Winning with Agility

Name: Winning with Agility
ISBN: 9787573920232

乔夫·夏普 / 宫玉振Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House · ChinaApr 2026

3.7

Word count: 190K words
Chapters: 23
ISBN: 9787573920232

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Summary

The second volume in the Winning Battles book series, translated under the lead of Gong Yuzhen, professor of management at Peking University's National School of Development and expert in military management, is an authoritative and systematic work drawn from elite forces—a set that integrates organizational leadership, execution, and organizational capability to forge rules for breaking through in an uncertain era.

Among them, Agile to Win is a practical guide that deeply integrates the tactics of the British Special Air Service (SAS) with business leadership. Drawing on his dual experience in the military and the business world, author Geoff Sharpe distills the SAS's four-pillar organizational model—culture, execution, evolution, and resilience—and reveals its business value through vivid cases:

1. Disruptive organizational culture: the idea that "people are the team, and the team is the people" drives strong cohesion, empowering companies to build a "pirate-style innovation" gene and activate individual freedom within a framework.

2. Leadership revolution: from "leading by example" to "servant leadership," focusing on solving real problems rather than power labels, so teams can make decisions without fear and collaborate efficiently under pressure.

3. Tactical wisdom of the small defeating the large: use guerrilla thinking to break resource dilemmas, upend traditional competition with speed, aggression, and surprise, and leverage light assets for high returns.

4. Crisis as opportunity: provide resilience rules for "rallying back," enabling companies to turn defeat around like the SAS and break through amid black swans.

If you want to be a true winner in an era of uncertainty, this book will be a required course for your organizational upgrade.

Editor's review

The book's highlight lies in organizing the operating methods of the British Special Air Service into four pillars—culture, execution, evolution, and resilience—and using business cases to illustrate their corresponding value. Unlike works that discuss only willpower, it focuses more on how organizations maintain speed of action and capacity to adjust when resources are limited and the environment changes rapidly. The book's ideas on cohesion—"people are the team, and the team is the people"—servant leadership, the tactical thinking of the small defeating the large, and the resilience rules for rallying back after failure together form a complete perspective from culture building to crisis response. Gong Yuzhen participated in the translation, and the terminology is handled fairly reliably. It is suitable for organizations that need to improve decision-making speed and adaptability under competitive pressure. It is recommended not to read it as a story collection in one sitting, but to read it in four blocks by pillar, and after each block to review the actual performance of your own organization on the corresponding dimension, then decide which block to prioritize for improvement.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Managers facing uncertain markets who need to improve their organization's adaptability
Leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises with limited resources who hope to compete with flexible strategies
HR practitioners concerned with organizational culture and leadership transformation
Readers interested in how special forces experience can be applied to business

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking standardized process manuals and hoping to copy operational steps
Military enthusiasts interested only in military history and tactical details
Readers in stable, mature industries who do not yet need organizational change

Reading tips

Read in four parts by culture, execution, evolution, and resilience, and conduct an organizational self-assessment after each part.
When reading business cases, first think of your own response plan, then compare it with the book's approach and note the differences.
Save the "rallying back" chapter to reread after your team suffers a setback; the experience will be more concrete.
Read alongside The Courage to Execute and compare the two books' different emphasis on execution and resilience.

About the publisher

Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House China · Founded in 1980

Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House is a comprehensive science and technology publisher known for academic monographs, applied technology titles and popular science books, with a focus on three areas: scholarship, popular science and science education. Judging from the books in the catalog, its publishing covers popular science, medicine, management, social psychology, Eastern philosophy and personal finance. It publishes works by overseas authors such as Douglas Hofstadter, Atul Gawande and Carlota Perez alongside Chinese writers including Liu Jian, Hu Hai, Wang Yifang and Peng Xiaohua. Representative titles include Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Being Mortal, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, A Short History of the Human Body (full-color illustrated edition), and Gawande's Better and Complications, spanning cognitive science, medical humanities and the social dimensions of technology. Its distinctive approach is to connect scholarship and the general reader through popular science, valuing both ideas and readability. As public information is limited, this profile is drawn only from the books in the catalog.

版权信息
系列推荐序一没有退路，真的是胜利之路吗
系列推荐序二向军队学打胜仗：在不确定时代锻造组织的决胜力
系列推荐序三在协同中自修，在秩序中自由
译者序 SAS：一个传奇性的组织
引言敏捷组织力的四支柱模型
第一部分支柱1文化，打造不败根基
第1章人即团，团即人
第2章要么带头，要么跟上，要么让开
第3章勇者必胜，不敢一试，何以取胜
第二部分支柱2执行，以雷霆之势攻克难关
第4章以小博大
第5章速度、攻击性与出其不意
第6章分清“关键”与“无关紧要”
第三部分支柱3进化，永不止步的变革
第7章原地不动者，终成靶心
第8章勇于求援
第9章停止学习，你就成了累赘
第四部分支柱4韧性，从逆境中强势崛起
第10章别无选择，唯有反击
后记团结起来，去面对世界上真正的难题
附录不断进化的SAS选拔机制
参考文献

FAQ

What is the difference between this book and The Courage to Execute?

Both books belong to the second volume of the Winning Battles book series, but their emphasis differs. The Courage to Execute revolves around execution culture and a four-step cycle; Agile to Win uses the SAS four-pillar model as its framework and places more emphasis on cultural cohesion, the small defeating the large, and resilience in crisis. You can read one first and then supplement with the other as needed.

What exactly is the four-pillar model in the book?

According to the materials, the four pillars are culture, execution, evolution, and resilience. Culture emphasizes the cohesion of "people are the team, and the team is the people"; execution focuses on efficient collaboration that solves real problems; evolution points to continuous adjustment and innovation; and resilience provides rules for rallying back after failure. Together they support an organization's performance under high pressure.

Will readers without management experience gain from this book?

They will gain something, especially from the content on courage in decision-making, team collaboration, and attitudes toward failure. However, the book discusses organizational culture building and leadership transformation at length, and readers without management experience may find it hard to relate; it is recommended to read it in connection with their own work or team experience.

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About the author

乔夫·夏普 Author

Public information about Geoff Sharpe is rather limited, and what can be confirmed centers mainly on Agile to Win, the only Chinese-language work of his held in the collection. Classified under management, the book appears, judging from its title and category, to focus on how organizations can respond to challenges in complex and fast-changing environments, improve execution and make decisions more efficiently, addressing managers and team leaders. The available facts give no clear information about Sharpe's nationality, dates of birth and death, education or professional career, so no speculation or supplementation about his personal life should be made. What is certain is that he has one signed work, with Agile to Win as his representative title; the subject falls within management practice and the style leans toward methodology and practical application. Readers wishing to learn more about the author may turn to the book itself to grasp the emphasis of his management ideas, while treating biographical details with caution and relying on public sources.

宫玉振 Author

Gong Yuzhen is a Chinese author whose works are currently represented in the library by four titles, commonly classified under inspirational growth and management. Public information about him is limited, and details such as his background, nationality, and dates of birth and death are not known. Based on the available works, his writing centers on leadership, strategic thinking, and the wisdom of competition. These include Twelve Lectures on Zeng Guofan's Leadership, which distills leadership principles from Zeng Guofan's approach to self-cultivation and the use of talent, and The Way to Victory: The Art of War and the Principles of Competition, which discusses competition through Sun Tzu's classic. Two further titles are The Character of Leadership and Agile Victory. Overall, he draws on Chinese historical figures and classical military thought to translate traditional wisdom into practical methods for modern managers, combining cases with principles and addressing workplace readers and managers. His works have a certain influence among readers of inspirational growth and business management.