Olivia: A Harvard Business Review study found that 70% of all organizational change initiatives fail. Seventy percent! It turns out, the reason isn't a lack of effort. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what it even means to adapt. Jackson: Wow, seventy percent. So basically, for every ten companies that say, "We need to innovate! We need to change!", seven of them just trip over their own feet and fall flat. That's a staggering number. It feels like we're all just terrible at this. Olivia: We are, and it's because we're using the wrong map. That's the core idea in a fascinating book by Max McKeown called Adaptability: The Art of Winning in an Age of Uncertainty. Jackson: Okay, I’m listening. Adaptability. It sounds like one of those business buzzwords. What makes this one different? Olivia: Well, the author, Max McKeown, isn't just a typical business guru. He's an innovation strategist with a PhD, and he approaches the topic from a really unique angle. The book itself got a lot of attention—it was named a Top 30 Business Book of the year it came out—but it also has this interesting reputation. Some readers find it incredibly insightful, while others say it feels more like an inspirational history of adaptation than a step-by-step manual. Jackson: I can see that. So it’s less of a "how-to" guide and more of a "how-to-think" guide. Olivia: Exactly. And his first big, counter-intuitive point is that the phrase we all know—"adapt or die"—is a false choice. It's a dangerously simplistic view of how the world actually works.

Jackson: Hold on, "adapt or die" feels like the most basic rule of nature and business. What’s wrong with it? If you don't adapt, you become a dinosaur, right? You go extinct. Olivia: That’s one possibility, for sure. But McKeown argues that it's not a simple binary choice. He lays out a spectrum of four possible outcomes for any group facing change. It's not just life or death. Jackson: Four outcomes? Okay, what are they? Olivia: The first is Collapse. That's the "die" part. The group fails and disappears. The second is Survival. This is where it gets interesting. You don't die, but you're miserable. You're just barely hanging on, existing in a state of constant struggle. Think of a company that avoids bankruptcy but has to lay off half its staff and is just a shell of its former self. Jackson: Right, like a zombie company. Still walking, but no brain. I can picture that. What are the other two? Olivia: The third is Thriving. This is what most of us think of as success. You're winning within the current rules of the game. You're hitting your targets, your profits are up, you're the market leader. Jackson: That sounds pretty good to me. What could be better than thriving? Olivia: This is the core of his argument. The fourth and highest state is Transcendence. This is where you don't just win the game; you create a new, better game where more people can win. You change the rules, the situation, and the very definition of success. Jackson: Okay, "transcendence" sounds a little... lofty. Thriving versus transcending—what's the real-world difference? Isn't a company that's thriving already doing everything right? Olivia: That’s the trap! You can be thriving your way right into a collapse. McKeown uses the work of Jared Diamond and his book Collapse to illustrate this perfectly. The story of the Easter Islanders is one of the most haunting examples. Jackson: Oh, the people who built the giant stone heads, the Moai. I know about them. Olivia: Exactly. For centuries, their society was thriving. Their entire culture, their status, their economy revolved around carving and erecting these massive, incredible statues. They were the best in the world at it. They were competing, innovating, building bigger and bigger statues. By all their internal metrics, they were at the absolute peak of their civilization. Jackson: But we know how that story ends. Olivia: We do. To move these statues, they needed logs. To get the logs, they cut down trees. They cut down every last tree on the island. Without trees, the soil eroded, washing into the sea. They couldn't build canoes to fish effectively. Bird populations, a key food source, vanished. Their thriving society, so focused on winning the statue-building game, had systematically destroyed the very ecosystem it depended on. They went from thriving directly to collapse. Jackson: That's chilling. They were literally carving their own tombstones while thinking they were at their peak. It’s a perfect, if terrifying, metaphor. So a company could be hitting record profits—'thriving'—but be on the path to collapse because they're ignoring a fundamental shift in the environment. Olivia: Precisely. Think of Blockbuster in its heyday. It was thriving! It had thousands of stores, massive revenue. But it was so focused on winning the game of physical rentals—late fees, store placement—that it completely missed the shift to streaming. It thrived itself into obsolescence. Transcendence would have been creating Netflix. Jackson: So transcendence is about seeing the bigger picture, beyond just the current metrics of success. It's about asking, "Are we winning the right game?" not just "Are we winning?" Olivia: Yes. And that requires challenging the most comfortable idea of all: stability. McKeown says, "Stability is a dangerous illusion." The moment you feel stable is the moment you should be most worried, because it means you've probably stopped looking for the signs of change. You're just happily carving your next statue. Jackson: Okay, so if just 'thriving' can be a trap, and stability is an illusion, how do we aim for that fourth level, 'transcendence'? How do we actually change the game? Olivia: That's where McKeown gets really provocative. He argues that the systems that got us here, the ones that create that illusion of stability—like rigid corporate hierarchies—are now, in his words, "fossil fuels." They're outdated energy sources. The future belongs to something much more chaotic and alive: the swarm.

