Speed Lead: Faster, Simpler Ways to Manage People, Projects and Teams in Complex Companies

by Kevan Hall

Success can make you slow
Today's managers waste an estimated 40 percent of their time on unnecessary cooperation, communication and control. Old-fashioned management skills are too expensive and slow to use in today's complex companies. When great companies grow they become more complex. This complexity starts to undermine what made the company the organization slows down, it is more difficult to get things done and it becomes a less satisfying workplace.

In his work with talented people from hundreds of the world's leading companies. Kevan discovered that they spend over 80 percent of their time on cooperation, communication and control - and that up to 50 percent of that time is wasted. Organized around 4 Cs - Cooperation, Communication, Control and Community - Speed Lead distills the experience of more than 35,000 people in over 200 of the world's leading companies. The resulting radical view has enabled organizations to unravel the spaghetti of complexity, reduce project cycle times, build closer business relationships and curb the costs of unnecessary travel.

Contrary to current leadership wisdom, Speed Lead advises celebrate the end of teams where you don't need them; abolish meetings of the bored; take control of the "crack-berry" and don't be a 24-hour control freak; expect more from your people and lead a lot less; make "good-enough" decisions; and, don't let diversity be a diversion - share practices, not values.

Genres: Business, Management

228 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2006

Reviews

[Petrov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

Very thought provoking book, I found a lot to save for future thinking. Will see further to read other books by the author.

[Steve Fenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some pretty good advice in here. It looks at things at scale and has recognizable challenges.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Hall, “the book is about how to simplify the way we work together in complex companies to increase speed, make them easier and cheaper to operate, and provide a more satisfying place to work.” Obviously, these are highly desirable objectives but seldom easy to achieve…especially now in what James O’Toole and Edward Lawler characterize as a "crazy-quilt world of work." In The New American Workplace, they share the results of their research and identify "some clearly identifiable developments":

Insufficient creation of "good jobs"
Increased choice and risk
Increased influence of competitive and economic drivers
Increased tension between work and family life
Mismatch between skills and business needs
Increased social stratification based largely on educational attainment
Changing nature of careers
Reduction in community and commitment
Shortcomings of the healthcare system
The boomer demographic imperative
Unrealized opportunities to make more effective use of human capital

These and other developments suggest a context, a frame-of-reference, for the material that Hall provides in Leading Speed. He focuses on what he calls the “4Cs”: Cooperation, Communication, Control, and Community. None is a head-snapping revelation and I would have included Collaboration. However, this is Hall’s book, not mine. He is to be commended for identifying the most serious efficiency and productivity problems in the workplace, and, common causes of each. He then proposes practical solutions to those problems. Of special interest to me is Hall’s emphasis on the need for what he calls “selective decentralization” when identifying simpler ways to manage people, projects, and teams, especially in (but not only in) complex companies. He also stresses the importance of simplicity throughout his narrative, agreeing with Einstein that policies and processes should be “as simple as possible but no simpler.”

Hall has no illusions whatsoever as to how difficult it is to overcome all manner of barriers (especially cultural barriers) in complex organizations. In this context, I am also reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes observation, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Corporate agility is by no means easy to establish and then sustain. Kevan Hall suggests how managers (not only C-level executives) at all levels and in all areas can create that decisive competitive advantage by working effectively with their associates to produce more and better work faster in less time and at a substantially lower cost.