Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution

Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution

by Jocelyn Davis, Henry Frechette, Edwin Boswell
Released June 2010
Publisher(s): Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 9781422131527

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Book description

Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are successfully executed. Of those that are, most CEOs view the process as too slow. What’s going on? And how can you accelerate execution in your company?

In Strategic Speed, the authors provide the answers. Start by understanding the barriers to execution: Employees don’t grasp where an initiative is going. They don’t adopt new behaviors. They’re not committed to working together to achieve results.

Most leaders try to speed things up by changing processes or installing new technologies. But better processes and systems won’t remove the barriers. Instead, you need to unleash three people factors—clarity (understanding the goal), unity (collaborating across work groups), and agility (adapting quickly).

The authors explain how to unleash these factors by exercising four leadership abilities:

• Affirming strategies: Ensuring everyone knows the destination and wants to go there
• Driving initiatives: Accelerating projects called for by your strategy
• Managing climate: Controlling what it feels like to work in your team
• Cultivating experience: Harnessing employees’ knowledge and expertise

Strategic Speed provides real-world examples—from companies as diverse as Tata Sky, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ameriprise, and Fender Guitars—showing these practices in action. And it’s packed with tools and assessments for diagnosing where your execution efforts are in trouble and choosing specific actions for accelerating results in your firm.

Table of contents

  1. Praise for Strategic Speed
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. PREFACE
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. PROLOGUE - The Hazards of Speed
  8. ONE - Speed: A New View
    1. The Key to Speed
    2. Trap 1: Overattention to Pace
    3. Trap 2: Overattention to Process
    4. Faster Companies Attend to People Factors
    5. Focus on People: The Three Most Important Factors
    6. Measuring Speed: Focus on Value
  9. TWO - The People Factors: Clarity, Unity, Agility
    1. Clarity
    2. Unity
    3. Agility
    4. The Strategic Speedometer: Measuring Clarity, Unity, and Agility
    5. Four Leadership Practices That Boost Clarity, Unity, and Agility
  10. THREE - Leaders Affirm Strategies
    1. Affirming Your Strategy Is the First Step
    2. Understanding the Components of a Strategy
    3. Being Aligned and Alert as a Leadership Team
    4. Helping Others Buy In
    5. Pulling the Pieces Together
    6. An Affirmed Strategy—or a Strategy in the Dark?
  11. FOUR - Leaders Drive Initiatives
    1. Keeping Your Foot on the Accelerator
    2. Structuring the Specific Initiatives
    3. Staffing with Capable Teams
    4. Driving the Initiative
    5. The Centrality of Behavior Change
    6. Driving Initiatives: Merely Project Management?
  12. FIVE - Leaders Manage Climate
    1. Facts About Climate
    2. The Dimensions of Climate
    3. Measuring and Managing Climate
  13. SIX - Leaders Cultivate Experience
    1. Well-Cultivated Experience Drives Speed
    2. Leaders as Cultivators
    3. Levels of Experience
    4. How to Cultivate Experience
  14. SEVEN - Tools for Achieving Strategic Speed
    1. The Time/Value Assessment: Are Your People and Projects Achieving Strategic Speed?
    2. The Team Survey: Are Your People Clear, Unified, and Agile?
    3. The Leadership Profile: What’s Slowing You Down?
    4. The Speed Matrix: What Are Your Top Priorities for Action?
  15. EPILOGUE - The Future of Speed
  16. APPENDIX A - The Forum Corporation and Economist Intelligence Unit Global Speed Survey
  17. APPENDIX B - The Cultural Aspects of Speed
  18. NOTES
  19. INDEX
  20. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Product information

  • Title: Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution
  • Author(s): Jocelyn Davis, Henry Frechette, Edwin Boswell
  • Release date: June 2010
  • Publisher(s): Harvard Business Review Press
  • ISBN: 9781422131527