It's Not the Big That Eat the Small … It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business. - Brief Article - Review - book review

HR Magazine, Jan, 2001

Jason Jennings

Laurence Haughton

HarperBusiness, 2001, 288 pages,

ISBN: 0-06-662053-8

List Price: $26.00

If you feel the need for speed, this book is for you. Jason Jennings, who heads Jennings Partners, a business consulting practice, and Laurence Haughton, the firm's chief strategist and tactician, believe that speed is critical in today's business environment. To quickly bring products, ideas and services to the market, organizations need to be fast on their feet in every area, including human resources.

This fast-paced book--enlivened with brief, snappy summaries of each subsection--demonstrates that the authors believe readers share concern about wasting time. A "Sixty-Second Heads Up" ends each chapter by summarizing the text in bulleted points. The writing style is direct and no-nonsense, as revealed in chapter titles and subheads such as "We Don't Suck Worse than Them."

Using real-life examples from today's business leaders, Jennings and Haughton divide their book into four critical topics: faster thinking, faster decisions, acceleration into the marketplace and sustaining speed.

Part I focuses on fast thinking. The authors say that leaders first must hone their ability to anticipate by looking to past cycles for clues to the next cycle. They should question "everything," conduct "scenario-planning" workshops and develop a sense of empathy to deepen awareness. Second, leaders need to become better at spotting trends by understanding the "drivers" of change and by reaching out to customers and clients. For example, Dave Pottruck, co-CEO of Charles Schwab, is cited as saying that most of the financial service firm's major innovations have developed from asking customers what they want. The last part of this section focuses on putting every idea through the "grinder" to come up with the one, best idea.

Part II emphasizes the importance of making fast decisions--throughout the organization. Speed becomes much easier, say the authors, when you base every decision on guiding principles and you eliminate bureaucracy. A brief pop quiz is included to test bureaucratic tendencies; watch out--your organization might flunk.

To get to market faster, the theme of Part III, organizations must "launch a crusade," exploit their own advantages, get vendors and suppliers to move faster and institutionalize innovation. Instead of a mission, organizations need a "cause" that every one understands and can get behind. For example, America Online's cause is 'to build a global medium as central to people's lives as the telephone or television, only more useful."

Part IV concentrates on how companies can sustain speed by being ruthless with resources, tracking activities that create sales--not the sales themselves--maintaining financial flexibility and staying close to customers. Jennings and Haughton direct some of the most pithy advice to leaders in the chapter "Don't B.S. Yourself." Leaders need to ruthlessly control delusions of grandeur, say the authors. They recommend that executives "get in touch with your inner jerk" and follow the Australian tradition of having an "off-sider"--a trusted colleague who is secure enough to challenge the boss when necessary.

The book closes with the admonition that getting rid of the "speed bumps" that slow companies down is hard work. These bumps must be ruthlessly eliminated," say the authors, and, "like killing a vampire, a stake must be driven through the heart to make certain they don't resurface."