“Speed Got Us Here but it Won’t Get Us there.”
(See March 15 blog post)

How can this be true?

Speed is essential to survival for many species, and has been an apt metaphor for successful businesses. “Get there first!” “Be the early leader!” These are the battle cries of business. Leaders are rewarded for the speed at which they make decisions and for delivering immediate results.

We’ve spent the last 20 years getting wired for speed. The dot com decade was like a series of Talladega Nights that left plenty of multi-car wrecks along the sidelines. (“If you ain’t first, your last.” We have the written permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc. to use that trademarked phrase.)

But consider the story of the fastest land animal on earth – the cheetah. These sleek and elegant cats can accelerate faster than race cars, hitting speeds up to 45 miles per hour (mph) within 2 seconds. It’s as though these mammals were custom designed for speed. Their claws, which don’t retract, act like cleats on an athletic shoe, providing traction on rough terrain. Their bones are built to withstand the harsh pounding of a galloping speed. Even their long, slender tails steady their balance as they hit top speeds up to 70 mph.

Yet this near perfect design for speed is facing extinction. Read more »

Omar, a surgeon who’s been working a 24-hour shift, goes to a break room and dials into a machine that checks his concentration, confidence and wakefulness. It’s a new machine that has replaced the magnets he used for neuro-programming in medical school. As Omar enters the operating room, he uses the NIC machine to do a Neuro-Imaging Cycles check to make sure he’s thinking hard and fast enough to do surgery.

Today’s patient is described as a quantifiable selfer who’s done a great job regularly reporting health data to his monitoring service, helping them to catch his problem early. Omar will be implanting bio stents that will shape to the patient’s heart once inside the body. The biostents also can grow new heart material if necessary by reassembling plasma to create new structures. Read more »

Speed has long been held up as the essential competitive ingredient for successful businesses to thrive in a world that seems to be governed by the clock. After all, those who get to market fastest, who carve out a position as an early leader, who invent the next wave of cool, stay ahead of the game for at least some period of time. The idea of speed, in this regard, is one that reaches business leaders at a primal level.

Leader after leader cries about the “need for speed,” and its new role as the single most important condition of future business success. But there is some flawed logic floating around the business community.

Read more »

And 4 Quick Ideas To Focus Learning On Core Capabilities To Improve Business Outcomes

Two interesting pieces of information came across my desk today.

The first was research done by McKinsey who found that 60 percent of senior executives said building core capabilities (lean operations, leadership development, merchandising or anything the company does well to drive business results) are among their top 3 priorities. Ninety percent said it’s in their top ten.

New Research From McKinsey

BUT less than a third say their company training programs focus on strengthening the capabilities that add the most value to business performance. Further, only 25 percent said their company’s training programs are “extremely” or “very effective” in preparing employee groups to drive business results. Confidence in corporate training drops further for leaders at lower levels in the hierarchy.

The McKinsey study said that when senior leaders set the training agenda, capability building is linked explicitly to immediate business goals, and learning programs focus more directly on core skills that make a difference to business performance. Additionally, these companies spend a higher percentage of their operating budgets on training compared to companies where HR or business unit leaders set the training agenda.

(We’re compiling these justifications and proof points for building or improving a Leaders As Teachers program in a business case template that will be available at the Leaders As Teachers Institute in the coming weeks.)

Then, in a Fast Company interview, Ford Motors CEO Alan Mullaly talked about the importance of clarity from senior leaders. Shortly before Mullaly assumed the role of CEO, the Ford team stopped production on its popular Taurus model because sales of their latest version, which they said looked like a football, were tanking.

Ford CEO Alan Mullaly

Mullaly said the Taurus was a key reason he took the job, and reminded them how many billions of dollars are invested in developing brand loyalty around a car like the Taurus. Read more »

Can you imagine a timid, barely audible voice at the back of a brainstorming session at Boeing suggesting, “Let’s build a plastic airplane.” Wouldn’t the mere mention of such a whacky notion stir a loud outburst from many leaders?

“That’s ridiculous. No respectable aerospace company would use anything but sheet metal.”

“Sure, and make the skill sets obsolete for every employee in engineering, manufacturing and fabrication.”

But there were at least a few who thought, “Maybe this guy’s onto something.”

Boeing's Dreamliner

Of course over at Airbus, their brainstorming session came up with something much more reasonable. “We need a larger airplane to carry the growing numbers of people in the Middle East and Asia who can now afford to travel.  Everyone on board with that?”

Twenty years ago, when companies didn’t recognize innovation as the lifeblood of sustainability to the extent they do now, growth came at the ease of new and improved. Today, it often demands a step change; a disruption.

Airplanes take years to design, build, test and bring to market.  Boeing leaders needed courage nearly 10 years in advance to pursue an idea that wasn’t just outside the box; it was outside the company and the airline industry.

Read more »

NBA LAKERS STAR KOBE BYANT

You might not think the NBA is a place where the Leaders As Teachers approach is practiced, or effective.  Think again!

A Spike Lee documentary, “Doin’ Work”, that aired on ESPN in May, 2009, featured the personal narrative of NBA star Kobe Bryant during a game against the San Antonio Spurs.

Lee created a cocoon of cameras and microphones around Bryant to capture strategy in the locker room, his narrative to orchestrate chess-match-like moves out on the court, and sideline coaching sessions with team members where he shares analysis of the Spur’s tactics.

Bryant noted how basketball, like a business, depends on data analysis to assess and gain insights on competitors.

“You don’t disguise your calls.  (Plays the team will run.) There’s so much scouting and filming, teams know what you’re going to run.  They know what moves I like.  But it’s about coming up with counters for that.  There are so many levels of execution. It’s always a new puzzle; a new game.”

Read more »