The Fast Beating the Slow: The Need for Speed in Modern Business

The Fast Beating the Slow: The Need for Speed in Modern Business by Laura Stack

"If you don't have a goal, you will score zero even if you run with the fastest speed." -- Israelmore Ayivor, African author and blogger. According to some futurists, there may come a time when technology evolves so rapidly we won't be able to keep up with it. At that point, the future will become completely unpredictable. They call this the Singularity—and some believe it's just around the corner. In the business world, change already moves at a breakneck pace. No longer do three- to five-year strategic plans suffice. As I've pointed out in my latest book, Execution IS the Strategy, static plans go stale within months. Indeed, some companies are reviewing strategy quarterly or even monthly. Front-line employees must have the permission and the flexibility to work with any tactics … [Read more...]

Teaching the Mission: Helping Your Team Understand and Achieve Alignment

Teaching the Mission: Helping Your Team Understand and Achieve Alignment by Laura Stack #productivity

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance." — Brian Tracy, American motivational speaker and writer. In 2001, energy company Enron self-destructed in a scandal that still amazes those of us who witnessed it. Despite the core values literally carved into the façade of its Houston headquarters—Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence—top executives completely lost track of their company's official Mission and Vision. Instead, they focused on feathering their own nests and defrauding stakeholders to the tune of billions of dollars. As a leader, you can't allow anything like that to happen on your watch. … [Read more...]

The Execution Continuum: Your Means of Spinning Victory from Chaos

The Execution Continuum: Your Means of Spinning Victory from Chaos by Laura Stack #productivity

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."—Sir Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of the U.K. "Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment." -- Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, American authors of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. As with so many other things, business has borrowed the concepts of "strategy" and “tactics” from military and games theory, where the two are typically regarded as discrete if interrelated topics. When business still moved at human speed, we could afford to consider them separately. In the Electronics Era, we no longer can. We need to perceive tactics and strategy as what they truly are: points on an Execution Continuum, along with several other critical … [Read more...]