The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results

Once I started it, could not wait to finish it!It gives a very different perspective of running an organization, completely different than what I thought was the right way.Thank you so much, Andrew McAfee for this book and showing me The Geek Way.

McAfee, an author of many tech books, now puts the culture of successful companies in front of us. He asserts that the culture of speed, openness and other elements provide the medium for growth. He provides data to support his claim, which I’ll discuss below. While the author claims this new way of operating companies started in the 2000s, and is codified in a Netflix presentation openly shared with everyone, he also says that the crux of the Geek Way is found in a stack of business books sky-high. Which probably would include “Creativity Inc.” by Ed Catmull about Pixar’s culture. McAfee’s experience makes this a fun read, but for those of us who have read the mile-high stack of business books about cultures of mutual trust—competence, reliability/dependability, openness, acceptance (of failure in particular) and integrity—and driving accountability, responsibility and creativity will hardly learn much here. We would have seen similar things in Deming’s work, the culture of Westinghouse’s Hawthorne Works operations from the 1920s and 1930s, famous Skunkwork developments for World War II, high-reliability/high-performance military and civil operations teams, and so on. Much of McAfee’s advice can be found in “Built to Last” by Collins and Porras. Or McFarland’s “The Breakthrough Company” for the small- or medium-sized enterprises. Still, this book will help start-up leaders set the right course for their fledgling companies.Like many other business books, McAfee’s suffers from a lack of contradictory evidence. He and others can write about the 10-50 successful companies practicing the Geek Way. He cannot or does not uncover if there are thousands of companies practicing the Geek Way outside of Silicon Valley, outside of tech, and how successful or not they are. There may be many that don’t succeed. How many tech startups have died, and yet had a Geek Way culture? How many other business failures—and the number is staggering in the first five years of any one business—weren’t prevented by the Geek Way? We may never know because Harvard Business School—of which McAfee had been a faculty member—cannot tell us. There isn’t a database for this.While he applauds the social aspects of Geek companies—cultural evolution—he neglects some of the complaints that have happened even inside his star companies. There’s still tribalism in society and in tech companies: gender, race, caste are still obstacles to hearing and accepting another’s input or feedback. While constructive debate might be healthy, psychological safety can be key as McAfee points out. Still different personality types and different inherent motivational bases need different communication environments, methods and venues for safety and overcoming timidity. Ethical failures have also occurred in Geek Way companies. Maybe in a few decades we’ll know if Geek Way companies are “built to last.”Likewise, the inertia in organizational dynamics and corporate culture requires several years to change a non-Geek company into one practicing the Geek Way. It’s why some startup kings and queens have had a hard time moving over to established companies. The people have “grown up” under a different kind of leadership and have a hard time trusting the new leadership styles, especially in the lower ranks who have less exposure to the C-suite.The author avoids the trap of multiple anecdotes masquerading as data. However, McAfee fails to discern the quality of the data he includes. For example he touts a study of GlassDoor comments. GlassDoor surveys are self-selected, not random. This has an inherent bias towards the theoretical ends of company-culture distributions: the really bad and the really good. So we know nothing of the cultures—perhaps some operating in the Geek Way—of the middlingly rated, middlingly successful companies.While there are some inherent flaws in McAfee’s approach—but not unique for business books—his work can be important for those who need to hear and want to hear how the successful tech companies are thriving.

I’ve read each book authored by McAfee along with virtually every paper he’s written. There are few whose writing and articulation of topics I enjoy as much as his. His own curious, original, and independent style of thinking MATCHED with his ability to synthesize a wide body of complex/dynamic ideas AND THEN deliver a unified theory in a clear, unique, and engaging writing style – is second to none. To sum up McAfee: A brilliant thinker… Always guided by interesting questions… Always extensively researched… Always clear in his delivery… And always practitioner-friendly (practical and actionable).In my own work, The Geek Way is particularly applicable. I help client organizations (executives and practitioner teams) identify how they might best incorporate technology to better compete now and in the future. Our engagements are most often initiated by executive teams approaching us frustrated (and often frantic) with the news that they’ve deployed $XXXM (often ranging hundreds of millions of dollars) into their digital transformation effort but that they haven’t captured value from those investments. Essentially, what began as an attempt to take a page out from the playbook of companies in the tech space to “be more innovative” has spiraled out of control. Those executives are then surprised (and often reluctant) when, instead of diving headfirst into the technology and attempting to perfectly map out what’s going to happen, we focus a majority of the attention on helping them rethink (and redesign) their organizational culture, organizational models (business and operating models), governance, etc. in order to harness the value of these technologies.McAfee understands what many executives struggle to understand and put into practice, which is: In most cases, it’s NOT the design and development of new technologies that’s holding them back. Instead, what’s often holding them back is a failure to design, build, and lead corresponding new/modern (and more effective) organizational cultures that support innovation, speed, agility, and execution simultaneously. Unleashing new technologies that are “bolted on” to classic, industrial-era corporate culture models is a recipe for disaster. In fact, the rate of change and innovation in these new technologies necessitates an upgrade to the standard corporate culture, a modern company that’s able to move faster and innovate more. In The Geek Way, McAfee provides the playbook to help executives build a modern organization and thrive in a faster-moving world.

McAfee presents a collection of really interesting, practical and essential concepts for growing a successful, sustainable organization. I loved this book.

I work in healthcare and still believe this book should be required reading for everyone in the C Suite. It also explains why so many hospitals are working in dying cultures.

really cool.

1. The book could be much shorte without so many selective stories. 2. The book might be more appropriate for someone who need a crash course without practical details.

For anyone who wants to understand the sucess of firms like amazon,google,etc

What I liked about this book is that everything it is discussing, I kind of already knew about and had figured out for myself, its just that I had never put it all together into a coherent structure. So its great to see it all written down in a framework that makes sense. I feel so empowered by this because I can now explain all these things to other people and have lots of examples to draw on.The book is quite short, almost a collection of around 6 essays. Perhaps in future edition the author could expand upon specific practices employed to implement the geek way more. More practical guidelines on how to introduce geek culture or maintain it would be welcome. No matter, I still give it 5 stars.