"If you wanted to communicate with a partner 25 years ago, you'd send a letter, maybe make a trip. But because of the type of communications used, the pace of decision-making was slow. With e-mail, you've compressed the time you're expected to deal with this problem. The world doesn't want you to slow down to make a good decision. Now you're lucky if you can sleep on it. Being considered a slow decision-maker is a terrible label to have."

Wall St. Journal interview with Lew Platt, recently retired CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Cisco Systems leads in eliminating the drudgery of bureaucracy while improving performance.  By creating an "E-organization" that enables people to operate intelligently and independently using web tools which rivals their equally successful E-commerce efforts.

Why 1st generation strategies are not sufficient

Reason One: Strategies that yield competitive advantage cease doing so once they are broadly adopted.  With varying success, most firms at least understand the value of speed.  If your firm gets to market a year before mine, you have a rich advantage, but when the lead is cut to just two months, that's not much advantage.  Bottom line:  Compare yourself to your competitors, and:

• If you're behind, start with first generation
• If everyone's in a pack and you've addressed 1st generation, turn to second generation
• In either case, make sure the case for speed is driven by your business strategy.

Reason Two:  Internet Time!  Cisco Systems CEO, John Chambers is fond of saying, the Internet moves in dog years where 1 year of Internet time equals 7 normal years.   Frankly, that may be too slow.  The real-time feedback and global reach of the Internet makes initiative and inaction equally transparent to all. 

 Reason Three:  Operations is no longer the critical path.  My research indicates that the critical barriers to speed is the time required to make strategic choices  (and re-make them!) than operational areas.   Just as falling water levels expose rocks in a stream,  removing obstacles in operations exposed the slow pace of strategic decision making.

Hallmarks of 2nd generation speed

Making faster strategic decisions presents a dilemma.  As former Hewlett-Packard CEO Platt describes (see sidebar), fast decisions will minimally more mid-course adjustments, and some will be outright wrong.  Roaring straight ahead like a dragster fueled with alcohol is suicide. 

Information technology, which played a minimal role in the first generation of speed is absolutely essential in the second.  Today's employees don't need nor want much "management."  They'd rather have tools such as Inter/Intranet enabled processes from expense reporting to bid procurement and co-design tools. 

 2nd generation speed requires constant strategic context refreshment, flexibility and discipline:

1. Move speed into the executive suite - constantly refresh your understanding of the competitive context, test and re-define direction and boundaries in real-time.
2. Shift from dragster speed to Formula 1.  Develop your firm's ability to brake and shift direction as quickly as it accelerates.
3. Use information technology, particularly Intranets/Internets, to reduce information float and increase decision/execution speed..
4. Use information technology to hard and soft wire your firm to critical partners - redesign business processes across firms; move from multi-functional to multi-organizational thinking.
5. Don't distribute global; define and design globally as well.

©2000 Christopher Meyer