The Four Pillars of High Performance: How Robust Organizations Achieve Extraordinary Results

A substantive and crystal clear guide, especially for CEOs. Light takes years of data provided by the Rand Corporation and distills them into the 4 essential pillars to establish high performing organizations and the operating principles of "robust organizations." Most useful of all is Light's guidance in facilitating organizational change -- thereby enabling readers who are leaders (or consultants to leaders) to advance organizations to new heights of performance for today's and tomorrow's challenging environments. Light shines light on the path for success !!

It is evident from the text and from the author's course notes that his working title was Robust Organization. His publisher must have thought that people would not buy a book with that title, that they will only buy a book that promises, like all the others, 'high performance' as a direct and immediate result of reading the book. Light's actual message is that, in a turbulent environment, you have to build in a capability to achieve performance in different ways. This is not efficient, nor is it a direct path to high performance. But if you do it the right way, it is extremely efficient insurance, and an insurance that many organizations don't have or throw away needlessly. It is an extremely important line of argument, especially for organizations of last resort, such as any Federal agency. The literature in this area is thin and this is a good addition. (Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents, is a classic.) While Light gets to the right answer, his concepts, arguments, and evidence are often unclear or disappointing. I get the impression that Light has the gift of gab, lays it down quickly, and moves on. (His frequent talks on NPR flow nicely.) He asserts, for example, that his robust organization qualifies as a resilient organization in Hamel's terms, but that a resilient organization isn't necessarily robust. Correct, but I tried to restate his argument and found that I had to make up a lot that wasn't there. But I suppose that makes the book useful for readers who want to make it their own and use it. I have reorganized my own organizational diagnostic instrument around Light's categories and am pleased with how it helps me relate detailed alignment issues with broader strategy.

The RAND Corporation's organizational strategy advice is based on more than 50 years of research. Author Paul C. Light draws from RAND studies primarily related to the U.S. military to explain the need for organizations to confront unavoidable change with alertness, agility, adaptability and alignment. He notes that these four attributes are equally valuable to small and large businesses, and to organizations of all kinds. You can apply each solid lesson Light takes from RAND's studies to your organization's structure and planning. In fact, some of his points are already common wisdom. Political instability, labor force fluctuations, or the potential for terrorism or economic unrest affect some industries more than others, but every organization is susceptible to unanticipated developments. If you want to find out what to do when your organization gets surprised, we recommend this in-depth research-based report.

Obviously, when building anything, there are several essential requirements: an appropriate design, materials of the highest possible quality, skilled workers, and establishment of a solid foundation. In this volume, Light suggests how certain organizations have met these requirements and how others can also do so. He concedes that a moribund or demoralized organization can "create a burst of high performance by terrifying [its] workforce or rallying [its] troops" but invariably the results are only temporary. He asserts (and I agree) that the greater challenge is to "build organizations that produce results by hedging against the inevitable surprises and vulnerabilities that lurk in today's environment, while exploiting opportunities to shape the future to their advantage." Hence the importance of having a stereoscopic perspective which includes an awareness of possible and at least a sense of probable perils as well as opportunities. Hence the importance of having a design which can accommodate modification in response to "inevitable surprises." Hence the importance, also, of having a foundation which can withstand the impact of adversity while sustaining competitive initiatives. In 1999, Light was engaged by the RAND Corporation to examine what its researchers had learned about managing public organizations during several previous decades . He eventually decided to focus on what had been learned about how any organization can achieve and then sustain high performance. It is important to note, as does Light, that RAND research is guided by three basic principles embedded in its own organizational culture: "First, RAND has a well-deserved reputation for questioning the questions.....Second, RAND has a long history of questioning its own answers through peer review and quality control....Third, RAND allows the evidence to speak, even when it unsettles the client." I was also interested to learn that RAND had some serious problems of its own during the mid-1990s which are noted within Light's narrative. RAND solved those problems by focusing on the basics of the Four Pillars. That said, let's examine how he organizes his material. In Chapter 1, he shares several lessons about the future revealed by RAND's research after a rigorous analysis of "four critical sources of organizational vulnerability: ignorance, inflexibility, indifference, and inconsistency." In Chapter 2, Light shifts his attention to what RAND research has learned about addressing the vulnerabilities of uncertainty. Of special interest to me are the "seven powerful predictors of high performance" and the "four underlying pillars that help organizations achieve extraordinary results," all of which had been identified by the research. Then in Chapter 3, Light explains what RAND has learned about each of the "four pillars." In Chapter 4, he focuses on what RAND has learned about operating a "robust" organization. "Simply asked, how do robust organizations create the alertness, ag