WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
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.
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.
WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK
We wrote this book because we keep seeing organizations in an infinite loop: they try to hit new performance expectations with old structures. Leaders roll out transformations, AI licenses, new operating models, and fresh jargon—yet the overall system doesn’t improve.
People get faster locally, costs go up, but outcomes don’t move, because the organization design is not fit for purpose.
At the heart of this book lies a question that organizations and their leaders must explore with urgency:
How do we learn, adapt, and perform to become 10X more impactful and relevant?
In the AI era, the mismatch between org design and strategy becomes brutal: a small, well-designed company can amplify AI into a real advantage, while a large, function-siloed enterprise just grows queues, handoffs, and work-in-progress.
We wrote 10X ORG as a manager’s guide to doing the hard but high-leverage work: treat org design as a real management practice, map how value actually flows, assess fit to strategy, and redesign deliberately. This way, AI amplifies human learning and compounds impact instead of triggering more control, pressure, and wasted potential.
WHAT'S IN THE BOOK
Read other blogs on Scrum.org on this subject
First Fix Your Org Design, Then Adopt AI.
Strategy + Org Design = Performance.
From Scrum to Org Design: Honesty as a Capability.
From Scaling Scrum to Designing 10X Performance
GET THE BOOK ON AMAZON
You can get your book on Amazon.com here.
DAVE WEST ON THE ORG TOPOLOGIES APPROACH
“Org Topologies provides a practical approach to evaluating and improving your organization. In this book, Alexey and Roland describe not only a robust strategy for organizational redesign but also introduce a simple way to get started, which is often the hardest step. You might be surprised how disconnected your organization's structure is from what you are trying to achieve with it. In this book, Alexey and Roland describe a practical approach to organizational redesign, offering a blueprint for success.”
— Dave West
Alexey, Craig & Roland