One of the immutable facts business leaders held dear for years exploded not long ago. Clay Shirky's book, "Here Comes Everybody," did the best job explaining why organizations with rich management infrastructure were giving way to leaderless organizations that tapped the power of loosely structured networks. It was provocative then and continues to be an area where big businesses are playing catch-up. The beauty of working in a small team or small company, as Maurya points out early in his outline of Running Lean, 2nd Edition, is that they can be flexible. This flexibility is embodied in a concept borrowed from the book "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries, one of Maurya's mentors and sources of inspiration. A pivot is an adjustment in strategy that redefines elements of your business plan without losing your core vision. The plan itself, and the ability to recognize when and how to pivot, is central to Running Lean, 2nd Edition.
At its most basic, this book is a roadmap to creating a business plan. It might seem redundant to read a book about writing a plan... Why not spend time reading books about starting a business, or servicing customers, or building products? Maurya argues convincingly in Running Lean, 2nd Edition that the Lean Canvas (derivative of the Business Model Canvas introduced earlier by Alexander Osterwalder) is what every entrepreneur should rely on as an anchor during the early stages of building a product or service. Notice we said "building," not launching. Much as software developers have been dancing with the concept of involving the customer during the programming process, as opposed to only showing them the finished product, Maurya is all about transparency. He argues that if you work from a plan that involves customer feedback early and often, you'll be much better prepared to deliver a successful product. Like any business book, the end goal here is to ship something that people love and that makes money. In that sense, Running Lean, 2nd Edition isn't much different than any other treatise on succeeding in business.
The book is organized into four main sections. The first and second parts are devoted to understanding how you'll generate your Lean Canvas on paper. They describe the elements of the canvas and how to think about fitting your product or service plan into the appropriate boxes. Maurya uses the process of writing and publishing his book as an example, a change from the first edition that used a specific business example some found confusing. The latter sections of the book are about evaluating where you have the greatest exposure or risk, and going out to the market to satisfy concerns about that risk. Maurya makes it clear that a major part of any entrepreneur's life is about reducing risk. Wasted time and effort can be part of this, but there are many other risks inherent with any plan that need to be explored, validated, and minimized. Rather than project and speculate, Maurya proposes treating business process as one big experiment. Test and validate, much as programmers are now looking at testing and validating products from the code to the customer level.
There's new material in the form of case studies and comparisons that build on what was addressed in the first book, that may help you adapt the Running Lean concepts to your business. This isn't a one-size-fits-all book, but it certainly does a nice job building on the concepts introduced by others like Ries and Osterwalder. Whether you're a small software startup or a small shop in the midst of a large corporation, Running Lean, 2nd Edition is a great model for thinking about new approaches to innovation. Rather than the seat-of-your-pants, Indiana Jones approach to launching your ideas into the world, Maurya's Running Lean, 2nd Edition proposes a graduated, methodical, and fact-based model. It's a quick read with lots of good takeaways that should inspire budding entrepreneurs out there to get out of their garages (real or metaphorical) and start talking to customers.
