Life and death depend on speed

Speed is a term used to manage work in the new economic era. Small businesses can bring an initial idea to market in just ten weeks, a process that typically takes at least two years. Industry barriers are being lowered as technology becomes public, and companies that already exist must be able to make adjustments to their entire market strategies within a very short period of time. Some companies have had to reframe their strategies every few weeks in the face of customer feedback.

Fast Teams: Identifying Six Winning Factors

In late 1999, IBM CIO Steve Ward was in a state of anxiety. He found that if the company's global information technology team can't keep up with the pace of the Internet age, the small businesses that respond quickly will steal business, especially those related to the Internet. Therefore, he proposed the establishment of a "speed team" (Speed Team). The team is composed of IBMers who have completed creative networking projects in a very short period of time, and is led by two notable figures for quick wins: Managers of Internet Technology and Operations Jane Harper and Ray Blair, Purchasing Manager.

They first decided to spread the word throughout the company that the "fast team" would work for six months, ending in June 2000. Next, they analyze redundant steps and successful projects to identify commonalities and identify "speed barriers" that affect other schedules.

One of the factors that affects speed is the rules of application development. The reasons for these rules are very legitimate -- to ensure quality -- but they are based on "change with the same" basis. Blair found that making appropriate adjustments to the processes of individual projects could increase the speed of some projects while maintaining quality. In less than a year, Blair took IBM's online purchases to nearly $2 billion by eliminating several steps in the application, while saving the company $80 million. He expects total savings to reach $250 million in the second year. The review time for incoming applications has also been shortened from two weeks to 24 hours.

"Fast Team" also borrowed from the "WebAhead laboratory" (WebAhead laboratory). The lab, located in Connecticut, is one of IBM's frontier divisions, specializing in the development of new technologies. The work ethic of the "Internet Pioneers" is tinged with a sort of shop floor culture, who sees themselves as producing "the heart of IBM." The team shared an office, with employees sitting in rows around long tables. The lab keeps in touch with clients and other parts of IBM through instant messaging technology and wireless networks. An innovation called the Video Watercooler provides employees with a meeting environment similar to speaking over a chiller or coffee machine—a less formal, but time-saving, meeting. This practice is more motivating for people to work faster on a project than a pre-arranged video conference.

Jane Harper, who manages the 10 employees of the Cyber Pioneer Lab, has drawn some valuable lessons from her lab work. One is recognizing that speed is a reward in itself, because everyone loves seeing their projects get done as quickly as possible. In addition, you need to recruit employees who can adapt to high-speed work -- not everyone can do this. So she kept expanding IBM's software engineer internship program, scouring Harvard and Stanford for potential design candidates before small businesses.

IBM has identified six winning factors for a speed strategy: strong leadership; team members' passion for speed; clear goals; reliable communications; project-appropriate processes; speed schedule. But the "fast team" found that all of this ultimately comes down to your perception of time. Treating and measuring time as a tangible resource as important as money or people can help you make better use of your time. As with other change management techniques, goals can be broken down into encouraging tasks that can be completed quickly, and long-term planning that require significant changes in company policies, procedures, and even company values.

"In the past, strategic planning used a plan first, then sell model," said John M. Jordan, manager of e-commerce research at Ernst & Young, an international consulting firm, "but now the customer is calling the shots. , tell the company their requirements, and the company must respond to those requirements or be eliminated. It's a whole new strategic mindset."

Fast Culture: Follow the "Three Clicks" Principle

In the Internet age, "you must sprint at any time". For Boston Consulting Group senior staff Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, victory belongs to the first competitor to get the business strategy right. Today's companies have to keep trying and keep trying. "Follow-up tactics may work in a marathon, but not in a sprint."

What does this mean for the average manager's day-to-day job? The speed of work in the Internet age is usually calculated on a ten-to-one ratio, that is to say, the business processing speed in the Internet economy is ten times faster than that in the old economy. The internet age means not only high speed, but also working whenever the customer wants, and the customer has the final say for how long.

In response to the sudden collapse of the time frame and intense competition, the company had to revise its management systems using a variety of techniques, including the multi-scenario simulation that military planners used before the war. Solutia Chemical's strategists assigned four different short-term outcomes to each proposal, with built-in triggers designed to indicate when changes were needed. As a result, a company can abandon or change a particular strategy within hours before it must execute on that given strategy, regardless of the market's reaction.

For many industries, the customer now has real power, as if he had a direct line with the sales manager. Therefore, companies must develop a new corporate culture that is compatible with the Internet age.

