BOOK REVIEW: Winners work fast and smart

The Velocity Advantage, by Jack Bergstrand

VELOCITY provides an exceptional advantage, author Jack Bergstrand asserts, and this book will convince you he is right. Velocity is going ahead with speed, in the right direction, because speed only matters if you are going in the right direction. 

On reading this you may be thinking that you don’t want any more speed! You are already working too many hours. Velocity, however, only increases when fewer people work fewer hours relieved of the unnecessary weight of bad work practices. We need to manage differently.

If ‘efficiency’ is doing things with minimum effort, and ‘effectiveness’ is doing the right things, ‘velocity’ is doing the right things in the right order in the right way. The results include “simplification, generating surpluses, freeing up time for people, increasing growth and profits, and producing a higher standard of living for our societies,” Bergstrand demonstrates.

Velocity is focused on creating value - not cost cutting - and so growing the economic pie for all.

In the industrial age, large corporations were the winners; today they are being replaced by the fast and smart. The slow companies will inevitably fail, with disastrous consequences for their employees.

The scientific approach to management was designed to improve manual-work productivity in the industrial age, but it is singularly ineffective for today’s knowledge-based economy.

But so many persist in using it with its quantitative methods, strict controls, detailed plans, and excessive analyses. Just reconsider what that achieves: poor work-life balance, meetings that suffocate one, decisions that don’t stick, and consistently high project failure rates.

In the past, you could see the plant line idle, and you could see defective units piling up at the end of the line as scrap. Today, it is not unusual for an entire team of expensive, talented knowledge workers to be brought to a standstill by an unanswered email that is sitting someone’s inbox. This “knowledge-worker scrap” wastes resources no less expensive than physical scrap, only without any visible evidence of the problem.

Manual work has physical constraints. People can walk a lot of dogs, but there are clear limits. Knowledge can be much more productive. Warren Buffett’s firm of investors, Berkshire Hathaway, do knowledge work and earned a net income of $24bn in 2015 with a staff of twenty-five people.

Today’s companies run on knowledge, which is an infinite power source, able to be used and still available at the same time. With knowledge work, potential productivity is huge but the shelf-life of knowledge is shorter. This makes the velocity (speed in the correct direction) an essential ingredient for success. 

In this book Bergstrand offers two models: one is to enable team members to identify their strengths so they can be used to support complex, team-driven projects. The other is a knowledge management model and I will describe this one below. I chose this one because so many executives are bogged down by efforts not results, and this model focuses sharply on getting results.

The model is Envision-Design-Build-Activate (EDBA), and can become the drumbeat for teams at every level. The model helps leaders and frontline workers alike to focus on results, and not be distracted by effort. I will look at it only from the executive perspective.

Work is a social science, and as such needs a shared language, frameworks, and processes to avoid an unworkable amount of complication later. Such a shared understanding will allow people to be on the same page, move in a single direction, and adapt in an ever-changing environment so they solve problems and exploit opportunities. 

Without this, resources are wasted, employees become disengaged, and there is a high rate of project failure.

Four steps to success

The EDBA velocity framework has four steps.

Step one is ‘Envision’: this is the process of working out where you intend to go and why, for a specific time. Through Envision, people become clear on the destination and timeframe. In companies, Envision-orientated functions include departments or activities of research and development, strategy, marketing, and other externally influenced functions.

Step two is ‘Design’ and helps to prioritise what you need to do and when. With Envision clear, Design can establish the most important priorities needed to make the Envision statement happen. In companies, the Design-orientated functions include finance, accounting, engineering, and planning.

Step three is ‘Build’, the step at which people determine how to best implement the design priorities most productively. Build-orientated corporate functions include areas such as manufacturing, information systems, and logistics.     

Step four is ‘Activate’: selecting and assigning the right people to the right work at the right time. In companies, Activate-orientated functions include areas such as line management, coaching, communications, and sales. These functions require motivating, personal relationships, influencing and guiding people to produce success. Increasing velocity requires this social process.

What I like most about the four steps of the EDBA model is the simplicity. When things go wrong it is inevitably because one of the steps was glossed over or done badly. To get things going speedily and correctly, employ the model. But do it slowly, and thoroughly.

The pre-work saves an awful amount of re-work and it will increase impact, energy, and engagement.

Readability:     Light --+-- Serious
Insights:          High -+--- Low
Practical:          High +---- Low

* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently-released Executive Update. Views expressed are his own.