This is a book about organisations that are flexible and quick to adapt to changing environment, markets and customer needs – we call them agile companies or organisations.

These organisations are agile not just because of the way they manage IT and other development projects; the whole organisation is agile. What characterises them all is that they have removed elements of hierarchic and bureaucratic management that constrain and frustrate their employees.

Most notably they have eliminated budgeting and other detailed planning methods, which in practice are often associated with tight monitoring and a focus on short-term shareholder demands and supported by individual performance-based incentives.

In our experience removing one or two of these features is not enough, a holistic approach is needed. But the prize is worth the effort because it can help to transfrom organisations from rigid super tankers to agile shoals of fish.

The book presents differences between agile and rigid organisations from both practical and research perspectives and offers numerous cases from the real business world to support its conclusions including descriptions of how this transformation has been achieved in practice.

Göran Nilsson has extensive experience in academia and the business world and co-authored the classic international text book "Management Control Systems.”

Lennart Francke worked for 35 years at the renowned Swedish universal bank Handelsbanken, where he rose to be CFO. Subsequently he took up a senior role at another large Swedish bank and has served on many other Company boards.

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