational Intelligence
  5. Doing Intelligence
  6. Delivering Intelligence
  7. Directing Intelligence
  8. Driving Intelligence
  9. Thinking in Intelligences
  10. AI for Organizational Intelligence
  11. AI for Doing
  12. AI for Delivering
  13. AI for Directing
  14. AI for Driving
  15. On Agentic Org Design
  16. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 4: Growing Misfit

  1. The Perfect Storm
  2. Resource
  3. Delivery
  4. Adaptive
  5. Key Chapter Ideas
  6. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 4: Fit for Purpose

  1. Seeing Topologies
  2. Resource Topology
  3. “The Mechanistic System”
  4. Best Fit of Resource Topology
  5. Pin Factory
  6. Misfits of Resource Topology
  7. Component Development
  8. “Waterfall”
  9. Delivery Topology
  10. “The Structured Network”
  11. The Mandates
  12. Misfits of Delivery Topology
  13. When Fast Feels Last, and Flow Runs Slow
  14. Remote—Regressing to Resource
  15. Elevate by Unpinning
  16. Adaptive Topology
  17. “The Living Ecosystem”
  18. Fit in Product R&D
  19. Where to Learn More?
  20. Fit in Service Organizations
  21. Misfits of Adaptive Topology
  22. Fit Is All You Need
  23. Combining Topologies
  24. How Organizations Age
  25. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 5: Map to Understand

  1. Change Management
  2. Reorientation
  3. Mapping
  4. Out of Bounds
  5. Key Chapter Ideas
  6. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 5: Change Through a Learning Loop

  1. Redesigning from a Messy State
  2. Get off the Transformation Treadmill
  3. The Unflyable Gap
  4. Go See
  5. Go See with a Map
  6. Change Through a Learning Loop: MADE
  7. Thinking in Systems
  8. Masterful Systems Managers
  9. Study: Map and Assess
  10. Map
  11. Assess
  12. Improve: Design and Elevate
  13. Design
  14. Elevate
  15. Organizational Improvement Loop: MADE
  16. A Light Run Through MADE
  17. Why MADE Works
  18. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 6: Debating the Mandates

  1. Humanoid Robotics
  2. Valid Concerns
  3. Learnin’ Machines
  4. Serving Experience
  5. Key Chapter Ideas
  6. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 6: Follow the Value—Learn and Deliver

  1. The Last and Lasting Transformation
  2. Divide and Conquer
  3. Triple Taxation
  4. Follow the Value
  5. Waves of Routinization
  6. Adaptive Expertise and Adaptive Performance
  7. Exposure to Unexpected
  8. The Adaptive Element
  9. Elevating Career Paths
  10. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 7: Design for the Future

  1. The Taste of Urgency
  2. Getting the Change Going
  3. Desired Org Goal
  4. Shortlisting
  5. Thinking Slow
  6. Org Designing
  7. Intentional Choices
  8. Key Chapter Ideas
  9. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 7: Make the Org Goal Win

  1. A Man Walks into a Bar …
  2. Immunity to Change and a Cookie Monster
  3. False Choices
  4. Context Is King
  5. Secondary Concerns
  6. Winning Change
  7. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 8: Elevate, Not Eliminate

  1. Waiting for the Fastest
  2. Secondary Skills
  3. Exploit and Explore
  4. Get Change Going
  5. First Design, Then AI
  6. Reframing
  7. Smart Learning
  8. The Offsite
  9. Key Chapter Ideas
  10. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principle 8: Embed Multi-Learning

  1. The Invisible Wall
  2. Multi-Learning Is Not New
  3. Traditional Cases Against Multi-Learning
  4. Argument of High Costs
  5. Argument: “But Our People Cannot Know Everything!”
  6. Argument: “I Am More Valuable When I Am a Deep Specialist”
  7. Argument of Cognitive Overload
  8. Multi-Learning Is Now
  9. “Nobody Needs 1,000X More Databases”
  10. Embed and Amplify
  11. Levers—Embedding and Amplifying Multi-Learning
  12. Feeling the Learning
  13. Seeing the Learning
  14. Refocusing on Learning
  15. Build Your Case for Multi-Learning
  16. Human-Centric Adaptive Org Design
  17. Learn More with Aiden

Chapter 9: Awakening

  1. Subconscious Speaking
  2. Aligning Views
  3. Laws of Nature
  4. Shaping Change
  5. The Art of Possible
  6. Real Change
  7. A Clear Direction
  8. Key Chapter Ideas
  9. Questions for Slow Thinking

Principles 1–8: Summary

Principle 9: Accelerate with Strategic AI

Epilogue: Elevating Humans in the Age of AI

  1. Our Time
  2. People Plus AI

Appendix A: Elevating Katas

  1. Strategy: Direction and Goals
  2. Structure: Power, Authority, Organization
  3. Processes: Information and Decision Flows
  4. Rewards: Incentives and Motivation
  5. People: Skills, Mindsets, Capabilities

Appendix B: Reference Guide to Three Topologies

  1. Resource Topology
  2. Delivery Topology
  3. Adaptive Topology

Bibliography

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