Accelerating Performance

SECTION IIThe Acceleration Imperative

Now that you have seen the basic outline for META, this section takes a deep dive into the specifics, at each of the four levels where META applies: strategy, the organization, teams, and leaders.

Chapter 6, on how to accelerate strategy, observes that many companies do a curious thing: They may focus 100 percent of their effort on things they can control, even though analysis shows that 45 percent or more of a company’s profitability depends on events in the environment, outside its control. This chapter explains how to sense better what’s going on in the environment and then respond faster, to turn that 45 percent-plus from uncertainty into opportunity. The chapter goes through 13 factors that can either create drag or drive performance. For instance, it explains how to fail fast—most companies hold on to failing strategies for too long. The chapter explains how to check for “execution feasibility”—many companies set strategy without fully understanding whether they can make it work, rather than trying to develop a strategy with the fewest execution hurdles in front of it. The chapter also describes how to respond rapidly, based on less-than-perfect information, and how to get to the goal ahead of the competition.

In Chapter 7, on how to accelerate organizations, we note that it has been a very long time since there has been fundamental innovation in organizational structure. As a result, developments in technology and other factors that ...