AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 26 - (metaphoric ideas
for updated management practitioners)
Don’t worry about being surprised by the
unexpected. Just carry on expecting the
unexpected, regardless of the implicated chaos.
Create instability as the essence of your strategy.
Keep in mind: a more volatile external environment
requires a less stable internal world. Seek out
substitutes and opportunities to increase
productivity by measuring the mass used in your
business today, and getting it to decrease every
year. Respond with more rapid and varied
adaptation.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 27 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Conduct thousands of tests of products,
prices, features, packages, marketing
channels, credit policies, account
management, customer service,
collections, and retention. Make informed
but subjective judgments. Push ahead
before the competition could catch up.
Seize the opportunity—even when not
really prepared.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 28 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Empower talented people. Accelerate
talented people very quickly, because that’s
where you get the value. Place bets on future
values. Cross boundaries, change jobs, and
form new teams to meet evolving needs.
Align with the business. Use good economic
judgment. Be flexible. And be empathetic to
your colleagues.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 29 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
It’s okay to break the rules in the right
way. Going around doing randomly
disconnected things. Develop all the
peripheral relationships you need to be
effective organizationally. Manage the
connections rather than the structure.
Also know how to hybridize.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 30 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Reach out to others with corresponding roles
across the organization to learn and share
ideas. Move around and support your
colleagues when needed. Enable innovation
by bringing DIVERSE elements together.
Without these kinds of connections,
DIVERSITY has little inherent value.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 31 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Empower others and yourself by the whole
chaotic percolation of ideas at the bottom
of the organization. Bear in mind:
Empirical evidence, based on small tests,
always carried the day. Attract very bright
people with initial proof of concept, then
plug them into your organizational
structure.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 32 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Maintain common interfaces and cross-
functional capabilities that allow work to
flow and value chains to talk to each other.
Harvest the idea, then propagate it wildly
before the mimicry of competition sets in.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 33 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Employ diversification to spread their risks.
Be willing to take the risk of shaping the
future according to your own design.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but don
put all your eggs in one basket. Beware of
this: Discontinuities, irregularities, and
volatilities seem to be proliferating.
Remember: Without risks, life poses no
mystery.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 34 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Seed, select, amplify, and destabilize the
situation are the two management ideas
for accelerated evolution. Don’t expect a
perfect feedback system in a volatile
environment. Don’t be excellent at
doing; be excellent at changing, too.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 35 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Explore the extremes, where nonlinear
effects kick in. Sometimes, the extremes
contain pleasant, nonlinear surprises.
Imagine things that engender loyalty
towards your organization. Through
experimentation with detailed
measurements and discipline and logical
analysis, you find profitable innovations.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 36 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Test things at the bottom of the organization
that lead to big insights. Test, experiment,
measure, and optimize. Institute hard-core
analytic optimization. Architect your entire
infrastructure to operate in real time. Let
your account-management programs to be
driven by experimentation.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 37 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Dream up programs that might be of value
to customers, and then test them. A
successful test often triggers other
behaviors, and you should follow these
with more new offers. Shift to roll-out,
because ah of a sudden your competition
get a preponderance of one product of my
organization that they’ve never seen
before.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 38 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Have a free flow of resources to where the
value is. Rather than penalizing people who
fail, praise them for their commitment and
intentions. Reinforce the tolerance of risk and
failure. Revise your best practices. Observe,
orient, decide, act. First to fight now means
first to learn.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 39 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Fly great distances, meet new people,
and encounter new ideas. Have a
freedom of thought, the passion for
experimentation, and the desire to
imagine your future. Believe in not
commonly believed opinions.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 40 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
It’s about getting more from less. That’s the true
road to wealth. Focus on changes, challenges,
and opportunities. Earn more while spending
less. Reach a higher level of output. Pursue
profit maximization. Remain competitive. Adapt
to revolutionary innovations in technology and
business efficiency the soonest. Craft value
creating relationships. Establish guidelines, offer
insight, and provide inspiration. Identify, analyze,
and maximize your learning opportunities.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 42 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Evaluate, identify, select, negotiate, manage,
turn around, govern, implement, anticipate,
and ensure success. Generate immediate cost
savings. Realize a cash infusion from the sale
of assets. Relieve the burden of staffing.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 43 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Be freer to direct your attention to the
more strategic aspects of your job. Keep
your logic compelling.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 44 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
Destabilize in order to live closer to the edge
of chaos. This means being agile enough to
change as the environment does, but not so
fluid as to lose its defining structure. Walk the
walk as well as talking the talk of the Adaptive
Enterprise.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 45 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
A lesson: The word adaptation describes the
interaction between an organism and its
environment.

AGOSTINI SUCCESS TENET # 46 -
(METAPHORIC IDEAS FOR UPDATED
MANAGEMENT PRACTITIONERS)
TO BEAR IN MIND! But one thing an
evolutionary and ecological perspective tells
us for sure: If several major forces are at
work, they will not progress in separate
straight lines —they will interact chaotically,
creating unforeseen changes.