Steven Spear - The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition

HOW MARKET LEADERS LEVERAGE

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

TO BEAT THE COMPETITION

STEVEN J. SPEAR

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Copyright 2009 by Steven J. Spear. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-174140-8

MHID: 0-07-174140-2

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In memory of

Jacob Irgang (19301995),

Korean War veteran, Purple Heart recipient,

Stuyvesant High School teacher extraordinaire, 19631995.

He knew his students were capable of far more

than even they realized.

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Contents

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v

c o n t e n t s

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preface

T he High-Velocity Edge shows how to beat your rivals, even in the most competitive markets. True, business can be brutal. You exhaust yourself identifying market needs, hustling to develop offerings, and rushing to produce and deliver those items. No sooner is this done than someone else competes for your customers, conspires with your suppliers, and quickly bids down returns on your efforts.

Still, a few enjoy a better experience. They too have to identify needs, create solutions, and deliver to market. However, rivals chase them and never catch up. Instead, the enviable few keep hitting new milestones. They win, not from finding predation-safe positions. There are none. Rather, they discover ways to be better at what they do and develop products and processes that are better than anyone elses, operating with such velocity that pursuers are frustrated.

The High-Velocity Edge reveals how this is done. It shows how leaders create and sustain unassailable rates of broad-based, internally generated improvement, innovation, and invention, and how you and your organization can do so as well. And if A

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P r e f a c e

you succeed in transforming your organization into one that is high velocity, you too can face the market with unmatchable combinations of reliability and responsiveness.

That you must compete not just by position but by velocity as well is the result or both external and internal pressures.

Externally, you are always challenged by rivals in the private sector and increasingly by resource-strapped patrons in the public sector. Unless your organization figures out how to do more of what is better with less, you lose relevancy.

There is also internal pressure for high-velocity discovery, learning, innovation, and invention. The work of organizations is incredibly complex, and nothing complex can be designed perfectly. There are simply too many partsbe they the actual components of complex technical systems or the contributions of people who are expert in myriad disciplinesconnected in too many convoluted, interdependent ways for a small group of smart people to plan a system that will work adequatelylet alone perfectly. Since you cannot plan perfection, then you must pursue perfection.

The High-Velocity Edge develops the principles, with examples of their application, that leaders employ to ensure that their organization performs better than anybody elses. This book explains how to:

Create an organization in which work is done in a way that both harnesses the best known approaches currently available and signals loudly when and where new knowledge is needed.

Solve problems as they arise, not only to make the immediate symptom disappear but also to develop new understanding that prevents the problem from recurring.

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Magnificently multiply the impact of these local discoveries by making them systemically useful.

Lead an organization in a manner that facilitates the constant development of great discoverers thereby enabling discovery to happen all of the time, everywhere.