According to Peg Neuhauser, Ray Bender and Kirk Stromberg, three authors of Culture.com, Web designers know that when searching for a product, service, or information, most Internet users get impatient with more than 3 clicks. If they still haven't found what they need, by the 4th click, they'll move away -- into the arms of a competitor. Therefore, if companies must consider the "three clicks" concept of the Internet age when formulating strategies, they need a "three clicks" culture to support them. The book Culture.com describes a company called Acxiom developing a 100-day plan to accelerate progress and change the company's strategy, hoping to build and sell its new type of business-to-business e-commerce in 100 days. software goals, which used to take a year. Acxiom identified two main issues to study: how to organize and make decisions quickly; and how to build a solid corporate culture that increases employee trust in new ways of working. The company has accumulated a lot of valuable experience in research, such as: do first and then study, rather than first study and then execute. Post-mover is long overdue.

Create an atmosphere that encourages adventure. Cutting down your own cash cow and replacing it with a new generation of products will keep you motivated.

Methods of changing decisions. Create a decision-making schedule like P&G—set a project completion goal three to four times faster than normal to win fast.

To improve the speed of decision-making in a company, you can count the number of meetings the company needs to hold to make a decision and the number of attendees required for each meeting, and then calculate the number of various meeting bodies, body members and meetings. The time required was cut in half and the number of participants was drastically reduced.

IBM's "Fast Team" understands that time is of the essence in the Internet age, especially when it comes to meetings -- ineffective meetings are a real waste of time and energy for any manager. energy. Knowing not to waste time in their own meetings, the Fast Team developed a set of meeting rules that would benefit other companies as well:

Be prepared. Know the content of the meeting properly and prepare well before you arrive.

Quick to the point. Schedule meetings and stay on topic, and minor issues can be discussed with colleagues via email.

Don't waste time on secondary issues. Issues that require further discussion can be taken up in a future conference call.

Don't mind your behavior -- you can save time by saying "don't stop" or "next question," especially if most people agree.

Encourage quick responses. The decision of the meeting will be published in the database within an hour, so that everyone knows what to do next.

The IBM team found that many business processes have an impact on speed because quality over speed is the priority in these processes. But if you, like IBM, revise your project procedures and don't put one mold on all projects, then there's no choice of quality or speed.

Fast Mode: Putting the Right People in the Right Positions

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) is a fund management company of British's Barclays Bank, headquartered in San Francisco, California. As a BGI employee, Bill Drobny has come up with a way to get projects done quickly by having the right people for the right jobs. Drobeney is an e-commerce strategist who also oversees business planning for the company's US division. In the past, due to too many projects being carried out and resources being scattered, many projects were in trouble, and at the same time, everyone was reluctant to make decisions on the choice of projects. Now, BGI has an inward clearing house for project intelligence, where valuable projects can be evaluated.

Drobny explains the pattern he built. There are five important roles in this model: a sponsor, or funding partner, is a heavyweight executive who is closely related to the company's strategic goals and can provide the company's credibility to the project; a sponsor who supports the project and is responsible for the day-to-day Business owners or business executives who make decisions; project managers; technical experts; and employees who provide support. "You've got to have money, you've got to make decisions, you've got to have deadline-worrying employees, and you've got to have tools," he said.

In dissecting failed projects, Drobny found that roles such as project manager and business owner were often concentrated in the same person, who didn't know what to do when a decision was contested. "You can't have people playing opposing roles, or they'll be biased in choosing the best option," he said. "There's no question that project managers should be thinking about deadlines, not quality."

Drobny He added that his model "makes you feel better because you can get some projects done, and the fact that the project gets done is the most important thing. Usually, the model is not about whether the project is successful, but about whether the project is successful or not. Is the project achieving some tangible results; is the project constantly eating up resources." When the project process is bogged down, one can go back and revisit this model to check whether the required roles or technologies are not There is a missing. But it requires employees who fit in with the company culture.

It's never too late to increase your speed. Companies must make decisions quickly, and this is nothing new—it has been necessary since ancient times. The difference is to broaden the scope of the decision-making process so that decisions are made faster. In order to meet the requirements of rapid response, decision-making and decision-making methods must be changed.

Originally adapted from The Next Big Idea by Carol Kennedy with permission. The book is published by Random House Business Books. Copyright is registered by The Random House Group Limited. Translated by Su Yong.

Carol Kennedy is an award-winning business and management author and author of the bestselling Guide to the Management Gurus. She has written numerous other books on business and social history, including The Merchant Princes.