Jackson: The swarm? That sounds like a horror movie. What does he mean by that? Olivia: He means moving away from top-down, command-and-control structures and embracing decentralized, fluid, and fast-moving models of organization. It’s one of his most controversial rules, which he titles, and some readers have pointed this out, with a bit of a jolt. The chapter is called "F*** with the rules." Jackson: Ha! Okay, that definitely gets your attention. I can see why some business readers might clutch their pearls at that. But it makes a point. So, what does "f***ing with the rules" look like in practice? Olivia: It means recognizing that the most powerful adaptations often come from breaking the established patterns. And the best case study for this, a story that perfectly captures the clash between an old-world hierarchy and a new-world swarm, is the battle between Sony and a group of hackers called Anonymous back in 2011. Jackson: Oh, I remember this. This was a huge story. Olivia: It was. It started with a 21-year-old hacker named George Hotz. He was brilliant, and for fun, he cracked the security on the Sony PlayStation 3. He wasn't trying to steal games; he just believed systems should be open. He posted how he did it online. Jackson: And Sony, being a massive global corporation, probably sent him a nice letter asking him to stop? Olivia: Not quite. Sony, the very definition of a rigid hierarchy, responded with overwhelming legal force. They sued him. They went after the IP addresses of everyone who had even watched his YouTube video. It was a classic top-down, crush-the-problem response. Jackson: A battleship turning its giant cannons on a single speedboat. Olivia: A perfect analogy. But in doing so, they poked a hornet's nest. Or, more accurately, a swarm. A decentralized, leaderless collective of online activists known as Anonymous saw Sony's actions as an attack on freedom of information. And they declared war. Jackson: But how does a group with no leader declare war? How does a swarm even decide what to do? It sounds like pure chaos. Olivia: That's the power of it. There's no CEO of Anonymous. There's no central committee. It operates on a shared belief system. People propose ideas on forums, and if an idea gains traction, individuals are free to act on it. They swarmed Sony's online services, launching cyberattacks that brought the PlayStation Network to its knees for weeks. Jackson: And Sony had no one to negotiate with, no one to sue. Olivia: Exactly! How do you fight an enemy with no head? Sony's hierarchy was built to fight other hierarchies. It was slow, predictable, and powerful in a conventional way. The swarm was fast, unpredictable, and creative. They exposed massive security holes in Sony's network, leading to the theft of 77 million users' data. It was a public relations and financial disaster for Sony. Jackson: Wow. So the very thing that made Sony strong—its size, its structure, its legal power—became its biggest weakness when facing a completely different kind of opponent. Olivia: That's the essence of it. The hierarchy was a fossil fuel, burning slow and heavy. The swarm was like electricity—instantaneous and everywhere at once. In the end, Sony had to settle with George Hotz. The kid in the speedboat, backed by the swarm, had won. Jackson: That story really drives the point home. It’s not just about being agile within your own company. It's about understanding that entirely new forms of competition—and collaboration—are emerging, and they don't play by the old rules. Olivia: And McKeown argues we need to bring that "swarm" energy inside our own organizations. He talks about the need to "free radicals"—to empower the rebels, the mavericks, the people who challenge the status quo. These are the people who can see the need for change before it becomes a crisis. They are the internal swarm that can prevent the company from becoming a rigid, slow-moving target. Jackson: It makes me think of another one of his rules you mentioned, "Keep the ball." He uses the example of the Barcelona football team and their "tiki-taka" style. They didn't just play football better; they reinvented it. Every player could play every position. It was a fluid, swarming intelligence on the field. Olivia: A perfect example. They simplified the game to its core component—possession—and built a transcendent strategy around it. They changed the game itself. That's the ultimate goal of adaptability. It’s not just about reacting to what your competitor does; it’s about making them react to you.

Jackson: Okay, so if I'm trying to pull all this together, it feels like the big insight from McKeown isn't just "be more flexible." It's a much deeper challenge to our core beliefs. We're taught to seek stability, to build strong hierarchies, to master the existing rules. But this book argues that's the path to becoming a dinosaur. Olivia: I think that's a great summary. He's asking us to fundamentally redefine what success looks like. It’s a shift from a defensive mindset—"how do we survive this change?"—to an offensive one—"how can we create the next change?" Jackson: So it seems the big takeaway is that adaptability isn't a defensive crouch, it's an offensive leap. It's not about reacting to the world, it's about having the ambition and the tools to reshape it. Olivia: Exactly. And that connects to his final, and perhaps most hopeful, rule: "Always the beginning." No matter how badly you've failed or how successful you've been, you are always at the starting line of the next adaptation. The game is never over. Lego was on the brink of collapse, then it adapted by copying its competitor, and now it's a global powerhouse again. It's always the beginning. Jackson: That’s a powerful thought. It takes the pressure off of being perfect and puts the focus on being ready to learn and change. So, for our listeners, what's the one thing they can do tomorrow to start practicing this? Olivia: I think the most practical first step comes from that idea of challenging the rules. McKeown would say to find the best place to focus your adaptation efforts. So, the one concrete thing to do is to ask yourself a simple question: What is one rule in my work, or even my personal life, that I follow without question simply because "that's how it's always been done"? Jackson: That’s a great question. And a little scary to answer honestly. Olivia: It is! But once you identify it, ask a follow-up: What would happen if I playfully bent it? Not broke it in a destructive way, but just... tested its limits. That's where the new game begins. Jackson: I love that. That's a great challenge for our listeners. Think about that one unquestioned rule. We'd love to hear what you come up with. Let us know what you discover when you start to play with the rules you live by. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.