How do we learn, adapt and perform to become 10X more impactful and relevant?
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and in many other categories and stores
#1 on Amazon
#1 Best Seller in Management Science (Amazon.com, Amazon.nl, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de – Kindle, Feb 2026) and in many other categories and stores.
10XORG: About the Book
What would you do if your CEO asked: “When do you think we can turn down new hires by turning up AI?”
Do you see this happening too: competitors are racing ahead, investors want more with less, and the leadership team expects a breakthrough?
Hanna, the HR head, receives this jarring message from her CEO. Initially dismissing it as humor, she investigates the actual state of her organization.
Working through the Org Topologies lens with her leadership team, Hanna identifies what had remained hidden: an org design misfit. Once strategy-to-structure alignment is recognized, AI can be adopted strategically—as a capability multiplier that amplifies human intelligence rather than displacing it.
“There is no instant pudding.”— W. Edwards Deming
Indeed, sustainable change takes attention and time.
Told as a business novel woven with practical principles and real cases, this book shows how to unlock human potential by designing for learning, collaboration, and performance, and only then using AI as a force multiplier—so intelligence is extended and elevated, not replaced.
Table of Contents
Why 10X?
Expectations for business performance are rising fast. AI vendors promise massive gains, executives fear falling behind, and investors demand more. In this climate, a comfortable 10% improvement won't be enough.
10X stands for a step change: intentionally redesigning how the organization works to elevate performance, not just optimize yesterday's efficiency.
“10X is a vote for humanity in an era obsessed with mechanical efficiency.”
It's about radical gains in business results and the future relevance of people. Because lasting performance comes from great organizations—places where ordinary people can thrive and do extraordinary work.
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Every organizational unit carries a mandate: a bundle of authority and responsibility to decide, act, and deliver results within a defined scope.
These two dimensions determine how each unit comes to life — whether this is a person, a team, an AI agent, or a temporary project group.
Together, the mandates shape the capabilities each unit is allowed to apply and the actions it is empowered to take.
If you want to improve organizational performance, influence how people behave, and eventually shape the organizational culture, adjusting these mandates is one of the most powerful activities you can undertake.
Four Organizational Intelligences
Combining two axes of mandates gives us four distinctive modes of organizational intelligence. Just as people can be "word smart" or "logic smart," organizations express different intelligences through their structure and mandates.
Coordination Intelligence
Oversees the whole solution space with centralized control. Lacks skills to create value directly but adds value by coordinating others' work through planning and control.
Adaptive Intelligence
Focused on owning outcomes and shaping what gets built next. Blends discovery and delivery, using real customer signals to refine both the problem and the solution.
Specialization Intelligence
Highly skilled in narrow domains. Excel at precision, quality, and efficiency within well-defined boundaries. Act as deep specialists focused on defined tasks rather than outcomes.
Flow Intelligence
Creates value independently within a defined work area. Masters a complete Definition of Done, shipping results quickly while staying within defined boundaries.
Three Topologies
Drive fit-for-purpose org design with three common organizational topologies — each with a distinct structural shape that optimizes for a different kind of performance.
Resource Topology
Performance through resource efficiency and deep specialization
Work is divided by function. People specialize deeply and are assigned work that fits their skills. Resource managers coordinate planning, allocation, and monitoring.
Delivery Topology
Performance through fast, predictable flow
Functional workers are remixed into cross-functional teams organized around specific features, product areas, or service types. Each team handles end-to-end workflows within well-defined scopes.
Adaptive Topology
Performance through flexibility, innovation, and resilience
Sub-units merge into a larger networked system — a "bigger brain" — focused on solving a shared goal. Broad mandates enable high adaptability but require sustained investment in learning, transparency, and psychological safety.
Strategic AI
The rise of AI does not change the responsibility of aligning structure with strategy — but it does expand the options. Used thoughtfully, AI can strengthen an organization's intelligence. Used carelessly, it can simply amplify existing dysfunctions.
Strategic AI starts by understanding which capabilities are missing and then using AI to help build them. And that might be different for each of the organizational intelligences.
Combined with the M.A.D.E. org change loop, strategic use of AI can make the change easier and more sustainable. For instance, by lowering the costs of multi-skilling.
As we say in the 10X Org book: "First Design, Then AI." AI must come only after the organization's direction is clear.
8 Principles for 10X Performance
The 10X Org principles provide that system. They are not tactics or best practices to be cherry-picked, but a coherent design logic for organizations that can learn, adapt, and perform at 10X scale. Each principle builds on the previous ones—moving from ownership and intent, through structural choices and learning loops, toward sustained human and organizational capability in the age of AI.
Own, Not Rent
Sustainable improvement endures only when the organization truly owns the change.
Drive Performance with Org Design
Make ownership concrete through deliberate system design.
Shape Intelligence with Mandates
Focus change on skills and work mandates to reshape what the organization can see, learn, and act on.
Fit for Purpose
Replace ideology with intent. Different goals demand different structural choices.
Change Through a Learning Loop
The M.A.D.E. loop—Map, Assess, Design, Elevate—turns change into continuous evolution.
Follow the Value—Learn and Deliver
Design organizations that move toward where value is emerging.
Make the Org Goal Win
Protect improvements from local optimization by embedding a clear primary goal.
Embed Multi-Learning, Then Amplify with AI
Use AI strategically to accelerate learning and extend human capabilities to 10X potential.
Craig Larman Announces the Book
