Think Fast

Automotive Manufacturing & Production, May, 2000 by Gary S. Vasilash

observations and opinions about the nature of Detroit in context with what's occurring right now in silicon valley from a man who has been on the ground in both locales, Dr. Christopher Never. As Meyer observes, "speed has never been more important." They get it in the valley. But what about Motown?

How would you like to face this situation: Your company is producing a better-performing product, a product with better quality than that provided by another company, yet the other company's revenues are growing faster. When Christopher Meyer was working at disk drive manufacturer Quantum Corp. in the late '80s, the company found itself facing those very conditions. And as he was developing strategy for Quantum at the time, the CEO told Meyer to come up with a strategy to reverse the situation. "It was purely a time-to-market issue," Meyer recalls. "The strategy was to get faster." So Meyer set about to learn the ways, means and methods to go faster. (And Quantum ended up passing its competitor, which ended up becoming absorbed by another manufacturer.)

Today Meyer is the chairman of the Strategic Alignment Group (Portola Valley, CA). He thinks fast.

I remember standing in line at a Borders in the early 1990s. I noted that there, behind the counter where they keep the books that have been ordered and are ready for customer pickup, a couple dozen copies of Fast Cycle Time: How to Align Purpose, Strategy, and Structure for Speed by Christopher Meyer. The book was published in 1993. That Borders is located in sight of Ford World Headquarters. In the early 1990s, Meyer worked with Ford on developing world-class timing capability. Although Meyer continues to be a car guy by interest, his focus has been on the way work--from planning to execution (or not)--is done in Silicon Valley. In 1998 he published Relentless Growth: How Silicon Valley Innovation Strategies Can Work in Your Business. Yes, it can even work in the auto industry.

Preemptive admission. Meyer is a consultant. Sometimes people are somewhat less than taken with consultants. The reason is that the disenchanted tend to be charged with getting things done and some consultants have a tendency to be more theoretical than practical.

Two points to hear from Meyer so that you are more inclined to listen to the rest:

1. "Strategy is essential because it is a competitive world out there, but analytical disciplines are meaningless if people don't act on them."

2. "Lots of companies have rational and well thought out plans, but their execution is lousy or, in Silicon Valley language, 'sucks."'

(And if none of that convinces you, perhaps this will help: In addition to consulting, he also teaches executive education courses at Stanford and the California Institute of Technology, plus MBAs at the University of Santa Clara.)

Preemptive admission no. 2. Silicon Valley is by any measure a leading--perhaps the leading--geographic area where innovation is seemingly the raison d'etre (but it isn't: they want to make money and plenty of engineers want to do new things because those new things are cool and, perhaps more importantly, because they can). Meyer describes it as "a petri dish of innovation, a rich media." That said, know that he acknowledges: "The Valley is really good at some things and lousy at others." He notes, "Silicon Valley is not a paragon. It has its own warts."

Meyer's admiration is not naive.

Preemptive admission no. 3. Meyer stresses that there are some overarching issues related to the products of Detroit vis-a-vis those developed in Silicon Valley that make the stakes a whole lot different[ldots]such as product liability issues. It's one thing if your hard drive crashes. It is another if your ABS doesn't work.

Forget the products for a moment. What makes any company fast and good (if you're going to be fast, you'd better be good because time doesn't wait for rework) is process.

Meyer suggests: "The Valley is not just computers and software, but it's a constant reinvention of the process and art of innovation. What Silicon Valley invents is the process, not just the products."

He adds a cautionary note about process, however: "My intention is to avoid the 'process police' view of the world which sublimates humans to rigid processes. While there are exceptions, in Silicon Valley, processes serve people, people don't serve processes."

Meyer provides two images of Silicon Valley companies:

1. He describes them as companies that are "leaning into the future." He contrasts that future orientation with some Detroit companies that "tend to take their past and sell it in the present and even carry it into the future." With all of that baggage, it is difficult to move smartly into the future.

2. Valley managers and engineers sometimes talk about "going up the down escalator"--an escalator that's descending at a brisk clip as technology changes cause margins to erode. If you stand still, you move into the past. And given that your competitors are rushing to go up, you lose. And down you go.